Note: Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/lettersfromoldra00hinerich
Transcriber's note:
The word "To" was added to the title, in front of "His Son,
a General Manager".
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
LETTERS FROM AN OLD RAILWAY OFFICIAL
Second Series
To His Son, a General Manager
by
CHARLES DELANO HINE
1912
Published by the
Simmons-Boardman Publishing Co.
New York
McGraw-Hill Book Company, Sole Selling Agents
239 West Thirty-ninth Street, New York
London, E.C., 6 Bouverie Street. Berlin, N.W. 7, Unter den Linden 71
Copyright, 1912, by
Simmons-Boardman Publishing Co.
New York
FOREWORD.
The author of the letters composing this book, which appeared serially
in the _Railway Age Gazette_ in 1911, is a West Point graduate. He
served as a lieutenant in the 6th United States Infantry. He is a
civil engineer. He is a graduate of the Cincinnati Law School.
Leaving the Army to enter railway service, he worked as freight
brakeman, switchman, yardmaster, emergency conductor, chief clerk to
superintendent, and trainmaster. When the war with Spain began in 1898
he quit railway service and participated in the Santiago campaign as a
major of volunteers. After the war he re-entered railway work, and was
trainmaster and later general superintendent. Subsequently, he did
special railway work in various staff positions for both large and
small railways in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
He was for a time inspector of safety appliances for the Interstate
Commerce Commission. In 1907 he assisted in the revision of the
business methods of the Department of the Interior at Washington, D.C.
Then he was receiver of the Washington, Arlington & Falls Church
Electric Railway. In 1910, as temporary special representative of
President Taft, he outlined a scheme for improving the organization
and methods of the executive departments of the United States
government. Meantime, in July, 1908, he had become special
representative of Mr. Julius Kruttschnitt, director of maintenance and
operation of the Harriman Lines, and had entered on a study of the
needs of the operating organization of those railways and of the means
that should be adopted to meet those needs. The result of this work
was the adoption by most of the Harriman Lines of the unit system of
organization. On January 15, 1912, Major Hine became vice-president
and general manager of the Southern Pacific Lines in Mexico and the
Arizona Eastern, having about 1,600 miles of railway.
The foregoing details have not been given for biographical purposes.
They have been given to enable the reader to understand the author's
point of view. Or, rather, his points of view. For few men have had
opportunity to look at the railway business from so many angles, both
practical and theoretical. Given such an education, such a training,
such a varied experience, and a keen observer's eye to see, an active,
logical mind to generalize, and a graphic, witty, scintillant English
style to set down the results of observation, experience and thinking,
and, if their possessor turn to writing, the product is sure to be
literature of interest and value. The readers of Major Hine's first
series of letters, "Letters of an Old Railway Official to His Son, a
Division Superintendent," found them at once entertaining, suggestive
and instructive. They will find equally or more so the second series,
written after a wider experience, and now embodied in this volume.
One of the greatest problems of modern railway management is that of
organization. Little railways have been combined into big ones; and
big railways have been consolidated into big systems. To so organize
these extensive systems that each division and each railway shall
have enough individuality and autonomy to deal effectively and
satisfactorily with the conditions and needs local to it, and at the
same time bring about the correlation and unification of all parts of
the entire system essential to the most efficient operation--this is
one phase of the problem. To develop men able to administer skilfully
departments having many and varied branches--this is another phase. It
was as a means to solving this great problem that Major Hine worked
out the unit system of organization now in effect on most parts of the
Harriman system. In the letters composing this book he has described,
not with the cold, hard outlines of a blue print, but vividly, and
with fullness of practical illustration, the nature, purposes and
workings of the unit system. Whether the reader agrees with the
author's views or not, he cannot but be interested in them as the
views regarding a scheme of organization which is the subject of
widespread interest and discussion of the man who originated and
worked out that scheme of organization.
Besides organization the letters deal with many other questions of
practical interest both large and small--with the relations of the
railway with the public; its regulation by public bodies; the labor
situation on the railways, etc. Indeed, they touch on almost every
phase of contemporary railway conditions and operation. Full of human
touches, they clothe the skeleton of railway organization and
operation with flesh and blood; and will give the current reader and
the future historian a better picture of contemporary railway working
than many more stilted and pretentious books.
SAMUEL O. DUNN.
FILE NUMBERS.
LETTER I.
The New General Manager 1
LETTER II.
Building an Organization 10
LETTER III.
The General Manager on the Witness Stand 20
LETTER IV.
Further Gruelling of the General Manager 32
LETTER V.
Limitations of the Chief Clerk System 43
LETTER VI.
Preventing, Instead of Paying, Claims 52
LETTER VII.
