proposition, but with the type we have been getting. It is about Z-99
as compared with the real thing. It has too many flat wheels to run
smoothly. It must be jacked up high enough for new trucks and a
stronger kingbolt. True civil service presupposes maximum care in
original selection. It doesn't mean that we shall wait until the grain
and the coal begin to move before we figure on more crews. It rather
contemplates having available firemen in wipers, and willing brakemen
in clerks. Every superintendent believes that he is the best judge of
men on the pike. On every system are probably men who can give him
cards and spades, picked coal and treated water, and then outclass him
on such a run. If we leave the hiring to the different trainmasters,
master mechanics, or agents, we may have mostly the Irish on one
division, mostly the Dutch on another. If we are going into this civil
service business and are taking men, like Federal judges, for life or
during good behavior, let's have a long list of waiting eligibles
recruited for each division. Let's send around periodically a car with
an examining board from central headquarters to size up the talent
recommended by local officials. Put experienced officials, a surgeon
and an oculist on the committee. Show your trainmaster that men who
make it a business have more time than he to keep dudes and cigarette
smokers off the runboard and the payroll; that the former have broader
opportunities than he to develop a high standard of requirements. Let
the committee encourage men already employed to demonstrate their
fitness for transfer to other departments or to heavier divisions.
Let's change ends with our rail and put it where it will do the most
good. The employment bureau, the recruiting office, or the civil
service commission becomes a necessity to every large organization.
Some roads have made a start in this direction, but it is only a
start. To work out the problem will cost us money. Yes, but less than
we are being forced to pay by some of the labor contracts we have had
to sign. It is not only more graceful, it is less expensive, this
leading instead of being driven.
The great trouble seems to be in this matter of civil service that we
have tried to accomplish too much in too short a time. An industry
whose existence does not antedate the memory of men still living
cannot hope to have struck the best methods already. Yet it can be too
cautious in building Chinese walls around its organization. What we
have been striving for is to cultivate a company spirit, to improve
the efficiency of the service. We have felt that the way to do this is
to make our men feel secure in their positions, to have them convinced
that the shakeup made by our advent is the last they will ever
experience. Have we not chased this rainbow long enough? Should we not
back up and draw some of the spikes we have put in the connection
switches? It is one thing to sit in an office and figure that the
importation of this one man ought not to make anybody uneasy. It is
quite another to make the thousands of men along the road believe that
we can stick to the original package. Blood is thicker than water and
the new man will have his relatives and his followers or the followers
of his friends. If he is too thin-skinned, fear of criticism may
prevent his bringing in some new talent that would be of real benefit
to his road. He is blamed if he does and blamed if he doesn't.
Whichever course he pursues there remains, in greater or less degree,
that uncertainty which is so demoralizing. Remove this uncertainty,
let men know definitely what to expect, and you are over the hill and
closer to the terminal.
The old-fashioned rule of promote two and hire one worked mighty well
on some roads for conductors and enginemen. In these days of larger
systems the ratio might be changed to three or four or even five or
six to one. If it were definitely understood that every so often, say
every fifth vacancy in certain grades of officials and employes, a man
would certainly be selected from outside the service, I believe that
we could remove the feeling of uncertainty. We would in a large
measure attain the result we have thus far missed. We would build up
organizations with enough fresh blood to stand the test of time.
Brains and adaptability are not a natural monopoly. God Almighty
hasn't given any road a New Jersey charter broad enough for
incorporating a trust of the most efficient men. No, I am not a
populist or a socialist. I believe in trusts. They have come to stay
and ultimately to benefit the masses. Legislation will no more succeed
in destroying them than it did in preventing partnerships in England
where centuries ago it was thought for two men to unite as partners in
business was an unsafe combination of power. Education comes by hard
knocks and probably anti-merger decisions are worth the inconvenience
that they have caused. The sober sense of the American people will
tell them after a while that in attempting constitutional and
legislative interference they have not benefited themselves one
dollar. They will learn that forcing a change of methods does not
necessarily bring about a different result. They will learn that in
the long run they, the people, are the losers when good capital is
tied up; that they pay the price for unwise competition. The
railroads, the first great trusts, should be early to realize that
some conditions inherently forbid the elimination of competition. Our
prairies are too broad for an agricultural trust. The range of the
human mind is too great for any railroad to patent the ability of its
men.
This trust freight seems to make you full tonnage without cleaning out
all the rush stuff in my yard. You may cut off ahead of the rest of
the civil service loads and I will have a pony set on your caboose
when you pull through the ladder. Yes, I will tell the operator at the
yard office to scratch them off your consist. I shall have to run
another section and fill out with some cars of company material which
the construction department is kicking about. Please put up--excuse
me, display--signals until the dispatcher can get hold of you at the
end of the double track. By the way, if instead of "will display
signals, etc.," his order should read, "will signal, etc.," would it
not be shorter and, including flags, lamps, whistle and voice, be more
comprehensive?
