LETTER XIV.
THE MANAGEMENT THAT BREEDS FROM ITS OWN HERD.
My Dear Boy:—History repeats itself, and railroad history is made so fast that we repeat ourselves very often. Mankind absorbs a certain amount from the experience of others. In spite of the much good that comes, the same old fallacies are followed, the same old blunders are made. Within the last fifty years every road in the country, at some time or other, has undergone at least one reorganization and a corresponding radical change in personnel. Always, after several new camels get their heads under the tent, comes a newspaper pronunciamento that thereafter the management will breed from its own herd. This inbreeding invariably leads ultimately to narrowness if not to deterioration. The cousins intermarry too often and ere long the road is breeding its own scrubs.
Within the last five years every road in the
89
