this model one is prepared to examine a patient's eye.

The best text book is Gower's Medical Ophthalmoscopy. It is written in a very pleasing style and unfolds the possibilities of the ophthalmoscope in such an attractive way that you will all be pleased to take it up, I am

sure.

AN ADDRESS.*

BY J. T. BROOKS, Esq., of Pittsburg, Second VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE PENNSYLVANIA

LINES WEST of Pittsburg.

Mr. President and Gentlemen: I have long

looked forward with interest to an opportunity of meeting the claim agents of the American railways. I was promised that pleasure two years ago, but events which I could not control made it impossible for me to realize my wishes at that time. I am entirely within the bounds of truth when I say that I have looked to the coming of this event with pleasure, because I knew it would bring me face to face with a body of men whose labors are worthy of record, and who, I know, are performing work for the great American railway systems which is of the very highest importance.

My only regret is that I have been so busy that I could not prepare myself worthily for this occasion. Your duties are incessant in railway service, and you know that all men who are engaged in that service are also busy. You have also learned that nothing of much value can be produced in this world without labor and a certain amount of thought, not even a speech. However, there are several points connected with the particular duties to which you are assigned with which I am familiar, and I hope to be able to speak in reference to them in a manner that will not be unsatisfactory to you.

The position you occupy is properly one of evolution. The human race itself, and every branch of human industry, so to speak, is in a stage of progress or decline. As time advances, it meets new conditions and must provide for new troubles. The progress or retrogression of the enterprises, in which men are engaged depends entirely upon the character of the men who are engaged in them. If they are intelligent, if they are devoted to the work

Delivered at the Convention of Claim Agents held at Pittsburg, Pa., May 28, 1896

in which they are engaged, if they engage in that work with a personal interest-not merely a perfunctory interest-and if they have a sincere desire to promote the good of the cause in which they are employed, nothing is more natural than that ideas should occur to them, which will enable them to make their work more interesting to themselves and more valuable to their company. Therefore, railway managers, railway representatives and employes, in the prosecution of their work, which has been going on in this country for half a century, have come to the conclusion that a well-organized claim department is indispensable to the highest degree of success in railway

operation. You claim agents are, therefore, just as reasonable a product of the process of evolution as can be found in any department of human industry.

Passing from that point to the one which is most prominent in my mind, what do you find it is in the prosecution of your work that has contributed most essentially and most happily to your success? Precisely what wise and thoughtful men find in the pursuit of other employments. That you register greater progress, that you attain to a higher degree of success, in proportion as you confer with other men engaged in similar work; contrast your ideas with theirs, give your experience and get theirs, and, acting together, agree upon certain principles of action and rules of procedure, which will guide you individually when you go forth to the four corners of the world to carry on your work. Therefore, your annual meeting here is the second step in a process of evolution, the credit for which belongs exclusively to yourselves.

Passing from these general considerations to others more particular, what do you find— you have been for years in the service of railway companies-it is in the discharge of your daily duties that conduces most to your own ease of conscience, and results in the greatest degree of good to your company? Without stopping to consider the result of your efforts in any particular case which is under consideration, what do you find is the finest incentive to high and noble action? Surely it is that you will be loyal to the company which employs you.

The executive officers of railway companies are busied incessantly with a certain class of

railway topics, and men in the other departments have their particular questions to consider and decide; men who are charged with the responsibilities of transportation have their work to perform, and those who are in charge of freight and passenger traffic have their special duties to attend to. Now the claim agents, who are a part-and a vital part-of the law department of a company, have their special functions to perform, and each of these departments which make up the whole of a railroad system is charged for the time being with the responsibilites and the cares of the particular class of railroad business which is assigned to it. Therefore, my proposition on this point is, that a man who is a good claim agent and who aspires to be an honorable man in that profession, and to win the highest success possible, should be inspired with the strongest sense of loyalty to his employer, conscious of the fact that his associates in other branches of the railway service look confidently to him, without a thought, without a suspicion that he will serve the company other than faithfully in every respect in which the company's interests are committed to his charge. We all recognize the fact that when a man is entrusted with the performance of a duty-when children, decrepit people, women unversed in business, or business men whose time and thoughts are engrossed in other matters, turn over to this man or to that man the care of a particular branch of business, they have a right to expect from him steadfast loyalty and perfect integrity. You all concede that thorough uprightness is expected of that class of persons who are known so widely as trustees, executors and administrators. In the same sense, you, in the discharge of your duties, for the time being hold the key of the treasury of the railway company. When your decisions are made and your bills are rendered in favor of an injured party, nobody doubts that you have done as fairly, as wisely and as properly for the railroad company you represent as it is possible to do; therefore, your bills go through without a question, because we say, we know that John Smith, or William Jones, or whatever our claim agent's name may be, is as loyal to our company as we are, and we may be certain that he has exercised his best patience, industry, ingenuity and judgment to get our company out of trouble. Now there,

