May 22, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—The evolution of the relative importance of the several departments in railroad work is an interesting study. The early railroads were short and usually had for president the most important man of affairs in the community, a banker, a lawyer, a publicist, a what-not. Frequently this man could not give his whole time to the road and he leaned heavily upon his superintendent, who, perhaps, had been the engineer in charge of construction. The superintendent of the early days was general manager on a small scale, and with limited facilities had to be a man fertile in resources. The superintendent of to-day is a better man, because the race improves all the time, but he performs duties of a decidedly different nature. It is idle to speculate as to just what he would do under primitive conditions. A return to such circumstances is impossible. We know that in a pinch our railway officials and employes, as a class, are never found wanting. They will measure up to standard in the future as they have in the past. One fact they must never forget is that, like soldiers and sailors, their faculties must be so alert, their grasp so comprehensive, that they will not get lost when the fortunes of the service bring them into strange territory. The pace is too swift to admit of standing still to get one's bearings.
There were few officials and the conductors were very important personages. When the superintendent needed an assistant it was natural to take a conductor who helped around the office, ran the pay car and specials, and made himself generally useful. Later on, train dispatching developed splendid tests of executive ability and the official staff was recruited by promotions from dispatchers. Still later, the growing importance of terminal problems gave yardmasters a chance for recognition and advancement.
As West Point was the nursery of the early constructing engineers, many of the early roads were built and operated by military men, whose impress in railway methods has survived to this day. When the civil war was over the railroads gained for their service thousands of men whose ability had stood the stern test of camp and battle, men who could meet unexpected conditions. These men bore the brunt in the wonderful railroad development that secured forever the commercial greatness of our country. The value of military methods was appreciated by them and almost unconsciously such methods were copied in organization, in discipline, in correspondence. One reason the great Pennsylvania organization is so strong and successful is the training some of its embryo high officials received in the military railway bureau of the War Department during the great conflict. The bayonet always precedes the gospel. When the military have cleared the wilderness of the savage foe the railroad brings a permanent civilization. Witness the marvelous growth of the great West during the last forty years.
A majority of the railroads in the country at some time or other passed through a receivership. Here came a chance for legal men, and after reorganizations lawyer presidents have not been uncommon. At the next stage of development many railroads had been built and systems were growing larger. The civil engineer, who in earlier years would have become the president or chief operating official, was now taken care of in a newly necessitated department, that of maintenance and construction, sufficiently important to attract his talents. Following this period competition was keen; it was a struggle for existence. The man who could get the business was IT. The traffic man had his inning and, if not president, dictated policies and the amount of his own salary and perquisites. With the growth of the community of interest idea the traffic man is just as important; but he is no longer wreckmaster, and the transportation man is up under the lime light near the derrick car. Between the different dynasties of departments the transportation man, like the rock of ages, is always the standby and always will be. The other departments come and go in relative importance, but the transportation never shuts off, and is there with the sand when the others unload from the gangway.
The revolution in standards of power and equipment incident to recent years of tractive units and ton-mile costs has brought the mechanical man prominently in front of the headlight. Fortunately for himself and for the service in general he has not dodged the rays when anyone cared to read figures, and the way to higher executive positions has not been left dark for him. The pendulum is already coming back toward the transportation man. Whether the next swing will be toward the signal engineer or toward the electrician it is hard to say.
The lesson a superintendent should learn from all this is that he has more and more superiors to please, more and more fads to follow, more and more improvements to develop, more and more different points of view to reconcile. He must merge his own importance, his likes and dislikes in the great corporation with which he has cast his lot. If his superiors spell traveler with two l's or labor with a u, let him do likewise. By so yielding he is not losing any manhood. He is winning a victory over the crotchety part of his individuality and leaving room for its development along broader lines. He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city. As no man can take a city or do any great work unaided he must learn first to rule his own spirit in order that he may rule others and gain their heartiest co-operation. The superintendent who is habitually calm and polite, however great the provocation to speak angrily, will soon find that if he is firm and just his men are worrying even more than he lest things go wrong on the division.
In the matter of discipline there has been a great change in sentiment and in method. Whether or not it is all advisable is very much of a question. There are too many collisions in proportion to the improvement in material and personnel. In the old days the crew at fault, whether they actually got together or not, were discharged and forever barred off the road. Nowadays we are apt to give them another trial on the theory that we are immune from future mistakes on their part. This may or may not be so, but how about the effect on others in the service? How about the men who are thereby entitled to promotion? Is not a failure to make an example of such offenders holding life and property too cheap? We may pity the unfortunate blunderers, just as we may pity a drunkard or a thief, but their usefulness to us should be over. They may start in again, but it must be on some other road. Our duty to the public and to our stockholders demands that the safety of a train should be sacred. One of the most absurd conclusions is to measure the punishment by the amount of damage, according to how straight the track happened to be, according to how hard they happened to hit. Some railroad sins can be forgiven, but drunkenness, chronic or periodic; stealing, money or property; and collisions, actual or constructive, should be unpardonable on any road, however thoroughly they may be blotted out elsewhere. Less sentiment and more discharges will mean fewer collisions.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
May 29, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—An able and successful general manager—not all able men and not all general managers are successful—recently called attention to a most important distinction in the training and practice of superintendents. He says that too much stress is laid upon the development of ability to locate responsibility after a wreck occurs, and not enough upon the quality of controlling circumstances, of cultivating precautionary habits that will prevent disaster. As he aptly puts it, the superintendent should be a doctor, a health officer, rather than a coroner; his staff a sanitary commission, a board of health to prevent disease rather than a jury to determine its causes and effects. Some superintendents pride themselves on their legal acumen, their ability to cross-examine, and on the way they can catch a crew trying to lie out of a mix-up. This is all very well if it does not obscure the main object, namely, to minimize disaster in the future. The investigation serves, perhaps, to determine what men to discipline and discharge as an example to others in the service. It should also serve as a lesson in official methods. However thorough and searching, it cannot restore life or return property. The damage has been done. All the king's horses and all the king's men cannot put Humpty-Dumpty together again.
