LETTERS FROM AN
OLD RAILWAY OFFICIAL
TO HIS SON, A DIVISION SUPERINTENDENT

FILE NUMBERS.

Letters From A Railway Official

  LETTER I.

A WORD OF CONGRATULATION.

March 20, 1904.

My Dear Boy:—The circular announcing your appointment as division superintendent has just been received, and it brings up a flood of thoughts of former years. I felt that you had made a mistake in leaving us to go with the new system, but it has turned out all right. I can appreciate the fact that you would rather work away from me, so as to make people believe that you can go up the official hill without having a pusher behind you.

This should be one of the proudest periods of your life. You are now in a position to do good to your company, to your fellow man, and incidentally to yourself. No matter how highly organized a road may be, the importance of the office of division superintendent is in direct proportion to the ability and earnestness of the incumbent. The position is little or big, restricted or untrammeled, just as you make it. Many a superintendent has had to double the hill of a swelled knob, and run as a last section into the next promotion terminal. You have too much of your mother's good sense ever to cause anybody else to put up signals for you on this account. Therefore do not lose your democratic manner. Keep your heart warm and regard the wider field as an opportunity to get more friends on your staff. Try to call every employe in your territory by name, as Cæsar did his soldiers; for all the traffic of goodwill must run in a direction toward you if you want maximum results, as they call efficiency nowadays. Good old rule 121 of the standard code says: "When in doubt take the safe course and run no risks," which, in the case of acquaintance, means if uncertain whether you know a man or not, speak to him and give him the glad hand anyway. You will have to discipline men, but that can be done without parting company with your good manners. Remember that the much-abused word "discipline" comes from the same root as the word "disciple," a pupil, a learner, a follower. It is always easier to lead men than to drive them.

When you go over the division do not try to see how many telegrams you can send, but how few. It is usually a pretty safe rule after writing a telegram on the hind end of a train to carry it by two or three stations to see if you would rather not take it back to the office yourself. The dispatchers used to tell your old dad that they couldn't have told he was out on the line as far as his messages were an indication. Another thing, do not try to plug your whistle and muffle your bell. Let everybody know you are coming. The "Old Sleuth" stunt is for criminals, not for honest employes. Be on hand so frequently that your coming is taken as a matter of course. Never hunt quail with a brass band, but bear in mind that men, unlike quail, rather like to perch on a band wagon. If you are tempted to wait behind box cars to see if the men on a night pony have gone in the hay, do not yield, but get out, see that the switches are lined up, and count the ties in front of the headlight until somebody gives her steam; just as Napoleon walked post for the sleeping sentinel. Then, if you administer a polite jacking up it will be twice as effective, even if the delay to the work that one time has continued. Remember that things are not as they should be, and it is probably your own fault if, under normal conditions, a particular movement depends upon your personal efforts. Any routine action that you take should be calculated to help many trains, or one train many times; or to help many men, not merely the trains or men in question. It is all right, in emergencies, to jump in and do the work of a conductor, of an engineman, of a switch tender, or of any other employe. The great trouble is in discriminating between an emergency and a defect which can better be remedied in some other way. The smaller the caliber of the official the more numerous the emergencies to his mind.

You should try to arrange your work so as to stay up all night at least once a week, either in the office, or better, on the road or in the yards. You will keep better in touch with the men and the things for which you, asleep or awake, are always responsible. You remember when your sister Lucy was little how we asked her why she said her prayers at night but usually omitted them in the morning. Her answer which so tickled you was, "I ask God to take care of me at night, but I can take care of myself in the daytime." It is much the same way with a railroad. From your point of view it will take pretty fair care of itself as a daylight job, but at night that proposition loses its rights. The youngest dispatcher, by virtue of being the senior representative awake, is to a certain extent general manager. The least experienced men are in the yards and roundhouses. The ever-faithful sectionmen are off the right of way. The car inspector's light and the engineman's torch are poor substitutes for the sun in locating defects. The most active brains are dulled by the darkness just before dawn. Then it is that a brief hour may side-track or derail the good work of many days. It is this responsibility, this struggle with nature, this helping God to work out the good in men, that makes our profession noble and develops qualities of greatness in its members.

Next time I shall try to tell you something about helping your train dispatchers.

With a father's blessing, ever your own,

D. A. D.

  LETTER II.

HELPING THE TRAIN DISPATCHERS.

March 27, 1904.

My Dear Boy:—I promised in my last to say something about helping your train dispatchers. The way to help any man is first to encourage him and by showing that you appreciate his good qualities give him confidence in himself. When you come in off the road tell the dispatcher, if such be the case, "Nice meeting point you made yesterday for 15 and 16; I was there and they both kept moving almost like double track." If your division has been badly handled, the dispatcher, unaccustomed to such appreciation, will at first think this is a sarcastic prelude to having the harpoon thrown into him; but your sincerity will soon disabuse his mind of such a notion. Sarcasm in official intercourse or toward one's subordinates should never be tolerated. It is an expensive kind of extra that should never be run. When you praise a man it will add to his good feeling if some one else happens to be present. If you have to censure anyone, whether directly or through the channels, do it privately and spare the recipient all unnecessary humiliation. The official who remembers to mention good work will find his rebukes and criticisms much more effective in remedying poor work than the official whose theory and practice are to take up failures and to let successes be taken for granted.

