manager, whose sole duty it is to make the wheels go around in the dividend machine, and to furnish juicy slices of melon for the stock-holders. The bond holders, on the other hand, don't even know where their property is located, and they only exercise their managing faculties long enough to clip coupons. It is exceedingly doubtful whether even 5 per cent. of the stock and bond holders of our railroads could tell the difference between a coupling-pin and a caboose.
Most of these people live over in Europe, where they find more congenial society among the bankrupt nobility and the royal has-beens. They would not associate with such ordinary truck as Americans. Their daughters are married to European counts and no-accounts, the dukes and ducks, the Boni Castelaines and Prince De Sagans, the Washlawinskis, Tchernewichicoff and Stinkiwitz. No, no, dear reader, these people don't run railroads. They only run through the money made on the railroads.
If the whole precious lot, with their monkey dinners, dog parties, cat funerals, butterfly balls, diamond dog collars, French poodles, actresses, automobiles, steam yachts, counts and no-accounts, with their mothers-in-law thrown in, would go to the bottom of the seas tonight, there would not be a single railroad train five seconds late in all the United States of America tomorrow morning, on account of the sad departure.
Separation Between Ownership and
Labor.
In the railroad industry, the separation between ownership and labor is perfect. Those who own the roads do not run them and those
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