hardest query that the brilliant Ingersoll had to answer in his
assaults on the Christian religion. Does not the same question
confront us in our attacks upon organized labor? We endeavor to tear
down, but do we build up? This subject, like the marriage relation,
cannot be entered into lightly. It is longer than a train of ore
jimmies, and broader than a box vestibule. It is a bridge too close to
the track for the telltales to sting your face in time to get off a
furniture car. Like the ostrich, believing itself hidden with its head
stuck in the sand, we feel that if we call them committees of our
employes we are not recognizing the union. Is this consistent? We
claim, and justly so, that a high principle is involved; that if we
recognize the union we practically force every man to join, regardless
of his own inclinations and of his freedom as an American citizen.
This is sound doctrine, but its application is very faulty. Our spirit
may be willing, but our flesh is damnably weak. Do we give the
non-union man a show for his white alley? Not as long as we fail to
question the credentials of committees. We know that all their names
appear on the payrolls, at least during the time they are not laying
off and using our transportation for organizing or grievance work. We
do not disturb ourselves to find if they were elected as employes. Did
the non-union men have any voice in their selection? Not much; they
were elected in the lodge room. We, in effect, say to the non-union
man that the way to the band wagon is through the lodge room door.
Then we are very much shocked to find that he, like ourselves, is
following the lines of least resistance. It is so much easier to run
with the current of traffic than to cross over; it takes so much less
nerve to open up for trailing points than to keep our hand off the air
valve when approaching facing points. When a move is made to run out a
non-union man, we are so afraid of being accused of holding somebody
up that we put on the man the whole burden of making good.
Unionism, like religion, and like love, is the outgrowth of certain
feelings and emotions in the human breast that strive to overcome the
limitations of mankind; that seek to make an eternity of time, an
ideal of an idea, a solid phalanx out of heterogeneous parts. You may
win the strike, down the union, hire your men as individuals; but
sooner or later, in the Lord's own good time, in obedience to natural
law, they will organize in some form, under some name or other. Only a
few will stand out; some from sheer contrariness; more from strong
individuality of temperament. The outsiders, from a lack of
organization, have little positive influence, simply a negative
conservatism.
Since these things are so, why not, to drop into familiar phrase, be
governed accordingly? Instead of letting the men organize the road,
why not have the road organize the men? The system of collective
bargaining, of labor contracts, has come to stay. It is merely a
question of how and with whom we shall deal. It is so easy to let out
work by contract, to call on the supply dealer to help us out, that
doubt as to our own powers of organization becomes habit of mind. We
farm out our rest rooms, our temperance encouraging resorts, to the
Railroad Y.M.C.A. Where comes in the company, whose existence makes
occupation possible, whose capital is invested, whose property is
involved?
Do you think we have made effort enough to let our men organize as
employes? Should not all our plans for terminals and headquarters
include the excellent investment of a club house and assembly hall?
When we have tried this plan and failed have we not been too easily
discouraged? Sometimes the cause of failure has been our own mistake
in selecting the wrong location, in deferring too much to the
convenience of our own land company, in attempting too much official
supervision, in allowing our local officials to butt in to ride their
pet hobbies. Let us try turning the building over to a committee of
our employes and inculcate a feeling of pride and responsibility. Our
employes are a high grade of men; many of them are nature's noblemen.
It is true they sometimes worship false gods, indulge in strikes,
commit violence, and require vigorous discipline. Although misguided
in all this, they are usually honest as individuals. When banded
together there results the same tendency that exists in political
parties, in churches and in societies, to mistake their own
organization for the only defender of the true faith. This same spirit
plans religious crusades, gains converts by the sword and destroys
freedom in the name of liberty. This spirit run mad breeds anarchy. It
may result in a condition, as with us in the strikes of 1894, when
cold lead and sharp steel are needed to cool hot blood, when the
innocent have to suffer with the guilty. This spirit is unreasonable,
but its existence cannot be ignored.
