No two railroad presidents come up to their problem in quite the same way. Take the two members of the Western railroad world—one gone now—Hill and Harriman. In J. J. Hill’s domain the personality of the man counts for everything. He picks his men, advances them, rejects or dismisses them, by a rare intuitive sense, with which he judges character. A high chief in his ranks once asked for a vacation in which to take his family to Europe. Hill granted it. When the man came back from Europe another was at his desk. Hill did not approve of long vacations, and that was his method of showing it. The department head should have known better.
On the other hand, Harriman measured his men impersonally—as if in a master scale. He measured them by results. A man might personally be somewhat repugnant to him, but if he accomplished results for the road, he held his place, at least until some one came along who could do even better.
W. C. Brown, of the New York Central, and James McCrea, of the Pennsylvania, are the heads of two railroads great in mileage and in volume of traffic; yet their methods are in many essentials radically different. McCrea is the essence of Pennsylvania policy—coldly impersonal. It is easier to gain an audience with the president of the United States than with the president of the Pennsylvania. No Pennsylvania man from president down to the lowest ranking officer, grants an interview to a newspaper reporter. It would be risky business for any officer of the Pennsylvania to have his photograph published or himself glorified by reason of his connection with the company. The company is the corporation.
When it speaks, it speaks impersonally through its press agent, a clever young man with clever assistants, who both answers newspaper questions and advances newspaper information. His function is a new one of the American railroad, and allies itself directly with the office of the president.
W. C. Brown, of the New York Central, probably stands preëminent to-day among American railroad executives. He has shouldered himself up from the ranks of the railroad army, and only good wishes have gone to him as he has stepped from one high post to a still higher one. He has come, as nine out of ten successful executives have come, from the operating end of the railroad.
Brown is particularly accessible to newspaper reporters. He talks with them, carefully and painstakingly, and sees to it that they are correctly informed as to each of the great railroad problems of the day. He believes sincerely that the head of a railroad should be personality and that the personality should stand forth directly in the guidance of the property. In his own case, at least, he has demonstrated the value of his theory.
For all this work and all this strain, the railroad president demands that he be adequately paid. He has a good many perquisites—chief among them a comfortable private car at his beck and call; but perquisites are not salary. The head and front of the American railroad to-day receives anywhere from $15,000 to $75,000; an astonishingly large percentage of railroad presidents are receiving at least $50,000 annually. But they work for their pay—sometimes with their life-devotion, as in the case of the big man who built the big terminal; other times with the hard sense of the president who bought his steel girders and cars in the time of panic. Here is a case in point.
A road in the Middle West, which was so compact as to make it quite local in character, had a big traffic proposition to handle and was handling it in a miserable fashion. One local celebrity after another tackled it, until the directors were laying side bets with one another as to the precise day when the receiver should walk into the office. Finally, Eastern capital, which was heavily interested in the property, revolted at the local offerings, and sent out an operating man with a big reputation to take hold of it.
The directors received him with a certain veiled distrust as coming from another land, but in the end they hired him. The matter of salary came up last of all.
“Fifty thousand,” said the New Yorker in a low voice.