The Chief of Staff Idea 63
LETTER VIII.
The Unit System 73
LETTER IX.
Standardizing Office Files 88
LETTER X.
The Line and the Staff 100
LETTER XI.
The Problem of the Get-Rich-Quick Conductor 112
LETTER XII.
The Labor Nemesis and the Manager 126
LETTER XIII.
A Department of Inspection, or Efficiency 136
LETTER XIV.
Preserving Organization Integrity 146
LETTER XV.
The Size of an Operating Division 156
LETTER XVI.
Supplies and Purchases 168
LETTER XVII.
Correspondence and Explanations 181
LETTER XVIII.
Organization of the Ideal Railroad 192
LETTER XIX.
The Engineering of Men 205
LETTER XX.
The Fallacy of the Train-Mile Unit 214
LETTER XXI.
The Man-Day as a Unit 224
Appendix 228
Letters From A Railway Official
LETTER I.
THE NEW GENERAL MANAGER.
Chicago, April 8, 1911.
My Dear Boy:--Once more a circular comes to gladden my heart and
gratify my pride. This circular announces your appointment as general
manager, a position of honor and importance, extensive in its
opportunities for good administration as well as for wasteful neglect.
Some seven years ago, when you were a division superintendent, I wrote
you a book of letters which caused us both to be taken more seriously
than perhaps we shall ever be again. Can T. R. come back? I don't know,
I am sure, but your old Dad can and will. For never before in our
splendid profession of railroading has there been greater need for the
wisdom of old age, the enthusiasm of youth, and the balanced execution
of middle life. We, the railways, we the most scattered and, ergo, the
most exposed of property rights, are the first of the outposts to
receive and to repel the assaults of anarchy and its smaller sister,
socialism. Subtle, sinister, and specious is the reasoning which
supports the claims of those who single out the arteries of inland
commerce as a thing apart, as something immune to the irresistible laws
of cause and effect. Shall we sit idly by, because we have had our
part? No, my son. In that inspiring painting, "The Spirit of '76," the
old man and the boy, equals in enthusiasm, typify the soul love of
liberty of an aroused people. Let you and I, therefore, do our little
part to call to arms our brethren of a nation-long village street.
Perhaps we are only hired hands of imaginary "interests." Perhaps,
nevertheless, we are liberty-loving, God-fearing, right-thinking
American citizens. Perhaps we do not need to be backed into the last
corner before we turn and stand for the God-given rights for which men
of all ages have been willing to fight and die. Perhaps the muck-rakers
have not procured all the patents pertaining to perfection, potential
or pronounced. But be that as it may, you and I can at least be heard,
can have our day in the forum of public opinion, which after all is the
court of last resort. In the language of Mr. Dooley, the decisions of
the Supreme Court follow the popular elections.
What shall we do to be saved? First, put our own house in order that
example may protect precept. It is a pretty good house after all. Only
eighty years old to be sure, short in epochs of experience, but
relatively long in æons of achievement. It already has some degenerate
offspring, but mighty few when you consider the rapidity of forced
breeding, the intensity of incubation. Transportation, acknowledged as
second only to agriculture in the world's great industries, has
advanced faster and further in eight decades than has agriculture in
eight centuries. That is something to be proud of. Therein is glory
enough for us all.
Unfortunately, pride goeth before destruction. In the bivouac of the
living, glory is a mighty unreliable sentinel. Let us hang up pride and
glory as our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. Let us don consistent
practice and tenacious watchfulness for week-day wear. Let us cease to
temporize with principle when such unmanly action seems easy and
inexpensive. Nothing is so expensive ultimately as a violation of
principle. A platitude, you say. So it is. The aforesaid T. R. has
gained a great hold on the American people, at one time a strangle
hold, by repeating platitudes over and over again. Great is the man who
can measure the limitations of his fellows. Let us take a leaf from his
book and repeat, reiterate, and reverberate the Ten Commandments, and
the greatest of all commandments, the Golden Rule, alias the Square
Deal.
It takes an abnormally intelligent people to grasp at first blush the
truism that railways should charge "what the traffic will bear" for the
same good reason that the corner grocer makes all the profit the
business will survive. Therefore, put the soft pedal on _cost_ of
service and a fair _return_ on capital invested.
Get on the band wagon and follow the able lead of the good old _Railway
Age Gazette_ in playing the logical tune of _value_ of service
rendered, of charging all the admission fee the show will stand. The
people will not go to church to hear our preaching. We must reach them
in the highways and the byways, in the moving picture shows, and
through improvised Salvation Armies of self-interest. Do not expect the
people to espouse a cause in which we are half-hearted. Either we are
right or we are wrong. Either the government should own and run the
railways, or the stockholders should retain possession and we, the
intelligent _entrepreneur_ class, should continue our scientific
management--for scientific it has been.