"Men," says Marcus Aurelius, "exist for one another; teach them then
or bear with them." It is up to us to do more of the teaching act. A
prime requisite of a teacher is honesty. Let us be honest. Let us
either recognize the unions outright, or else try to teach them that
they have not yet attained full age; that as yet they are lacking in
the ripe wisdom which permits of a larger participation in affairs.
Let us be fair and tell them wherein they are lacking. Capital, from
inherent differences in nature, can never surrender itself to the
absolute control of labor. Capital can, however, give labor, its poor
neighbor, the results of deeper study, of wider view, of larger
experience. It can point out the consequences of mistakes of past
centuries, as, for example, the shortsighted policies of the trade
guilds in England. We can teach the unions that much more than the
payment of dues should be essential to membership; that they are in a
position to demand high standards of conduct. The unions must learn
that if they would be powerful, they must be severe as well as just.
If they desire merely benevolent and comfortable care of their members
they must put away the ambition for recognition. To be respected they
must purge their ranks of the morally unfit. The union must expel the
thief and the drunkard, as well as the thug and the ruffian, if justly
discharged by the company, before it can hope to be trusted as a judge
of capacity. It must learn that the American people will never stand
for the closed shop, the restricted output, a limited number of
craftsmen.
The failure of the A.R.U. strike in 1894 taught a much-needed lesson.
It put many a good man on the hog train, but it was a terrible warning
to would-be strikers. Did we maintain our advantage? Did we develop
more men and prepare for the great rush of business the years were
sure to bring? Perhaps we did the best we could; perhaps in the name
of economy we maintained too few officials. Perhaps our officials were
so overworked that they did not have time to watch the game. Perhaps
the situation got away from us because the unions increased their
official payrolls relatively faster than did the railroads. Perhaps
the union leaders made relatively greater progress than railway
officials in attracting the men with insurance or profit-sharing
features. The whole question is interlocked with so many side lines
that it is easy to overlook a dwarf signal or two. Be that as it may,
we lost our nerve and shut off too far back in the country when we got
a meeting order for the flush times of 1902. We were so afraid the
other fellow might make a dollar or two if we happened to tie up, that
we yielded the inch which has resulted in the ell of union domination.
A war, terrible as it is, may result in good. There are worse things
than strikes to contemplate. We chose peace at any price, and we are
paying the price. We blame our statesmen and politicians for not
resisting union influence, for being morally responsible for the
uncompromising attitude of union leaders. Why should they open our
firebox door for us as long as we fear to burn our own fingers? The
great comfort in the situation is that we are beginning to wake up. We
have walked long enough in our sleep. The slumbering giant, business
sense, is aroused. The worst is over if we but do our part. The unions
have come to stay. Their extermination, even if desirable, is as
impracticable as liquor prohibition. We cannot surrender supinely. The
solution lies in wise regulation, in education, in the inculcation of
true temperance of thought and action.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER XXIV.
THE ROUND-UP.
August 28, 1904.
My Dear Boy:--When you have a conference of your staff, do not
overlook the storekeeper. Even if he reports to the general
storekeeper, he should be on your staff in somewhat the same relation
to you as is the master mechanic who reports to the superintendent of
motive power. If the management, in the last treaty of peace, has
awarded the storekeeper to some other sovereignty, be foxy enough to
invite him to be present for his own good. He will not decline to
come. Then, when you are discussing work trains; when the master
mechanic figures out the engines; the trainmaster, the crews; the
roadmaster, the men; the chief dispatcher, the working hours; the
whole arrangement will not fall down from lack of material which the
storekeeper did not know about in time. Invite the storekeeper out on
the road with you; drop in frequently at the storehouse and see if you
cannot help him out of his difficulties. We all have our troubles. Do
not proclaim your own inefficiency and narrowness by writing the
general superintendent that your failure has been due to the store
department falling down on material. Unless you have kept close to the
game, you may find that you were lame in not giving sufficient
warning; that the stuff was loaded in time but was delayed by the
transportation department waiting for full tonnage.
