LETTER XVIII.
BE A SUPERINTENDENT—NOT A NURSE.
July 17, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—I am so sure that you will be a general manager some day that I have been writing you a good deal of advice as to matters that are above the control of a division superintendent. As a rule, however, a man will fill any position better if he has a good conception of the work that is beyond his own sphere. Some people do not like to hire an ex-official for work subordinate to positions that he may previously have held. They fear that the old superintendent who gets aboard as yardmaster or dispatcher will be a nuisance, that he will be all the time scheming for promotion, that he may try to dictate to his superiors, that he will have too much dignity to climb a side ladder, that he will be only temporary, that they will soon be put to the trouble of breaking in another man. All of which is narrow and shows in the aforesaid objectors a lack of confidence in themselves and in their own organization. It all depends on the man himself. If he is the right stuff he will take a broader view for having been an official. He will appreciate the difficulties of his superiors. His desire to make good should induce him to put forth maximum effort. He may be able to get his men out of ruts of many years' standing. It is so seldom that we get fresh blood we should be thankful that circumstances permit us to get a three-hundred-dollar man to work for one hundred. He may be only temporary for that position, but if he makes us money we should be willing to be incommoded later on. It is a selfish fear, this feeling that by and by our royal selves may suffer the personal inconvenience of having to look after a certain part of our machine that we thought was running itself. Vain hope, this looking for any kind of perpetual motion. We are paid official salaries to be big enough to tower over such lazy feelings, over our own personal disinclination to exertion. Let me repeat, once more, that for every position you should have an understudy. Then if anybody drops out through promotion or otherwise your task is a simple one.
A fact that none of us should overlook is that we all have superiors. The president reports to the directors, and the latter to the stockholders. The stockholder, big or little, is his or her majesty, the citizen. Our superiors must know what we are doing. They will not butt in and give us so many directions if we just keep them advised of our progress. Your general superintendent is an able man, but neither you nor he is a mental telegrapher. After you get the surgeons called, the wreck train started, the general superintendent should be the next man to have the wire. Tell him briefly what has happened, what you have done, are doing and expect to do. If conditions are such that it is wise for you to go to the wreck or the washout yourself, wire him that you are on the ground. Don't think this is enough, but every half hour or so tell him how you are getting along. He will feel better and the officials above him will feel better. You will feel better because, if they are wise, they will let you alone and not bother you with instructions. Above all things do not try to pass responsibility up higher by asking what to do. Tell the general superintendent what trains you will detour, what equipment you will need from other divisions for stub runs, what you have requested your neighbors to do. War has been declared, the writs of the courts have ceased to run. You are the general in the field and it is all up to you. From the moment that you are wideawake enough to answer the telephone at the head of your bed, your brain should be earning your company many dollars a minute. As you slip into your clothes, think connectedly where all available men and material are to be had. As you rush over to the office, figure what the situation needs to protect the morning suburban trains. When you see the train sheet, tell the dispatcher what trains should be kept on time as long as possible, what trains should be tied up to prevent a blockade. Don't sit down and take the key, or act as call boy or for one second forget that you are the superintendent, that the whole push looks to you. The cooler your manner, the less hesitating your instructions, the greater the confidence of your men in you and in themselves, the better their work.
Arriving at the scene of trouble, size up the situation, reassure the panic-stricken passengers, organize everybody present, give politely all the information you have, how many hours passengers will be delayed, what train will come to take them forward, when their baggage can be expected. Be cool but sympathetic; alert, but polite. In a few minutes your presence for good will be felt. Tell the wreckmaster what to do first, but do not try to handle his men. Resist the temptation to use an axe or shovel yourself. Do not shrink from the sight of blood. Lead the relief parties, but do not try to be surgeon or nurse. Let the others do the lifting of the killed or injured. You do your work with your brains and with your voice. Be a superintendent. Care first for the injured and the dead. Then look to the comfort of the other passengers. Next in importance comes the mails, then the express and the baggage. Do not give any grand stand orders to burn cars or roll heavy equipment down the bank. Think twice before you destroy more property. The line must be opened, but conditions may be such that an extra hour or two will not complicate the situation, and will save the company thousands of dollars. Men often earn big salaries by the things they avoid doing.
