I have delayed replying to your private letter of the 23rd instant a day or two for more accurate knowledge than I have in regard to what is at present customary on certain works. I have not succeeded as yet; if I obtain any information modifying what I shall say below, I will write you again.

I think that there is no fixed custom. The same employers take different courses at different times. Personal sympathy and other influences are allowed to affect the decision. Having strict regard to hard, commercial economy, it is generally recognized in the management of large works that it is prudent to be considerably more liberal than is necessary to meet legal, or even just claims. This from regard to moral effect. There is generally sympathy with a stricken man, especially in the case of prolonged and dangerous illness. If the employer is not thought to share in this sympathy and to be moved to liberality, an undefined and indistinctly recognized disposition to be indolent in mental exercise in his behalf is apt to occur in the force. In other words, the condition is favored which, when it becomes markedly obvious, is called by army and navy officers demoralization. In the degree that this demoralization exists, waste occurs, not through definable leaks, but as if through general porosity and insensible perspiration.

Recently a bank clerk fell slowly into bad health, at last being completely disabled and off duty for a year, then returning. The Directors voted him full pay. But this, of course, was an extreme case.

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It is as nearly a rule as anything, that when a man has to leave his duties on account of illness or accident for which his employer is not at all responsible, with the result that others of his fellows fill the gap for the time being as well as they can, no new man being enlisted to take his place, he is kept on full pay, even although the business suffers a little. When the absence is more prolonged; say beyond a month, in the large works with which I have had to do, full pay for the first month, and half pay afterwards for a reasonable period, has generally been allowed upon my recommendation. What is a reasonable period in such a case is to be determined chiefly by considering whether the break is to be regarded as a temporary one, or practically amounts to a permanent retirement from the organization.

I should think that Mr. Howard was generally regarded as a zealous servant to Mr. Vanderbilt; that there is general sympathy with him, and that you would be entirely within the lines of your duty as a purely business agent of Mr. Vanderbilt if you dealt with him as liberally as you are evidently disposed to.

Yours Faithfully