When you get to be general manager, do not forget the general
storekeeper. Keep close to him and take him out often. When you become
operating vice-president, do the same with the purchasing agent, whose
position, like that of the general storekeeper, is an evolution from a
clerkship in some general office. Not all of us have realized the
necessary elevation of these places to official status. They, too,
have come to stay. They will survive even the awkwardness of their own
titles. Would not "purchaser" or "buyer," and "supplyman" or
"supplier," be better terms?
Speaking of inviting people to ride in your car. From operating
vice-presidents down we do not avail ourselves sufficiently of the
company of representatives of the accounting department. They do not
and should not report to us. They, however, compile statistics from
data which we furnish. We want to have our data in such good shape
that they will not misinterpret. As they count our Australian ballots,
it is important for us to know how to put the cross opposite the eagle
or the rooster. On the other hand, the service will not suffer if we
have a chance, on the ground, to show the inconsistency of some
arbitrary requirements.
I carried by an idea in a recent letter. I asked the man on the
opposite run to take it back; but he, too, had a big switch list and a
time order. So it has been an over in the freight room until now I
bill it free astray. The thought is that our organization should
provide automatically, as in the army and the navy, for the next in
rank available to assume the duties of an absent or incapacitated
official. A superintendent has to be sick or absent for quite a long
time before we designate an acting superintendent. We let the chief
clerk sign for him, an absurd fiction if long continued. Why should
not the assistant superintendent, or, if none, the trainmaster, sign
as acting superintendent as a matter of course when the accidents of
the service take the superintendent off the division? An assistant is
really a deputy, although, with all our borrowing and mutilating of
titles, we have not utilized the comprehensive qualification of
"deputy." The time is soon coming when we shall welcome the
opportunity of making our organization elastic by giving understudies
the title of acting so and so. As we grow in liberality we shall feel
proud to lend one of our men to another road for a few months at a
time to do special work or to introduce some new idea that he has
developed. The other road will be glad to pay the man a good salary,
and he will return to us all the broader and more valuable because of
service elsewhere. We have been meantime training another man for any
vacancy in the grade that may occur. By the same token, we shall by
and by consider it a privilege to get back in our official family a
man whom we trained to our ways in youth, but who has been broadened
by service with different roads. We shall get over considering him as
having lost his rights, as an unpardonable offender against our sacred
civil service. There is never any affection stronger than our first
real love.
As you master the details of your profession, as you carry out loyally
the policies of your management, keep in mind the possibility of
radical changes. We shall not forever keep up the absurdity of a
Pullman conductor's snap and a train conductor's busy job. When we
each own at least the sleeping and parlor cars local to our own rails,
the conductor will run the train and perhaps work the sleepers, while
a collector will work the coaches and chair cars. When oil burners and
automatic stokers have revolutionized the fireman's duties, when train
orders are unknown, when the position or color of a signal is the only
instruction, we may transfer the command of the train to one of the
men in the engine. When we so protect our trains by block signals or
other devices that to send back a flag is an absurdity, our trainmen
will become starters, and perhaps collectors, with duties not
dissimilar to those of guards on elevated roads. When the much-needed
motor car for suburban and branch service is perfected, other changes
will come. You may not live to see electricity displace steam for
heavy motive power, but you had better not gamble all your life
insurance on such a proposition.
The tendency has been to limit all the utilities of a railroad to
transportation. Before long we shall, for a time at least, be going to
the opposite extreme. Some of us have entered the pension and life
insurance business, some own coal mines directly or indirectly. Should
we not manufacture our own ice at various points as needed and cut out
some haul? Should we not control the banks in the cities and towns
where we disburse so much money? Why not grain elevators and
industrial plants? Can we afford to manufacture relatively fewer of
our own appliances than that comprehensive organization, the Standard
Oil Company? These questions cannot be answered easily or by a simple
yes or no. They all depend upon time and circumstance. Our trouble has
been a fundamental error in reasoning, a dogmatic generalization from
too few particular cases. Stagnation is usually death to business. As
we cannot back up, it would seem wise to be ready to move forward in
power and influence. Ours is a high destiny. The railway officials of
the future will never be without knotty propositions to tackle. They
will not have to work as long hours as we, but their problems will be
more intense. The injector saves the drudgery of jacking up an engine
to pump her, but it does not warrant sitting down while waiting for
the steam derrick.