Some of your men every day will give you the old hot air, "As long as there are railroads there will be wrecks." To which you should hand back the stereotyped reply, "Very true, but let's figure on letting the other fellow have them." A discreet remark or suggestion that will put a man to thinking for himself is one of the secrets of success in handling men. Never miss an opportunity to make the point that wrecks seldom occur from the neglect of any one man. It is when two or more forget at the same time or fall down together that trouble results. Impress on the brakeman the fact that the very stop he neglects to flag is the time when the operator is most likely to let two trains in the same block. Remind your conductor that when he fails to read the orders to the engineman in person and sends them forward by the porter or the head brakeman, that is the very trip the orders get torn or smeared so that a fatal mistake results. When a passenger train breaks in two the air usually sets on both portions. It fails to do so when bums or misplaced safety chains have turned the angle cocks; and that is the time there should be a trainman riding in the rear car. Men will tell you so and so cannot happen, but next week it does happen just the same. The whistle hose and the brake hose cannot be coupled together because the connections are purposely made of a different pattern. A green apprentice coupling an engine to a tender at a roundhouse managed to pound together the couplings of the wrong pairs of hose, which the engine inspector had failed to notice were badly worn. That was the day the car inspectors neglected to try the signal and the air before the train left the terminal. By a strange fatality the conductor trusted the car men for the station test. The engineman was too busy to make a running test. They all got wise when the air wouldn't work at the first railroad crossing. Watch the inspectors to see that they do not form the lazy habit of giving the signal to try the air from the next to the last car, of walking only half the length of the train to see the pistons and the brakeshoes. Never wink at an irregularity of that sort. It will come back to plague you a hundredfold. Go right after it quietly, but promptly and effectually. Do not wait for disaster or for investigation by your superiors to tell you that a loose practice prevails. Get such information with your own senses or from observations of your staff.
It is vigilance, eternal vigilance, that is the price of safety. Teach your men that a hundred successes do not justify an avoidable failure, that twenty years of faithful service cannot condone criminal carelessness. A fundamental is that when backing up there should always be a man on the rear end. Educate your men to feel that neglect of this wise precaution is just as mortifying as to appear in public without clothes. In shoving long cuts of cars without using air, get your brakemen and switchmen to feel a pride in setting a hand brake on the end car to take the slack and save the jerk on the drawbars. Work for the old-time feeling of chagrin that came to the calloused-armed passenger brakeman, in the days of Armstrong brakes, when he did not go after them soon enough and let his train run by the station. The men are not to blame for this loss of pride and interest. We, the officials, are at fault. We have not kept ahead of the game. We have been coroners, not sanitary inspectors.
If an engine is waiting at a hand derail or at a crossover for a train, neither switch should be thrown until the train has passed. Then, if the throttle happens to fly open at just the wrong moment, the train will not be sideswiped. If not trained, your switchmen will throw every switch possible beforehand so as to be ready. They may think such precautions are old womanish, but the time will come when your wisdom will be vindicated. If a train is waiting for a connection, with a siding switch in rear, the facing point switch should be opened, so that if the incoming man loses his air or misjudges distances the train will not be hit. Similarly a flagman going back to protect a train between switches should open the siding switch as he passes it. The switch is more effectual than a torpedo, and if a following train happens to get by him and his torpedoes his own train will not be hit. He should flag just the same, because a train entering the open switch too fast might turn over. It is better to take a chance on a derailment than on a collision. It is better still to have such training, vigilance and discipline that there will be little chance of either disaster.
Train your men to do things because they are right, because it is manly to do good railroading. Then, when you hold an investigation you will not find at the moment the accident happened that the engineman was priming his injector, the fireman putting in a fire, the head brakeman shoveling down coal, the conductor sorting his bills, and the hind man starting to boil coffee for supper.
There is hardly a conductor or an engineman of any length of service who has not at some time overlooked an order or a train. When he has forgotten, his partner has remembered. The trouble has come, bad luck, they call it, when they both forgot. Many a $50 operator has saved the job of a $150 engineman. Keep your men keyed up to the idea that this is too uncertain; that each must watch his own job, that in so doing he may keep his comrade out of the hole, that by conscientious vigilance he becomes a better man and more of a credit to his calling. No man wilfully courts danger to life and property. His failures are an accompaniment, a concomitant they call it in logic, of officials being better coroners than they are doctors.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
June 5, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—I once heard General Sheridan, my old commander, say that when he was a lieutenant he made up his mind to be the best lieutenant in his regiment; that in every grade to which promotion brought him he strove to be the best; that he attributed his high rank to this consistent effort. Right here is a moral that many a railroad man should apply to himself. Although Sheridan's comrades at West Point and in the service knew his efficiency, the powers that were in 1861 found no higher position for him than that of captain and assistant quartermaster. During the first year of the civil war, while politicians were called colonels and lawyers tried to be generals, this trained soldier was inspecting horses and mules in the Southwest, a veterinary's work. Some men, disheartened by such apparent inappreciation, would have lost interest, would have let the contractor palm off inferior animals on the government. Not so with the future commander of the army. He tried all the harder and his work was efficient, clean and honest. In the spring of 1862 a Michigan cavalry regiment needed a colonel and the officer hailing from Ohio, who had bought horses so well, had a chance to drill both horses and men. A year and a half later he was commanding a division of infantry, and six months after that as major general a corps of cavalry. Popular opinion pictures Sheridan as a dashing fighter, executing the plans of some one else. Never was there a more incomplete conception. No matter how hard had been the fighting, how wearing the march, it was Sheridan who rose in the night to see that the sleeping camp or bivouac did not suffer from laxity in guard duty, that all was ready for the plans of the morrow. The general manager did not have to tell him that the switch lamps on his division were not burning. The general superintendent did not have to wire him that his water cranes were out of order. The superintendent of motive power did not have to complain that his enginemen were not kept in line. The traffic manager did not lose freight because his night terminals became congested.
There is many a railroad man who has lost heart and lessened his usefulness because an honest but inappreciative management has promoted the wrong man. Then is the time to come out strong, to try harder than before to be appreciated. The world has little use for soreheads. The more strenuous the conditions the less sympathy for the sulker in the tent. Be game and do not kick for rest. The sleeve is no place to wear a wounded heart. Do not put up a squeal about nepotism. As long as man loves woman and that woman's children the relatives of the management will always be the easiest for the promotion call-boy to find. Remember that though they be marked up first out, there are other runs to be filled; that sooner or later there are chances for more crews to get out. If you find flaws in the reasons announced for certain appointments, forget them in the thought that honesty of purpose is a distinguishing characteristic of operating management. Not only look pleasant but head off the efforts of foolish friends to form a volunteer grievance committee in your behalf.
