Most of the divisions of the Harriman lines had an assistant superintendent, engaged mainly in outside duties, with an office near the superintendent’s, presided over by a chief clerk. Both the superintendent and the assistant superintendent had his own chief clerk, who consumed reams of paper annually in intercommunications over their respective superior’s signatures. The new system provides, as a first step, that if the division has no assistant superintendent, one shall be appointed. The next step is to order the assistant superintendent to remain at headquarters in charge of the office, in effect, but not in name, the chief-of-staff idea, so successfully applied by the Germans through Von Moltke. When necessary, an additional trainmaster is appointed for the previous outside duties of the assistant superintendent. The old chief clerk is placed in line of promotion by appointing him, when possible, to a position with outside duties on the road.
Next, the division shop is raided, the division master mechanic and the travelling engineer (road foreman of engines) are moved bodily to the same building with the division superintendent, where are usually already located, the division engineer, the trainmaster, and the chief despatcher. The old theory has been that the master mechanic should be at his shop to supervise the shop force. The new conception is that the master mechanic has passed the stage of a shop foreman; that, located at one shop, he unconsciously comes to underestimate the importance of roundhouses and car repair plants at outlying points on the division. He is brought to division headquarters to get the atmosphere of transportation, to be in touch with the train sheet, and to realize that motive power is one of the component elements of transportation; that the shop is incident to the railroad, not the railroad to the shop.
The official family, now being gathered under the parental roof of the superintendent, are politely requested to deposit the official shooting-iron, the typewriter, in one official arsenal, from which all shooting will be done in the future. The office files are consolidated in one office of record. This idea is borrowed from the courts of justice, where one clerk of the court, with as many deputies as necessary, records all transactions regardless of the number of judges and other officers.
You must have worked in a railroad office to appreciate the fearful condition of official files in this year of grace, nineteen hundred eleven. You ask for the file on that culvert at Jones’ farm on the Martinsburgh branch, and an anæmic office-boy staggers toward you with enough manuscript to be the making of a novel. There are the contract arrangements and the correspondence with the J. B. & G. concerning the union station privileges that are enjoyed with it at Blissville; why, there was a whole chapter given over to that episode of July, three summers ago, when the leaders had to be renewed on that magnificent structure, and its roof re-shingled. Here is the contract for handling milk on a single side-line division—and the accompanying symposium of thought from chief clerks and minor officers in the form of miscellaneous—and entirely useless—correspondence. This is the agreement with the bridge-builders’ union—four inches thick. No wonder the shelves of the record room sag, and that the clerks are hollow-eyed. Tons of unprotected paper have been scrawled upon, perfect rivers of helpless black ink have done the work—and all for that!
The heaviest file in the office of the Harriman system to-day is half an inch in thickness, and there is no one to deny that the property is being run at a high stage of efficiency—particularly in comparison with some other railroad systems of the land. As the result of a single record system at any division headquarters, the astounding saving has been to that group of railroads, of five hundred thousand letters a year, and it now goes without saying that they were unnecessary letters. In a year or two, that figure will cross the million mark—and you must take second breath to imagine the time and thought that goes into the making of a million letters in a twelvemonth. The material saving in stationery is considerable—although trifling in the operation of a system that spends about $225,000,000 a year, but the logical claim is made that the five hundred thousand letters eliminated retarded rather than helped administration, that they produced more harm than good. Deeper than all this is the dwarfing effect upon the individual initiative of the man below, for whom the letter attempts to think.
Elimination of red tape is not the sole object of the new system. Mr. Kruttschnitt regards this as incidental. What has appealed to him is the final step in the organization which is to confer the uniform title of “assistant superintendent” upon the former division engineer, master mechanic, trainmaster, travelling engineer, roadmaster, and chief despatcher. These officers retain their former duties and responsibilities, but they broaden authority to meet emergencies on the spot. This means increased supervision of employees, more scientific management of men. The officials of the Harriman lines faced here a ticklish problem. The attitude of organized labor was in doubt. Would the men object to too many bosses? Would confusion result from several men issuing orders that might possibly conflict? The results have been a splendid vindication of the intelligence of the men who are close to things. The men were often quicker to catch the idea than were the officers. What appealed to them most of all was the dictum that no man could sign another man’s name or initials.
“We old men do our work, no matter how many bosses there are; we realize that younger men need more instruction than supervision,” said a veteran conductor on the Union Pacific, when the matter was brought to his attention. “We used to make one report to the master mechanic and another to the superintendent. Now one report addressed simply ‘assistant superintendent’ is enough. It means less red tape. But what we like best of all is that some smart Aleck of a clerk can no longer jack us up.”
That veteran ticket-puncher recalled that in older days conductors had been dismissed for allowing operators to sign their names to telegraphic train orders; perhaps the letter of dismissal was signed by the superintendent’s chief clerk. There was railroad system for you!
After a year and a half of what the local officers called trial—for Mr. Kruttschnitt and Major Hine have always regarded that period as demonstration rather than as experiment—the system was broadened. It was applied to some of the higher units. For nearly a year, the U. P. general officers at Omaha have had five assistant general managers. In other days there were a general superintendent, a superintendent of motive power, a chief engineer, a superintendent of transportation, and an assistant to the general manager. The new million dollar general office building of the U. P. at Omaha will have its office space arranged according to the new conception. Until it is completed, the consolidation of office records will not be practicable, because the various general offices are now scattered over town. But a start has been made, and plans laid for full development.
What is good at the east end of a railroad is generally as good at the west end, and so the plan, working handily in general offices at Omaha, has been transplanted to the general offices of another Harriman road—the newly combined Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Company at Portland, Ore., and at Seattle, Wash. Other general headquarters of the Harriman roads are only awaiting the construction of new and modern office buildings, before they will be asked to fall in line with the plan. Kruttschnitt does not order these things. He is far too wise a railroader for that. He directs by suggestion and the family circle talks of Major Hine. And yet twenty-three out of the thirty-three divisions of the Harriman railroad group have fallen into the new groove within two short years.