In a world of complexities, filled with relative things, some truths
are so absolute that they are axiomatic, some positions so pronounced
that there is no middle ground. From Trafalgar there rings through the
ages Nelson's signal, "England expects every man to do his duty." Its
interpretation and its adaptation for us to-day mean that every
railroad man, every home lover, every believer in property rights must
defend the sound position of the railways, must anticipate the assaults
of pseudo-socialism. The individual is the indivisible unit of society.
The family is the consecrated unit of civilization. The home is the
prime requisite for the family whose very existence depends upon the
right of property, tangible or intangible.
You say that all railway men are doing something along this line. So
they are, but nearly every one can do more if intelligently and
persistently directed. We have taken too much for granted in believing
that the legal department would look out for legislation, and the press
agent for publicity. This phase, like many of our problems, is a
question of organization, which itself as a science is a branch of
sociology. On most railways some department--never, of course, our
own--has unconsciously tried to be bigger than the whole company, in
violation of the axiom that the whole is greater than any of its parts.
When, by proper organization, we balance these departments--especially
on the other fellow's road--we shall be in a better position to present
a more united front in forestalling the arrival of the common enemy,
prejudice and his principal ally, ignorance. "Men," says Marcus
Aurelius, "exist for one another. Teach them, then, or bear with them."
We, the railroads, have done our share of bearing. It is time to do
more teaching. Before we can impart knowledge we must know ourselves,
we must be sure of our own information.
Naturally, I want you to be the best general manager in the country.
Therefore, if I am a little too didactic at times, you must be patient
with me. Of course, you will have to work out your conclusions for
yourself. Remember that I am too old at this teaching game to try
always to think for other people. My job is so to state the
propositions that you will reach the answers in your own way.
Incidentally, the more you think you have discovered for yourself, the
greater the credit due your teacher. Men are only boys grown tall. As
grown-up children they seem to prefer the misfits of their own
manufacture to the hand-me-down assortment from the shelves of stored
experience. Too often the employing corporation pays the bill for
educating an official for his duties after his promotion and
appointment, for the cloth he wastes in selecting unwise patterns of
procedure.
Most of our large corporations are still in a stage of industrial
feudalism. In the middle ages the feudal baron and his methods were
absolutely essential to preserve civilization for society. Without him
and his forceful ways the relapse to barbarism would have been rapid.
In the earlier periods of the large corporation the industrial baron
and his ofttimes lawless audacity were essentials of corporate
existence. As these great types die off, their system dies with them.
Supply keeps close on the heels of demand. These feudal barons of
industry and commerce are breeding no successors because none are
needed. As a government of laws succeeds a government of men, so
administration by system displaces administration by personal caprice.
The scheme of progress now demands a higher type of corporation
official, and he is being rapidly developed. Altruism, adaptability,
consideration and courtesy are the more modern requirements. The
successful official of to-day is more of a sociologist than ever
before. He must study human nature from its broadest aspects. He must
know the public, its whims and caprices, its faults and foibles, its
intelligence and its strength. He must learn to know his men that he
may see how many things they can do, not how few. Human nature is
mighty good stuff. The more it is trusted the better it responds. The
feudal baron did not know this. He was jealous of his own authority,
because more or less conscious of his limitations, of the weakness of
his system. Those who take up his self-imposed responsibilities must be
better men. They must be so sure of themselves and of the science of
their methods that they can trust others, can delegate authority to the
man on the ground. The task of the general manager to-day is so to
decentralize authority that the company can obtain the best thought of
the humblest employe, that indivisible unit of society whom his feudal
superiors have trusted too little. The most important unit of
organization is the individual. Give him his due weight as a living,
thinking man, and you increase the mass efficiency of the corporation.
This run is too heavy for stringing on one schedule. I am now giving
you the first terminal figure, 12:01 a.m. at Problem. Next time if I
can push you to Principle you can perhaps flag over a station or two
toward the despatcher at Understanding, whose wires have been known to
go down in stormy weather.
With a father's blessing,
Your affectionate and rejuvenated,
D. A. D.
LETTER II.
BUILDING AN ORGANIZATION.
Chicago, April 15, 1911.
My Dear Boy:--Nearly every man entrusted with authority over his
fellows flatters himself that he is a born organizer. Flattery is never
more deceptive than when applied to one's self.
For every good organizer there are a hundred good administrators or
managers. What often passes for good organization is first class
administration. Yes, many a mother's son who reads this will exclaim at
first blush, "That is just what I have been saying for a long time. It
beats all how weak some organizations are. I am glad that my
organization can stand the test of such criticism."