I say, is an illustration of the fact that you occupy a high and responsible position in the railway service, since your drafts at sight, on the treasury of the company, are honored without a question.

Now, what does that loyalty that I speak of require you to do? I have no fear of the answer which any man in this assembly will make to the question I am going to put. Does it require you always to exact the last cent or the last dollar that you can in a settlement with a person who has been injured, or with the representatives of one who has been killed, regardless of every consideration, regardless of all circumstances? Does your strict sense of duty, your high sense of honor, in a case where the interests of the company are committed entirely to yourself, and where the company is manifestly in the wrong, does it require you to yield the lowest possible sum to an injured party, without any regard to the injuries or circumstances of the injured one? I know I am treading on delicate ground, but I am ready to answer the question to my own conscience and say that justice should always be done. I say that among intelligent men, and especially men who have attained to high standing and good character in business life, there rests at the bottom of the heart of every one of them a thought that there is a fitness of things which every man's conscience should recognize, and that you should come as near doing justice to the injured as you can, just as much as you should come as near as you can doing justice to your employer.

I shall not take time to prove to you what justice is or that justice is due to all men. In what I have to say on this branch of the subject I shall confine myself simply to the politic side of the question. What is the consequence in the course of years of a claim agent disregarding the principles of right in settling with parties who have claims against a railroad company, who feel it to be his duty, and rejoices when he can perform it, to wring the last cent of concession out of an injured person, or the representative of a deceased person, on the one hand; or who, on the contrary, tries to shed the beneficent rays of an enlightened conscience over the subject that is under consideration, and yields to that sentiment of justice which, by common consent, prevails among men, and enables you to say

whether you have done in this case, or in that case, the thing that is right or the thing that is wrong? What is the effect, I say, upon the character and welfare of your company of those two different courses of action? Whether the claim agent, on the one hand, exacts the last farthing possible for his company, or, on the other hand, approaches every case and settles it with a beneficent purpose, not only to serve his company loyally, but to do justice to the injured party? We have had warnings of these different courses of procedure and we need no dissertation nor historical description of Company "A" or Company "B" or Company "C" to advise us what will be the result, if we follow one or the other of these courses of procedure. The representatives of railway companies are known to be identified with power, with wealth and with great influence, and no man can be in the service of a railway company, at least in America, without being recognized as a man who is fortunate in some sense in being allied with a railroad company; therefore, the representative of a railway company is a mark for observation and criticism in the community where he lives. He stands in that respect a little different from other men. Now, what is the result? Suppose a claim agent follows the course first indicated, and in the course of his business is invariably harsh and pitiless, and extorts the lowest settlement possible out of a mutilated person or the representatives of one who has been killed? conceals facts that he knows are against his company, sometimes perverts and falsifies those facts, and is willing to deceive and impose upon an ignorant person, in order to save a little money for his company. He may save a few dollars in one case, but the party who has been injured, and afterward wronged, does not keep that fact to himself. His neighbors want to know what treatment he has received from the railroad company for the loss of an arm, or whatever his injury may be. So that there are many people in a community who know at once what the railroad company has done for the man. Now, it is not long before that claim agent has to settle with somebody else. If the means of communication are not very good, it is possible that the next man he has to deal with may not have heard of the case described and he, too, may be duped and cheated by the claim agent, but presently af

He

fairs come to that state where everybody knows that that particular claim agent is an unscrupulous man, and when anybody is injured and is asking about where he can get advice and to whom he can go in his trouble, he will be told: "You cannot trust yourself with that claim agent; you had better get a lawyer, get somebody who is a match for him and let him sue the company." So that in time the claim agent acquires an unsavory reputation, and, unfortunately, at the same time he is bringing his railroad company into disrepute, because the public do not discriminate between the corporation and the acts of its representative. So that under such a course of procedure, it is not long before the whole community comes to look upon that claim agent and the company which he represents as unprincipled, grasping and despotic.

