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.
LETTER XV.
MORE ON CIVIL SERVICE.
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.