Through all the improvements, real or imaginary, through all the
changes that the years may bring, bear in mind the human element.
Although the race grows better all the time, the old Adam and Eve will
be ever present in all of us. High explosives, armor plate, modern
weapons, modify the conditions of war, but as the Japs and Russians
are teaching us to-day we can never do entirely without the individual
initiative, without the courage necessary for the hand-to-hand
conflict. Some may deplore this condition, but, in the words of the
Salvation Army lassie, I thank God for it.
For a period covering some thirty years, beginning and ending over a
hundred years ago, an English nobleman and statesman, the Earl of
Chesterfield, man of letters, wrote a series to his son. The morals
inculcated are hardly acceptable in this better age. The manners
taught, the art of pleasing so attractively set forth, have a value
to-day, have made the term Chesterfield a synonym for grace. Lord
Chesterfield's letters to his son were collected to the number of
nearly five hundred and published in book form. He has had many
imitators, and I confess to being one of them. Whether or not he
borrowed the idea from some ancient father I have never sent a tracer
to find out. Now that you and I are to be near enough for
heart-to-heart talks, my weekly letters will cease. Whether or not
they shall be preserved in book form it is up to you to say.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
POSTSCRIPT.
BY FRANK H. SPEARMAN.
When a young army officer, a West Pointer, resigns his commission to
become a railroad man the unusual happens and observers naturally
follow the result with interest. Major Charles Hine was more than a
lieutenant of the Sixth United States Infantry when he threw up his
commission to become a freight brakeman on the Big Four. He was even
then, at twenty-eight, a graduate of the Cincinnati Law School, a
member of the bar and a practical civil engineer. When the country
needed her army men in 1898, Lieutenant Hine, then on the staff of a
Big Four superintendent in Cleveland, secured leave of absence,
volunteered and was commissioned a major of the First District of
Columbia Infantry. After Santiago, Major Hine promptly resumed his
work as a railroadman. He has served as brakeman, switchman,
yardmaster, conductor, chief clerk to the superintendent, trainmaster,
assistant superintendent and general superintendent. He is, by nature,
a student; no task is too onerous to dismay him if there is in it or
behind it something he can learn. Thus he has not only stored away
information, but he has learned how to impart it, and his fund of
shrewd observation and good common sense he has drawn on in writing a
railroad book entitled "Letters From an Old Railway Official to His
Son, a Division Superintendent."
The letters cover a breadth of ground in railway operation that is
really astonishing to any one who does not know the man behind them.
This is not all; loaded as they are with nuggets of hard, practical
sense in railroad practice, they have a form and finish that make them
doubly attractive. They are short, compact, of an easy and agreeable
style and both lively and humorous as well as instructive.
Major Hine has long since won his literary spurs as a contributor to
the Army and Navy Journal, The Railway Age and The Century Magazine.
His present book is bright, quick and gossipy, and it would interest a
man that did not know the difference between a puzzle switch and a
gravity yard, but its especial appeal is to the young railroad man of
to-day who understands that whether in the operating department, the
accounting department or the motive power, he must, to get ahead, know
all that he can, and the letters cover as many railroad subjects as
they bear numbers. They will take their place at once in railroad
libraries and in railroad literature. Major Hine--recently doing
special railroad work on the staff of the general manager of the Rock
Island system and at present on the staff of the second vice-president
of the Burlington, specially charged with the subject of company
supplies--may write longer and more pretentious books than this; but
hardly one of more real value to the ambitious young railroad man.