Harriman Lines. As I understand it, their able director of purchases
does not, as many people suppose, scrutinize all requisitions. Each of
the eight vice-presidents and general managers has his own purchasing
agent, who, under the broad policy of local autonomy, buys many
articles as best he can. Those large items which experience proves can
best be bought for all by the director of purchases, are so purchased
under blanket contracts. For those items the local purchasing agent
becomes an ordering agent. The point of it all is that no iron clad
rule is laid down. Because some items can best be purchased in bulk, it
does not follow that local administration should be hampered by
requiring all items to be so procured. Instead of a narrow, rigid rule,
there is a broad policy enunciated which permits the discriminating
judgment of experience, to decide questions on their individual merits
under the ever-changing conditions of service.
When railroads are older similar broad treatment will be accorded other
features of operation as well as supplies and purchases. Broad policies
and individual judgment will gradually supplant attempts to decide
questions in advance in accordance with preconceived notions of
probable conditions.
The evolution of the so-called store department on most railways has
been a striking instance of one-sided development. A railway exists to
manufacture and sell an intangible commodity, transportation, not
necessarily to carry either a large or small stock of material and
supplies. The purchasing agent tells us in good faith how much money he
has saved the company by time spent in driving good bargains. He is not
in a position to know how many men have been worked to poor advantage,
or have been idle, while waiting for proper tools, materials and
supplies. Such features of economic waste are not always the fault of
the purchasing agent. The general storekeeper and the local
storekeeper, ambitious for low stock records, may hold down their
requisitions. It is so easy to say that a telegram will bring a
cylinder head or other spare part to the desired point. If meantime a
big locomotive has been out of commission in a distant roundhouse for
two or three days and a light engine has been sent to protect the run,
there is nothing in the store accounts to reflect this needless
expense. The individual batting averages are high, but some way the
team is not winning games.
One of the fallacies introduced by the store people is that the user of
material cannot be trusted with its custody, because he will carry too
much stock, due to an exaggerated view of future necessities. This
mistaken theory is carried to the extent of denying to the division
superintendent the custody of fifty shovels to be used by the emergency
gang of fifty men which it is entirely within his province to order out
to clear the road. The men he can command. The shovels, without which
the men are useless, he must beseech from a storekeeper receiving,
perhaps, one-third as much salary as himself. Of course, in an
emergency, the superintendent takes the shovels, anyway. As I said
before, it is a pretty poor system that breaks down in an emergency.
The test of a system is an emergency. I confess my inability to see
that being a user of material necessarily makes a man more indifferent
to the company's interests. Perhaps it is the same habit of mind that
causes me to deny greater rectitude to the man in the accounting
department.
The user of material has undoubtedly been careless in many cases. Will
he not become more careless if relieved of responsibility and informed
that he cannot be trusted? When children err, the wise parent does not
disown them. From his fund of riper experience, he helps them by
impressive teaching to gain a proper viewpoint. Similarly, the general
storekeeper should control the superintendent and teach the latter the
most economical handling and use of material and supplies. Control is
comparatively valueless without authority. This authority can be most
effectively conveyed by rank. The general storekeeper should not be a
keeper of a general store. He should be a general officer, under the
general manager, superior in rank and pay to the division
superintendent. Instead of the superintendent being relieved from
responsibility, he should be held to a greater accountability. The
reformed and reconstructed bandit often makes a relentless police
chief. The despised user of material under proper organization becomes
the zealous conserver and protector.
The general storekeeper, like the chief mechanical officer, should be
located in the same building with the general manager. There is no more
reason for locating either one at a store or at a shop than there is
for locating a general superintendent in a switch shanty near a yard.
General officers must see the whole property and maintain a balance
among its component units, which are normally operating divisions. If I
were you, as between your purchasing agent and your general
storekeeper, I would appoint the most experienced an assistant general
manager, so that his office file can be logically and consistently
consolidated with your own. The other of these two men I would make
purchasing agent with a distinct title and a separate office file,
because of his large volume of business with outside persons. Such
assistant general manager would be in effect manager of supplies and
purchases, the trained expert seeing the whole problem of operation and
deciding normally what material and supplies the company needs. Under
such assistant general manager, would be the purchasing agent, a staff
officer, specializing on the technique and psychology of bargaining.
Such assistant general manager, as a line officer, would be his own
general storekeeper and would hold division superintendents responsible
for the stores on their respective divisions. His work would be
co-ordinated with that of the other assistant general managers by the
chief of staff, the senior assistant general manager.