Now what is the effect of such conduct? We have seen what is in juries; we have seen what is is on boards having power of taxation; we have seen what it is in legislatures, and even in Congress. In other words, there is not a department of the administration of public affairs into which the knowledge does not come of the character of a railroad company and its employes. It may be that the injured party himself may some day sit upon a jury in a case in which a railroad company is involved, or on a taxing board, in the legislature or in Congress; or, if not a member or judicial officer himself, he is sitting on his portico some night and talking with his neighbor, or is in one of the offices in the county building, and there, in the presence of the sheriff or the clerk, or some of the county officers, he is relating his own experience, or that of John Smith, in getting a settlement with the railroad company for the loss of his arm. He tells his story and the railroad company is not there to defend itself, even if there was a defense to be made, and there goes forth into the heart of every man who listens to that tale a feeling of resentment against that railroad company, not merely against the unscrupulous claim agent, but against the company which he represents, and then woe betide the company when the man who has heard that story is on a jury or on a taxing board, or in the legislature, when the interests of that railroad company are at stake.

I have seen the operation of cases of that

kind in multiplied instances, and I have seen the evil consequences of them; I have also been permitted to see the very reverse, where the representatives of a railroad company, recognizing, in a particular case, that the company is in the wrong, do the very thing which one neighbor does toward another neighbor when he has wronged him. He feels that it is just for him to repair that wrong, and he does repair it as far as he can. He recognizes the duty that rests upon his company, as well as the good policy of the act, to seek to do justice to the man with whom he deals; and in that way he protects his company from bad repute. While the growth of opinion and the growth of character is often slow-it is sometimes disheartening that it is so slow-yet, ultimately that railroad company, through the aid of that honorable man who represents it in the claim department, may feel just as sure of honorable recognition and of fair treatment in the community where the railroad company's interests are under public consideration as any private citizen. Therefore, I say that the welfare of the railroad company is promoted by your exercising the sentiment of justice in your dealings with every injured man. Try to do as near as you can what your conscience tells you is right, and I will trust your conscience in every case, and, further than that, I will trust the officers of the railroad company to sustain you.

There are swindlers abroad in the land, and no men know it better than claim agents. There is no class of men, unless it be hired detectives, who have presented to them as many phases of duplicity in human nature as the claim agents of railroad companies. So that when we come to consider the mental characteristics which the claim agent should have, I reckon among the very first the power of penetration that enables him to look into a man's face, to weigh his words and determine whether he is a swindler or whether he is an honest man. The impressions he receives are sometimes erroneous, especially so if they are received too hastily. You are not called upon to decide a case the first minute, nor the first day, nor the first week after you have had an interview with the person who says he has been injured. In cases of alleged nervous prostration, injury to the spine and other favorite ills of swindlers, where you cannot see

that a leg or an arm has been broken; or where a man says he has an indescribable sensation and cannot tell you what it is, cannot tell because he hasn't anything of the kind; in such cases take your time to decide the claimant's sincerity and be diligent in hunting up his record. record. You will soon have intelligence to enable you to distinguish between fact and fraud, and, when sure of your point, act according to the merits of the case. Give not a cent to the swindler, and if he has swindled you, follow him till the prison gates close upon him. But if he is honest and has really been injured and is reasonable in his demands, your heart will tell your mind how you should act. Do by him as you would like to be done by in similar circumstances. I know of no safer rule in dealing with an honest man than to apply the Golden Rule, and do unto men "as you would that they should do unto you." It sometimes seems trivial, some may think it seems unmanly, to refer too often to the Golden Rule. We learned that rule at our mother's knee, we learned it when we were children and when the question at issue was about the division of a piece of cake or an apple, a few chestnuts or a little candy. I have been working pretty busily all my life, and I am ready to make the confession now and here, at the risk of being considered a weak-minded man, that I know of no safer guide on earth, in the largest as well as in the smallest transactions, than the Golden Rule; it is good for great men as well as for little children.

case.

