The American Railway: Its Construction, Development, Management, and Appliances

by Thomas Curtis Clarke

This has been the outgrowth of a single half-century. The vast and intricate organization implied in the management of such an interest had, as it were, to be improvised. The original companies were small and simple affairs. Some retired man of business held, as a rule, the position of president; while another man, generally a civil engineer, and as such supposed to be more or less acquainted with the practical working of railroads, acted as superintendent. The superintendent, in point of fact, attended to everything. He was the head of the commercial department; the head of the operating department; the head of the construction department; and the head of the mechanical department. But there is a limit to what any single man can do; and so, as the organization developed, it became necessary to relieve the railroad superintendent of many of his duties. Accordingly, the working management naturally subdivided itself into separate departments, at the head of which men were placed who had been trained all their lives to do the particular work required in each department. In the same way, the employees of the company—the wage-earners, as they are called—originally few in number, held toward the company relations similar to those which the employees in factories, shops, or on farms, held to those who employed them. In other words, there was in the railroad system no organized service. As the employees increased until they were numbered by hundreds, better organization became a necessity. The community was absolutely dependent upon its railroad service for continued existence, for the running of trains is to the modern body politic very much what the circulation of blood is to the human being. An organized system, therefore, had to grow up. This fact was not recognized at first; and, indeed, is only imperfectly recognized yet. Still the fact was there; and inasmuch as it was there and was not recognized, trouble ensued. No rationally organized railroad service—that is, no service in which the employer and employed occupy definite relations toward each other, recognized by each, and by the body politic—no such service exists. Approaches to it only have been made. A discussion, therefore, of the form that such a service would naturally take if it were organized, cannot be otherwise than timely.

It has already been noticed that in the process of organization the railroad, following the invariable law, naturally subdivides itself into different departments.[32] In the case of every corporation of magnitude there are of these departments, whether one man is at the head of one or several of them, at least five. These are:

1st. The financial department, which provides the ways and means.

2d. The construction department, which builds the railroad after the means to build it are provided.

3d. The operating department, which operates the road after it is built.

4th. The commercial department, which finds business for the operated road to do, and regulates the rates which are to be charged for doing it.

5th. The legal department, which attends to all the numerous questions which arise in the practical working of everyone of the other departments.

These five divisions of necessary work exist in the organization of every company, no matter how small it may be, or how few officers it may employ. In the larger companies the need is found for yet other special departments. In the case of the Union Pacific, for instance, there are two such: First, the comptroller's department, which establishes and is responsible for the whole method of accounting; second, a department which is responsible for all the numerous interests which a large railroad company almost of necessity develops outside of its strict, legitimate work as a common carrier.

When it comes to dealing with the employees of the company, it will be found that the vast majority of those whose names are on the pay-rolls belong to the operating department. This department is responsible not only for the running of trains and, usually, for the maintenance of the permanent way, but also for the repairs of rolling stock. All the train-hands, all the section-men and bridge-gangs, and all the mechanics in the repair shops thus belong to the operating department. The accounting department employs only clerks. The same is true of the commercial department, though the commercial department has also agents at different business centres who look after the company's interests and secure traffic for it. The construction department is in the hands of civil engineers, and the force employed by it depends entirely upon the amount of building which may at any time be going on. As a rule, the bulk of the employees in the construction department are paid by contractors, and not directly by the railroad company. The legal department consists only of lawyers and the few clerks necessary to aid them in transacting their business.

In the operating department of the Union Pacific at the present time (1886) about 14,000 names are carried upon the pay-roll. The number varies according to the season of the year and the pressure of traffic. In January, and during the winter months, the average will fall to 12,000, while in June and during the summer it rises to 14,000.