When the work has been organized, circulate among the gangs, give each foreman a word of praise, tell them all that you have ordered coffee and sandwiches, that the company also gives its men square meals at wrecks. Arrange to feed your transferred passengers earlier rather than later than usual. Do not hesitate to feed badly delayed passengers at the company's expense. When everything is running smoothly keep your mouth shut and your ears open. As the country people come flocking in to see the wreck, as the roadmaster yells his orders, you will hear some sweetheart ask her swain if that is the superintendent who has such a big voice. When he shakes his head and the wreckmaster roars to take a fresh hitch, she guesses again, only to be told that the quiet man over there with apparently the least to say is the boss of all. Soon many of the bystanders are pointing admiringly at you as the master of the situation. When it is all over, when, hours or days later, you lie down for a well-earned rest, you will feel that you are a railroad man, that you are holding down a job for which no old woman need apply. There is some self-satisfaction in this world which outruns the pay car, which cannot be measured in dollars and cents.
What I am telling you holds good for a trainmaster, a yardmaster or whoever happens to be the senior representative present. Sometimes it is better to send out the trainmaster and stay in yourself to handle an already congested situation. Sometimes the trainmaster is at the wrong end of the line and you must go yourself. Common sense is a pretty safe guide as to one's course of action. The principle to be remembered is to avoid interference with the man on the ground. If it is a minor derailment which the conductor is handling, do not rattle him with messages, with requests for reports. When you examine your conductors on rules, include questions and explanations which outline action expected in emergencies. Forbid your dispatcher sending a stereotyped message to get written statements of all witnesses every time a personal injury occurs. Have your conductors, your agents and your section foremen so drilled that they will keep the office informed and will depend on themselves, not on the dispatchers, for such things. Your rules, your organization, the instructions on your blanks will amount to little if they are continually discounted by special messages. You had better lose a set of reports than tear your organization to pieces. When somebody falls down, discipline him in such a way that the others will keep in line.
It takes patience and persistence, forbearance and firmness to drill men to a high state of discipline. Disobedience and indifference can sometimes be traced to unwise orders. The impossible or the unreasonable is expected. There are too many bulletins and too many instructions. Do not think a thing is done, an abuse corrected, a condition remedied simply because you have given an order to produce the desired effect. It is up to you to follow the matter to a finish. You must know by observation, by inspection, by the reports of your staff, that your order is being obeyed. The way to enforce discipline is not to keep repeating the order. Except in rare cases an order should not be repeated or a bulletin reissued. Weak men try to strengthen their discipline by extravagant language in their instructions. Do not say that no excuse will be taken for failure to turn in these reports or to comply with these instructions. You may be made to appear ridiculous, even mendacious, by a cloudburst, by a holdup, by an act of God or the public enemy, as the old law phrase runs. Vitality in expression is a good thing. It is useless without vigor in enforcement. The latter does not depend upon the kind of breakfast food you order in the dining car, but upon the ginger in your administration.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER XIX.
THE RACK OF THE COMPARATIVE STATEMENT.
July 24, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—You ask what I mean by the rack of the comparative statement. I mean that, figuratively speaking, we are all pretty securely fastened to the corresponding month of last year. What was originally intended as a tavernkeeper's tab, as a rough check on operation, has become a balanced ledger, a rigid standard of efficiency. Time, even a short period, brings a sacredness to all things. If we make a so-called better showing on paper than a twelvemonth previous, we shake hands with ourselves and forget how rotten we were considered just one short year ago. The ball team that wins the championship and takes the big gate receipts is the one whose members play for the side rather than for high individual averages. The tendency is for our owners to expect us to make base hits rather than send in runs which win games.
