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been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with
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LETTERS FROM AN OLD RAILWAY OFFICIAL
TO HIS SON, A DIVISION SUPERINTENDENT
BY
CHARLES DELANO HINE
WITH A POSTSCRIPT BY FRANK H. SPEARMAN
CHICAGO
THE RAILWAY AGE
1904
COPYRIGHT, 1904,
BY CHARLES DELANO HINE
_To the railway officials and employes of America:_
_Their intelligence is an inspiration; their steadfastness, a
psalm._
FILE NUMBERS.
LETTER I.
A Word of Congratulation 1
LETTER II.
Helping the Train Dispatchers 6
LETTER III.
Handling a Yard 13
LETTER IV.
Distant Signals on Chief Clerks 18
LETTER V.
Safety of Trains in Yards 26
LETTER VI.
Standardizing Administration 31
LETTER VII.
The New Trainmaster and Civil Service 36
LETTER VIII.
Education of Several Kinds 43
LETTER IX.
Correspondence and Telegrams 49
LETTER X.
The Bayonet Precedes the Gospel 56
LETTER XI.
Preventing Wrecks Before They Happen 63
LETTER XII.
The Self-Made Man Who Worships His Maker 70
LETTER XIII.
The Friend-Mile as a Unit of Measure 79
LETTER XIV.
The Management that Breeds from Its Own Herd 89
LETTER XV.
More on Civil Service 97
LETTER XVI.
The Supply Train 104
LETTER XVII.
What the Big Engine Has Cost 114
LETTER XVIII.
Be a Superintendent--Not a Nurse 121
LETTER XIX.
The Rack of the Comparative Statement 130
LETTER XX.
Handling the Pay-Roll 137
LETTER XXI.
Military Organization 145
LETTER XXII.
Wrecks and Block Signals 153
LETTER XXIII.
Unionism 161
LETTER XXIV.
The Round-Up 169
POSTSCRIPT.
By Frank H. Spearman 177
Letters From A Railway Official
LETTER I.
A WORD OF CONGRATULATION.
March 20, 1904.
My Dear Boy:--The circular announcing your appointment as division
superintendent has just been received, and it brings up a flood of
thoughts of former years. I felt that you had made a mistake in
leaving us to go with the new system, but it has turned out all right.
I can appreciate the fact that you would rather work away from me, so
as to make people believe that you can go up the official hill without
having a pusher behind you.
This should be one of the proudest periods of your life. You are now
in a position to do good to your company, to your fellow man, and
incidentally to yourself. No matter how highly organized a road may
be, the importance of the office of division superintendent is in
direct proportion to the ability and earnestness of the incumbent. The
position is little or big, restricted or untrammeled, just as you make
it. Many a superintendent has had to double the hill of a swelled
knob, and run as a last section into the next promotion terminal. You
have too much of your mother's good sense ever to cause anybody else
to put up signals for you on this account. Therefore do not lose your
democratic manner. Keep your heart warm and regard the wider field as
an opportunity to get more friends on your staff. Try to call every
employe in your territory by name, as C├Žsar did his soldiers; for all
the traffic of goodwill must run in a direction toward you if you want
maximum results, as they call efficiency nowadays. Good old rule 121
of the standard code says: "When in doubt take the safe course and run
no risks," which, in the case of acquaintance, means if uncertain
whether you know a man or not, speak to him and give him the glad hand
anyway. You will have to discipline men, but that can be done without
parting company with your good manners. Remember that the much-abused
word "discipline" comes from the same root as the word "disciple," a
pupil, a learner, a follower. It is always easier to lead men than to
drive them.
When you go over the division do not try to see how many telegrams you
can send, but how few. It is usually a pretty safe rule after writing
a telegram on the hind end of a train to carry it by two or three
stations to see if you would rather not take it back to the office
yourself. The dispatchers used to tell your old dad that they couldn't
have told he was out on the line as far as his messages were an
indication. Another thing, do not try to plug your whistle and muffle
your bell. Let everybody know you are coming. The "Old Sleuth" stunt
is for criminals, not for honest employes. Be on hand so frequently
that your coming is taken as a matter of course. Never hunt quail with
a brass band, but bear in mind that men, unlike quail, rather like to
perch on a band wagon. If you are tempted to wait behind box cars to
see if the men on a night pony have gone in the hay, do not yield, but
get out, see that the switches are lined up, and count the ties in
front of the headlight until somebody gives her steam; just as
Napoleon walked post for the sleeping sentinel. Then, if you
administer a polite jacking up it will be twice as effective, even if
the delay to the work that one time has continued. Remember that
things are not as they should be, and it is probably your own fault
if, under normal conditions, a particular movement depends upon your
personal efforts. Any routine action that you take should be
calculated to help many trains, or one train many times; or to help
many men, not merely the trains or men in question. It is all right,
in emergencies, to jump in and do the work of a conductor, of an
engineman, of a switch tender, or of any other employe. The great
trouble is in discriminating between an emergency and a defect which
can better be remedied in some other way. The smaller the caliber of
the official the more numerous the emergencies to his mind.