If elements of self-perpetuation are prime essentials of good
organization, the Pharisee family are certainly entitled to bid in the
preferred runs.
The corporation was evolved to supply a demand of society. Life,
property, material, moral and spiritual welfare could not be left to
depend upon the uncertain earthly existence of the leader or trustee.
So, both rationally and empirically, by reason and by costly
experiment, came the corporation to beat Death at his own game. Like
all progress the corporation was resisted, because in the divine scheme
of things the radicals never long outnumber the conservatives. Like all
real progress the corporation idea won because it was needed. The
corporation, whether governmental, religious, industrial or commercial,
marks a distinct advance from feudalism by protecting the rights of the
many against the caprice of the few. Because we have moved so fast
might has often seemed to be right. Because the line of least
resistance is the most attractive, we have sometimes backed down the
hill and doubled when a good run with plenty of sand would have carried
us over. Large corporations, including many railways, have often failed
to attain maximum efficiency. Much of this can be traced to a neglect
to carry out consistently in practice the sound working conception of
the corporation. The corporation has helped society to emerge from
political and financial feudalism. The interior organization and
administration of most corporations, including government itself, are
still too feudal in conception. The problem of to-day is so to
eradicate this feudalism that the corporation can have the benefit of a
free play of its constituent forces. Where feudalism exists the
effective working strength is limited to the personal equation of the
man at the head. The United States government is stronger than
Washington, or Lincoln, or Taft. The Great Northern Railway measures
its present acknowledged effectiveness by the man the Swedes call Yim
Hill. The United States government grows stronger with every
administration. The Great Northern Railway, too strong to be destroyed,
faces a period of relative distress with the next dynasty. The
Pennsylvania Railroad is stronger than such strong men as Scott,
Cassatt and McCrea. Both the United States government and the
Pennsylvania Railroad, although among the least feudal of large
corporations, can still eradicate feudalism from their interior
organization and administration. That, in good time, both will do so
cannot be doubted. Inconsistencies between comprehensive conceptions at
the top and narrow applications at the bottom are often overlooked.
When disclosed and appreciated these incongruities soon give way under
pressure of the broad policies above. We must build up from the bottom
but tear down our false work from the top.
Organization is a branch of a larger subject, sociology, the science of
human nature. Organization is not an exact science like mechanical
engineering, for example. The variables in the human equation defy
entire elimination. We check and recheck engineering conclusions. We
compute and recompute material strains and stresses. We run and double
back with the dynamometer car to try out our tractive power. We test
and retest materials. We weigh and measure our fuel and our lubricants.
We do all this for material things, which, because more or less
homogeneous, are the easiest to measure. When we come to the really
hard part, the judging of human nature, the co-ordination of the
heterogeneous human elements, our self-confidence denies the necessity
for preconceived practical tests. Because he is our man, because he
followed us from the sage brush or the mountains, he must be all right.
"Just look at our results." Right there, my boy, shut off and pinch 'em
down a little. What are results? Does any one know exactly? One year
they are operating ratio, another, train load, and later on, net
earnings. In no storehouse do material things deteriorate to scrap
value faster than does the intangible, indeterminate stock article,
results. No, I am not a pessimist; I still see the ring of the doughnut
on the lunch counter. But I do object to being fed on birds from year
before last's nests. I believe the railways hatch out better results
every year, but I also feel that improvement should and can be made
even faster. It is largely a breeding problem. How best can we blend
our numerous strains to produce a balanced output? Too often we try to
do this by cutting off the heads of all the old roosters, whose craws
really contain too much good sand to be wasted. A change of diet to a
balanced ration may be all-sufficient.
The wonderful Nineteenth Century in the name of a proper specialization
went too far. It over-specialized. The still more wonderful Twentieth
Century will swing back to a balanced specialization. The medical
colleges are learning that they can not turn out successful eye and ear
specialists, the law schools that the constitutional or interstate
commerce lawyer is the production of a later period. The successful
specialist must first have the foundation of an all-round training.
Broadly speaking, one applies everything of something only by
learning something of everything. We all believe in specialization.
Where we differ is as to the point where specialization stops and
overspecialization begins. We all believe in religion. Where we differ
is as to which is the main line and which the runaway track, as to
which derail deserves a distant banjo signal and which an upper
quadrant. Orthodoxy is usually my doxy. The great fear is always that
the other fellow, being less orthodox than we, will try to put over
some constructive mileage on us. Sometimes this causes us to make his
run so long and his train so heavy that he ties up under the
sixteen-hour law and we miss supper hour going out to tow him in. An
empty stomach discourages drowsiness, and we may then stay awake long
enough to realize that said other fellow was just as orthodox as
anybody about trying to make a good run.