Now, then, what other faculties are you called upon to exercise in the consideration of claims? Not only penetration, which enables you to distinguish between truth and falsehood; not only patience in the investigation of facts, and diligence in collecting all of them, but a sound judgment, a saving common sense of what is proper to do in any particular Entirely apart from the question of loyalty to your company or justice to the man with whom you are dealing, there are always circumstances that call for the exercise of a wise judgment; having determined what is just in this matter, and having every variety of men to deal with, I know of no place where a sound judgment can be exercised with such fruitful results to a railroad company as by a claim agent, in determining whether he had better settle or stand a lawsuit, just how far

he will go to secure a settlement, and where he will stop and allow his company to be sued, rather than be wronged. Here is a faculty which no man can say he was born to; it is the wisdom which comes of understanding, and experience gathered year by year, which ripens his judgment, so to speak, just as years of sunshine and showers ripen and develop the tree until it grows to a state of perfection. A man's mind is subject to influences, just as the creations of nature are. He receives impressions; he acts on them wisely and profits by them, or he acts on them unwisely and suffers by them. If he be heedful of his steps, if he learns to reflect and ponder upon his experience, to consider when and why he made mistakes, and when and why he acted wisely, these reflections will educate his judgment and make him a wise man; and just to the extent that he has thus educated his judgment and perfected his wisdom he will be able to draw the threads of what is fit and fair in every case which comes before him.

I have mentioned, briefly, as I am compelled to do, what I look upon as the fundamental requisites of a successful claim agent, not only with reference to his success as a claim agent, but with reference to the welfare of the company he serves. The recapitulate, therefore, I think that the conduct of the claim agent should be guided by a sentiment of loyalty to his company, and of justice to his fellow men. He should feel that he is working, not simply for to-day, but for all time. The reputation, the standing of the railway company he serves will survive him many, many years, and I would like to see every member of this association recognize, with me, the fact that the character, the reputation, the prosperity of his company, not merely in his own day, but with generations who are to follow him, will depend largely upon the manner in which he performs the duties of the present day and hour.

Finally, how can these traits of mind and heart be sharpened, quickened, broadened and strengthened? In considering this branch of the question I have mentioned but one or two points, advising that you make careful observation of your own conduct, note down in your own heart, you need not tell the world about it, but make a note of it in your own heart and for your own benefit, whether the

claim which you settled yesterday was settled equitably or unjustly. If you have done well, that act has the approval of your conscience. Now, then, by keeping that sort of a mental and moral diary of your own transactions, your mind becomes quickened and broadened, your conscience is strengthened and educated, and day by day you become better qualified to serve your company and add to your own reputation, and when Nature calls you away you leave your company in higher standing, with better credit and a better character than it had when you began to serve it, or than it would have had if you had pursued a different policy. Serving it, therefore, with an enlightened moral sense, and with an intelligence which has been educated by these mental observations which you make upon yourself and record in the diary of your mind and the diary of your heart, I say you are qualified to produce the best results for your company, not only in the day and generation in which you live, but in the far distant future, whose limit. it is not given us to discern.

Now, gentlemen, I am conscious that I have given but an outline of what might be said, and I would be glad to talk with you longer, but, unfortunately, my time is limited and I know that yours is; and so, welcoming you to this city and deriving the highest pleasure in the motive which draws you together, and in your desire to make the best of yourselves and your duty and your position, and to exalt yourselves and your office and the companies with which you are associated, urging upon you the necessity and propriety of coming together often, comparing notes and giving each other the benefit of your individual experience, what you have learned and what you have done, I thank you for the attention you have given

me.

A violent temperance advocate, upon being ushered into the dining-room of a friend, found the host and another guest just in the act of discussing a brace of roast ducks, with a bowl of punch in the background. He was asked to join them. "No, no, gentlemen," was the reply. "Give me a glass of water and a crust. You know not what you are doing. You are digging your graves with your teeth." Both gentlemen, however, outlived him.