Another way to help a man is to lead him away from the pitfalls that are peculiar to his path of work. The official who is an old dispatcher has to fight in himself the temptation to be the whole cheese. He has to learn to trust subordinates with details. Every position entails some inherent temptations. The absolute, unquestioned authority given a dispatcher in train movements breeds a temptation to be autocratic and unreasonable, to put out too many orders, to give too many instructions. Therefore, try to get your dispatchers in touch with your crews. If the former are in a skyscraper uptown, get authority to build an office for them at the terminal where most of the crews live. Personal contact is much better than long-distance communication by wire. There is enough of the latter from the very nature of the business without causing an unnecessary amount by artificial conditions.

The temptation of a legislator is to make too many laws; of a doctor to prescribe too much medicine; of an old man to give too much advice; and of a train dispatcher, once more, to put out too many orders. It used to be thought by some that the best dispatcher was the one who put out the most orders. The later and better idea is that, generally speaking, the best dispatcher puts out the fewest orders. It is always easier to give orders of any kind than it is to execute them. It is a far cry from an O.S. on a train sheet to getting a heavy drag into a sidetrack and out again. It often takes longer to stop a train and get an order signed and completed than the additional time given in the order amounts to. Even a judicious use of the beneficent nineteen order involves more or less delay. One of the lessons a dispatcher has to learn is to know when he is up against it; when he has figured badly; and when not to make a bad matter worse by vainly trying to retrieve a hopeless delay. A good dispatcher will know without being told that he has made a poor meeting point. Educate him to consider that as an error to be avoided under like conditions in the future; not as a mistake to be made worse by putting out more orders that may fail to help the stabbed train enough, and may result in having every fellow on the road delayed. If any train must be delayed, let it be one that is already late rather than one that is on time. Above all get the confidence of your dispatchers so that they will not try to cover up their own mistakes or those of others. Teach them that, in the doubtful event of its becoming necessary, the superintendent is able to do the covering up act for the whole division.

Every superintendent and higher official should remember that if the same train order is given every day there must be something radically wrong with the time table. All over this broad land, day after day, hundreds of unnecessary train orders are being sent because many time tables are constructed on the models of forty years ago. At that time, in fact as in name, there were two classes of trains, passenger and freight. To-day there are in reality at least two distinct classes of passenger trains and two classes of freights, or at least four in all. On most of the roads in the country passenger trains of whatever nature or importance are all shown in one class, the first. As a result every limited train in the inferior direction on single track has to be given right by train order over opposing local passenger trains in the superior direction. In other words, the working time table, by definition a general law, has no more practical value, as between such trains, than an advertising folder. A train order by its very nature is an exception to the general law, the time table. When the exception becomes the rule it is high time to head in or to put out a thinking flag. Some years ago your old dad after much persuasion induced his superiors to let him make four classes of trains on a pretty warm piece of single track. The result directly and indirectly was to reduce the number of train orders by twenty or twenty-five per day. Every train order given increases the possibility of mistake and disaster; the fewer the orders the safer the operation. The change was made without even an approach to a mistake or the semblance of disaster. The dispatchers being less occupied were able to give more attention to local freights, and the general efficiency of the train service was greatly increased. The wires could go down and the most important trains would keep moving. It has stood the test of years and if the old method were resumed a grievance committee would probably wait on the management.

Successful politicians and public speakers have long since learned not to disgust their hearers by trying to talk in language ridiculously simple and uncultured. For us to say that the intelligent employes of to-day cannot keep in mind four or even five classes of trains is to confuse them with the comparatively illiterate men of a bygone generation. The public school and the daily newspaper have made a part of our problem easier. We are paying higher wages than ever before, but is it not partly our own fault if we fail to get full value received?

Therefore, see if your time tables appeal to tradition or to reason; if they belong to a period when women wore hoopskirts, or to a time when women ride wheels and play golf. In brief, before you take the stylus to remove the dirt ballast from the dispatcher's eye, be sure that there are no brakebeams stuck in your own headlight.

Affectionately, your own

D. A. D.

  LETTER III.

HANDLING A YARD.

April 3, 1904.

My Dear Boy:—You have asked me to give you some pointers on handling a yard. You will find that nearly all situations in a yard hark back to one simple rule, which is: When you get hold of a car move it as far as possible toward its final destination before you let go of it.

The training of a switchman is usually such that, if let alone, he will stick the car in the first convenient track and wait to make a delivery until he can pull every track in the yard and put with it all other cars with the same cards or marks. By this time some other fellow with a similar honesty of purpose but differently applied will come along and bury the car or block the first man in so that one engine has to stand idle. A yardmaster has to learn to keep his engines scattered and to hold each foreman responsible for the work of an engine. A good yardmaster knows instinctively where to be at a certain time to minimize the delay incident to engines bunching. The old switchman who becomes a yardmaster often proves a failure because he cannot overcome his inclination to follow one engine and take a hand in the switching himself. By so doing he may perhaps increase the work accomplished by that one engine, possibly five per cent; but in the meantime the other engines, for want of comprehensive, intelligent instructions, are getting in each other's way and the efficiency of the day's service is decreased maybe twenty per cent.