You should try to arrange your work so as to stay up all night at
least once a week, either in the office, or better, on the road or in
the yards. You will keep better in touch with the men and the things
for which you, asleep or awake, are always responsible. You remember
when your sister Lucy was little how we asked her why she said her
prayers at night but usually omitted them in the morning. Her answer
which so tickled you was, "I ask God to take care of me at night, but
I can take care of myself in the daytime." It is much the same way
with a railroad. From your point of view it will take pretty fair care
of itself as a daylight job, but at night that proposition loses its
rights. The youngest dispatcher, by virtue of being the senior
representative awake, is to a certain extent general manager. The
least experienced men are in the yards and roundhouses. The
ever-faithful sectionmen are off the right of way. The car inspector's
light and the engineman's torch are poor substitutes for the sun in
locating defects. The most active brains are dulled by the darkness
just before dawn. Then it is that a brief hour may side-track or
derail the good work of many days. It is this responsibility, this
struggle with nature, this helping God to work out the good in men,
that makes our profession noble and develops qualities of greatness in
its members.
Next time I shall try to tell you something about helping your train
dispatchers.
With a father's blessing, ever your own,
D. A. D.
LETTER II.
HELPING THE TRAIN DISPATCHERS.
March 27, 1904.
My Dear Boy:--I promised in my last to say something about helping
your train dispatchers. The way to help any man is first to encourage
him and by showing that you appreciate his good qualities give him
confidence in himself. When you come in off the road tell the
dispatcher, if such be the case, "Nice meeting point you made
yesterday for 15 and 16; I was there and they both kept moving almost
like double track." If your division has been badly handled, the
dispatcher, unaccustomed to such appreciation, will at first think
this is a sarcastic prelude to having the harpoon thrown into him; but
your sincerity will soon disabuse his mind of such a notion. Sarcasm
in official intercourse or toward one's subordinates should never be
tolerated. It is an expensive kind of extra that should never be run.
When you praise a man it will add to his good feeling if some one else
happens to be present. If you have to censure anyone, whether directly
or through the channels, do it privately and spare the recipient all
unnecessary humiliation. The official who remembers to mention good
work will find his rebukes and criticisms much more effective in
remedying poor work than the official whose theory and practice are to
take up failures and to let successes be taken for granted.
Another way to help a man is to lead him away from the pitfalls that
are peculiar to his path of work. The official who is an old
dispatcher has to fight in himself the temptation to be the whole
cheese. He has to learn to trust subordinates with details. Every
position entails some inherent temptations. The absolute, unquestioned
authority given a dispatcher in train movements breeds a temptation to
be autocratic and unreasonable, to put out too many orders, to give
too many instructions. Therefore, try to get your dispatchers in touch
with your crews. If the former are in a skyscraper uptown, get
authority to build an office for them at the terminal where most of
the crews live. Personal contact is much better than long-distance
communication by wire. There is enough of the latter from the very
nature of the business without causing an unnecessary amount by
artificial conditions.
The temptation of a legislator is to make too many laws; of a doctor
to prescribe too much medicine; of an old man to give too much advice;
and of a train dispatcher, once more, to put out too many orders. It
used to be thought by some that the best dispatcher was the one who
put out the most orders. The later and better idea is that, generally
speaking, the best dispatcher puts out the fewest orders. It is always
easier to give orders of any kind than it is to execute them. It is a
far cry from an O.S. on a train sheet to getting a heavy drag into a
sidetrack and out again. It often takes longer to stop a train and get
an order signed and completed than the additional time given in the
order amounts to. Even a judicious use of the beneficent nineteen
order involves more or less delay. One of the lessons a dispatcher has
to learn is to know when he is up against it; when he has figured
badly; and when not to make a bad matter worse by vainly trying to
retrieve a hopeless delay. A good dispatcher will know without being
told that he has made a poor meeting point. Educate him to consider
that as an error to be avoided under like conditions in the future;
not as a mistake to be made worse by putting out more orders that may
fail to help the stabbed train enough, and may result in having every
fellow on the road delayed. If any train must be delayed, let it be
one that is already late rather than one that is on time. Above all
get the confidence of your dispatchers so that they will not try to
cover up their own mistakes or those of others. Teach them that, in
the doubtful event of its becoming necessary, the superintendent is
able to do the covering up act for the whole division.