Assuming that you are trying to be the best division superintendent, remember that in the final roundup it is not your own ideas of success that must prevail. You may know that you are stronger and better than the official who gets the preferred run. You may know that it would be best for the company to have you run around him. All the men on the division may unconsciously feel your superior ability. They may all swear by you and make your name almost sacred around the lunch counter and the caboose track. All this will not count for full value if you do not please your superiors. When the general manager comes on your division you must be ready for any kind of a statistical run. He has not time to wait for you to oil around. His every hour is valuable and like all busy men he forms his opinions in a hurry. Remember that until we know men intimately we judge them by standards more or less artificial, but usually pretty accurate in the aggregate. Thus a man who is careless and untidy in his dress is apt to overlook little essentials in the management of men and affairs. The dandy is almost never a coward; for, if physical courage be lacking, his pride supplies its place. The superintendent whose desk is in confusion probably has untidy stations and dirty coaches. The man who slouches coatless into his superior's office and sprawls into a chair before being invited to sit down is likely to be equally inconsiderate of the public his company serves. The tobacco lover who cannot refrain from smoking or chewing the few minutes he is close to the throne will probably not inherit much of the kingdom of advancement. The man who clings to the George Washington habit of eating with his knife and the Thomas Jefferson custom of drinking from his saucer has the burden of proof on him to show that he is not unobservant of progress in other things and is not generally behind the times. The self-made man in so many cases worships his maker that he forgets the divinity that doth hedge a king. The man above may be no better, perhaps not as good, morally, mentally, physically and socially, but officially he is the superior in fact as well as in name. Familiarity breeds contempt and the more respect you show your superior the more dignity you are conferring upon yourself, the less likely are your own subordinates to forget the respect that is due your position. Self-restraint and mental poise cultivate an unconscious dignity of character that is of immeasurable value in the handling of men. Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee, men of radically different types but alike in being idolized by their people, were popular heroes, although neither was addressed, even by his intimates, by his first name. The highest compliment you can pay an associate or a subordinate is to address him in private by his first name. It shows either that you have known him a long time or that you think enough of him to separate him from his payroll designation.
One of the amiable failings of human nature is to be self-satisfied, a condition that in our profession is probably intensified. We railroad men have to think and act in such a hurry that we become very cocksure of ourselves. We have so little time for introspection that we often regard the science of railroading as putting it on the other fellow. When disaster occurs, no matter how defective may have been our equipment, how parsimonious our policy, how lax our discipline, we cry out long and loud at the untrustworthiness of employes, at the decadence of company spirit, at the growing evils of the labor unions. An intelligent public usually gets on to us, however, and we pay for such mental and vocal pyrotechnics with compound interest. It will profit us to do a little more self-examination, to copy the publican rather than the pharisee. The conductor who burns off journals will assure us of his distinguished concern and of his constant injunctions to his brakemen to watch for hot boxes. The superintendent who rawhides his men will tell you with tears in his voice how necessary it is to be considerate of the boys on the road. The general superintendent who sends long and unnecessary telegrams will deplore with you the tendency of the traffic department to burden the wires. All these are good men and true, but they have not formed the habit of healthy, honest self-criticism. Strong, indeed, is the man who can stand up and say, like Lee at Gettysburg, "I was in command and responsible. If anyone is to blame I am the man."
The greatest of executives are those who can make men think for themselves, who can work men and have them believe they are playing, who can suggest a new thought to a man and leave him with the idea that he originated it himself. A great deal of effort is lost, a vast amount of mental force is wasted in trying to convince people that you alone originated an idea or a movement. Bury such a thought in the results produced, for it is results we are after. Get your satisfaction in said results and your amusement in the honest self-glorification of some unconscious borrower who has utilized your idea. It doesn't pay to be too much of an originator. If you have advanced ideas, keep yourself in the background or you may kill the ideas. Men find the old alignment so familiar that they are slow to want curves replaced by tangents. If you are too ubiquitous with suggestions they will become leery of your good judgment and will unconsciously set the fish tail when you whistle into town. If you will run past the distant signal and find your superior at the home, some of the best stops for the suggestion derail are: "You doubtless have considered the advisability of thus and so;" or, "I assume you are not quite ready to decide the question of hit or miss;" or, "As you were saying the other day, we are losing money by deadheading crews;" or, "I hope you will be able to carry out your idea of introducing train staffs;" or, "On further consideration, do you care to recommend adopting lap sidings for the new extension?" etc. Of course this kind of a sand valve must not be opened too wide or too often or some of the soft soap will get on the detector bar and violate the interlocking rules.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
June 12, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—Your chief dispatcher blew through here the other day on his vacation and dropped in to pay his respects. He rather apologized for so doing, as he seemed to think it might be considered an intrusion to call on a stranger. I took it as a compliment to myself and as a mark of his loyalty to you. It is so easy for us old fellows to forget that we were once junior officials ourselves that I rather like to keep in touch with those who are to come after and maintain the time-honored standards of the profession. I never like to say very much about my desire to acquire information from everyone I meet, for experience has made me a little leery of the man who whistles too long for that station. He is apt to toot his own horn so much that he doesn't hear the other fellow's signals. So I tried not to do all the talking, and did not tell my guest of the great improvements I had made since I came to this position. I preferred to let him hear that from someone else. If one should take too literally the talk of the officials on whom he calls he would wonder how the road ever ran before each held down his particular job; how there can possibly be any improvement made by those who come after. No, I do not advocate hiding one's light under a bucket in the cab all the time—only when running.