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER XV.
MORE ON CIVIL SERVICE.
June 26, 1904.
My Dear Boy:--We were speaking of railroad civil service, so called.
As I told you before, our civil service is so far from the genuine
article that I always feel like qualifying the term in some way for
fear of being called in on the carpet for failure to cut the proper
duplex. It is a great big subject, worthy of the most serious
consideration, because it concerns men, not machines. Furthermore, it
is a high type of man with whom we deal or should deal. We are all so
busy that we say we concern ourselves with results. We all butt in too
much on details, usually along the line of our early training. Yet,
withal, we overlook some pretty long shots because we flatter
ourselves we are too busy to place small bets.
Even after we have wasted so much of the building season that we give
the contractor a bonus to rush the new line to completion in time to
hold the charter, wouldn't it pay us to have a care as to the kind of
men we let him work on our right of way? Next year, when the grievance
committees come up from the new division, we make them feel that it
means something, it gives them a stamp of honor to work for our
system. Why not begin a little farther back? Why not hook up in the
beginning so that our different departments can get busy early in the
game? Let the people who are to settle the new country help build and
maintain the road. Let the immigration agent camp with the
reconnoitering engineer. When the latter comes back to locate or
retrace, let the former be interesting colonies. Let our own
organization follow the surveyor's flag. Let's be our own contractor
and get back more of the money he disburses. Why let a floating gang
of Dagoes take so big a bunch of it back to sunny Italy? Why not spend
it ourselves so that its recipients will use it to develop the country
and hurry the origination of traffic? Let's handle this coin both
going and coming and cut out some of the empty haul.
The political revolutions in continental Europe and the famine in
Ireland in 1848 brought to this country a high class of immigrants. We
gave them work and schools. They helped build the railroads. Some
continued on the roads after construction; others helped develop the
surrounding country. Our flag made them free, and when civil war came
they were among the bravest of its defenders. To-day their children
and their children's children, all Americans, rank high among railway
officials and employes. Perhaps all this is a happen so; perhaps much
of it is due to big, brainy men whose policies were not narrowed by
specialization in departments. We are now doing little new
construction. We should do it better than ever and in the full sense
of the word. Is it enough to pass it up to the construction
department?
Did it ever strike you that there may be many good reasons why both
officials and employes may desire to transfer to another road? A young
man, feeling the home nest too full, the local demand for skilled
labor too light, has struck out for a newer country. He makes good. We
find him in after years running an engine, working a trick, or,
perchance, holding down an official job. Death occurs at the old home.
Marriage brings new interests in another country. An invalid member of
his family needs a change of climate. An unexpected development of a
chance investment in a remote locality demands occasional personal
attention. The orphaned children of a relative claim his protection.
Any one of a dozen praiseworthy motives may prompt him to make a
change, provided he can continue to derive his main support from the
calling to which he has found himself adapted.
Would he be able to transfer without beginning over again at the
bottom? Between the civil service of the companies and the seniority
of the brotherhoods he would find it like making a link and pin
coupling on the inside of a sharp curve. He would be lucky if he could
get a regular job on another division of the same system. Let him
persist in suggestions as to how the matter may be brought about, and
the average official, hidebound by precedent, will consider him nutty,
a candidate for the crazy house instead of for another run. Who is the
loser? Not only the man, but the company, which should have the
benefit of his wider experience, of his peculiar interest in its
territory, of the infusion of fresh blood which his advent would mean.
Suppose an official has resigned for any good personal reason, or
because he couldn't reduce the size of the engine nozzles fast enough
to suit a new management. When he starts out to hunt a job his
brethren of the profession receive him with sympathy. They promise to
help him out. Each begs him to understand how impossible it is for him
to catch the pay car on that particular line. Perhaps his informant
has been on that company's payroll only six months himself, but he
waxes eloquent on the benefits of civil service, on the desirability
of making their own men, of overcoming previous demoralization. This
would be amusing if it were not a serious business. Each seems to
flatter himself that he got aboard because of peculiar personal
fitness, and inferentially denies such attribute of genius in the man
on the outside. As a matter of fact, the recognition of outside talent
is usually a consequence of acquaintance, of happening to know the
right man at the right time, of having previously worked with the
appointing official. All this contains too much of the element of
chance. When we reserve certain vacancies for men outside of the
breastworks and select them in advance we shall get better results.
