TYPISTS IN TRAINS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10012, 7 April 1910, Page 4

TYPISTS IN TRAINS.

We have not yet in England, says a London paper, reached the stage where business men have telephones connecting them with their brokers by their side at quick lunch counters, as is said to be the case in Chicago, although one big shop in the West End provides telephonic service at its afternoon tea-tables, a recent departure of the London and North-Western Railway, however, shows that we are more and more seeking to utilise odd moments to the full. A new train is being run from Birmingham to Broadstret, London, which has in it a shorthandtypist ready to take down at dictation the letters of passengers. These letters will then be typed, and if they are not ready for signature by the time Broad-street is reached, they will be forwarded on to the passengers' offices. The same service is provided on the return jouiney from Broad-street to Birmingham in the evening. The passengers can, if they will, also dictate their telegrams and have them sent off. The railway company decided to make this new departure because one of its officials noticed that business passengers by the early trains to London were usually followed to the station each by three or four clerks with documents to be signed at the last moment. Now their letters can be brought to them unopened, they can read them in comfort at breakfast in the train, dictate answers afterwards, and arrive in London with the routine work cleared up. Modern progress steadily makes for the elimination of leisure. Even on a long ocean voyage the business man cannot escape his work, for wireless telegraphy follows him. Now the opporluntiy of resting upon the railway journey has gone. One big Toronto merenant, known to men, has a wireless apparatus on the roof of his great store, and another in his yacht on the lake side. When he goes away on holiday yachting trips he can keep almost as closely in touch with his secretaries as though he were on the spot. Philosophers may ask if even great success is worth the elimination of leisure and restfulness from a man's life.