The corollary of specialization is centralization. The undesirable
corollary of overspecialization is overcentralization. Get out your
detour map, approach this proposition by any route of reasoning you
please, and you will reach the same conclusion.
Railway administration to-day suffers most of all from
overcentralization. Trace this to its source and you will find
overspecialization of function, and its concomitant, an exaggerated
value of certain constituent elements of administration. When in doubt,
recall the ever applicable axiom that the whole is greater than any of
its parts. Some people confuse the terms and ideas, concentration and
centralization. Proper concentration in complete units by an earlier
convergence of authority permits decentralization in administration. A
lack of such early concentration makes centralization inevitable.
Again, concentration of financial control is not incompatible with
decentralization of administration among constituent controlled
properties. When the big bankers have time to think out these
propositions for themselves they will permit the railways to get closer
to the people and hostile legislation will diminish if not disappear.
Organization as a science seeks to develop and to support the strong
qualities of human nature. Organization likewise takes account of and
seeks to minimize the amiable failings of human nature. Constitutional
liberty insures the citizen protection against the caprice of the
public officer. Administrative liberty demands an analogous measure of
protection for the subordinate from the whim of his corporate superior.
An amiable failing of many a railway president is to be satisfied with
having everybody under his own authority, and to forget that the
official next below may be embarrassed by having only a partial
control. The general manager who insists the hardest that his
superintendents are best off under his departmental system will squirm
the quickest under the acid test of having the chief supply, the chief
maintenance or the chief mechanical official report to the president.
The superintendent who finds himself with a complete divisional
organization is oblivious to the troubles of a distant yardmaster with
car inspectors. When your old Dad was a ninety-dollar yardmaster some
of his most important work was at the mercy of a forty-five dollar car
inspector. The latter was under a master mechanic a hundred miles or
more away, who in turn could usually and properly count on the support
of the superintendent of motive power. The obvious inference was to
relieve the yardmaster of responsibility for mechanical matters. From
one viewpoint these mechanical questions are too highly technical for
the yardmaster. From another they are matters of common sense requiring
more good judgment than technical training. No, I would not put every
yardmaster over the roundhouse foreman and the car inspectors. What I
would do would be to make the position of yardmaster sufficiently
attractive to impose as a prerequisite for appointment a knowledge of
mechanical as well as transportation matters. Gradually I would work
away from the switchman or trainman specialist to the all-'round man in
whom I could concentrate authority as the head of an important sub-unit
of organization. Instead of leveling downward, as the labor unions do,
by assuming that the average man can learn only one branch of
operation, I would recognize individuality and gradually develop a
higher composite type. Because some car inspectors are not fitted to
become yardmasters is no good reason for practically excluding all car
inspectors from honorable competition for such advancement. When we
build a department wall to keep the other fellow out we sometimes find
it has kept us in. We blame the labor unions for these narrowing
restrictions of employment and advancement. Look once more for the
source, and you will find it among our predecessors in the official
class, a generation or more ago. These officials insisted upon planes
of department cleavage which the men below were quick to recognize.
Railway manhood has been more dwarfed by exaggerated official idea of
specialization with resulting departmental jealousies than by the labor
unions.
Therefore, my boy, let us get some of these inconsistencies out of our
own optics before we talk too much about the dust that seems to blind
the eyes of those who are exposed to the breezes of that world famous
thoroughfare which faces old Trinity Church in New York.
Affectionately, your own,
D. A. D.
LETTER III.
THE GENERAL MANAGER ON THE WITNESS STAND.
Chicago, April 22, 1911.
My Dear Boy:--Did it ever occur to you how easily a bright lawyer could
tangle up many an able railway official on the witness stand? Nowadays
we have to spend more or less valuable time testifying about service,
rates, capitalization, valuation, practices, methods, and a score of
other things that become of public interest. Whether this is just or
unjust, necessary or unnecessary, is beside the question. It is a
condition, not a theory, that confronts us. The wise railway man,
therefore, so orders his official life that it may endure the scrutiny
of both the persecutor and the prosecutor, of both the inquisitor and
the investigator, of both the muckraker and the political economist. It
sometimes happens, since men are only boys grown tall, that public
hearings are accompanied by stage settings for dramatic effect; that
trifling inconsistencies are magnified into egregious errors. Let me
picture part of such a hearing with a general manager on the stand:
Question: You testified, Mr. General Manager, on the direct examination
that your road is well managed and has a highly efficient organization,
did you not?