We have made our civil service frogs so stiff that our discipline has
climbed the rail. We know it is so hard for a conductor or an
engineman to get a job that we sometimes hesitate too long before we
make an example for the good of the service by discharging a flagrant
offender. If we knew that by and by he could hit on some road the
vacancy reserved for outsiders we would have the benefit of the
change. The man would learn a lesson, would not be debarred from his
occupation, and would give better service on another road. Talk with
your employes about this and you will be astonished to find how many
will fall in with this idea of leaving open a door of hope by filling
just so many vacancies with outside men.
Your official or your employe seeking a transfer or hunting a job will
be impressed with the fact that all assistance rendered will be with a
view to favoring him because he is a good, worthy fellow. He will not
hear it put on the ground that any company is fortunate to have his
services, that his future employers are being especially considered.
If he has known from boyhood the territory and civilization where he
desires to work, it will not be urged as a special qualification.
Right here is where the most of us fall down. We too seldom make our
subordinates feel that we are the gainers by having them in our
employ. We are too likely to make them feel they are lucky to have a
job. This may do for the indifferent men, but it puts no premium on
superior ability and loyalty. It renders a discharge, when made, less
effective as an example. You cannot treat all your men alike in all
things. In a few things, collisions, stealing, booze-fighting, for
example, you have to do so. In most things you must avoid destroying
individuality. You must build up personal pride in each. Even sister
engines of the same type do not steam or pull exactly alike. Man, made
in the image of Deity, has pride, brains and courage to make more
complex his disposition. Corporations have no souls. Railroad men have
souls and good red blood. Their intelligence is an inspiration; their
steadfastness, a psalm.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER XVI.
THE SUPPLY TRAIN.
July 3, 1904.
My Dear Boy:--Blacksmiths' horses and shoemakers' wives proverbially
go unshod. A railroad puts up its poorest sample of transportation in
the routine handling of its own material and supplies. Company stuff
is moved and handled last of all; and probably at maximum expense. For
example, if we wish to ship a car of wheels to division headquarters
we load them after we are lucky enough to get an available car. Then
after proper billing authority has been furnished we go through some
more red tape, so that the auditor may not confuse figs with thistles,
revenue producers with deadheads. When we happen to have a train with
such light tonnage that all excuses for moving the car have been
exhausted it reaches the yard nearest its destination. The master
mechanic's office in a day or two has pounded sufficiently at the
yardmaster to get the car set, usually several hours after it has been
promised. It is not of record just how much time and money have been
wasted by the mechanical department through not having the car when
expected.
If our administration is unusually smooth we may be able to load our
scrap wheels on this same car. Usually, however, we wait until the car
has been hauled down the line before some office away off somewhere
gives disposition for the wornout material. Or, having unloaded all
the wheels, we wait until next week before we order in another car,
and go through the same performance to ship a couple of pairs to some
junction point on the same division. I will not bore you with the
expensive details of getting a car of ties loaded and distributed, of
how much time the sectionmen are worked to poor advantage because the
car or material failed to show up when expected.
We, mounted on wheels, with transportation as our chief asset, let our
own business get it where the chicken felt the axe, where the sharp
flange caught the bum. It used to be more comfortable in the old days.
We could have the sectionmen do so many jobs without its seeming to
cost anything. The fact that we have learned better makes me rash
enough to believe that we may yet progress beyond thinking that some
of our own transportation costs little or nothing because we do it
with the local freight or a switch engine. We haul a car clear over
the division to pick up a few pounds of scrap paper; provided, of
course, the agents have not confused the day with that for loading
dairy line shipments. The weakness in handling company material
naturally leads to a distrust by other departments and a desire by
each to control the distribution of its own supplies.
Did you ever think in what a haphazard, hit or miss manner we handle
our traveling workers? The scale inspector is a very necessary
individual because freight revenue is a function of weight. He is so
valuable to us that, although the test car is a nuisance in trains and
yards, we haul him hundreds of miles to do a few minutes' or a few
hours' work. If he should try to do any other company business; if he
should repair furniture, solicit traffic, inspect ties or examine
interlocking plants, he would infringe on the prerogatives of other
men who earn salaries by riding much and working little. Yes, I know
we must have departments. Our great task is to work them to the best
advantage; to let them overlap a little when business is dull, or
where local conditions permit. We should switch our departments
together so that we can cut in the air on enough to hold the train
without going after expenses with a club.