The organization thus outlined would preclude the necessity for the
usual perfunctory approval of requisitions by the general manager. The
assistant general manager for supplies would normally put the final
approval on requisitions. Large or exceptional items the general
manager would approve. When differences of opinion developed among the
interested assistant general managers as to the relative ultimate
economy of different mechanical or structural devices, the general
manager would be invoked to give a decision that really would be worth
something, because made after considering different viewpoints. Under
the old order of things, the superintendent of motive power or the
chief engineer is tempted to seek the ear of the general manager on the
latter's best natured day to put over a requisition for some pet
device. So sporadic is the comprehensive consideration of requisitions,
so perfunctory is the usual approval, that the general manager
frequently tells his purchasing agent not to take the former's approval
too seriously, and to hold up approved requisitions about which the
latter is doubtful. This is another species of unconscious
administrative cowardice which attempts to put on the subordinate the
burden of responsibility for a departure from the normal. True
organization and administration demand normal procedure by
subordinates. At normal speed, the administrative machine should run
well balanced. When the speed becomes great enough, higher authority
should be a governor brought into action more or less automatically.
Telling a subordinate habitually to question the acts of his superior
has the same cheapening effect as unchecked disregard of block signals.
It puts higher authority in the undesirable attitude of exploiting a
fad, or an over-worked system, rather than of demanding reasonable
compliance with proper and logical requirements.
Have we not overdone the matter of low working stocks? Is it not more
expensive for a railroad to carry too small a working stock of material
and supplies than one too large? Is not the problem too extensive to
warrant very rigid comparisons as between different roads? Like the
average miles per car per day, does not the equation contain too many
variables to admit of a very exact solution? Can we compare effectively
the dissimilar conditions involved in climate, distances from producing
and distributing centers, character of predominating traffic, etc.? Are
not some records for seemingly low economical stocks based upon the
fallacy that it costs the company nothing to ship and reship its own
material? Where would these records land if company material carried a
freight charge of, say, 5 mills per ton per mile? Is it not more
economical to handle numerous items of supply in carload lots
regardless of average monthly consumption? Have we given due weight to
the concealed items of expense in arriving at conclusions as to the
cost of handling company material and supplies?
Two of the best-managed roads in the country, the Pennsylvania and the
Big Four, had no stores departments the last time I inquired. At the
other extreme, we find the Santa Fe and the Lake Shore carrying their
departmental system to their stores in an intensified form. In
between--that happy medium which I mentioned to you--stand the Harriman
Lines with division stores under the division superintendent, who in
turn as to supply matters is under the general storekeeper or other
chief supply official, the latter already having in some cases the
title and status of an assistant general manager. The man in direct
charge of the one general store which is allowed each general
jurisdiction is called a storekeeper. The underlying conception is that
railroad stores are maintained to help make the wheels go around, that
all supply activities should be concentrated upon the most economical
manufacture and sale of transportation.
This brings us to another phase of the problem. Frequently a railroad
as a plant is adequate to manufacture more transportation than it can
sell. The other fellow is getting too much of the competitive business.
Investigation often shows that railroad solicitors can sell a shipper
no freight or passenger transportation, because his salesman receives
no orders from the railroad's purchasing agent. The industrial bureau
of a traffic department works to create new business which is fostered
by discriminating freight rates. Yes, I stand up and use the word
"discriminating," because, when properly understood, it implies
intelligence and science, and is therefore one of the finest words in
the language. This good work of the traffic department in creating
wealth and developing industrial communities in territory local to a
particular road may be largely lost to that road because its purchasing
agent, consciously or unconsciously, fails to exercise proper and
legitimate discrimination in the performance of his important function.
At first blush, in these days of doubting insinuation and hysterical
aspersion, when a railway official is often denied the presumption of
possessing common honesty, when the burden of proof is to show him as
having average rectitude, such a statement may be construed by
distorted minds as a plea for subtle forms of rebating. Tenuous as may
seem the line here between right and wrong, it can in a given case be
readily determined. Too often apparent complexities are only the result
of an abstruse contemplation of abstract possibilities. Give honest,
fearless, practical treatment to each concrete case as it arises,
indulge more in inductive reasoning which predicates laws upon facts,
not facts upon laws, and complexity gives way to common sense.
Transportation is the most exacting, the most diversified, the most
far-reaching of commercial and industrial activities. It follows then,
under the law of the survival of the fittest, that those who can
survive in the art and science of transportation must be the fittest of
the fit. In their hands can safely be left the solution of these
difficult problems.