If in April and May we have a lot of ties on hand, we may not be allowed to put them in the track because they will be charged out before June 30, and make too heavy a showing of expenditure for the fiscal year. So, with labor comparatively plentiful and the weather comfortable, we wait until the new fiscal year comes in, until the sun shines hottest on the track. Then, with farmers paying harvest wages we have to offer more money. If we get the extra men the heat lessens their efficiency. It is true we have probably had to pay the producer for the ties, but if we fail to charge them to the final account, we have a childlike confidence that they have not yet cost us anything. The little matters of failure to utilize the full life of the tie, of interest on the money invested, we dismiss with the thought that trifling losses must be expected in the conduct of large affairs.
Maintenance of equipment as well as maintenance of way suffers from too much comparative statement. Some new official pulls our power to pieces to show us how they used to build up train-mile records on the Far Eastern. The crowded rip tracks reflect the tractive power of the big engines. Bad orders, the bane of a yardmaster's life, the teasers of the traffic man's tracers, block our terminals. Our shopmen and our car repairers, despairing of full time, move away. Yet withal we are serene, for are not we operating just as cheaply as they did at this time last year?
When I am in doubt, when I become mixed with the complexities of our profession, I go back to my boyhood on the farm. From that gateway as a basing point I can think out a rate sheet with fewer differentials. The same common sense housekeeping which my mother practiced will fit any railroad, however diversified its territory. The same well-balanced management which enabled my father to pay off the mortgage and extend his acres is suited to any railroad, however complicated its financial obligations. The bigger the proposition, the greater the need for sticking to homely basic principles. We learned on the farm to expect about so much rainfall every year. Whether the heaviest would come in one month or in another, the good Lord never found time to tell us. We did the things that came to hand, sometimes similarly, sometimes differently, from the corresponding month of the previous year. If our crops were short we did not starve our work horses. We sometimes found it paid, even with a poor crop in sight, to go to the bank and borrow rather than neglect the ditching in a wet field. If we made some surplus money we did not blow it all in for tools and improvements. We knew that the inevitable lean years preclude throwing the fat in the fire. If we ran behind some year, we did some retrenching, to be sure, but we did not lose our nerve, did not lose our faith in the future.
Some kinds of fertilizers on the farm are said to make rich fathers and poor sons. The way some railroads have been run for a record you would imagine that race suicide had reached a point where no further generations were expected. One of the gravest of our mistakes has been the application of the comparative statement, regardless of its effect upon our men. The farmer finds it wise and economical to arrange work for several monthly men in order to minimize the number of day hands for his rush seasons. In the winter he may lay them off, but this is for a period sufficiently long and sufficiently definite to enable the farm hand to become something else, say a wood chopper or a lumberman. Can we expect our car repairers, our sectionmen, to be loyal and faithful if we lay them off with necessary work in sight, simply to make our books look better? They know that later on we shall, at the last minute, at the scratch of an indefinite somebody's pen, put on a big force and with a hurrah, boys, rush it through. Is this fair? Is it not better to keep twenty men steadily employed than to have forty on half time? The unquestioned deterioration in the quality of our labor, in the morale of our forces, cannot all be laid on the union's doorstep. There is a responsibility here which we cannot shirk.
Cutting down expenses has been done in an unintelligent, cold-blooded sort of a way. We go home at night feeling good at having cut down our payrolls. We should be feeling sorry at the necessity for taking from men the wherewithal to pay the unceasing rent and grocery bills. Our methods give some room for the populists' plea to put the man above the dollar. No, I do not expect ever to see an entire correction of these conditions. In the play of economic forces the weak have to suffer. I believe, though, that through minimizing such suffering we can improve the service and earn bigger dividends for our stockholders. Each of us can do a little; all of us together can do a great deal toward making the problems easier. As the French say, noblesse oblige—rank imposes obligation—every time. It is up to us, the educated, powerful class, to take the lead and to do the most. We cannot expect the poor, unlettered man to work out his own salvation unaided. We cannot turn him loose to face an unequal struggle. If he fails, if he has too much time for brooding, society at large has an anarchist and we are the losers. Do not understand me as advocating the employment or retention of unnecessary men. What I am kicking for is a better balanced system. When we lay off our extra sectionman in the fall, do we give him a pass and ask him to come to town and work when we put on more unskilled winter labor in the shops and roundhouses? No, he is in a different department. An official or a foreman might be put to the inconvenience of waiting a few days, of breaking in a new man. Next spring there might have to be a readjustment when the work trains go on. Some big, strong railroad men are coming to the front who will improve these conditions by working from a broader viewpoint. We need more brainy men with nerve enough to stand up and insist upon a consideration of the welfare of our properties ten, twenty or fifty years hence. Because we need them they will be developed.