Good yardmasters are even harder to discover or develop than good train dispatchers. The exposure, the irregular hours for the yardmaster's meals in even the best regulated yards make a good conductor leery about giving up a comfortable run to assume the increased responsibility of a yard. The pay of a yardmaster is little more than that of a conductor and is sometimes less. Right here is a chance for some deep administrative thought. It is so much easier to get good conductors than good yardmasters, should we not make the latter position more attractive? Some roads have done this by making it one of the positions from which to promote trainmasters, and seldom have such appointees fallen down. However, there are hardly enough promotion loaves and fishes to go around. Men get tired of living on skimmed milk on earth for the sake of promised cream in heaven. Every switch engine worked costs the company several hundred dollars per month, and the yardmaster whose good figuring can save working even one engine is more than earning his salary.

The closer you can get your yardmasters to your official family the better your administration. Pick up a yardmaster occasionally and take him to headquarters with you so that he will keep acquainted with the dispatchers. This will hold down friction and save the company's good money. A dispatcher naturally wants to get all the trains he can into a terminal, while a yardmaster is doing his level best to get trains out. With such radically different points of professional view there is a big opportunity for the superintendent and the trainmaster to do the harmonizing act, to keep pleasantly before employes the fact that all are working for the same company, that all do business with the same paymaster. Blessed are the peacemakers doesn't mean necessarily there must first be trouble. Peace carried in stock is better than that manufactured on hurry-up shop orders.

If you are looking for talent to run a yard, consider some ambitious dispatcher. Too few dispatchers have become yardmasters. The same cool head, the same quick judgment, the same executive ability are needed in both positions. The man who has successfully filled both is usually equipped to go against almost any old official job, without having to back up and take a run for the hill. The curse of modern civilization is over-specialization. The world grows better and produces stronger, better men all the while. Perhaps this is in spite of rather than on account of highly specialized organization. No industry can afford to be without the old-fashioned all around man who is good anywhere you put him.

The work of the yardmaster is more spectacular than that of the dispatcher. To come down to a congested yard among a lot of discouraged men blocked in without room to sidetrack a handcar is like sitting down to a train sheet with most of the trains tied up for orders. In either case let the right man take hold and in a few minutes the men involved will tell you who it is has assumed charge. Without realizing it and without knowing why, they redouble their efforts; things begin to move, and the incident goes down in the legends of the division to be the talk of the caboose and the roundhouse for years to come. To the man whose cool head and earnestness are bringing it all about comes the almost unconscious exhilaration that there is in leading reinforcements to the firing line. He feels with the Count of Monte Cristo, "The world is mine," I have the switches set to head it in.

Get out of your head the young brakeman's idea that yard jobs are for old women and hasbeens.

Affectionately, your own

D. A. D.

  LETTER IV.

DISTANT SIGNALS ON CHIEF CLERKS.

April 10, 1904.

My Dear Boy:—You write me that you have been kept very much in your office of late because the general superintendent has taken your chief clerk for the same position in his own office. You hope that your friend, the auditor, may be able to furnish you a good man who has such a thorough knowledge of accounts that you will be able to give less attention to such matters and therefore be out on the road that much more. You will pardon a father's severity, but you are running on bad track, and my interest prompts me to put out a slow order for you. You have had the division a short time, it is true, but that is only a partial excuse for not having better organization than your letter unwittingly admits. You have been there long enough to have sized up the men on the division, and you should know where to put your hand on a man for practically any position. A good organizer does not wait for a vacancy to occur or even come in sight before thinking of the next incumbent. He is always into clear on such a proposition. He has thought it all out beforehand. He has in mind two or three available men for every possible vacancy that can occur, for every job on the pike, including his own. Wherever possible by judicious changing of men he not only has a man in mind, but he has given him some preliminary training for, perhaps some actual experience in, the position to be permanently filled.

The tone of your letter is half complaining because the general superintendent has taken your good chief clerk. Away with such a feeling; it is unworthy. You should feel flattered that your division had a chance to fill the vacancy. You should rejoice in the advancement of your faithful subordinate. Some divisions, like some officials, are known the country over as developers of talent.

Youth is proverbially quick, and I think sometimes that you youngsters are quicker at getting into a rut than are we old fogies. Why for a chief clerk must you necessarily have a man with office experience? Does it not occur to you that your office will be in better touch with its responsibilities if it is in charge of a man who has worked outside along the road? Why not look among your trainmen, your yardmen, your dispatchers, your agents, your operators, or even among your section foremen? Experience is a great teacher, but it can never entirely supply the place of native ability, of natural adaptability. Brains and tact are the essentials and each is comparatively useless without the other. Both must be developed by training, but such training does not necessarily have to take the same course for all men. Railroading as a business is only seventy-five years old, and as a profession is much younger than that. It is too early in the game to lay down iron-clad rules as to the best channels for training and advancement. Common sense demands that such avenues be broad and more or less definite. The danger is that they will be only paths and so narrow that they will wear into ruts.