The world is getting to place more and more confidence in the man who thinks out loud. It trusts him because he is not doubtful of himself. The stunt of looking wise and not expressing an opinion when a suggestion is made is no longer popular. A non-committal promise to look into the matter may be construed as a mask for ignorance or timidity. The more a man knows the more frankly he acknowledges that a certain idea is new to him. Men to whom talking and writing do not come easy sometimes say beware of the windy man, but there are some mighty efficient railroaders who act and perform all the better for being able to handle words. Hot air is all right if properly compressed. The idle breeze dries the ground and runs windmills. Sand bites the rail in more economical quantities when fed down by the pneumatic attachment. Every division has its Windy Bill, its Chattering Charlie, its Gasbag George; but some way, when they are on the road you always feel safe. They may work a con game on some of the agents and dispatchers, but they get over the road with the local. You feel good when you meet them. The man you want to run from is Calamity Jake, who always has a tale of woe as long as a gravel train. His caboose rides rough; its stove smokes; the caller doesn't give him time enough for his wife to cook breakfast; the yardmaster saves all the shop cripples for his train; he can't trust the ignorant engineers; the brakemen are all farmers, and the signal oil won't burn. If you tell him that's all right, that you will try and correct all these things when the car accountant's office stops kicking on his wheel reports, he will look at you in sympathetic sadness and bewail the modern tendency to make clerks of conductors.
Your chief dispatcher is a fine fellow and understands the art of getting away. He didn't wear out his welcome but broke away while making a good impression. You have to unlock the switch for some men before they can couple their crossings and get out of town. The dispatcher has to send the operator outside with a clearance. Acquaintance is one of a young man's most valuable assets, and a two minutes' interview may grade the way for a lifelong run. Before the world was as good as it is now, men rather prided themselves on the number of enemies they had made. Nowadays the friend mile is a more desirable unit of measure.
Washington Irving puts it very prettily where he says, "for who is there among us who does not like now and then to play the sage?" So I felt rather flattered when your chief dispatcher asked me for advice as to what to study in order to get on in the railway world. I told him first of all to read every bit of company literature that he could get hold of; not to skim through a part of the pamphlet on refrigerator cars and guess at the rest. A table of freight rates may become interesting if properly approached. Do not try to memorize data and statistics, but rather plod through them at least once with a view to trying to master the principles that govern. Life is very full in this twentieth century, but, broadly speaking, it is still possible to know something of everything as well as everything of something. The day is coming when we will not entrust a man with the important duties and the great responsibilities of a division superintendent until we have given him a brief course in every department. We examine a man before we let him run an engine, but how about the man who runs him? A superintendent should know enough about an engine to handle the enginemen just as he does the trainmen. When we have men successfully running engines who can barely read and write, it is a mistake to claim that a locomotive is such a sacred mystery that only the mechanical department can judge whether or not it is properly handled. Enginemen are transportation men, and the time that master mechanics put in assigning crews, keeping an age book, and otherwise duplicating the superintendent's work might a great deal better be given to the back shop. The yardmaster has one caller and the roundhouse foreman another. The two callers go up the same street, sometimes together, and call men in adjoining houses, an expensive duplication of work. The trainmaster rides in the caboose and the traveling engineer—road foreman is the modern term—in the engine, but neither dares presume to know the business of the other. Every trainmaster should be a traveling engineer and every traveling engineer should be a trainmaster. That will be the case when we train officials along more definite lines. Honey bees feed their future queen a special food. No, I would not decrease the number of officials, if anything I would increase it. I would not, however, let every official created have a chief clerk and a stenographer. I would make it impossible for him to yield to the temptation to add a bureau of records to the amount of useless information already on file. I wouldn't lose my nerve if now and then a set of ancient papers got lost, for with less red tape quicker action would result and little would get away. The first time the trainmaster had to wait an hour or two before he could dictate a letter in the superintendent's office, or could use a stenographer in his own office, he would beef for a separate establishment. If more help should be needed, which would be very doubtful, put it on, but do not limit its usefulness to any one official. With a proper, responsible head it is entirely feasible to carry the community of interest idea into office organization. If the division engineer is under the superintendent, why, in sending papers into the next room to him, write a letter and burden your files with the carbon of the stereotyped, "Kindly note next attached and take necessary action?" Is not his office a part of the superintendent's? Have you not the same right to papers there that you have to those in the office of the chief dispatcher? Why not go even further and have one chief clerk and one set of records for the whole outfit, just as an assistant superintendent can handle a part of the work without having a separate force? If you ever rearrange an office building, fix it so that the casual visitor waiting to see the boss will not learn state secrets by hearing the chief clerk dictate letters.
A number of roads have tried the experiment of putting the enginemen and the roundhousemen solely under the superintendent, and of confining the master mechanic to his proper function of running the shops. It has usually failed; not on account of inherent weakness as a system, but because the superintendent didn't superintend, and found it too convenient to try to shift the responsibility to the mechanical department. Reform has to begin at the top, and if the division is to be the unit the superintendent must be something more than a high-class chief dispatcher finding flaws in train sheets. It is not enough for him to be a star division engineer, a boss yardmaster. He must remember that his holding of any of these positions is ancient history, not to be forgotten, because valuable and instructive, but nevertheless a thing of the past. As the yardmaster and the dispatcher must scatter their trains, so the superintendent must keep his staff doing different things. He must avoid having two men doing the same thing. If it is better to call the roundhouse foreman a master mechanic and invent a title for the man behind the back shop, let us do so; but by all means avoid working the master mechanic at present as foreman, head caller, road timekeeper and roundhouse clerk. The superintendent can boss all these jobs, and transportation, including its operating attributes, must focus at his office. It is not the superintendent who works the most hours who is the most successful. It is he who puts in the best licks at the right time, night or day, and with the right man or men.
I told your chief dispatcher that a knowledge of law is as important to a real superintendent as a knowledge of telegraphy. I advised him to give himself the pleasure of reading Cooky's edition of Blackstone, which, if taken in homeopathic doses, is one of the clearest things in the language. Every superintendent gets to be more or less of a lawyer. It should not be necessary to refer every little fire or stock claim to the legal department for some of its students to render a profound opinion upon a matter of common sense. It is so easy to follow the line of least resistance that we too often evade responsibility by throwing up our hands and saying that such and such is a legal question, a mechanical matter, or a traffic problem. We gracefully pass it up to the other fellow, and think we are in to clear when an investigation happens to come. By and by, oblivious of the relation between cause and effect, we deplore the curtailment of our authority and inveigh against centralization.