Now do not hand me the old song and dance about business being cold-blooded and devoid of sentiment. We spend money directly and indirectly for advertising with a view to fostering public sentiment in favor of our line. Business comes from an increase in population, from development of resources, from the growing sentiments of the human race. Life owes its origin to love, which originates in sentiment. The family, directly traceable to sentiment, is the unit of civilization. The way to have our heads rule our hearts is not to forget that we have hearts.
Business is so attractive because it is chock full of sentiment which can be made an asset.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER XX.
HANDLING THE PAY ROLL.
July 31, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—I have your letter about the supply train. Please do not fail to consider that it is an inspection and administrative train as well as a traveling storehouse. The term company train perhaps comes the nearest to a comprehensive designation. As a tentative proposition, to be modified by experience, I think I would distribute one-half of the expense of the train to supply, the other half to inspection and consider both halves as money well spent. With the enormous growth of business, with the increasing expansion of systems, we have had to leave more and more to departments. The result is that each department becomes more and more forgetful of the others. It isn't enough to have the heads at the general offices take lunch together. We must begin farther down in our administration to keep our departments in touch. Representatives of the traffic department should accompany the train and distribute their own advertising matter. Perhaps the best feature of all would be the improved feeling among the country agents due to more intimate acquaintance with the operating and traffic officials with whom they are doing business. We can afford to compete with the organizers of the telegraphers and clerks for this spirit. It will interest you to know that at least two large systems are figuring on a company train. When it comes, as come it will, we shall all wonder, as in the case of the telephone, how we ever got along without it.
You ask if the pay car should be included in the outfit. Yes, if local conditions permit. Before going into this very far, however, let us consider our system of paying only once a month. Has it sufficient merit to stand the test of time? It breaks down in some cases when we wish additional cheap labor. Many of us have turned over to contractors the unloading of company coal at fuel stations. The avowed reason for so doing is that the shovelers being often recruited from the hobo or the squalid class, we cannot hope to handle them as well as a contractor who pays daily or weekly. Right down the track a little way our agent is remitting company money which is not earning any interest. Another reason given is that our officials are too far away to give the coal wharves proper supervision. As a matter of fact the official is on hand about as frequently as the contractor. This is a sad commentary on the versatility and elasticity of our organization. Before throwing money to the contractors why not give our section foreman or our agent a bonus for supervising the coal heavers? Let our men be a little interchangeable. If a man becomes worn out from too much sun on the track, let the breeze blow through his whiskers in the coal shed for a few weeks. No, I do not think the track would suffer if the section foreman had to put the fear of the Lord in another gang of men. The old-time section foreman had ingenuity and originality enough to do many things. His prototype of to-day may be dwarfed by over-specialization. When we treat our men less like machines we can subdivide gangs and still get results.
Nearly every winter a bill is introduced in some legislature requiring corporations to pay their men at least twice a month. Railroads at once get busy and manage to be exempted from the provisions of these measures. Such resistance is based on a variety of arguments, the vastness of territory covered, the large number of men employed, the necessity for careful auditing, etc. How long we can hold out against the spirit of the age is a question. Why not keep ahead of the game and lead public opinion? At such times we become very solicitous of the thriftiness of our men. We claim that we are their benefactors; that by paying them so much money at one time we are helping them to save. As a matter of fact people who have studied such questions tell us that when payments are frequent less stuff is bought on credit and fewer bills are run. Savings banks find that, under certain conditions, men who are paid daily or weekly will put by more money than those who have a monthly pay day. It is an economic question, dependent more upon sociological conditions than upon railroad policy.