Do not delude yourself into thinking that by going out on the road you can get away from the accounts. They are a flagman that is never left behind to come in on a following section. You can never get beyond watching the company's dollars and cents any more than a successful musician can omit practice. Some officials think that the way to examine a payroll or a voucher is to see that all the extensions are accurately made, that the columns are correctly added. This mechanical clerical work is about the last thing an official should have to do. He should know how, but his examination should be from a different viewpoint. Primarily he must look to see if the company is getting value received for money expended. He must know that the rolls and vouchers are honestly made up, that agreements involved, if any, are carried out to the letter. The agreements may not be to his personal liking, may not accord with his ideas of justice, but the responsibility for that part is his superior's, not his own. There is a proper channel for him to follow in attempting to protect the company's interests, but that channel is not the one of a petty ruling on a minor question involved in a voucher or a payroll. Overtime, for example, is not a spook but a business proposition. If earned according to the schedule it should be allowed unhesitatingly. Before you jack up a yard-master for having so much overtime, see if the cutting out of that overtime will mean the greater expense of working another engine. The constant thought of every official is how to reduce expenses, how to cut down payrolls. This habit of mind, commendable as it is, has its dangers. In any business we must spend money to get money. The auditor's statements do not tell us why we lost certain traffic through relatively poor service. Their silence is not eloquent upon the subject of the business we failed to get. Figures must be fought with figures and many a good operating official has had to lie down in the face of the auditor's fire because, from lack of intelligent study of statistics on his own part, he had no ammunition with which to reload. Do not feel that if you happen to advocate an increase of expense you are necessarily a discredit to the profession, a dishonor to the cloth.

There are few roads that would not save money in the long run by allowing each division say one hundred dollars per month for developing talent. The expense distributed to oil for administrative machinery would express the idea. It would then be up to the superintendent to work out original methods for spending this money to the best advantage. A bright young fellow with the ear marks of a coming official could be given training in various positions. While he is acting in a certain position, the regular incumbent could be sent to observe methods elsewhere or be given training in some other department. For example, while your candidate is running a yard, the yardmaster could be an understudy for a supervisor. A station agent could take the place of a section foreman, an operator the place of a chief clerk, and so on indefinitely. Do not understand me as advocating a wholesale shakeup or the doing away with permanency of tenure. The limitations of the majority of men are such that they are better left in one fixed groove. We grow to be narrow in our methods because men are narrow. What I want is for us to be broad enough in method to keep from dwarfing the exceptions in the ranks, and at the same time keep the parts of our administrative machine interchangeable. The original entry into the service is more or less a matter of accident as to department entered. Let us not leave a good man the creature of accident all his days. The company is the loser as well as the man. We complain because the trades unions advocate a closed shop, a restricted output, a limited number of apprentices. Is not their attitude a logical development of the example we have set? Like master, like man.

Let your new chief clerk understand that he is never to use your signature or initials to censure or reprimand any employe, either directly or by implication. That is a prerogative you cannot afford to delegate. It is all right if a complaint comes in for the chief clerk to investigate by writing in your name and saying: "Kindly advise concerning alleged failure to do so and so;" or, "We have a complaint that such and such happened and would like to have your statement;" but he should stop right there. It is all wrong for him or for you to add, "We are astonished at your ignorance of the rules;" or, "You must understand that such conduct will not be tolerated." Wait until both sides of the case are heard. Then you alone must act. The division will not go to pieces while such matters await your personal attention. While you are learning that even a brakeman's unpaid board bill may be satisfactorily explained, the brakemen are learning that even a superintendent can find the time to be fair and just. A lack of development of the judicial quality in chief clerks and their superiors has cost the railroad stockholders of this country many a dollar.

Affectionately, your own

D. A. D.

  LETTER V.

SAFETY OF TRAINS IN YARDS.

April 17, 1904.

My Dear Boy:—I have yours saying that my letter on yard work omits mention of the most important feature, the safety of trains in yards; that the letter is much like a cup of lunch-counter coffee—very good, what there is of it, and plenty of it, such as it is.

I admit that you have caught me not only foul of the main, but outside the switches. I appreciate your consideration in so politely pulling the whistle cord for me, when you would have been justified in setting the air. We all like to be with good company and pull the president's special, and in this case I seem to have with me no less distinguished companions than the American Railway Association. That able body has been detoured too long around this important matter of rules governing trains in yards. Before I leave their varnished cars and climb into the gangway of a switch engine to run into the yards, I want the conductor to throw off a register slip setting forth my admiration for the great work already done by that brainy organization. I take off my hat to the American Railway Association. When I take off said hat, especially to a lady, I always keep both eyes open. Adoration should not be too blind or one may overlook some other meeting points and land clear off the right of way.

Long ago some bright minds, whose identity is lost in the rush of the years, hit upon the happy expedient of dividing trains into two kinds, regular and extra; just as early theology divided mankind into the two convenient classes of saints and sinners. This designation of trains, doubtless like all innovations opposed at first, soon acquired the sacredness that time brings to all things. At that period when we got a car over the road and into the terminal we felt that its troubles were about ended, as did the contemporary novelist whose terminal was always a betrothal scene. Under modern conditions a car reaching a terminal, like a couple leaving the altar, finds that its problems have only fairly begun. Less romance, more progress.

Did you ever try to explain to an intelligent traveling man just what a train is? Did he not ask you some questions that kept you guessing for a week? Did he not remind you that outsiders usually make the inventions that revolutionize operation? Radical changes in methods of warfare are seldom necessitated by the inventions of military men. A druggist invented the automatic coupler. Railroad men did not patent the air brake or devise the sleeping car. All this is natural, because in any profession where one attains excellence in a given method his mental vision may become contracted; he may reason in a circle.