Every superintendent and higher official should remember that if the
same train order is given every day there must be something radically
wrong with the time table. All over this broad land, day after day,
hundreds of unnecessary train orders are being sent because many time
tables are constructed on the models of forty years ago. At that time,
in fact as in name, there were two classes of trains, passenger and
freight. To-day there are in reality at least two distinct classes of
passenger trains and two classes of freights, or at least four in all.
On most of the roads in the country passenger trains of whatever
nature or importance are all shown in one class, the first. As a
result every limited train in the inferior direction on single track
has to be given right by train order over opposing local passenger
trains in the superior direction. In other words, the working time
table, by definition a general law, has no more practical value, as
between such trains, than an advertising folder. A train order by its
very nature is an exception to the general law, the time table. When
the exception becomes the rule it is high time to head in or to put
out a thinking flag. Some years ago your old dad after much persuasion
induced his superiors to let him make four classes of trains on a
pretty warm piece of single track. The result directly and indirectly
was to reduce the number of train orders by twenty or twenty-five per
day. Every train order given increases the possibility of mistake and
disaster; the fewer the orders the safer the operation. The change was
made without even an approach to a mistake or the semblance of
disaster. The dispatchers being less occupied were able to give more
attention to local freights, and the general efficiency of the train
service was greatly increased. The wires could go down and the most
important trains would keep moving. It has stood the test of years and
if the old method were resumed a grievance committee would probably
wait on the management.
Successful politicians and public speakers have long since learned not
to disgust their hearers by trying to talk in language ridiculously
simple and uncultured. For us to say that the intelligent employes of
to-day cannot keep in mind four or even five classes of trains is to
confuse them with the comparatively illiterate men of a bygone
generation. The public school and the daily newspaper have made a part
of our problem easier. We are paying higher wages than ever before,
but is it not partly our own fault if we fail to get full value
received?
Therefore, see if your time tables appeal to tradition or to reason;
if they belong to a period when women wore hoopskirts, or to a time
when women ride wheels and play golf. In brief, before you take the
stylus to remove the dirt ballast from the dispatcher's eye, be sure
that there are no brakebeams stuck in your own headlight.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER III.
HANDLING A YARD.
April 3, 1904.
My Dear Boy:--You have asked me to give you some pointers on handling
a yard. You will find that nearly all situations in a yard hark back
to one simple rule, which is: When you get hold of a car move it as
far as possible toward its final destination before you let go of it.
The training of a switchman is usually such that, if let alone, he
will stick the car in the first convenient track and wait to make a
delivery until he can pull every track in the yard and put with it all
other cars with the same cards or marks. By this time some other
fellow with a similar honesty of purpose but differently applied will
come along and bury the car or block the first man in so that one
engine has to stand idle. A yardmaster has to learn to keep his
engines scattered and to hold each foreman responsible for the work of
an engine. A good yardmaster knows instinctively where to be at a
certain time to minimize the delay incident to engines bunching. The
old switchman who becomes a yardmaster often proves a failure because
he cannot overcome his inclination to follow one engine and take a
hand in the switching himself. By so doing he may perhaps increase the
work accomplished by that one engine, possibly five per cent; but in
the meantime the other engines, for want of comprehensive, intelligent
instructions, are getting in each other's way and the efficiency of
the day's service is decreased maybe twenty per cent.
Good yardmasters are even harder to discover or develop than good
train dispatchers. The exposure, the irregular hours for the
yardmaster's meals in even the best regulated yards make a good
conductor leery about giving up a comfortable run to assume the
increased responsibility of a yard. The pay of a yardmaster is little
more than that of a conductor and is sometimes less. Right here is a
chance for some deep administrative thought. It is so much easier to
get good conductors than good yardmasters, should we not make the
latter position more attractive? Some roads have done this by making
it one of the positions from which to promote trainmasters, and seldom
have such appointees fallen down. However, there are hardly enough
promotion loaves and fishes to go around. Men get tired of living on
skimmed milk on earth for the sake of promised cream in heaven. Every
switch engine worked costs the company several hundred dollars per
month, and the yardmaster whose good figuring can save working even
one engine is more than earning his salary.