It is usually pretty good business sense to take advantage of trade discounts. Do you not think we could make better bargains with our men if we did not wait to pay them until we are six weeks in arrears? We pay them for only one month and are always in their debt. Every once in a while we lose a good man from the service because he is hard pressed and can raise money only by taking his time check.
The monthly payroll was adopted before bonding and surety companies revolutionized business methods. The theory is that the roll must be approved and audited before payment in order to insure accuracy and prevent fraud. Did you ever hear of a payroll being disapproved as such? No matter how unwise their employment, how injudicious the time put in, the men must be paid. We are under moral and legal obligations to pay for service performed. Did you ever hear of a padded payroll being caught in the auditor's office? The man who stuffs the roll alters the data against which the auditor checks. The few arithmetical errors discovered do not justify the time consumed. Again, why should you send your general superintendent a payroll of names any more than you should send him copies of your train sheets? What difference should it make to him just how much each particular man worked? He should have a summary of results, totals, maxima, minima, averages, etc., just as the morning report gives him a summary of the train sheet. If he wants more detailed information, let him come to your office and examine the time books, just as he should occasionally go over your train sheets. He is furnished a car to travel for just such purposes.
Assuming the desirability for more frequent payments, the day, the trip, the piece, would seem the best unit. Railroads have comparatively few credit lists. The ability to force patrons to pay cash is a business asset, and should give us the benefits of a cash basis. Our present system of payments is slow and cumbrous. In our desire to guard every avenue to fraud we have gone too far and retarded administration. The bonding company gives us a check which should enable us, under a proper system of inspection, to have the timekeeper practically the paymaster. I confess that I have not yet been able to work out all the details to my own satisfaction. I have gone far enough, however, to be convinced that there are men in our business bright enough to solve the problem. When given proper attention it will be found that for the same or less expense we can pay daily, improve the service and render a better account of our stewardship to the stockholders.
An agent remits daily. Why not let him turn in as cash a receipt or a deduction to cover his own pay? If he can do this, it is an easy step to accept as cash the time slips of his force, of the operators and sectionmen at his station. The time slips of shopmen, roundhousemen, yardmen, trainmen, enginemen, etc., when countersigned by the proper chief clerk, should become cash at a certain designated agency or local bank. It might be found practicable to use a form of time slip similar to a postal note or a street car transfer which could be punched and then authenticated with a stamp. An advantage of this would be that these original data would be available for tabulation in electrical integrating machines in the auditor's office. The plan followed in compiling statistics would be similar to that in use for many years in the census office in Washington.
Such a system of payment presupposes fewer checking clerks but more traveling auditors and inspectors. It does things first and talks about them afterward. It is predicated upon the belief that checks and balances must begin to work nearer the foundation, that true centralization of results demands a full measure of local autonomy.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER XXI.
MILITARY ORGANIZATION.
August 7, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—While in Washington last week I dropped in to see some old cronies at the War Department. The iconoclasts have been at work there, too, with gratifying results. The military secretary's office has superseded the former adjutant-general's department. Under the new dispensation every letter must receive definite action, not a mere acknowledgment, the very day of its receipt; every telegram must be answered within two hours. An emergency request came in for some equipment for a militia encampment. In three hours the Philadelphia clothing depot acknowledged the order, reported loading and shipment, and advised that bill of lading had been mailed. This means better supply, less suffering, more effective movements when real war comes. It means a saving in blood and treasure.
We of the railroads are inclined to scoff at the slowness of government methods. Are we doing as well as the rejuvenated War Department? Of course, when there is a wreck, a washout, a fire, we do some great stunts. Day in and day out we are sadly lacking in promptness with our telegrams and our letters. The pulse of business is so quick that these delays cost us money. The remedy is simple. Get the departments in line. A diplomatic censor with rank enough, say, that of assistant to the president, should be able to show even the highest officials where they are falling down, where they are duplicating work, where their telegrams have no business on the company's wires, where their letters are too lengthy, where their offices are lame. The departments on a railroad correspond to the bureaux of the War Department.