I had some other ideas to set out for you, but we have drifted so near the switch that there is not room enough to make a drop of the caboose. So I shall either pull the whole train into the yard or get permission from the yardmaster to cut off on the main, and like an orthodox conductor, leave them for the night men to switch out. We conductors feel that, as a switch engine lies around the most of the time, it can always do at least one more job, besides having time to shove us out of the yard and over the hill.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
June 19, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—History repeats itself, and railroad history is made so fast that we repeat ourselves very often. Mankind absorbs a certain amount from the experience of others. In spite of the much good that comes, the same old fallacies are followed, the same old blunders are made. Within the last fifty years every road in the country, at some time or other, has undergone at least one reorganization and a corresponding radical change in personnel. Always, after several new camels get their heads under the tent, comes a newspaper pronunciamento that thereafter the management will breed from its own herd. This inbreeding invariably leads ultimately to narrowness if not to deterioration. The cousins intermarry too often and ere long the road is breeding its own scrubs.
Within the last five years every road in the country has gone outside its own ranks for official talent. The oldest roads have had only a few Leonard Woods and Fred Funstons, a president here, a vice-president there. Other roads have changed officials so fast that one is reminded of the traveler sojourning in Paris during the French Revolution. He instructed his servant to tell him every morning what the weather was, that he might know how to dress himself, and what the government was, that he might know how to conduct himself. What then of our boasted civil service; of the wonderful administrative machines we build up and find wanting? Is the principle wrong or is its application faulty? The earnest efforts of able men, crowned by many partial successes, are sufficient guarantee of honesty of purpose, of the necessity for something of the sort that has been attempted. He who criticises, be he ever so honest, must suggest a practical remedy or he soon descends from the level of the critic to that of the demagogue or the common scold.
Our trouble seems to be, not with civil service as an abstract proposition, but with the type we have been getting. It is about Z-99 as compared with the real thing. It has too many flat wheels to run smoothly. It must be jacked up high enough for new trucks and a stronger kingbolt. True civil service presupposes maximum care in original selection. It doesn't mean that we shall wait until the grain and the coal begin to move before we figure on more crews. It rather contemplates having available firemen in wipers, and willing brakemen in clerks. Every superintendent believes that he is the best judge of men on the pike. On every system are probably men who can give him cards and spades, picked coal and treated water, and then outclass him on such a run. If we leave the hiring to the different trainmasters, master mechanics, or agents, we may have mostly the Irish on one division, mostly the Dutch on another. If we are going into this civil service business and are taking men, like Federal judges, for life or during good behavior, let's have a long list of waiting eligibles recruited for each division. Let's send around periodically a car with an examining board from central headquarters to size up the talent recommended by local officials. Put experienced officials, a surgeon and an oculist on the committee. Show your trainmaster that men who make it a business have more time than he to keep dudes and cigarette smokers off the runboard and the payroll; that the former have broader opportunities than he to develop a high standard of requirements. Let the committee encourage men already employed to demonstrate their fitness for transfer to other departments or to heavier divisions. Let's change ends with our rail and put it where it will do the most good. The employment bureau, the recruiting office, or the civil service commission becomes a necessity to every large organization. Some roads have made a start in this direction, but it is only a start. To work out the problem will cost us money. Yes, but less than we are being forced to pay by some of the labor contracts we have had to sign. It is not only more graceful, it is less expensive, this leading instead of being driven.
The great trouble seems to be in this matter of civil service that we have tried to accomplish too much in too short a time. An industry whose existence does not antedate the memory of men still living cannot hope to have struck the best methods already. Yet it can be too cautious in building Chinese walls around its organization. What we have been striving for is to cultivate a company spirit, to improve the efficiency of the service. We have felt that the way to do this is to make our men feel secure in their positions, to have them convinced that the shakeup made by our advent is the last they will ever experience. Have we not chased this rainbow long enough? Should we not back up and draw some of the spikes we have put in the connection switches? It is one thing to sit in an office and figure that the importation of this one man ought not to make anybody uneasy. It is quite another to make the thousands of men along the road believe that we can stick to the original package. Blood is thicker than water and the new man will have his relatives and his followers or the followers of his friends. If he is too thin-skinned, fear of criticism may prevent his bringing in some new talent that would be of real benefit to his road. He is blamed if he does and blamed if he doesn't. Whichever course he pursues there remains, in greater or less degree, that uncertainty which is so demoralizing. Remove this uncertainty, let men know definitely what to expect, and you are over the hill and closer to the terminal.
The old-fashioned rule of promote two and hire one worked mighty well on some roads for conductors and enginemen. In these days of larger systems the ratio might be changed to three or four or even five or six to one. If it were definitely understood that every so often, say every fifth vacancy in certain grades of officials and employes, a man would certainly be selected from outside the service, I believe that we could remove the feeling of uncertainty. We would in a large measure attain the result we have thus far missed. We would build up organizations with enough fresh blood to stand the test of time.
Brains and adaptability are not a natural monopoly. God Almighty hasn't given any road a New Jersey charter broad enough for incorporating a trust of the most efficient men. No, I am not a populist or a socialist. I believe in trusts. They have come to stay and ultimately to benefit the masses. Legislation will no more succeed in destroying them than it did in preventing partnerships in England where centuries ago it was thought for two men to unite as partners in business was an unsafe combination of power. Education comes by hard knocks and probably anti-merger decisions are worth the inconvenience that they have caused. The sober sense of the American people will tell them after a while that in attempting constitutional and legislative interference they have not benefited themselves one dollar. They will learn that forcing a change of methods does not necessarily bring about a different result. They will learn that in the long run they, the people, are the losers when good capital is tied up; that they pay the price for unwise competition. The railroads, the first great trusts, should be early to realize that some conditions inherently forbid the elimination of competition. Our prairies are too broad for an agricultural trust. The range of the human mind is too great for any railroad to patent the ability of its men.