The closer you can get your yardmasters to your official family the
better your administration. Pick up a yardmaster occasionally and take
him to headquarters with you so that he will keep acquainted with the
dispatchers. This will hold down friction and save the company's good
money. A dispatcher naturally wants to get all the trains he can into
a terminal, while a yardmaster is doing his level best to get trains
out. With such radically different points of professional view there
is a big opportunity for the superintendent and the trainmaster to do
the harmonizing act, to keep pleasantly before employes the fact that
all are working for the same company, that all do business with the
same paymaster. Blessed are the peacemakers doesn't mean necessarily
there must first be trouble. Peace carried in stock is better than
that manufactured on hurry-up shop orders.
If you are looking for talent to run a yard, consider some ambitious
dispatcher. Too few dispatchers have become yardmasters. The same cool
head, the same quick judgment, the same executive ability are needed
in both positions. The man who has successfully filled both is usually
equipped to go against almost any old official job, without having to
back up and take a run for the hill. The curse of modern civilization
is over-specialization. The world grows better and produces stronger,
better men all the while. Perhaps this is in spite of rather than on
account of highly specialized organization. No industry can afford to
be without the old-fashioned all around man who is good anywhere you
put him.
The work of the yardmaster is more spectacular than that of the
dispatcher. To come down to a congested yard among a lot of
discouraged men blocked in without room to sidetrack a handcar is like
sitting down to a train sheet with most of the trains tied up for
orders. In either case let the right man take hold and in a few
minutes the men involved will tell you who it is has assumed charge.
Without realizing it and without knowing why, they redouble their
efforts; things begin to move, and the incident goes down in the
legends of the division to be the talk of the caboose and the
roundhouse for years to come. To the man whose cool head and
earnestness are bringing it all about comes the almost unconscious
exhilaration that there is in leading reinforcements to the firing
line. He feels with the Count of Monte Cristo, "The world is mine," I
have the switches set to head it in.
Get out of your head the young brakeman's idea that yard jobs are for
old women and hasbeens.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER IV.
DISTANT SIGNALS ON CHIEF CLERKS.
April 10, 1904.
My Dear Boy:--You write me that you have been kept very much in your
office of late because the general superintendent has taken your chief
clerk for the same position in his own office. You hope that your
friend, the auditor, may be able to furnish you a good man who has
such a thorough knowledge of accounts that you will be able to give
less attention to such matters and therefore be out on the road that
much more. You will pardon a father's severity, but you are running on
bad track, and my interest prompts me to put out a slow order for you.
You have had the division a short time, it is true, but that is only a
partial excuse for not having better organization than your letter
unwittingly admits. You have been there long enough to have sized up
the men on the division, and you should know where to put your hand on
a man for practically any position. A good organizer does not wait for
a vacancy to occur or even come in sight before thinking of the next
incumbent. He is always into clear on such a proposition. He has
thought it all out beforehand. He has in mind two or three available
men for every possible vacancy that can occur, for every job on the
pike, including his own. Wherever possible by judicious changing of
men he not only has a man in mind, but he has given him some
preliminary training for, perhaps some actual experience in, the
position to be permanently filled.
The tone of your letter is half complaining because the general
superintendent has taken your good chief clerk. Away with such a
feeling; it is unworthy. You should feel flattered that your division
had a chance to fill the vacancy. You should rejoice in the
advancement of your faithful subordinate. Some divisions, like some
officials, are known the country over as developers of talent.
Youth is proverbially quick, and I think sometimes that you youngsters
are quicker at getting into a rut than are we old fogies. Why for a
chief clerk must you necessarily have a man with office experience?
Does it not occur to you that your office will be in better touch with
its responsibilities if it is in charge of a man who has worked
outside along the road? Why not look among your trainmen, your
yardmen, your dispatchers, your agents, your operators, or even among
your section foremen? Experience is a great teacher, but it can never
entirely supply the place of native ability, of natural adaptability.
Brains and tact are the essentials and each is comparatively useless
without the other. Both must be developed by training, but such
training does not necessarily have to take the same course for all
men. Railroading as a business is only seventy-five years old, and as
a profession is much younger than that. It is too early in the game to
lay down iron-clad rules as to the best channels for training and
advancement. Common sense demands that such avenues be broad and more
or less definite. The danger is that they will be only paths and so
narrow that they will wear into ruts.
Do not delude yourself into thinking that by going out on the road you
can get away from the accounts. They are a flagman that is never left
behind to come in on a following section. You can never get beyond
watching the company's dollars and cents any more than a successful
musician can omit practice. Some officials think that the way to
examine a payroll or a voucher is to see that all the extensions are
accurately made, that the columns are correctly added. This mechanical
clerical work is about the last thing an official should have to do.