The Spanish war showed the weakness of the departmental system under modern conditions. It has been corrected by the creation by Congress of a general staff, with a chief of staff, usually a general officer detailed from the line, who, as next in rank to the Secretary of War, controls all departments, thus insuring unity of action. He has help enough to enable the general staff to give attention to details. The president of a railroad is often too busy and seldom has assistance enough to hold his departments in check. They do not always maintain a proper proportion to each other. If he appoints a committee to consider a question, the tendency is for such committee to leave the transportation part to its transportation man, the mechanical question to the mechanical member and the traffic problem to the traffic representative. The results of such work are likely to be narrow or one-sided. Each member should consider every phase of the matter and not minimize his own versatility. Remember that the layman may discover a radical inconsistency in professional practice. Give each man due weight in his specialty, but do not let him be absolute. A minority report from a committee should always be welcome as affording more information for the parent body or the appointing power. A little careful consideration, a little lively debate on a committee report, may be a healthy check.
While speaking of military organization, let me impress upon you that in the army the line always commands the staff. A staff officer cannot command troops except by express direction of the President. Enlisted men and junior officers must show a staff officer the respect due his rank, just as our conductor is respectful to the division freight agent, but when it comes to taking orders, that is another question. A lieutenant of the line, if he happens to be the senior present, may have under his command a surgeon with the rank of major, a commissary with the rank of captain, etc. Certain special work, such as the construction of buildings, of a telegraph line, of a road, may be put under a staff officer reporting directly to headquarters and exempted from the orders of the local commander of troops. We do the same when we put certain construction work under our engineers working independently of the superintendent. In an emergency all officers, men and material come under the control of the senior line officer present. With us the line is the transportation department, to whose senior representative, in time of trouble, usually the superintendent, every official and employe of whatever department should yield unquestioning obedience.
They have another feature in army administration which we would do well to emulate. On the theory perhaps that a cat may look at a king, the lowest may address the highest. The official ear and mouthpiece of the War Department is the military secretary. He may be addressed by the lowest man in the service, provided, that under the address is the important phrase in parenthesis, "through the proper channels." Unless the communication is grossly irrelevant or disrespectful it must be forwarded through the channels, each officer indorsing his opinion, pro or con. If it reaches an officer whose authority and views can give favorable action, it need not go higher. Otherwise, it must keep going. The reply comes back to the man through the same channels. All this is worth the trouble it costs, for, even if unfavorable action is taken, the man feels that he has been given consideration; that he is not a mere machine; that there may be good, honest reasons for turning him down. This strong effort to preserve individuality is the reason that the American people never have cause to lose confidence in the man behind the gun. Its short-sighted absence in railroad administration is the prime cause of our loss of confidence in the spirit of our men. The inauguration of such a feature might cause our agitators to be annoying and importunate for a time. The greater the consideration shown, the sooner would the agitators be laughed at and discouraged by their comrades. It would break up the fashion of ignoring the superintendent and running to the general manager with every petty little grievance.
If your trainmaster sees fit to make a general recommendation, for example, about a train rule, provided he does so through your office, you should forward it, giving your own views. If you happen to disapprove, do not try to kill the proposition by holding the letter. Under the narrow practice of most roads the trainmaster would have no redress and would be considered disloyal if he attempted to reach the general superintendent.
In the handling of railroad papers there are a number of short cuts. There are too many letters written just for the sake of having a carbon to complete a file. If you must have a carbon, require offices reporting to yours to make an extra copy on the typewriter of the original letter. Stamp both copies with the office dater, and just below use a one-line rubber stamp; for example, "To the General Superintendent," adding in pen, if necessary, such words as "recommended," "disapproved," etc. If no special action is taken, no signature is necessary, the office stamp being sufficient authentication. Forward one copy, keep the other, and in routine correspondence your file is complete without the scratch of a pen or the click of a typewriter in your office. Certain classes of papers referred to your subordinates, for example, special itineraries, claims, statistics, etc., can be kept track of by a number system in a small book, without using any carbon. Master the file system of your office. If someone happens to drop in for information, do not be put to the mortification of explaining that your clerks do not come down Sunday morning, or that they are all playing ball on the company nine. Filing should be uniform on divisions and in departments, one general plan for the whole road. Some roads have as many varieties as a pickle factory.