This trust freight seems to make you full tonnage without cleaning out all the rush stuff in my yard. You may cut off ahead of the rest of the civil service loads and I will have a pony set on your caboose when you pull through the ladder. Yes, I will tell the operator at the yard office to scratch them off your consist. I shall have to run another section and fill out with some cars of company material which the construction department is kicking about. Please put up—excuse me, display—signals until the dispatcher can get hold of you at the end of the double track. By the way, if instead of "will display signals, etc.," his order should read, "will signal, etc.," would it not be shorter and, including flags, lamps, whistle and voice, be more comprehensive?
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
June 26, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—We were speaking of railroad civil service, so called. As I told you before, our civil service is so far from the genuine article that I always feel like qualifying the term in some way for fear of being called in on the carpet for failure to cut the proper duplex. It is a great big subject, worthy of the most serious consideration, because it concerns men, not machines. Furthermore, it is a high type of man with whom we deal or should deal. We are all so busy that we say we concern ourselves with results. We all butt in too much on details, usually along the line of our early training. Yet, withal, we overlook some pretty long shots because we flatter ourselves we are too busy to place small bets.
Even after we have wasted so much of the building season that we give the contractor a bonus to rush the new line to completion in time to hold the charter, wouldn't it pay us to have a care as to the kind of men we let him work on our right of way? Next year, when the grievance committees come up from the new division, we make them feel that it means something, it gives them a stamp of honor to work for our system. Why not begin a little farther back? Why not hook up in the beginning so that our different departments can get busy early in the game? Let the people who are to settle the new country help build and maintain the road. Let the immigration agent camp with the reconnoitering engineer. When the latter comes back to locate or retrace, let the former be interesting colonies. Let our own organization follow the surveyor's flag. Let's be our own contractor and get back more of the money he disburses. Why let a floating gang of Dagoes take so big a bunch of it back to sunny Italy? Why not spend it ourselves so that its recipients will use it to develop the country and hurry the origination of traffic? Let's handle this coin both going and coming and cut out some of the empty haul.
The political revolutions in continental Europe and the famine in Ireland in 1848 brought to this country a high class of immigrants. We gave them work and schools. They helped build the railroads. Some continued on the roads after construction; others helped develop the surrounding country. Our flag made them free, and when civil war came they were among the bravest of its defenders. To-day their children and their children's children, all Americans, rank high among railway officials and employes. Perhaps all this is a happen so; perhaps much of it is due to big, brainy men whose policies were not narrowed by specialization in departments. We are now doing little new construction. We should do it better than ever and in the full sense of the word. Is it enough to pass it up to the construction department?
Did it ever strike you that there may be many good reasons why both officials and employes may desire to transfer to another road? A young man, feeling the home nest too full, the local demand for skilled labor too light, has struck out for a newer country. He makes good. We find him in after years running an engine, working a trick, or, perchance, holding down an official job. Death occurs at the old home. Marriage brings new interests in another country. An invalid member of his family needs a change of climate. An unexpected development of a chance investment in a remote locality demands occasional personal attention. The orphaned children of a relative claim his protection. Any one of a dozen praiseworthy motives may prompt him to make a change, provided he can continue to derive his main support from the calling to which he has found himself adapted.
Would he be able to transfer without beginning over again at the bottom? Between the civil service of the companies and the seniority of the brotherhoods he would find it like making a link and pin coupling on the inside of a sharp curve. He would be lucky if he could get a regular job on another division of the same system. Let him persist in suggestions as to how the matter may be brought about, and the average official, hidebound by precedent, will consider him nutty, a candidate for the crazy house instead of for another run. Who is the loser? Not only the man, but the company, which should have the benefit of his wider experience, of his peculiar interest in its territory, of the infusion of fresh blood which his advent would mean.
Suppose an official has resigned for any good personal reason, or because he couldn't reduce the size of the engine nozzles fast enough to suit a new management. When he starts out to hunt a job his brethren of the profession receive him with sympathy. They promise to help him out. Each begs him to understand how impossible it is for him to catch the pay car on that particular line. Perhaps his informant has been on that company's payroll only six months himself, but he waxes eloquent on the benefits of civil service, on the desirability of making their own men, of overcoming previous demoralization. This would be amusing if it were not a serious business. Each seems to flatter himself that he got aboard because of peculiar personal fitness, and inferentially denies such attribute of genius in the man on the outside. As a matter of fact, the recognition of outside talent is usually a consequence of acquaintance, of happening to know the right man at the right time, of having previously worked with the appointing official. All this contains too much of the element of chance. When we reserve certain vacancies for men outside of the breastworks and select them in advance we shall get better results.
We have made our civil service frogs so stiff that our discipline has climbed the rail. We know it is so hard for a conductor or an engineman to get a job that we sometimes hesitate too long before we make an example for the good of the service by discharging a flagrant offender. If we knew that by and by he could hit on some road the vacancy reserved for outsiders we would have the benefit of the change. The man would learn a lesson, would not be debarred from his occupation, and would give better service on another road. Talk with your employes about this and you will be astonished to find how many will fall in with this idea of leaving open a door of hope by filling just so many vacancies with outside men.
Your official or your employe seeking a transfer or hunting a job will be impressed with the fact that all assistance rendered will be with a view to favoring him because he is a good, worthy fellow. He will not hear it put on the ground that any company is fortunate to have his services, that his future employers are being especially considered. If he has known from boyhood the territory and civilization where he desires to work, it will not be urged as a special qualification. Right here is where the most of us fall down. We too seldom make our subordinates feel that we are the gainers by having them in our employ. We are too likely to make them feel they are lucky to have a job. This may do for the indifferent men, but it puts no premium on superior ability and loyalty. It renders a discharge, when made, less effective as an example. You cannot treat all your men alike in all things. In a few things, collisions, stealing, booze-fighting, for example, you have to do so. In most things you must avoid destroying individuality. You must build up personal pride in each. Even sister engines of the same type do not steam or pull exactly alike. Man, made in the image of Deity, has pride, brains and courage to make more complex his disposition. Corporations have no souls. Railroad men have souls and good red blood. Their intelligence is an inspiration; their steadfastness, a psalm.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
July 3, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—Blacksmiths' horses and shoemakers' wives proverbially go unshod. A railroad puts up its poorest sample of transportation in the routine handling of its own material and supplies. Company stuff is moved and handled last of all; and probably at maximum expense. For example, if we wish to ship a car of wheels to division headquarters we load them after we are lucky enough to get an available car. Then after proper billing authority has been furnished we go through some more red tape, so that the auditor may not confuse figs with thistles, revenue producers with deadheads. When we happen to have a train with such light tonnage that all excuses for moving the car have been exhausted it reaches the yard nearest its destination. The master mechanic's office in a day or two has pounded sufficiently at the yardmaster to get the car set, usually several hours after it has been promised. It is not of record just how much time and money have been wasted by the mechanical department through not having the car when expected.