Every once in a while we are appalled by a terrible collision in a terminal, the result perhaps of some poor devil of an employe not appreciating fully the meaning of "all trains." To the innocent bystander the switch engine and cars are just as much a train as the Pullman flyer with its two little green markers on the last car. After such accidents, for a brief period, we hear a great deal about act of Providence, presumptuousness of man, fallibility of the human mind, surprise checking, discipline of employes, company spirit, governmental supervision and a lot of other more or less unrelated subjects. Are we not to blame for not having met the issue squarely? Is it not time that we legislated to recognize the scores of engines chasing through our terminals, from freighthouse to yard, from engine house to station? Are they outcasts? Do the millions of dollars of investment they represent come through a different treasury?

To the human mind an engine or a motor is a train, while a cut of cars without motive power is only a piece of a train, and goes to the brain as an idea of something incomplete. All the artificial definitions of the standard code cannot alter this state of facts. What do you think of the following proposed designations and tentative definitions?

Train.—An engine (or motor) in service, with or without cars. Two or more engines (or motors) may be combined as one train.

Regular Train.—A train represented on the time table. It may consist of sections. A section derives its running existence from a train order requiring a regular train or the proper section thereof, to display prescribed signals.

Extra Train.—A train not represented on the time table, but deriving its running existence from train order.

Yard Train.—A train neither represented on the time table nor created by train order, but deriving its running existence from rules governing movements within prescribed limits.

You will find if you work these definitions through the standard code the changes will be slight, but the results comprehensive and satisfactory. This will do as a starter, but you will live to see trains handled on single track without train orders as we now understand the term.

If this answers your signal, suppose we call in that flag we whistled out when we stopped to talk it over.

Affectionately, your own

D. A. D.

  LETTER VI.

STANDARDIZING ADMINISTRATION.

April 24, 1904.

My Dear Boy:—While backing in on a branch idea I bumped into a load consigned to the American Railway Association which, with your permission, I wish to bring in behind the caboose to save a switch. Yes, I have tied a green flag on the rear grabiron for a marker. When the hind man has dropped off to shut the switch and has given the eagle eye a high sign, I shall make a note on the wheel report to the effect that there is not a much better daylight marker than the caboose itself. Some people doubt the necessity for green flags on freight trains or work trains unless the caboose does not happen to be the last car. Night markers are unquestionably necessary, but are not a source of additional expense, as the same oil answers for both the rear red signal and the marker.

The idea in question is that the American Railway Association might well afford to pay salaries to more of its officials and let certain ones give their entire time to committee work and the general welfare. It is too much to expect that men, probably already overworked on their own roads, can find the broadest solution of problems in the very limited time allowed. It might be possible to work out a plan whereby election to certain positions in the association would mean that the individual elected was to be loaned to the association for his term of office, say two years, and then return to service with his own company. A permanent body of officials in such an organization would be undesirable, save of course the able secretary, for the reason that too long a separation from active service would beget an indifference to practical operating conditions. Under such a plan officials would have to be elected by name to prevent a company from unloading any old rail on the association. You know that some statistician has figured out that the average official life of a railroad man in any one position is only about two years. Rearrangement of the staff on the return of an official from such broadening special duty should not be a difficult matter. But, as a man once said to me, "You will not bring all these reforms about until the old fogies die off, and by that time you will be an old fogy yourself and it will not make any difference."

There is almost no limit to the number of matters in railway administration that can be made standard and uniform for all roads. A great deal has been done, but to a coming generation the present stage of accomplishment will seem to have been only a fair beginning. The hopeful feature is that roads now meet each other in a much broader spirit than ever before. The fortress that parleys is half taken, and when negotiations looking to uniformity are once begun a long stride forward has been taken. Take the wage agreements of a dozen roads at a large terminal. All twelve are intended to mean practically the same thing, yet the wording of no two will be found alike. This probably is not due so much to a disinclination to get together as to a lack of time for working out uniform details.

Some roads are noticeable for the clearness, conciseness and brevity of their instructions. Others employ a lot of surplus words which are as expensive and annoying in operation as dead cars in a yard. On every road there are a few men in the official family who have a faculty of expression, either inborn or acquired. Some day when we more fully overcome the prejudice against sending officials to school we shall utilize the services of such valuable men as instructors in style. When this is done, especially in the traffic and legal departments, we shall materially reduce our telegraph expenses. The mere thought of the thousands of unnecessary words flying over the railroad wires every day is enough to give one telegrapher's cramp. Some roads occasionally censor telegrams with a view to reducing their number and their length. These efforts, like municipal reform, are apt to be too spasmodic to prove of lasting value. Success in anything depends upon keeping most everlastingly at it. You notice that I do not confine this remark to our own profession. Carry a flag for me against the man who always says: "In railroading you have to do thus and so, for it's not like other business." All must admit that conditions in railroading are intense; that, except in an army in time of war, there is no profession that is more strenuous or calls for better staying qualities. These facts, however, do not put us in a class by ourselves, a little lower than the angels, a few car lengths ahead of perfection. As Oliver Cromwell said, some things are fundamental. One of them is that good organization and administration depend upon certain basic principles which hold true for any industry. Whatever one's religious views, he must find that the Bible is one of the best books of rules ever written, one of the best standard codes on organization that has been devised. Men were organizers on a large scale centuries before railroads were built.