It was nice of your friend, the chief dispatcher, to write so strong a letter indorsing the sacredness of signatures. He is right; most telegraphic instructions on a division should go out over the initials of the chief dispatcher. Years ago your old dad, with the title of trainmaster and the duties of an assistant superintendent, obtained smooth results from the following bulletin:
"Instructions from this office governing the movements of trains, engines and cars, and the temporary assignments of men, will be given over the initials of the chief dispatcher. Messages concerning such routine matters will be addressed to the chief dispatcher. The idea is to limit the use of the trainmaster's initials to cases handled personally by him."
The men caught right on. They saw that it was impossible for a man to be issuing all the instructions over the wire when he spent most of his time on the road.
I have long thought that a train order should be as individual as a bank check and be signed by the dispatcher's own initials. I am beginning to believe that no signature is necessary; that the dispatcher's initials, given with the "complete," should be sufficient.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER XXII.
WRECKS AND BLOCK SIGNALS.
August 14, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—You ask what we are going to do to prevent so many wrecks. My various admonitions to you have been in vain if I have failed to score some points looking to that end. We must get closer to our men, improve their discipline, which means also their spirit. We must have more official supervision. We must pay division officials better salaries. The minimum pay of a division superintendent, regardless of the price of wheat, should be $300 per month and expenses, with such greater amount as the importance of the division demands. Trainmasters cannot be expected to enforce discipline and set an example in neatness if paid less than some of their conductors and enginemen. Not a bad rough rule for fixing intermediate salaries is to split the difference between the highest man in one grade and the lowest in the next higher, and then add enough to make convenient even money. Do not think you are saving money if you avoid raising the pay of your officials when you raise that of employes.
Wrecks are a reflection of administration. Sometimes cause and effect are years apart, so distant, in fact, as to be almost unrecognizable. Adversity makes heroes and the more disorganized we find conditions the more comprehensive and earnest should be our efforts to seek the cure. Neither public opinion nor our own self-respect will stand for shifting too much of the blame to our predecessors. Whatever safety appliances we adopt we shall never be able to eliminate entirely the element of human judgment, we shall never get beyond trusting somebody. Therefore we must train our men to alertness. We must build up a loyalty that pervades every rank. Those roads have the fewest wrecks due to defective equipment which cater to the welfare of their men. Such roads do not expect a man to live on air. When repair work is slack they put their men to building cars and engines, taking advantage of the low price of material. If we have to operate so closely that we cannot make such wise investments in influence, we are grading the way to disaster. We are preparing to pay out later in wrecking, personal injuries, maintenance and renewal of equipment, much more than the expense of anticipating future needs by keeping our men employed and contented. No amount of engine and car inspection can overcome inherent defects due to careless workmanship. Will the track walker who knows not when he will be laid off prevent as many disasters as he whom we find time to tell in advance what tenure to expect? We can overdo this matter of running our railroad too strictly in accordance with the auditor's statistical blue print. As surgery the operation is a great success, but unfortunately the patient dies.
We have divided responsibility sufficiently when we furnish both the conductor and the engineman a copy of the train order. If it is desirable for the brakemen and the fireman to be informed, we should furnish a copy to each man in the crew. What is everybody's business becomes nobody's business. Even if it were practicable it is undesirable, this idea of showing the orders to every member of the crew. It would seem better to have three different standard signals for an engineman whistling into town; one indicating a wait order or a meeting point, either by time table or train order; another indicating a passing point, and a third indicating no other trains to be considered. The wrong signal sounded by the engineman should cause the conductor to stop the train with the air before the switch is reached. Some roads now have the engineman sound a prescribed signal, after the station whistle, to indicate orders to be executed. The objection to this is that valuable time may be lost by the conductor before being sure whether or not he heard the signal. A condition should not be indicated in a negative manner by the failure to do something. All indications should be of a positive nature, that a positive understanding may result and positive action be taken. It may be a little hard to give up the good old long blast for stations, but safety demands some such modification.