The employe who does not receive supplies regularly, whose
requisitions for stationery are arbitrarily cut, will try to get
enough ahead to keep himself from running out. When you take an
inventory you must figure on removing the temptation for everyone to
hold back full returns for fear of not rendering good service in the
future. With a lot of money tied up in supplies at central or division
storehouses our service often suffers, even accidents occur for want
of a lantern globe, or a few gallons of oil. The average local freight
crew has no more compunctions in replenishing the caboose from a can
of oil consigned to a country agent than did the slave in taking
chickens. It all belongs to the company. Massa's chicken, massa's
niggah. Some roads are now distributing oil to sections and to small
stations from a box car fitted with inside tanks and self-registering
pumps, a very economical arrangement. This car runs on the local
freight at fixed times. The next step has been to put with it supply
cars, handled by the oil man, who issues supplies and tools to agents,
section foremen and pumpers. A stationery car comes next in the
outfit. This progressive development is hampered in most cases by
adherence to the time-honored requisition. It does not promote a good
company spirit in an agent to haul by him a car filled with supplies
and deny him a much-needed broom, a comfort-giving pane of glass,
simply because a requisition has not passed through the prescribed
number of chief clerks' office baskets. Issues are for the good of the
service, not for charity. The best way is to require a division
official to accompany the cars on his division, hold him responsible,
and make his check good on our traveling bank. Let the employe sign on
a line in a book for articles received, just as an agent receipts to
an express messenger, and let the official countersign once for all
the employes on a page. Then you have the economy and benefits of
centralization without the demoralizing interference with local
administration.
The supply cars are only a beginning. The evolution must be a supply
and inspection train run exclusively for company business, and to do
every practicable kind of company business. It should supply every
department and pick up the surplus and scrap in each. It should run
over as many divisions as feasible, giving it time to return and
restock so as to cover its territory at prescribed intervals, say
every thirty or sixty days. This train should be manned by monthly
company men, preferably of the semi-official class. The position of
fireman should be part of the course of a special apprentice. If no
special apprentice is available for engineman, use the man in mind for
the next vacancy as road foreman. Let the scale inspector be the
flagman. For conductor have a coming trainmaster, not afraid to pull
off his coat to help adjust a scale or to unload a keg of track
spikes. Have an ambitious brakeman for train clerk, whose records
would replace requisitions and waybilling. For pilot use the
superintendent, the trainmaster, the chief dispatcher, the master
mechanic, the road foreman, the division engineer, or the supervisor.
Have as many as possible of those last named accompany the train and
give the division a rigid inspection. Pretty soon you would find the
general superintendent frequently hitching his car to this train. Put
the contents of the train in charge of a high-class traveling
storekeeper. On the ground the employe would indicate his
requirements, the division official would recommend, and the traveling
storekeeper, closely in touch with the management and its policies,
would take final action. Whatever happened to be done, it would be
right up to date, and in accordance with existing needs. Arriving at a
roundhouse, the train itself would spot a car of wheels and a car of
oil, taking care to reload scrap wheels and empty oil barrels. In
general do not issue a new article unless an unserviceable one is
turned in. The recollections of those present will make fresher the
record of expendable articles issued on a previous trip. Long range
requisitions, approved by distant authority, may result in false
economy, in a lack of clearly defined responsibility. The essence of
good administration consists in dealing with men and things, in giving
them greater value than their paper symbols. If love for requisitions
should still linger in the official breast, the proprieties of such
chaste affection could be preserved by going through all the forms
until their absurdity is fully demonstrated.
The supply train should have a car fitted up as a workshop in which a
handy man could repair station trucks, office chairs, lanterns, switch
lamps, etc., etc., and save shipping many miles for a new part. Many
tools and utensils would last longer if, in some such way, they could
receive the stitch in time that saves nine. Prompt repair and
interchange among various points should diminish investment in reserve
supply. An article should not have to be returned to the place where
previously used. Under present methods the return journey may put it
in worse shape than when first sent in. When repaired it should be
issued wherever it will do the most good.
Another car in the supply train should be a laboratory in charge of
the superintendent of tests or his representative, whose office would
thus get more closely in touch with division officials and with
service conditions. The scrap car, with its broken side rods, its
worn-out shovels, its twisted drills, might mean a whole lot in
connection with arbitrary theoretical tests.
With the train, on stated trips, should be the employment bureau. Pick
up candidates, haul them over the division. Talk with them, note their
adaptability in strange surroundings, see of how promising a stretch
is the rubber in their necks. Give them transportation back home and,
if desired, tell them to report again next trip for further
examination.
When your supply train has to tie up away from a night roundhouse, let
the crew take short turns as watchmen. Incidentally the train might
serve as an object lesson as to the endurance and capacity of men, the
length of runs, and the care of an engine. If your labor contracts do
not permit you to man your own train, do the necessary toward an
amendment of such unwise schedules.
The more you think of the increased efficiency of the service, of the
ultimate economy, of the smoother administration, the more you will
cuddle up to the notion of a company train. Experience will show the
wisdom or unwisdom of numerous details that will suggest themselves. I
have given you only an outline with a few samples of methods to be
pursued. I want you to think out the rest for yourself. It is theory
to-day, but the theory of to-day is the forerunner of practice a few
years hence.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER XVII.
WHAT THE BIG ENGINE HAS COST.
July 10, 1904.