Ingersol was appointed by the international committee to superintend the
work. There has been no rest for him in this. A leading railroad
official says: "Ingersol is indeed a busy man. Night and day he travels.
To-day a railroad president wants him here, to-morrow a manager summons
him. He is going like a shuttle back and forth across the country,
weaving the web of railroad associations." When he entered on the work
there were but three railroad secretaries; now there are nearly seventy.
There are now over sixty branches in operation; and the work is going on
besides at twenty-five points; almost a hundred different places,
therefore, where specific work is done for railroad men. They own seven
buildings, valued at thirty-three thousand two hundred and fifty
dollars. The expense of maintaining these reading-rooms is over eighty
thousand dollars, and more than two thirds of this is paid by the
corporations themselves; most of the secretaries are on the regular
pay-rolls of the companies. How can this be done? Simply because the
officers see such a return from this expenditure in the morals and
efficiency of their men that they have no doubt as to the propriety of
the investment.

Mr. William Thaw, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Company, writes:
"This work is wholly good, both for the men and the roads which they
serve." Mr. C. Vanderbilt, first vice-president of the New York Central
and Hudson River Railroad, writes: "Few things about railroad affairs
afford more satisfactory returns than these reading-rooms." Mr. J.H.
Devereux, of Cleveland, president of the Cleveland, Columbus,
Cincinnati, and Indianapolis Railway, writes: "The association work has
from the beginning (now ten years ago) been prosecuted at Cleveland
satisfactorily and with good results. The conviction of the board of
superintendents is that the influence of the room and the work in
connection with it has been of great value to both the employer and the