When, after months of deliberation, the convention had finally agreed upon the provisions of the Constitution of the United States, the document was referred for revision to a committee on style and expression. The result has been the admiration of the English speaking race. The caller's book does not show that the American Railway Association has ordered a run for such a committee. Should a claim of that sort be made it would hardly be advisable to file the last standard code as an exhibit.

Affectionately, your own

D. A. D.

  LETTER VII.

THE NEW TRAINMASTER AND CIVIL SERVICE.

May 1, 1904.

My Dear Boy:—I have your letter telling about your new trainmaster. You feel that a man from another division has been forced on you by the general superintendent; that you have suffered a personal affront because the promotion you recommended on your own division has not been approved. I am sorry to rule against you, but from your own story if anybody deserves six months twice a year, it is you and not the general superintendent. The latter may have been lacking in tact; he may have been unduly inconsiderate for your personal feelings, but in making the appointment, which you admit is a good one, he has doubtless been actuated by a conscientious sense of duty. Remember that a fundamental principle of highly organized bodies is that a superior cannot expect to select his own lieutenants. The next higher is always consulted and generally the latter's superiors also. The theory is that they are in a position to have a broader view, to size up more talent, to draw from the system at large, and to accentuate principles and policies in promotions and appointments. This theory is supported by practice, which goes even further. On most roads circulars signed by the superintendent and approved by the general superintendent announce the appointment of a trainmaster. Do not let this delude you into thinking the general manager has not been consulted. In fact, if you could drop a nickel in the slot and get a phonographic report of conferences on the appointment, you might happen to recognize the voice of the president himself before the machine shut off. All of which should convince you that the stockholders and directors have strewn other official pebbles besides yourself along the organization beach. You say that the relation of superintendent and trainmaster should be that of elder brother and younger brother. Very true, but do any of us ever select our brothers?

In a primitive state of civilization, when force is law, the military chieftain rules. He makes and breaks his lieutenants at pleasure. The oldest form of organization we have is the military, for armies are older than governments. Every nation has its birth in the throes of battle. Time passes and the chieftain finds his lieutenants insisting on permanency of tenure. Gradually they secure it, and channels of promotion and appointment are defined. These reach the lower grades and the general finds that he has not even the authority to discuss a private soldier from the service until the latter has been convicted by a court-martial of an offense covered by enactment of the legislative body of the nation. In every civilized country officers are commissioned by the executive head of the nation and by no one else. The general-in-chief may recommend, but he cannot appoint even a second lieutenant. Consider now a commercial organization. Do you think the high-salaried captain of an ocean liner can select his first and second officers without consulting his superiors? Does he select his own crew? Really, now, do you think the general superintendent should perfunctorily approve your recommendation for trainmaster?

Men have been organizing armies and have been going down to the sea in ships for thousands of years. Let the railroads, which have been in existence only seventy-five years, draw another leaf from the lesson of the ages. The time is fast coming when an official cannot discharge a skilled laborer from the service without the approval of at least one higher official. We may not like it; we may say that such policies will put the road in the hands of a receiver. That is just what the conductors said when we took away from them the privilege of hiring their own brakemen. It will come just the same. We may as well look pleasant and see the bright side. Where employment is made a lifetime business, where admission thereto is restricted to the lower grades and to younger men, public sentiment will not stand for letting the question of a man's livelihood be decided by any one official, however fair and just he may be. Safety and good administration may demand the man's summary suspension from duty by the immediate official or employe in charge. If the man has been in the service a prescribed probationary period his permanent discharge will have to be approved by higher authority. Men will not care to risk having a recommendation for discharge disapproved. They will learn that the more carefully a discharge has been considered the less readily will a reinstatement be made.

Some people think you cannot have military methods and organization on a railroad because it has no guardhouse. This is a mistake. Your old dad, after trying both, finds that railroads, in some respects, have a more powerful discipline than the army. A discipline based on bread and butter, shoes for the baby, love of home, and pride of family, which is the bulwark of the state, has in itself all necessary elements for maximum practical effectiveness.

Reinstatements, unless based on new evidence, are demoralizing to discipline, for the reason that the unworthy employe bumps back to a lower grade some deserving man, whose good service is then reckoned at a discount. Some passenger conductors become so color blind they cannot tell the company's money from their own. They keep down the wrong lead until the auditor derails them at the spotter's switch. The ex-conductor gets hungry, the sympathetic grievance committee, not knowing what is for its own best interests, intercedes. The management, dreaming of loyalty in coming strikes, reinstates the offender. Some young conductor, who, on the strength of his promotion, has married or bought a home, is set back to braking. This causes some brakeman to carry the mail to the extra list. He quits in disgust and another road, less sympathetic, gets the benefit of his training. Other reinstatements follow and more of the younger men quit. Years go on, a rush of business comes. The management look in vain for promotion material and wonder at the seeming ingratitude in quitting of so many good young men whom it was fully intended to promote—in the sweet by and by. This is not the experience of one road, but of many. Let us be just before we are generous.