After three years of satisfactory experience with division accounting
bureaus, the Harriman Lines have extended such activities to include
the division stores. This is done by moving the division storekeeper,
his accounting and correspondence clerks, to the division
superintendent's office in order that division records may be
consolidated in one file and division accounts in one bureau. A
division material-on-hand account is included. The necessary issue
clerks, foremen, etc., are left at the storehouse, which is often a
mile or two from the superintendent's office. Another avowed object is
to get the division supply people closer to the train sheet, to give
propinquity a chance to develop love, and to counteract that
we-are-so-different feeling which comes on many railroads, not only in
the spring, but under all signs of the zodiac. The logical development
on divisions of considerable volume of supply business will be to make
the division storekeeper an assistant superintendent. This method of
store accounting is relatively closer to real transactions, especially
where the division supply train is used, than might be supposed. On the
Hill lines, the store accounting is done in the general auditor's
office, perhaps one or two thousand miles from the store itself, a
decidedly long range proposition. Which policy is better is of course a
question of opinion. A man's views on organization and methods are
largely a matter of temperament and association, just as his politics
and religion depend usually upon heredity and environment.
Affectionately, your own,
D. A. D.
LETTER XVII.
CORRESPONDENCE AND EXPLANATIONS.
Portland, Ore., July 29, 1911.
My Dear Boy:--The man who is successful in the exercise of authority
soon learns to be something of a buffer between his superiors and his
subordinates. He learns to temper justice with mercy. In this little
railroad game of ours there has often been an unconscious departure
from this rule of conduct. The word "why" should ask for an increased
overtime rate in its next working schedule. Somebody at the top is
peeved because a train comes in late. He asks the next man below,
"Why?" Down goes the inquiry through the baskets of offices whose files
contain the desired information, because it is so much easier to write
another man a letter than to dig up one of our own. The final inquiry
is to a man who has already rendered one report or explanation. It
would be a pretty poor sort of recording angel that would register
against this underling the more or less justifiable profanity in which
he then indulges.
Up in this part of the country, where they do some mighty good
railroading, is a big hearted general officer, who once, during a
blizzard, directed his superintendents to order train and engine crews
to disregard block signals forced out of commission by the elements. A
section foreman went out to change a rail with the traditional one man
who could not flag both ways. So the section foreman, with the rail
out, relied upon the [automatic] block signal for protection. Along
came the train with orders to disregard the signal--and the engine
landed in the ditch. There was some official talk of discharging the
section foreman. The big general officer faced the music and said, in
effect, that if any enforced vacancies were to occur he himself must be
the man. "Furthermore," he added, "we have learned something; if we are
ever again tempted to disregard block signals, we will first notify
everybody on the railroad, including the section foremen." Such
manliness is the rule rather than the exception among railroad
officers. It is a practical kind of honesty which counts in the great
art of handling men.
The lesson to be drawn is that we should all be just as honest and
considerate for the man below in the conduct of our offices as in the
face to face contact of outside activities. The first thought of an
official and of his chief of staff should be to avoid humiliating a
subordinate. A letter demanding an explanation accumulates much
momentum of censure while traveling, perhaps from the general offices,
through the channels to an agent, a yardmaster, a conductor, or a
foreman. The tendency of each office is to unbottle a little more of a
never-failing supply of suppressed indignation. By the time the return
explanations and apologies have trekked back across the plains to the
starting point, the whole incident is often as much ancient history as
the days of '49.
Yes, we must have explanations for certain irregularities. The taste
for such office pabulum is more or less cultivated. It is a kind of
diet which demands vigilant restraint of appetite. It does not increase
the self-respect of a faithful old employe to write a schoolboy
explanation of something that looked badly on paper in a distant
office. Actual experience has demonstrated that discipline can be
maintained, efficiency increased, and loyalty engendered by greater
politeness and consideration in official correspondence. Instead of the
superintendent or trainmaster writing to a conductor, "Why did you
delay No. 1 at Utopia when you pulled out a draw-bar on the main track
on the 32nd?" why not say, "It is claimed that quicker work on your
part would have avoided delay to No. 1 when your train pulled out a
draw-bar, etc." This leaves it open to the man to explain or to let the
matter go by default. The employe who lets too much go by default is
soon well known to his officers and his cases will receive the special
treatment they deserve. Some officials devote more time to the
gnat-heel measure of explanations than to a broad analysis which will
prevent future irregularities.
