ines the number and size of
the bridges and viaducts to be made, calculates the quantity of
embankments required to fill up hollows, and the number of cuttings to
level obstructions, in which latter calculations he estimates that the
cutting down of elevations will be made subservient as far as may be, to
the elevation of depressions. All this involves very nice and exact
calculation as to quantity of material, masonry, etcetera, and the
sinking of "trial shafts" to ascertain the nature of the various strata
to be excavated or tunnelled. Then the cost of all the works has to be
estimated in detail, apportioned into lengths and advertised for
execution by contract. To each section of the line thus apportioned--
forty or fifty miles--an experienced engineer is appointed, having under
him "sub-assistants," who superintend from ten to fifteen miles each,
and these again are assisted by "inspectors" of masonry, mining,
earth-work and permanent way, to each of whom a district is assigned.

These managing and guiding men having been appointed, the physical
workers are then called into action, in the form of bands of navvies.
As the steam and mechanism of the locomotive are useless except in
regulated combination, so brain and muscle can achieve nothing without
wise and harmonious union. If boys and men would reflect more deeply on
this great truth, pride, boasting, and the false separation of classes
would be less rife. We say _false_, because there is a separation of
classes which is natural and unavoidable. No one ever complains of
_that_. If ill-advised or angry navvies were to refuse to work, what
could directors and engineers do? If, on the other hand, ill-advised or
angry directors and engineers refused to pay, what could navvies do?
Antagonism is an unhealthy condition of things. There is far too much
of it between employers and employed in this world. "Agree with thine
adversary quickly" is a command which applies to bodies of men quite as
much as to individuals, and the word is "agree," not coerce or force.
If we cannot agree, let us agree to differ; or, if that won't do in our
peculiar circumstances, then let us agree to separate. Fighting, save
in self-defence, is only fit for fools.

But to return. When bone and muscle have been for the time welded to
brain, then the work of construction goes on "full swing." Difficulties
and obstructions are overcome in a way that appears to the unskilled eye
nothing