If our administration is unusually smooth we may be able to load our scrap wheels on this same car. Usually, however, we wait until the car has been hauled down the line before some office away off somewhere gives disposition for the wornout material. Or, having unloaded all the wheels, we wait until next week before we order in another car, and go through the same performance to ship a couple of pairs to some junction point on the same division. I will not bore you with the expensive details of getting a car of ties loaded and distributed, of how much time the sectionmen are worked to poor advantage because the car or material failed to show up when expected.
We, mounted on wheels, with transportation as our chief asset, let our own business get it where the chicken felt the axe, where the sharp flange caught the bum. It used to be more comfortable in the old days. We could have the sectionmen do so many jobs without its seeming to cost anything. The fact that we have learned better makes me rash enough to believe that we may yet progress beyond thinking that some of our own transportation costs little or nothing because we do it with the local freight or a switch engine. We haul a car clear over the division to pick up a few pounds of scrap paper; provided, of course, the agents have not confused the day with that for loading dairy line shipments. The weakness in handling company material naturally leads to a distrust by other departments and a desire by each to control the distribution of its own supplies.
Did you ever think in what a haphazard, hit or miss manner we handle our traveling workers? The scale inspector is a very necessary individual because freight revenue is a function of weight. He is so valuable to us that, although the test car is a nuisance in trains and yards, we haul him hundreds of miles to do a few minutes' or a few hours' work. If he should try to do any other company business; if he should repair furniture, solicit traffic, inspect ties or examine interlocking plants, he would infringe on the prerogatives of other men who earn salaries by riding much and working little. Yes, I know we must have departments. Our great task is to work them to the best advantage; to let them overlap a little when business is dull, or where local conditions permit. We should switch our departments together so that we can cut in the air on enough to hold the train without going after expenses with a club.
The employe who does not receive supplies regularly, whose requisitions for stationery are arbitrarily cut, will try to get enough ahead to keep himself from running out. When you take an inventory you must figure on removing the temptation for everyone to hold back full returns for fear of not rendering good service in the future. With a lot of money tied up in supplies at central or division storehouses our service often suffers, even accidents occur for want of a lantern globe, or a few gallons of oil. The average local freight crew has no more compunctions in replenishing the caboose from a can of oil consigned to a country agent than did the slave in taking chickens. It all belongs to the company. Massa's chicken, massa's niggah. Some roads are now distributing oil to sections and to small stations from a box car fitted with inside tanks and self-registering pumps, a very economical arrangement. This car runs on the local freight at fixed times. The next step has been to put with it supply cars, handled by the oil man, who issues supplies and tools to agents, section foremen and pumpers. A stationery car comes next in the outfit. This progressive development is hampered in most cases by adherence to the time-honored requisition. It does not promote a good company spirit in an agent to haul by him a car filled with supplies and deny him a much-needed broom, a comfort-giving pane of glass, simply because a requisition has not passed through the prescribed number of chief clerks' office baskets. Issues are for the good of the service, not for charity. The best way is to require a division official to accompany the cars on his division, hold him responsible, and make his check good on our traveling bank. Let the employe sign on a line in a book for articles received, just as an agent receipts to an express messenger, and let the official countersign once for all the employes on a page. Then you have the economy and benefits of centralization without the demoralizing interference with local administration.
The supply cars are only a beginning. The evolution must be a supply and inspection train run exclusively for company business, and to do every practicable kind of company business. It should supply every department and pick up the surplus and scrap in each. It should run over as many divisions as feasible, giving it time to return and restock so as to cover its territory at prescribed intervals, say every thirty or sixty days. This train should be manned by monthly company men, preferably of the semi-official class. The position of fireman should be part of the course of a special apprentice. If no special apprentice is available for engineman, use the man in mind for the next vacancy as road foreman. Let the scale inspector be the flagman. For conductor have a coming trainmaster, not afraid to pull off his coat to help adjust a scale or to unload a keg of track spikes. Have an ambitious brakeman for train clerk, whose records would replace requisitions and waybilling. For pilot use the superintendent, the trainmaster, the chief dispatcher, the master mechanic, the road foreman, the division engineer, or the supervisor. Have as many as possible of those last named accompany the train and give the division a rigid inspection. Pretty soon you would find the general superintendent frequently hitching his car to this train. Put the contents of the train in charge of a high-class traveling storekeeper. On the ground the employe would indicate his requirements, the division official would recommend, and the traveling storekeeper, closely in touch with the management and its policies, would take final action. Whatever happened to be done, it would be right up to date, and in accordance with existing needs. Arriving at a roundhouse, the train itself would spot a car of wheels and a car of oil, taking care to reload scrap wheels and empty oil barrels. In general do not issue a new article unless an unserviceable one is turned in. The recollections of those present will make fresher the record of expendable articles issued on a previous trip. Long range requisitions, approved by distant authority, may result in false economy, in a lack of clearly defined responsibility. The essence of good administration consists in dealing with men and things, in giving them greater value than their paper symbols. If love for requisitions should still linger in the official breast, the proprieties of such chaste affection could be preserved by going through all the forms until their absurdity is fully demonstrated.
The supply train should have a car fitted up as a workshop in which a handy man could repair station trucks, office chairs, lanterns, switch lamps, etc., etc., and save shipping many miles for a new part. Many tools and utensils would last longer if, in some such way, they could receive the stitch in time that saves nine. Prompt repair and interchange among various points should diminish investment in reserve supply. An article should not have to be returned to the place where previously used. Under present methods the return journey may put it in worse shape than when first sent in. When repaired it should be issued wherever it will do the most good.
