"No, sir."
"Of Massachusetts Tech.?"
"No, sir."
"Then you are engaged," said Toucey.
Mr. Toucey was well up-to-date, and differed from a superintendent on another road in which I was a director. The suburban business of that line had increased very rapidly, but there were not enough trains or cars to accommodate the passengers. The overcrowding caused many serious discomforts. I had the superintendent called before the board of directors, and said to him: "Why don't you immediately put on more trains and cars?"
"Why, Mr. Depew," he answered, "what would be the use? They are settling so fast along the line that the people would fill them up and overcrowd them just as before."
I was going over the line on an important tour at one time with G. H. Burroughs, superintendent of the Western Division. We were on his pony engine, with seats at the front, alongside the boiler, so that we could look directly on the track. Burroughs sat on one side and I on the other. He kept on commenting aloud by way of dictating to his stenographer, who sat behind him, and praise and criticism followed rapidly. I heard him utter in his monotonous way: "Switch misplaced, we will all be in hell in a minute," and then a second afterwards continue: "We jumped the switch and are on the track again. Discharge that switchman."
Major Zenas Priest was for fifty years a division superintendent. It was a delightful experience to go with him over his division. He knew everybody along the line, was general confidant in their family troubles and arbiter in neighborhood disputes. He knew personally every employee and his characteristics and domestic situation. The wives were generally helping him to keep their husbands from making trouble. To show his control and efficiency, he was always predicting labor troubles and demonstrating that the reason they did not occur was because of the way in which he handled the situation.
Mr. C. M. Bissell was a very efficient superintendent, and for a long time in charge of the Harlem Railroad. He told me this incident. We decided to put in effect as a check upon the conductors a system by which a conductor, when a fare was paid on the train, must tear from a book a receipt which he gave to the passenger, and mark the amount on the stub from which the receipt was torn. Soon after a committee of conductors called upon Mr. Bissell and asked for an increase of pay. "Why," Bissell asked, "boys, why do you ask for that now?"
After a rather embarrassing pause the oldest conductor said: "Mr. Bissell, you have been a conductor yourself."