He should know how, but his examination should be from a different
viewpoint. Primarily he must look to see if the company is getting
value received for money expended. He must know that the rolls and
vouchers are honestly made up, that agreements involved, if any, are
carried out to the letter. The agreements may not be to his personal
liking, may not accord with his ideas of justice, but the
responsibility for that part is his superior's, not his own. There is
a proper channel for him to follow in attempting to protect the
company's interests, but that channel is not the one of a petty ruling
on a minor question involved in a voucher or a payroll. Overtime, for
example, is not a spook but a business proposition. If earned
according to the schedule it should be allowed unhesitatingly. Before
you jack up a yard-master for having so much overtime, see if the
cutting out of that overtime will mean the greater expense of working
another engine. The constant thought of every official is how to
reduce expenses, how to cut down payrolls. This habit of mind,
commendable as it is, has its dangers. In any business we must spend
money to get money. The auditor's statements do not tell us why we
lost certain traffic through relatively poor service. Their silence is
not eloquent upon the subject of the business we failed to get.
Figures must be fought with figures and many a good operating official
has had to lie down in the face of the auditor's fire because, from
lack of intelligent study of statistics on his own part, he had no
ammunition with which to reload. Do not feel that if you happen to
advocate an increase of expense you are necessarily a discredit to the
profession, a dishonor to the cloth.
There are few roads that would not save money in the long run by
allowing each division say one hundred dollars per month for
developing talent. The expense distributed to oil for administrative
machinery would express the idea. It would then be up to the
superintendent to work out original methods for spending this money to
the best advantage. A bright young fellow with the ear marks of a
coming official could be given training in various positions. While he
is acting in a certain position, the regular incumbent could be sent
to observe methods elsewhere or be given training in some other
department. For example, while your candidate is running a yard, the
yardmaster could be an understudy for a supervisor. A station agent
could take the place of a section foreman, an operator the place of
a chief clerk, and so on indefinitely. Do not understand me as
advocating a wholesale shakeup or the doing away with permanency of
tenure. The limitations of the majority of men are such that they
are better left in one fixed groove. We grow to be narrow in our
methods because men are narrow. What I want is for us to be broad
enough in method to keep from dwarfing the exceptions in the ranks,
and at the same time keep the parts of our administrative machine
interchangeable. The original entry into the service is more or less a
matter of accident as to department entered. Let us not leave a good
man the creature of accident all his days. The company is the loser as
well as the man. We complain because the trades unions advocate a
closed shop, a restricted output, a limited number of apprentices. Is
not their attitude a logical development of the example we have set?
Like master, like man.
Let your new chief clerk understand that he is never to use your
signature or initials to censure or reprimand any employe, either
directly or by implication. That is a prerogative you cannot afford to
delegate. It is all right if a complaint comes in for the chief clerk
to investigate by writing in your name and saying: "Kindly advise
concerning alleged failure to do so and so;" or, "We have a complaint
that such and such happened and would like to have your statement;"
but he should stop right there. It is all wrong for him or for you to
add, "We are astonished at your ignorance of the rules;" or, "You must
understand that such conduct will not be tolerated." Wait until both
sides of the case are heard. Then you alone must act. The division
will not go to pieces while such matters await your personal
attention. While you are learning that even a brakeman's unpaid board
bill may be satisfactorily explained, the brakemen are learning that
even a superintendent can find the time to be fair and just. A lack of
development of the judicial quality in chief clerks and their
superiors has cost the railroad stockholders of this country many a
dollar.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER V.
SAFETY OF TRAINS IN YARDS.
April 17, 1904.
My Dear Boy:--I have yours saying that my letter on yard work omits
mention of the most important feature, the safety of trains in yards;
that the letter is much like a cup of lunch-counter coffee--very good,
what there is of it, and plenty of it, such as it is.
I admit that you have caught me not only foul of the main, but outside
the switches. I appreciate your consideration in so politely pulling
the whistle cord for me, when you would have been justified in setting
the air. We all like to be with good company and pull the president's
special, and in this case I seem to have with me no less distinguished
companions than the American Railway Association. That able body has
been detoured too long around this important matter of rules governing
trains in yards. Before I leave their varnished cars and climb into
the gangway of a switch engine to run into the yards, I want the
conductor to throw off a register slip setting forth my admiration for
the great work already done by that brainy organization. I take off my
hat to the American Railway Association. When I take off said hat,
especially to a lady, I always keep both eyes open. Adoration should
not be too blind or one may overlook some other meeting points and
land clear off the right of way.
Long ago some bright minds, whose identity is lost in the rush of the
years, hit upon the happy expedient of dividing trains into two kinds,
regular and extra; just as early theology divided mankind into the two
convenient classes of saints and sinners. This designation of trains,
doubtless like all innovations opposed at first, soon acquired the
sacredness that time brings to all things. At that period when we got
a car over the road and into the terminal we felt that its troubles
were about ended, as did the contemporary novelist whose terminal was
always a betrothal scene. Under modern conditions a car reaching a
terminal, like a couple leaving the altar, finds that its problems
have only fairly begun. Less romance, more progress.
