I shall not continue further in this letter the catechismal method, lest you accuse me of forgetting that you long ago graduated from the kindergarten. So you did; but when in doubt get back to early methods. After reading recently an article on scientific management, I had to recall my catechism to feel certain that handling pig iron is not the chief end of man. We all, you and I included, sometimes show up smaller than we really are, because we seem to think only in the narrow terms of the things to which we are closest. It once fell to the lot of a young official to escort over his road some of its directors, bankers from New York. Being an enthusiast for his section of country, being an operating man with an instinct for developing traffic, he talked of progress, of the economic and social welfare of the people. When he spoke of sugar planting, or of cotton growing, of blooded stock and dairy yield, the bankers asked, "How much does it cost to raise an acre?" or "What percentage of profit do they make?" He returned from the trip feeling that money must be their god, that his directors could think only in terms of dollars and cents. It dampened his ardor for a time. Then he was so fortunate as to ride for a few days with some of the really big modern bankers. He found himself listening with open mouth to their expression of practical sociological truths. He marveled at their recognition of the human element, and he understood better why the board sometimes turned down his recommendations. His only lament was that he could not see more of them. There, my boy, is the great misfortune, there is a problem to be solved. There is too much Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. The directors seem too far away. It is a step forward that the overlords of transportation are bankers who have won their way rather than hereditary descendants of once reigning families. Some method must be evolved to make for more elastic control. Annual inspection trips will not overcome that rigidity in administration at which the public chafes and from which it seeks relief in drastic laws. An interesting and hopeful phase of present development is the election to directorates of trained railway executives like L. F. Loree and H. I. Miller. The professionally equipped railway director is a desirable evolution. Supply always follows demand, and the broad solution will be a composite made up of many elements of progress which perhaps have not yet unfolded themselves to any of us.
It is a great game, this transportation business. The more you study it, however, the more you discover that it is amenable to the same underlying principles on which rest the great and small activities of the human race. Like all professions, it has its distinct technique. Like all professions, it suffers from the inborn tendency of human nature to segregate itself behind an exaggerated class consciousness. "We are a little different," or "You do not quite understand our peculiar local conditions," are the arguments with which ultra-conservatism has opposed progress in all ages, are the obstacles which make so interesting all real contests for principle.
I make no apologies for taking you in this letter from the witness stand of the west to the financial chancelleries of the east. When both the banker director and the general manager learn that signatures on letters and tram orders must be as sacred as when signed to bank checks, we shall be winning back a little of that old-time sense of personal responsibility which is so needed for improving composite efficiency to-day. What better epitaph could any man desire than this, "He helped to teach corporations to remember that lasting composite strength comes only from intelligent recognition of individual manhood?"
Affectionately, your own,
D. A. D.
LETTER V.
LIMITATIONS OF THE CHIEF CLERK SYSTEM.
Tucson, Arizona, May 6, 1911.
My Dear Boy:—I have had a good deal to say to you at one time and another about chief clerks and the chief clerk system. From actual experience as a chief clerk I know that it is a trying position. It is because the railway chief clerks of the country are as a class such a splendid body of men that I am trying to do what I can to help them. Too many times a chief clerk misses promotion because he is such a valuable man that he has to stand still to break in all the new bosses who come along and leave him in the side track.
The chief clerk system as we know it to-day cannot long survive because it is too feudal in conception to reflect the spirit of a progressive age. We need a chief clerk to be a head clerk, a senior clerk, a foreman of the office forces, as it were. Much of the time on American railroads the chief clerk is in effect an acting official, acting trainmaster, acting superintendent, acting general manager, acting vice-president, and even acting president. As such he signs the name of his boss, the theory being that the latter, like a feudal baron or a king, is omnipresent within his own dominions. Not only does this outgrown conception violate the fundamental laws of matter; it often borders upon a breach of honor, integrity and good faith. Legal fictions are fast giving place to the law of common sense. Railway officials should not risk arraignment before the bar of public opinion for such indefensible practices.