The fad for main track derails at interlocking plants seems nearly to have ditched itself. We are realizing that it is not necessary to kill an engineman who runs past a signal. The money that such unnecessary derailments have cost might better have been spent in enforcing discipline by increased official supervision. If main track derails were proper for an interlocking plant, it would logically follow that every block signal should be interlocked with a derail. Desirable as they are on auxiliary low-speed routes, it is doubtful if derails have any place in a main track, even at drawbridges. We are learning, too, that a good derail can be installed without cutting the rail.
Public opinion is aroused on the subject of our failure to safeguard human life in proportion to our progress in other matters. We must cough up the money for more block signals. I say block signals, not because they are the panacea for the evil that many people imagine, but because they are the best safeguard yet devised. They are useless without proper discipline and supervision. The vertical plane coupler is not all that can be desired. Yet if modern equipment had to stand the slack of the link and pin it would be in a bad way. The block signal even with the train staff or the train tablet is far from perfect. It is impolitic, however, for us to hesitate too long before going down into our clothes for the coin. While waiting for the perfect method to be developed the perfect man may be evolved and bump the most of us out of our jobs.
There will be fewer wrecks when executive and general officials have better control of temper and judgment. Feeling in an indefinite way the responsibility for an appalling wreck, the high official thinks he must do something. He butts in with some ill-considered instructions which breed distrust of the entire system of running trains, which discount the whole organization. This action may result for a time in an abnormal, unhealthy vigilance, which is certain to be followed by a demoralizing reaction. When a condition, like a man, gets the drop on you the only sane thing to do is to throw up your hands for the time being. Wisdom consists in looking for the true prime cause of the aforesaid drop. The frontal attack on a buzz saw is suicidal. Always take it in flank.
When you get your block signals, consider the permissive block as an abomination before the Lord. The only block to have is the positive block in both directions. If there is trouble in a block, let the dispatcher give the delayed train a message to flag over. Encourage your men to flag over, block or no block, against any train on the road when common sense dictates such a course. The object of all rules is to run trains with safety, not to tie them up on technicalities. Flagging means good flagging, signals as sure and unmistakable as fixed signals. Some day we shall find time to instruct our flagmen uniformly. They should all either put the red light on the end of a tie and swing the white light across the track, or they should swing both lights; not sometimes one way, sometimes the other. A red light of itself means stop. If the flagman swings it he runs a big risk of blowing it out. In matters of this sort there cannot be too much uniformity for all roads. Where we run uniformity into the ground is where we fail to recognize the radical differences in individual characteristics of men of the Atlantic, the Pacific and the prairie type.
Realization, if not repentance, must precede salvation. We must save ourselves. If not, the government doctrinaires will undertake a task for which we are better qualified. We cannot stop killing people to-day or to-morrow, this year or next. The problem is not as easy for us as for the oft cited English railways. Their block signals are a coincidence, not a prime cause of their safer operation. Much of our mileage has only a speculator's or a promoter's excuse for existence. Much of our traffic is so thin that English thoroughness would put a part of our lines out of business, much to our relief, but much to the intolerance of the public. Until our systems are sufficiently stable to remove the tempting sign, "Please kick me," from the view of the financial manipulator, we cannot keep out of the scrimmage, we cannot build up as safe and conservative operating organizations as the English. We can, however, do much better than we are doing. Automatic devices will help, but they are only a check. The balance lies, my boy, in developing the human interest of the men, high and low, who work for the road.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
LETTER XXIII.
UNIONISM.
August 21, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—"What will you put in its place, Bob?" was perhaps the 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.