Answer: Yes, sir, we think we have one of the best in the country.
Q. Would you mind telling the able members of this Honorable Commission
in just what your superiority consists?
A. Not at all, sir. In the first place, we have a great deal of harmony
and work very closely together.
Q. Did you ever know a railway official who did not claim the same
thing for that part of the organization over which he presided?
A. (Hesitating.) Well, now that you mention it, I can't say that I ever
did. (Sudden inspiration.) But you know there is a great deal of
bluffing in this world.
Q. (Drily.) What style of anti-bluffing device has your company
adopted?
A. Of course, you are speaking figuratively. Such a thing isn't
possible. We have a pretty good check in the fine class of men we have
developed.
Q. Then, it is a sort of breeding process?
A. Yes, sir, that's it.
Q. To go a little further, has your company any patents on improving
human nature?
A. No, sir, we don't claim that.
Q. Is it not a fact that your officials and employes are average
citizens recruited and developed about like those of other roads?
A. That is hardly a fair way to put it, but I suppose they are.
Q. Why isn't it fair?
A. Because it leaves out of account the acknowledged efficiency that
comes from having men well treated and contented, and better instructed
than others. Some farms make more money than others because the old man
gets more work out of the boys.
Q. Then your road has officials who can radiate more divine afflatus
than others?
A. I didn't say that. We do the best we know how.
Q. What is organization?
A. Why organization is--let me see--why, organization is the name we
use for the men--the people, the forces we hire to run our road. It is
hard to give a concise definition. I might ask you what law is.
Q. That's easy, law is a rule of conduct. Now, tell me, please, who
runs the road?
A. Why, the officers run the road, the men do the work.
Q. Did you not just say that you hire men to run the road?
A. I didn't mean that.
Q. Then in your business you are not very accurate. You say one thing
and mean another.
A. No, sir; we may have more sense than you think we have. We spend a
lifetime at this business and must learn something about it.
Q. Will you please tell this fair-minded commission just how you run
the road, just how you attempt to minister to the needs of the
intelligent people of this great commonwealth?
A. Now, sir, it is a pleasure to testify. You are getting away from
definitions and technicalities and down to practical facts, where I
feel more at home. I will be glad to tell you all about it. In the
first place a railway is such a big affair that we divide it into
departments.
Q. Excuse me, what is a department?
A. A department is--well--I can make it clearer by describing what it
does. As I was saying, we divided it into departments, and a department
is--well--a department is--why, something so different from everything
else that we put it off by itself and hold the head of the department
responsible for results. We are very particular not to interfere with
the details of the departments.
Q. Pardon me, but the present members of this exceptionally able
commission, inspired further I may say by the example of our patriotic
governor, are accustomed to give profound consideration to these great
questions. (Modest pricking up of ears of commission, with determined
composite expression bespeaking relentless performance of a dangerous
duty.) Please, therefore, tell us what your department does.
A. As I testified on the direct examination mine is the operating
department; as general manager I have charge of operation.
Q. What does that include?
A. It includes transportation, and maintenance and new construction. It
handles the business the other fellow gets.
Q. Who is the other fellow?
A. The traffic department.
Q. Of another company?
A. Why, no, of our own. It is just another department. It deals with
the public, it gets the business, it makes the rates; excuse me--it
recommends rates to honorable bodies like this commission.
Q. Then you in the operating department don't deal with the public?
A. Yes, sir, we do, more and more every year.
Q. Is the traveling freight agent in your department?
A. No, sir, he is in the traffic department.
Q. Then you have no control over him?
A. No, sir, no direct control, but as I said before, we all work very
closely together on our road.
Q. It is claimed that there has been discrimination in car distribution
in this state, because a traveling freight agent promised more cars to
some shippers than the latter were entitled to according to the supply
available. How about that?
A. I am unable to say.
Q. Getting back to your narrative, please resume the interesting
description of your department.
A. As I was saying, we have several departments, each under a
superintendent or other officer. We have a general superintendent, a
chief engineer, a superintendent of motive power, a superintendent of
transportation, a superintendent of telegraph, a signal engineer, a
superintendent of dining cars, and a general storekeeper, all of whom
we call general officers in charge of departments.
Q. I thought you said you are the head of the operating department.
A. Yes, sir; that's right.
Q. I don't quite understand. You say that there are eight departments
in your department?
A. Yes, sir; that is what we call them. It always has been so.
Q. Then when is a department a department?
A. You see these are really not departments; they are just parts of the
operating department which is really a department.
Q. Then, why not have definite designations?
A. I don't know. We have never thought it necessary. We are getting
good results and giving good service to the public.
Q. What are results?
A. I am not sure; the longer I live the less certain I am about these
things.