To some officials, papers on the desk are a nightmare. For the sake of
a clean desk they will write unnecessary letters and pass the papers to
the men below. The road will not go to pieces if many papers are held
for a personal interview next trip. Because it is now and then
desirable to force some old buck to go on record is no reason for not
separating the sheep from the goats and avoiding the necessity for a
record in a majority of cases. This is another instance where L.C.L.
judgment is worth a whole trainload of rigid bumping posts.
Among the many advantages of the chief of staff should be his ability
to prepare explanations for higher authority from routine reports at
hand without making a special reference of papers to offices below.
Your old dad takes considerable pride in the fact that he never
consciously wrote a sharp letter to a subordinate. Once, when a
trainmaster, and sick in bed, he dictated in a letter to a conductor,
"Hereafter, please take _sufficient_ interest to see that switches are
properly locked." The stenographer improved the phraseology by writing,
"Please take _special_ interest, etc."--see the difference?--which
happy circumstances caused the conductor to come to the sickroom and
express his undying devotion to the cause of locked switches. A
personal interview with a conductor, however, is worth a dozen letters
by a trainmaster.
These same observations apply to the general manager as well as to the
trainmaster. The higher one goes, the more consideration must he
cultivate. If you have something disagreeable to get out of your system
and the typewriter is your only recourse, take it out on your superiors
rather than your subordinates. It is better for the company to have you
fired for insubordination than for you to demoralize the service by
rawhiding men below. You must carry out the policies and instructions
of your superiors. The success of your administration will depend upon
the manner in which you execute the wishes of your superiors and upon
the methods you pursue, as much as upon the inherent merits of the
policies themselves. Flattering yourself, as you probably do, at being
the happiest of the happy in the medium line, see how safe a middle
course you can steer. It will take another generation to eradicate
feudalism in railroad administration. Those whom Fate, opportunity, or
desire has landed in the railroad game must abide by the existing
rules. If out of accord with the policies of those above, be a good
sport and resign like a gentleman. Before doing so, however, be dead
sure that you have not mistaken some trifling inconsistencies of
methods for real incompatibility warranting voluntary separation.
A good friend and a good superintendent down south recently asked me to
preach a little on the necessity for a more dignified tone in railway
correspondence. He cited his correspondence with government offices as
an example of dignified expression. Instead of saying, "Please advise
me," or, "Kindly let me know," or "I wish to be informed," they use
some such impersonal expression as, "Please advise this office," or
"Kindly favor the department," or, "This bureau desires information
concerning, etc." Some people say they like to have an official or an
employe act as if he owned the property. I would not. A man will ride
his own horse to death. When acting as trustee, guardian, or fiduciary,
he will perhaps conserve the property entrusted to his charge more
carefully than if it were his own. Is not a careful trustee better than
a careless owner? Railway officials are trustees as well as hired
hands. Through long traditions of service, the government officer,
however hampered by certain limitations that are inherent in government
administration, forms a habit of mind which prompts first attention to
his employer rather than to himself. On railways we are equally loyal,
but are cruder in our manifestations. We have the feudal conception of
"_my_ railroad" rather than that of "the railroad on which I have the
honor to be employed."
Following the same reasoning, it is better for a man to sign, "John
Doe, for and in the absence of the General Manager," than "Richard Roe,
General Manager, per John Doe." When John Doe acts in the place of
Richard Roe, the former has become the representative of the company,
rather than a facsimile of Richard Roe. The act of John Doe binds the
company, and the papers should show on whom personal administrative
responsibility must be fixed. The phrase, "For and in the absence of,"
explains to the recipient the departure from normal procedure, and to
the company's future reviewer is John Doe's explanation or apology for
seeming usurpation of the functions of higher authority.
When you have signed a letter, no matter by whom suggested or prepared,
it becomes your act for which you are responsible. Do not have its
effect weakened by showing in the corner of the original the initials
of the persons dictating and typewriting. Whether or not such initials
shall be shown on your file carbon for the sake of future reference is
a matter of taste. Such carbon copy record can be made either by a
rubber stamp or by typewriter. With the latter method some
stenographers prefer to slip in a piece of heavy paper to blank the
original and to save the trouble of removing the outer sheet from the
machine. The point is that, however desirable such information may be
for your own office, it is no concern of the recipient of the letter.
It is much more important that the carbon copy should show by rubber
stamp or otherwise who actually signed the original and became
responsible for that completed stage of the transaction.
The impersonal form of address used in government correspondence
precludes the necessity for printing the names of officials on letter
heads. Illegible signatures are a pretty poor excuse for attempting to
issue an official directory in the form of a letter head. The working
conception of the self-perpetuating corporation falls short if we must
alter or reprint our stationery every time an official is changed.