Did you ever try to explain to an intelligent traveling man just what
a train is? Did he not ask you some questions that kept you guessing
for a week? Did he not remind you that outsiders usually make the
inventions that revolutionize operation? Radical changes in methods of
warfare are seldom necessitated by the inventions of military men. A
druggist invented the automatic coupler. Railroad men did not patent
the air brake or devise the sleeping car. All this is natural, because
in any profession where one attains excellence in a given method his
mental vision may become contracted; he may reason in a circle.
Every once in a while we are appalled by a terrible collision in a
terminal, the result perhaps of some poor devil of an employe not
appreciating fully the meaning of "all trains." To the innocent
bystander the switch engine and cars are just as much a train as the
Pullman flyer with its two little green markers on the last car. After
such accidents, for a brief period, we hear a great deal about act of
Providence, presumptuousness of man, fallibility of the human mind,
surprise checking, discipline of employes, company spirit,
governmental supervision and a lot of other more or less unrelated
subjects. Are we not to blame for not having met the issue squarely?
Is it not time that we legislated to recognize the scores of engines
chasing through our terminals, from freighthouse to yard, from engine
house to station? Are they outcasts? Do the millions of dollars of
investment they represent come through a different treasury?
To the human mind an engine or a motor is a train, while a cut of cars
without motive power is only a piece of a train, and goes to the brain
as an idea of something incomplete. All the artificial definitions of
the standard code cannot alter this state of facts. What do you think
of the following proposed designations and tentative definitions?
Train.--An engine (or motor) in service, with or without cars. Two or
more engines (or motors) may be combined as one train.
Regular Train.--A train represented on the time table. It may consist
of sections. A section derives its running existence from a train
order requiring a regular train or the proper section thereof, to
display prescribed signals.
Extra Train.--A train not represented on the time table, but deriving
its running existence from train order.
Yard Train.--A train neither represented on the time table nor created
by train order, but deriving its running existence from rules
governing movements within prescribed limits.
You will find if you work these definitions through the standard code
the changes will be slight, but the results comprehensive and
satisfactory. This will do as a starter, but you will live to see
trains handled on single track without train orders as we now
understand the term.
If this answers your signal, suppose we call in that flag we whistled
out when we stopped to talk it over.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER VI.
STANDARDIZING ADMINISTRATION.
April 24, 1904.
My Dear Boy:--While backing in on a branch idea I bumped into a load
consigned to the American Railway Association which, with your
permission, I wish to bring in behind the caboose to save a switch.
Yes, I have tied a green flag on the rear grabiron for a marker. When
the hind man has dropped off to shut the switch and has given the
eagle eye a high sign, I shall make a note on the wheel report to the
effect that there is not a much better daylight marker than the
caboose itself. Some people doubt the necessity for green flags on
freight trains or work trains unless the caboose does not happen to be
the last car. Night markers are unquestionably necessary, but are not
a source of additional expense, as the same oil answers for both the
rear red signal and the marker.
The idea in question is that the American Railway Association might
well afford to pay salaries to more of its officials and let certain
ones give their entire time to committee work and the general welfare.
It is too much to expect that men, probably already overworked on
their own roads, can find the broadest solution of problems in the
very limited time allowed. It might be possible to work out a plan
whereby election to certain positions in the association would mean
that the individual elected was to be loaned to the association for
his term of office, say two years, and then return to service with his
own company. A permanent body of officials in such an organization
would be undesirable, save of course the able secretary, for the
reason that too long a separation from active service would beget an
indifference to practical operating conditions. Under such a plan
officials would have to be elected by name to prevent a company from
unloading any old rail on the association. You know that some
statistician has figured out that the average official life of a
railroad man in any one position is only about two years.
Rearrangement of the staff on the return of an official from such
broadening special duty should not be a difficult matter. But, as a
man once said to me, "You will not bring all these reforms about until
the old fogies die off, and by that time you will be an old fogy
yourself and it will not make any difference."
There is almost no limit to the number of matters in railway
administration that can be made standard and uniform for all roads. A
great deal has been done, but to a coming generation the present stage
of accomplishment will seem to have been only a fair beginning. The
hopeful feature is that roads now meet each other in a much broader
spirit than ever before. The fortress that parleys is half taken, and
when negotiations looking to uniformity are once begun a long stride
forward has been taken. Take the wage agreements of a dozen roads at a
large terminal. All twelve are intended to mean practically the same
thing, yet the wording of no two will be found alike. This probably is
not due so much to a disinclination to get together as to a lack of
time for working out uniform details.