Speaking of discharged employes, did you ever happen to be in a general office with an ex-passenger conductor, discharged for "unsatisfactory services," but seeking immediate reinstatement; and have an ex-official, who left the service in first-class standing, come in and ask for the next official vacancy? The conductor might succeed, but the official would fall a sacrifice on the shrine of civil service, a fetich because, in its true meaning, so little understood.

I shall string a civil service limited for you on some other time card.

Affectionately, your own

D. A. D.

  LETTER VIII.

EDUCATION OF SEVERAL KINDS.

May 8, 1904.

My Dear Boy:—I happened to meet your general manager the other day, and the way he spoke of the good work you are doing warmed the cockles of my old heart. He said that you couldn't rest easy until you knew more about the division than any other man. This, of course, is as it should be, but it is astonishing how many division superintendents are satisfied to grope along in the dark. Then some fine day the general officials come along on an inspection trip and unintentionally make the superintendent look like thirty cents by the sincere questions they ask about the division which he is unable to answer. If one's memory has not been trained by education it is a good thing to condense information and have it in a notebook in the vest pocket. Some wise man has said that all education after we are twenty-five years old consists in knowing where to look for things.

Another help that school education gives to an official is to broaden him so that he can use different methods on different properties. There are three main reasons why officials without much early education have succeeded and will continue to succeed. The first is native ability, which remains comparatively undeveloped without the second, which is opportunity. The third is the good luck to work under organizers and developers of talent. Training under the right sort of leaders is an education in itself. The danger of relying on such training alone is that one may copy too blindly the methods of his master without being broad enough to realize that the same master under other conditions of territory would adopt radically different methods. This is the reason why there are so many failures when a new man takes a crowd of his followers to reorganize a property. If all succeed, very well, but if one fails the most of the bunch go tumbling down like a row of blocks.

Again, the educated man from his knowledge of history is less likely to forget that what may go in fifteen-year-old Oklahoma will receive the icy mitt and the marble heart in three-hundred-year-old Virginia. Triples that are O.K. in cavalier South Carolina may be too quick acting in puritan Massachusetts. Commercialism, like patriotism, rests on certain fundamental principles. The application of these principles may be as uniform as a train of system cars; it may be as diverse as the cars in a train of a connecting line. Orthodoxy is usually my doxy.

The rough and ready efficiency of the West, which has developed a vast domain, has won the praise of the world. Our rough and ready brethren are finding that, as society rapidly becomes more highly organized, this old-time efficiency must be supplemented with technical education. So you find your self-made magnate giving his sons college educations. The only regrettable part is that to make it easy the old man raises the low joints for the boys and they do not always get bumpings enough to test their equipment thoroughly. Time will correct this, and more college men, more presidents' sons, will fire, will switch, will brake, will become men behind cars as well as men behind desks. It is not only what you know, but what you make people believe you know, that counts in this little game of life. The American people never go back on a man who puts aside birth or education and stakes his all upon his manhood; who is willing to share the dangers and the hardships of his calling. Our military men have long since learned this lesson, and the son of the general must do the same guard duty, make the same marches, dig the same trenches, and face the same bullets as his fellows. His father knows that for it to be otherwise would be to handicap the son by the contempt of his comrades. Like the Spartan mother, he says: "My son, return with your shield or upon it."

Did you ever consider how uncertain a quantity is opportunity, as inscrutable as the ways of Providence? In all ages and in all callings it has been one of the numerous mysteries that make life so attractive. There is many a veteran conductor, many a gray-haired station agent, who, if he could have had the chance to start, would have become a general manager. Some men have to go to another road to be fully appreciated. When a man is young he is criticized if he changes roads. When he is older his services are sought because of his varied experience with different roads. Human nature is prone to limit the length of everybody's train to the capacity of its own sidetracks.

In the spring of 1861 there went from his tannery at Galena to the capital of Illinois an ex-officer, a professional soldier, whose gallantry and efficiency had stood the tests of the war with Mexico. Springfield was filled with commission seekers, natives of the State, and Illinois, like some railroads, did not wish to go off her own rails for talent. She needed trained clerks to make out muster rolls, to book wheel reports in the yard office, as it were. This humble employment the silent soldier accepted with better grace than has characterized some former railway officials under similar circumstances. The opportunity came in the shape of a mutinous regiment, which, like a mountain division, was hard to handle. Three years later the clerk had run around all the officers, was commanding all the armies of the Union, and the world rang with the military fame of Ulysses S. Grant. Strange indeed is opportunity. Some successful railroad men owe their official start to the seeming bad luck of being let out as an employe.

Your general manager said that he had read some of my letters to you; threw me a warm jolly by remarking that you are a credit to such teaching. Then he confessed that he had asked the son if the old man always practices what he preaches. I am pleased to know from his own lips that you uncovered his headlight on that point.

Affectionately, your own

D. A. D.

  LETTER IX.

CORRESPONDENCE AND TELEGRAMS.

May 15, 1904.

My Dear Boy:—You have asked me to say something more on the subject of correspondence and telegrams. In these days of push the button for the stenographer, letters and telegrams are longer than when the officials themselves wrote out communications in long-hand. It therefore usually remains for employes like yardmasters, conductors and operators to preserve the good old terse style of the past. Some of them send messages that are models of comprehensiveness and brevity. When you run across a man who is an artist in that sort of thing keep an eye on him. The chances are that he uses the same good judgment in all of his work; that he accomplishes the greatest possible amount with the least possible effort; that he takes advantage of the easiest and best way; that he has the prime requisites of a coming official, namely, a cool head and horse sense.