Another car in the supply train should be a laboratory in charge of the superintendent of tests or his representative, whose office would thus get more closely in touch with division officials and with service conditions. The scrap car, with its broken side rods, its worn-out shovels, its twisted drills, might mean a whole lot in connection with arbitrary theoretical tests.
With the train, on stated trips, should be the employment bureau. Pick up candidates, haul them over the division. Talk with them, note their adaptability in strange surroundings, see of how promising a stretch is the rubber in their necks. Give them transportation back home and, if desired, tell them to report again next trip for further examination.
When your supply train has to tie up away from a night roundhouse, let the crew take short turns as watchmen. Incidentally the train might serve as an object lesson as to the endurance and capacity of men, the length of runs, and the care of an engine. If your labor contracts do not permit you to man your own train, do the necessary toward an amendment of such unwise schedules.
The more you think of the increased efficiency of the service, of the ultimate economy, of the smoother administration, the more you will cuddle up to the notion of a company train. Experience will show the wisdom or unwisdom of numerous details that will suggest themselves. I have given you only an outline with a few samples of methods to be pursued. I want you to think out the rest for yourself. It is theory to-day, but the theory of to-day is the forerunner of practice a few years hence.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
July 10, 1904.
My Dear Boy:—The progressive president of a rustling railroad has recently gone on record as regretting the too rapid introduction of big engines. To which from many an ancient office, from many a greasy roundhouse comes a loud amen. The fad for big engines, the slavery to the ton mile, the rack of the comparative statement, have cost the granger roads a pile of good coin. Procrustes, the highwayman of the ancients, fitted all his victims to stone beds, doubtless charging to other expenses the stretching of an arm or the cutting off of a foot. Nowadays we get our brains warped and our legs pulled just the same. The methods are more subtle, the operations more graceful. Our equanimity stands for almost any old thing, provided it is done in the name of progress, or is called a process of analysis. Able men devote their lives to the solution of problems of practical railroad operation, to making maximum net earnings for their employers, only to be discounted by the financial writers. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. The same writers who, to hear them tell it, can save financial panics by sound advice to the country bankers, who can instruct our Uncle Samuel how to handle his navy, who can hurry Russian troops to Manchuria, can tell us just how to run our railroad, just how many tons we should pull per train. Invention is the handmaiden of progress. Inventors are usually laymen or outsiders. Inventors and architects have to be held in check to prevent development from becoming abnormal or one-sided. The man who invented the air brake was not asked to come in and take charge of all transportation. The men who design big engines should not be allowed to forget conditions of track, territory and traffic.
Railroads are run to make money. A motion to manage them like golf links is never in order. The track is built for running trains. To the man with too much ton mile on the brain the running of a train, the very object of the road's existence, becomes a bugaboo. He will sacrifice business, incur risks of other losses, rather than run a train. In some cases this is all right, in others it is all wrong. There is a happy medium which all of us should be allowed to work out for ourselves, to suit our own conditions. The trouble is that we are denied a sliding scale. All roads look alike to the critic, the reviewer and the broker.
Roads of dense traffic with much low-class freight, such as coal, coke, ore, pig iron, etc., to move, found it more economical to have large engines and heavy trains. The nature of the business demands a considerable supply always on hand. This permits waiting for full tonnage for every train. A few cars, more or less, at one end or the other of the line make no great difference to the shipper. These roads usually have more than one track and an old solid roadbed. This good thing of economical transportation was pushed along to us of the prairies. Here traffic is relatively thin, the track with dirt ballast is less solid, hauls are many times longer, and single track is the rule. Moreover, we frequently have merchandise, implements, machinery and other high-class freight in one direction, and such perishable stuff as live stock and dressed meats in the other. A dozen years ago we had developed a combination freight and passenger engine, usually a ten-wheeler with fairly high drivers, which handled such business promptly and profitably. We could take out a Raymond excursion or a theatrical special one way, and coming back make a fly run with belated stock for a distant market. We may yet do the same with the compound battleship, but it will first require alterations and a big expenditure on track. When stock shows up you must get it moving. You cannot hold it to club trains, as in the case of coal and pig iron. You miss the market and there is a big claim to pay, to which the financial gentleman in New York does not give sufficient weight when he makes his wonderful analysis of our figures. It does not show up in grate surface, tractive power, or weight on the drivers. It is not complimentary to our wisdom that stock shippers have been compelled to invoke State aid to force us to run stock trains regardless of full tonnage, to do what our own best interests demanded. We should avoid the necessity for even a just regulation of our affairs. It opens the door to much that is unjust and undesirable.
The big engine has made us straighten curves, reduce grades, relay rail, renew bridges, buy land, increase terminals, extend passing tracks, abandon light equipment and increase wages. Its presence on single-track roads has retarded traffic and has increased expenses. It has torn up our track and increased the number of wrecks. Its long hours and trying work have been an element of demoralization among our men. The efficiency of our crews is limited to the endurance of the fireman. This last condition must be remedied by an automatic stoker—the most crying need of the present. Supply usually keeps pretty close to demand and the automatic stoker should not be very long in coming.
Yes, directly and indirectly, the big engine has cost us a lot of dough. It is not an unmixed evil. It has its good points, to be sure. Some of the new conditions it has forced would have come in time anyway. Its advantages would be greater, its operation cheaper, if its coming could have been broken to us more gently. It is now a condition, not a theory, and we must do our best with it, regardless of our personal predilections. Whether or not it has come to stay is an open question. It probably has, but modified for higher speed, when all conditions permit. We are not yet wise enough to know just what it is costing us. Not even our own statisticians have had time to digest fully the figures of increased equipment due to slower movement; of increased cost of maintenance, both of track and equipment; of unparalleled increase in freight claims; of higher wages; of strengthened power of the labor organizations; of altered trade conditions due to dissatisfaction with transportation; of changed location of industrial plants; of the effect of reduced speed on water competition; of the numerous conditions that go to make a railroad so complex. In the language of the good old funeral hymn, some time we'll understand.
We must make up our minds to prompter movement of freight, which may mean increased speed. The people demand it and public opinion is king. Here again the shipper steps in to help us out, for promptness simplifies our terminal problems. The art of war has been defined as getting the mostest men there the fustest. The art of railroading comes to mean moving the mostest trains the soonest.
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.