Some roads are noticeable for the clearness, conciseness and brevity
of their instructions. Others employ a lot of surplus words which are
as expensive and annoying in operation as dead cars in a yard. On
every road there are a few men in the official family who have a
faculty of expression, either inborn or acquired. Some day when we
more fully overcome the prejudice against sending officials to school
we shall utilize the services of such valuable men as instructors in
style. When this is done, especially in the traffic and legal
departments, we shall materially reduce our telegraph expenses. The
mere thought of the thousands of unnecessary words flying over the
railroad wires every day is enough to give one telegrapher's cramp.
Some roads occasionally censor telegrams with a view to reducing their
number and their length. These efforts, like municipal reform, are apt
to be too spasmodic to prove of lasting value. Success in anything
depends upon keeping most everlastingly at it. You notice that I do
not confine this remark to our own profession. Carry a flag for me
against the man who always says: "In railroading you have to do thus
and so, for it's not like other business." All must admit that
conditions in railroading are intense; that, except in an army in time
of war, there is no profession that is more strenuous or calls for
better staying qualities. These facts, however, do not put us in a
class by ourselves, a little lower than the angels, a few car lengths
ahead of perfection. As Oliver Cromwell said, some things are
fundamental. One of them is that good organization and administration
depend upon certain basic principles which hold true for any industry.
Whatever one's religious views, he must find that the Bible is one of
the best books of rules ever written, one of the best standard codes
on organization that has been devised. Men were organizers on a large
scale centuries before railroads were built.
When, after months of deliberation, the convention had finally agreed
upon the provisions of the Constitution of the United States, the
document was referred for revision to a committee on style and
expression. The result has been the admiration of the English speaking
race. The caller's book does not show that the American Railway
Association has ordered a run for such a committee. Should a claim of
that sort be made it would hardly be advisable to file the last
standard code as an exhibit.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER VII.
THE NEW TRAINMASTER AND CIVIL SERVICE.
May 1, 1904.
My Dear Boy:--I have your letter telling about your new trainmaster.
You feel that a man from another division has been forced on you by
the general superintendent; that you have suffered a personal affront
because the promotion you recommended on your own division has not
been approved. I am sorry to rule against you, but from your own story
if anybody deserves six months twice a year, it is you and not the
general superintendent. The latter may have been lacking in tact; he
may have been unduly inconsiderate for your personal feelings, but in
making the appointment, which you admit is a good one, he has
doubtless been actuated by a conscientious sense of duty. Remember
that a fundamental principle of highly organized bodies is that a
superior cannot expect to select his own lieutenants. The next higher
is always consulted and generally the latter's superiors also. The
theory is that they are in a position to have a broader view, to size
up more talent, to draw from the system at large, and to accentuate
principles and policies in promotions and appointments. This theory is
supported by practice, which goes even further. On most roads
circulars signed by the superintendent and approved by the general
superintendent announce the appointment of a trainmaster. Do not let
this delude you into thinking the general manager has not been
consulted. In fact, if you could drop a nickel in the slot and get a
phonographic report of conferences on the appointment, you might
happen to recognize the voice of the president himself before the
machine shut off. All of which should convince you that the
stockholders and directors have strewn other official pebbles besides
yourself along the organization beach. You say that the relation of
superintendent and trainmaster should be that of elder brother and
younger brother. Very true, but do any of us ever select our brothers?
In a primitive state of civilization, when force is law, the military
chieftain rules. He makes and breaks his lieutenants at pleasure. The
oldest form of organization we have is the military, for armies are
older than governments. Every nation has its birth in the throes of
battle. Time passes and the chieftain finds his lieutenants insisting
on permanency of tenure. Gradually they secure it, and channels of
promotion and appointment are defined. These reach the lower grades
and the general finds that he has not even the authority to discuss a
private soldier from the service until the latter has been convicted
by a court-martial of an offense covered by enactment of the
legislative body of the nation. In every civilized country officers
are commissioned by the executive head of the nation and by no one
else. The general-in-chief may recommend, but he cannot appoint even a
second lieutenant. Consider now a commercial organization. Do you
think the high-salaried captain of an ocean liner can select his first
and second officers without consulting his superiors? Does he select
his own crew? Really, now, do you think the general superintendent
should perfunctorily approve your recommendation for trainmaster?
