“I came in primarily to ask you to take luncheon with me, would you join me at one o’clock?”
“No, I had my lunch at the proper hour” came the quick rejoinder. Fortunately, the balance of the day was spent among “white men” of whom there are 95 per cent. naturally inclined to transact business with reason and decency, and their broad guage tendency seems to expand in proportion to the magnitude and responsibility of their undertakings.
Another gentleman occasioned a good deal of laughter telling on himself the story of taking his new chief on an introductory tour and being embarrassed to learn that the first manufacturer they called on had been dead for a year, and the second one, whom our friend knew to some extent, asking him what his name was. It takes time to talk away or live down these little incidents. Now and then a modest shipper with about one car a year traveling in your direction, will unblushingly suggest that he be loaned one of your annual passes for a little trip down to New York, and I recall hearing of a wallet of transportation, in the wrong hands, being lost in the railway yards near Rochester.
A number of the boys remember certain shippers who have had an insatiable longing for some substantial token in reciprocity for the traffic they could control, with a leaning towards a variety of household furnishings and what-nots.
Patronage lists and their influence, if operative the wrong way, are often the invention of the evil one and nullify the efforts of a conscientious worker, otherwise in good standing with all parties. One day Billy A——, General Freight Agent of the Canadian Pacific Railway, called with a traveling representative on a certain undesignated Canadian biscuit factory: out came the list with the statement of the egregious young manager that “Your road is not using our product on its diners.”
“Well,” promptly responded the truthful William, “It may be they are not good enough”.
To elaborate further, a contractor erecting a building in a distant city for a firm doing a large outfitting and general selling business, routed twelve carloads of structural steel that he required, via the “P.D.Q.R.” A wide awake, aggressive competitor coveted the haul of the material and meant to have it. They promptly placed an $80,000 order for hotel requisites with the outfitting firm and the latter, feeling the pressure where it was intended to be felt, capitulated, assuaged the contractor’s rising ire in a monetary but lesser degree, which, of course, jilted the expectations of the “P.D.Q.R.”
A competing line with heavy purchasing appropriations has been known to often frustrate genuine tonnage hopes by wiring that the name of a shipper interested in a transaction, be removed from their patronage lists unless he immediately saw the error of his ways and banished consideration for a rival route or an M.P., in Victoria, B.C., we’ll say, may exert some influence he may have and busy himself by telegraphing to forward specific public works supplies from the east this way or that.
The staff of a district freight department may do considerable preparatory work regarding, for instance, the movement of Australian and New Zealand wool for Europe to find their plans upset by a necessary war-time embargo affecting the transport of sheep skins and crossbred wool through this port or that country.
The bete noir of all railroad men is the shifty, unprincipled person who deceives you with a misleading yarn and means to do something else. A sample of this method of operating is outlined in the case following, and concerns a carload of pianos going from an Ontario town to Vancouver, B.C. Knowing his man, the consignee had telegraphed and also written the shippers “Route our car now loading ‘N.C.O. & B.R.R.’: under no circumstances deviate, pay no attention to other instructions, this is final.” To dull the watchfulness of the interested railways, Ananias declared the shipment would be held pending the arrival from elsewhere of an enclosure of four pianos, meanwhile laboring secretly to dispatch the complete shipment in the interim contrary to instructions. Temporarily balked in his fell purpose, to disarm suspicion when interrogated, he actually ordered placed on his siding a suitable car as a screen or camouflage, but pursued his original plan. Not until repeatedly disciplined by the head office did this factory manager desist and finally unload the forbidden car and obey orders. Such an employee is a stumbling block to progressive business.