Q. I am glad to hear that. This impartial commission has been
constituted because some railway officers tried to dictate what was
best for this enlightened commonwealth. Now, tell us, please, what you
think of the plan the United States government has of making the
"bureau" the next unit of organization below the "department"?
A. I have never given government organization much attention. The part
of the government that concerns me most is the Interstate Commerce
Commission, which seems made up mainly of inspectors.
Q. Have you ever studied the organization of the federal courts, and of
the army and the navy?
A. I can hardly say that I have studied their organization, but I have
observed them some.
Q. Then you and your road do not give much attention to organization?
A. Perhaps not to theories. We are very practical. I never could see
where a railway is like the government. They are very different.
Q. Is not human nature the same in its basic characteristics, whether
employed by a railway or the government?
A. I suppose that it is, but many things about a corporation are
different.
Q. Is not the government the largest of employing corporations with its
citizens as the stockholders?
A. Perhaps so. I would rather go on and tell you something practical
about our work.
Q. Pray do so.
A. You see, I am the responsible head, so that I insist upon being
consulted about all important matters, and leave only routine affairs
to be acted on by my subordinates.
Q. What are important matters, and what are routine affairs?
A. Why, the important things are those that I handle personally, and
routine, well, routine is what comes along every day and is so well
understood that it does not require my personal attention.
Q. Do you think any three men could agree upon what should be
considered routine business?
A. I don't know. I had never thought of it that way. Many things have
to be left to discretion. That is where judgment comes in.
Q. Whose judgment?
A. The judgment of the man handling the matter; in this case, my own.
Q. You have been here all day. Who is handling matters in your absence?
A. My chief clerk.
Q. You did not mention him before. What officer is he?
A. He is not usually counted as an officer, but is considered the
personal representative of an officer.
Q. Does he sign your name?
A. Yes, sir; but puts his initials under my name.
Q. Suppose he forgets to put his initials. Could you swear to the
signature in court?
A. I don't know. You understand that is only for routine business.
Q. Does he sign your name to your personal bank check?
A. No, sir; he does not.
Q. Then the company's business with the citizens of this state receives
less careful attention than your own personal affairs?
A. No, sir; the company's business comes first with me. I am a poor man
to-day.
Q. When you are away your chief clerk has to sign instructions to the
general officers in your department?
A. Only routine matters.
Q. Does he receive a higher salary than they?
A. No, sir; a lower.
Q. What determines relative salaries?
A. Qualifications and experience.
Q. Then you have the less qualified and the less experienced man
instructing higher officers.
A. It might seem so, but in our case we are very fortunate. My chief
clerk is an unusual man, and is very considerate and diplomatic. He
knows that I do not stand for inconsiderate requirements of others.
Q. From whom do you receive your instructions?
A. From our president.
Q. Always personally?
A. Not always; his chief clerk is authorized to represent him.
Q. Is his chief clerk as considerate for you as your chief clerk is for
your subordinate officers?
A. That is a very delicate question. I would rather not answer unless
the commission insists.
(Hearing adjourned for day. General counsel sends cipher telegram to
president stating indelicacy of state officials is almost unbearable;
that bankers and business men should petition governor to stop
destroying credit of railways.)
All of which, my dear boy, is not as bad as it sounds, but, through
difficulty of explanation, points the way to desirable improvements in
railway administration.
Affectionately, your own,
D. A. D.
LETTER IV.
FURTHER GRUELLING OF THE GENERAL MANAGER.
Tucson, Arizona, April 29, 1911.
My Dear Boy:--After the commission kicked for rest, the general manager
tied up in his caboose. Nobody was allowed to run around him and he was
marked up first out the following morning. The commission not having
any agreement about initial overtime, the attorney acting as yardmaster
handed him a switch list and told him to dig out these loads:
Question: How many letters a day do you write?
Answer: I don't know, a great many.
Q. How many a day go out of your office?
A. I can't state exactly, probably a hundred or more.
Q. Then you do not see them all?
A. No, that would be impossible in such a large office.
Q. Does the chief clerk see them all?
A. I think he does.
Q. You are not sure then?
A. No, not entirely. I have had no complaints about that.
Q. Is the only way you know about how things are going to have a
complaint come in?
A. Not exactly. I try to keep ahead of the game.
Q. Are the offices of your subordinates run in this same haphazard
manner?
A. I do not admit that it is haphazard. The general method is the same.
Q. Who is in charge of the distribution of cars?
A. My superintendent of transportation.
Q. To whom are his instructions given?
A. To the division superintendents.
Q. Does he give his instructions personally?
A. The important instructions he gives personally. Of course, he cannot
do it all alone. You understand that his department deals with
individual cars and has an enormous amount of detail.