Men have been organizing armies and have been going down to the sea in
ships for thousands of years. Let the railroads, which have been in
existence only seventy-five years, draw another leaf from the lesson
of the ages. The time is fast coming when an official cannot discharge
a skilled laborer from the service without the approval of at least
one higher official. We may not like it; we may say that such policies
will put the road in the hands of a receiver. That is just what the
conductors said when we took away from them the privilege of hiring
their own brakemen. It will come just the same. We may as well look
pleasant and see the bright side. Where employment is made a lifetime
business, where admission thereto is restricted to the lower grades
and to younger men, public sentiment will not stand for letting the
question of a man's livelihood be decided by any one official, however
fair and just he may be. Safety and good administration may demand the
man's summary suspension from duty by the immediate official or
employe in charge. If the man has been in the service a prescribed
probationary period his permanent discharge will have to be approved
by higher authority. Men will not care to risk having a recommendation
for discharge disapproved. They will learn that the more carefully a
discharge has been considered the less readily will a reinstatement be
made.
Some people think you cannot have military methods and organization on
a railroad because it has no guardhouse. This is a mistake. Your old
dad, after trying both, finds that railroads, in some respects, have a
more powerful discipline than the army. A discipline based on bread
and butter, shoes for the baby, love of home, and pride of family,
which is the bulwark of the state, has in itself all necessary
elements for maximum practical effectiveness.
Reinstatements, unless based on new evidence, are demoralizing to
discipline, for the reason that the unworthy employe bumps back to a
lower grade some deserving man, whose good service is then reckoned at
a discount. Some passenger conductors become so color blind they
cannot tell the company's money from their own. They keep down the
wrong lead until the auditor derails them at the spotter's switch. The
ex-conductor gets hungry, the sympathetic grievance committee, not
knowing what is for its own best interests, intercedes. The
management, dreaming of loyalty in coming strikes, reinstates the
offender. Some young conductor, who, on the strength of his promotion,
has married or bought a home, is set back to braking. This causes some
brakeman to carry the mail to the extra list. He quits in disgust and
another road, less sympathetic, gets the benefit of his training.
Other reinstatements follow and more of the younger men quit. Years go
on, a rush of business comes. The management look in vain for
promotion material and wonder at the seeming ingratitude in quitting
of so many good young men whom it was fully intended to promote--in
the sweet by and by. This is not the experience of one road, but of
many. Let us be just before we are generous.
Speaking of discharged employes, did you ever happen to be in a
general office with an ex-passenger conductor, discharged for
"unsatisfactory services," but seeking immediate reinstatement; and
have an ex-official, who left the service in first-class standing,
come in and ask for the next official vacancy? The conductor might
succeed, but the official would fall a sacrifice on the shrine of
civil service, a fetich because, in its true meaning, so little
understood.
I shall string a civil service limited for you on some other time
card.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER VIII.
EDUCATION OF SEVERAL KINDS.
May 8, 1904.
My Dear Boy:--I happened to meet your general manager the other day,
and the way he spoke of the good work you are doing warmed the cockles
of my old heart. He said that you couldn't rest easy until you knew
more about the division than any other man. This, of course, is as it
should be, but it is astonishing how many division superintendents are
satisfied to grope along in the dark. Then some fine day the general
officials come along on an inspection trip and unintentionally make
the superintendent look like thirty cents by the sincere questions
they ask about the division which he is unable to answer. If one's
memory has not been trained by education it is a good thing to
condense information and have it in a notebook in the vest pocket.
Some wise man has said that all education after we are twenty-five
years old consists in knowing where to look for things.
Another help that school education gives to an official is to broaden
him so that he can use different methods on different properties.
There are three main reasons why officials without much early
education have succeeded and will continue to succeed. The first is
native ability, which remains comparatively undeveloped without the
second, which is opportunity. The third is the good luck to work under
organizers and developers of talent. Training under the right sort of
leaders is an education in itself. The danger of relying on such
training alone is that one may copy too blindly the methods of his
master without being broad enough to realize that the same master
under other conditions of territory would adopt radically different
methods. This is the reason why there are so many failures when a new
man takes a crowd of his followers to reorganize a property. If all
succeed, very well, but if one fails the most of the bunch go tumbling
down like a row of blocks.
Again, the educated man from his knowledge of history is less likely
to forget that what may go in fifteen-year-old Oklahoma will receive
the icy mitt and the marble heart in three-hundred-year-old Virginia.
Triples that are O.K. in cavalier South Carolina may be too quick
acting in puritan Massachusetts. Commercialism, like patriotism, rests
on certain fundamental principles. The application of these principles
may be as uniform as a train of system cars; it may be as diverse as
the cars in a train of a connecting line. Orthodoxy is usually my
doxy.