Of course, the matter of terseness can be run into the ground. Clearness should not be sacrificed to brevity. There is a happy medium between the off agin, on agin, gone agin, Finnegan, of the Irish section foreman and the regretsky to reportsky of the Russian general. The point to be gained is to avoid repetition and unnecessary words. When wiring your office that you will go east on Number Two, the word east is superfluous for the reason that on your road Number Two can not possibly run west. For years in our train orders we used the phrase, right of track. Then somebody was bright enough to think that as Stonewall Jackson is no longer hauling locomotives from one line to another over the Valley turnpike in Virginia, the words "of track" might be cut out. Similar amputations have been made in the morning delay reports of many roads.

Human nature is so prone to grasp at the shadow rather than the substance that men cling to words rather than to ideas. When you have written a bulletin directing something to be done, do not discount your faith in its effect by the introduction of our good old friend, "Be Governed Accordingly." We get in the habit of doing a thing simply because we have always seen it done and know no other way. We paint on the sides of our cars such unnecessary words as baggage, chair, dining, parlor, furniture, stock, etc., etc., just as though these cars were never used for anything else; just as though the words really served some useful purpose. The people who do not know the different kinds of cars are beyond the reach of instruction through such information. You have heard of the man who entered the dining car by mistake and asked, "Is this the smoking car?" Whereupon a waiter grinned and replied, "No, suh, this is the chewin' cah." The Pullman people years ago discontinued the use of the words "sleeping car" on their equipment. It is not of record that the voices of the car inspectors and the switchmen on the outside have awakened any more passengers than usual on account of such omission.

We borrowed from the army and the navy the idea of uniforms for employes, brass buttons, gold lace and all. Lately soldiers and sailors are wearing plainer, simpler service uniforms. We, however, have not taken a tumble, perhaps because no one has hit us with a club, or run into our switch shanty and knocked it off the right of way. The cap is the essential feature of a trainman's uniform. He doesn't exactly talk through it, but its badge and ornaments identify his responsibilities and proclaim his authority. Add to the cap a plain blue uniform suit with the detachable black buttons the tailor furnishes, and you have a very satisfactory result. The cap then becomes the only difference between the costume for the road and that for the street. Where tried, it has been found that men wore their best suits on duty and on the street, and kept their worn and shabby suits to wear around home. At present on nearly all roads, as the uniform is too conspicuous to be worn off duty, the men are tempted to defer buying a new uniform until the old becomes very shabby. It has been found that freight crews are easily induced to take advantage of the contract price to buy such plain uniforms for street wear. Such freight crews can be provided with extra caps from the office in emergencies and be utilized to advantage; sometimes reducing the amount of deadhead mileage in making special one-way passenger movements. The street railway of at least one large city has tried this system of plain uniforms with excellent results. Why should the most of us be so timid that we must have a precedent before we can endorse a proposed plan? Like a successful after-dinner speaker, I am responding to the toast on expression by talking about other things.

In writing important letters or instructions it often pays to take the time to sit down and make a rough draft with a lead pencil. If you have the dictation habit so firmly fixed that this is irksome, revise the first draft made by the stenographer. Except when writing in the familiar style, the third person should be used rather than the first or second. The use of the second person should be carefully avoided in formulating general instructions; its use in special instructions to a few individuals is sometimes, but rarely, permissible. In writing or dictating telegrams figure roughly what the message would cost the company for transmission at commercial rates, and its probable reduction if the price per extra word came out of your own pocket. As far as possible avoid letting your initials become cheap by being used by too many people. If the management do not disapprove, encourage your subordinates to do routine business over their own initials or over symbols, as S. for superintendent (G.S. for general superintendent, and so on), so that when your initials come over the wire they will indicate personal attention and final action. This, too, has been tried successfully in contravention of the fallacy that unquestioning obedience must be rendered even when it is known that the official's initials have been signed by the office boy. It may be remarked in passing, that appreciation and fame await the individual who will be able to coin some short and expressive words to replace such awkward and cumbrous designations as superintendent of motive power, engineer maintenance of way, assistant to the first vice-president, etc., etc.

Did you ever think how desirable and practicable it would be to adopt the Government method of addressing the office instead of the incumbent by name? We do this with train orders, and usually in addressing station agents. We should also address "The Superintendent, Getthere Division, Suchtown, Somestate," and not use his name unless it is intended as personal and to be opened by him alone.

In all correspondence remember that a reprimand, expressed or implied, may be taken in a very different sense by the recipient from that intended by the sender. Your old dad has maintained satisfactory discipline among quite a bunch of men on more than one trunk line without ever writing a letter of reprimand or sending a hot message over the wire. The advice of the famous politician to walk ten miles to see a man rather than write him a letter is paraphrased for our business to mean rawhide yourself fifty or a hundred miles over the road to jack up a man rather than play him a tune on the typewriter. Another useful injunction is that of a famous soldier and diplomat, "Never underrate yourself in action; never overrate yourself in a report."

Affectionately, your own

D. A. D.