Q. How many men are authorized to sign his name and initials?
A. I don't know.
Q. Then you do not regard this as an important matter?
A. Not as important as some others. That is a matter for which the
superintendent of transportation is responsible. I look to him.
Q. Do you think every man charged with duties should be allowed to
select his own type of organization and decide as to his own methods?
A. As far as possible, yes.
Q. Then why not let each conductor make his own train rules, and each
station agent keep his own kind of accounts?
A. Because confusion would result.
Q. Is it not a fact that on most American railroads six or eight clerks
are signing the name or initials of the superintendent of
transportation?
A. I don't know; very likely.
Q. Does not a similar condition exist in a smaller degree in most
railway offices.
A. Yes, sir, that is the system.
Q. Then who are running the offices, the officials or the clerks?
A. I always supposed the officials. You see we could not afford so many
officials.
Q. Has it ever occurred to you that by having more officials you might
get along with fewer clerks?
A. No, sir.
Q. Who sign for the train orders on your road?
A. Our conductors.
Q. Have not conductors and operators been discharged for signing each
other's names?
A. Yes, sir. We must maintain discipline. If the train orders are not
respected, accidents will result.
Q. Then you have one policy for one class of employes, and allow your
officials and clerks to be a law unto themselves?
A. Not exactly. As I said before we cannot afford so many officials.
Q. Whose initials are signed to your train orders?
A. The superintendent's.
Q. Why?
A. Because it has always been that way on our road. It makes the order
stronger.
Q. If initials make an order stronger, why not sign yours, or the
president's, or God Almighty's?
A. That would be ridiculous.
Q. Then it is not ridiculous to sign the superintendent's initials when
he is at home in bed?
A. No, that is different. We wish to emphasize the fact that the
superintendent is in charge of the division.
Q. Then why not put the superintendent's photograph on all the orders?
Would that strengthen him with the men?
A. No, of course not.
Q. You have been talking about the superintendent; is he the same as
the superintendent of motive power?
A. No, you do not quite understand. The superintendent has charge of a
division and the superintendent of motive power, like the
superintendent of transportation, has charge of a department.
Q. Then the word superintendent doesn't always mean the same thing?
A. No, sir, but no confusion results. You see, the heads of departments
are general officers, while the superintendent is a division officer.
Q. Which superintendent?
A. The division superintendent.
Q. Is it not a fact that on some roads there is a question as to which
has authority in certain matters, the division superintendent or the
superintendent of motive power?
A. I believe so, but we do not have any such trouble.
Q. (Producing copies of letters furnished by discharged office
employe.) Does not this correspondence indicate a heated difference of
opinion between your superintendent of motive power and a division
superintendent which had to be settled by you?
A. Oh, yes; I recall, I had forgotten that. That will not happen again.
Q. What guaranty have you against similar friction?
A. I have that all straightened out. Everybody is lined up and
understands that I insist upon harmony with a big H.
Q. To prevent confusion and, therefore, to save money why not make
titles sufficiently distinctive in rank to prevent conflict of
authority?
A. We have not thought it necessary. I do not go as much on titles as
some people. The old-fashioned way is good enough for me. A rose by any
other name would smell as sweet.
Q. How, then, if you ordered roses for a funeral, would you guard
against the corpse being handed lemons?
A. By sending a note or a card.
Q. Signed by your chief clerk?
A. No, sir.
Q. Do you think it is honest to have your chief clerk signing your name
while you are away at this hearing?
A. There is no intent to deceive.
Q. Do you not unconsciously try to convey the idea that you are in one
place when you are really in another, or that you are acting when it is
really an entirely different man who is taking action?
A. Perhaps so. I had never looked at it in that way. It is a generally
recognized custom.
Q. You do not seem to regard the office part as very important, as you
permit a lot of clerks to take final action all day long.
A. The office is not as important as the road. I try to give the most
attention to the important matters on the road.
Q. You feel that by doing so the office will in a large measure take
care of itself?
A. That is it exactly.
Q. Do you not think that most railway administrative offices have grown
too large to take care of themselves?
A. You see, we keep in close touch with our offices on a railroad,
because when away we have a telegraph or telephone wire at our command.
Q. What good does a wire do you if you are tied up in a hearing or a
conference for two or three hours at a time?
A. I fear that I have not made clear to you just how valuable a man I
have trained into a chief clerk.
Q. I fear that you have not. You seem to believe the old system is all
right. Do you think the last word has been said or that your road has
hit upon the best system?
A. The last word on these important subjects will never be said, but we
have been getting along very well.
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