The Project Gutenberg eBook, Letters from an Old Railway Official, by Charles DeLano Hine

LETTERS FROM AN OLD
RAILWAY OFFICIAL
SECOND SERIES
TO HIS SON, A GENERAL MANAGER

BY

Charles DeLano Hine

1912

Published by the
SIMMONS-BOARDMAN PUBLISHING CO.
NEW YORK

McGraw-Hill Book Company, Sole Selling Agents
239 West Thirty-ninth Street, New York

London, E.C., 6 Bouverie Street. Berlin, N.W. 7, Unter den Linden 71

Copyright, 1912, by
Simmons-Boardman Publishing Co.
new york

FOREWORD.

The author of the letters composing this book, which appeared serially in the Railway Age Gazette in 1911, is a West Point graduate. He served as a lieutenant in the 6th United States Infantry. He is a civil engineer. He is a graduate of the Cincinnati Law School. Leaving the Army to enter railway service, he worked as freight brakeman, switchman, yardmaster, emergency conductor, chief clerk to superintendent, and trainmaster. When the war with Spain began in 1898 he quit railway service and participated in the Santiago campaign as a major of volunteers. After the war he re-entered railway work, and was trainmaster and later general superintendent. Subsequently, he did special railway work in various staff positions for both large and small railways in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

He was for a time inspector of safety appliances for the Interstate Commerce Commission. In 1907 he assisted in the revision of the business methods of the Department of the Interior at Washington, D.C. Then he was receiver of the Washington, Arlington & Falls Church Electric Railway. In 1910, as temporary special representative of President Taft, he outlined a scheme for improving the organization and methods of the executive departments of the United States government. Meantime, in July, 1908, he had become special representative of Mr. Julius Kruttschnitt, director of maintenance and operation of the Harriman Lines, and had entered on a study of the needs of the operating organization of those railways and of the means that should be adopted to meet those needs. The result of this work was the adoption by most of the Harriman Lines of the unit system of organization. On January 15, 1912, Major Hine became vice-president and general manager of the Southern Pacific Lines in Mexico and the Arizona Eastern, having about 1,600 miles of railway.

The foregoing details have not been given for biographical purposes. They have been given to enable the reader to understand the author's point of view. Or, rather, his points of view. For few men have had opportunity to look at the railway business from so many angles, both practical and theoretical. Given such an education, such a training, such a varied experience, and a keen observer's eye to see, an active, logical mind to generalize, and a graphic, witty, scintillant English style to set down the results of observation, experience and thinking, and, if their possessor turn to writing, the product is sure to be literature of interest and value. The readers of Major Hine's first series of letters, "Letters of an Old Railway Official to His Son, a Division Superintendent," found them at once entertaining, suggestive and instructive. They will find equally or more so the second series, written after a wider experience, and now embodied in this volume.

One of the greatest problems of modern railway management is that of organization. Little railways have been combined into big ones; and big railways have been consolidated into big systems. To so organize these extensive systems that each division and each railway shall have enough individuality and autonomy to deal effectively and satisfactorily with the conditions and needs local to it, and at the same time bring about the correlation and unification of all parts of the entire system essential to the most efficient operation—this is one phase of the problem. To develop men able to administer skilfully departments having many and varied branches—this is another phase. It was as a means to solving this great problem that Major Hine worked out the unit system of organization now in effect on most parts of the Harriman system. In the letters composing this book he has described, not with the cold, hard outlines of a blue print, but vividly, and with fullness of practical illustration, the nature, purposes and workings of the unit system. Whether the reader agrees with the author's views or not, he cannot but be interested in them as the views regarding a scheme of organization which is the subject of widespread interest and discussion of the man who originated and worked out that scheme of organization.

Besides organization the letters deal with many other questions of practical interest both large and small—with the relations of the railway with the public; its regulation by public bodies; the labor situation on the railways, etc. Indeed, they touch on almost every phase of contemporary railway conditions and operation. Full of human touches, they clothe the skeleton of railway organization and operation with flesh and blood; and will give the current reader and the future historian a better picture of contemporary railway working than many more stilted and pretentious books.

SAMUEL O. DUNN.

FILE NUMBERS.

Letters From A Railway Official

LETTER I.
THE NEW GENERAL MANAGER.

Chicago, April 8, 1911.

My Dear Boy:—Once more a circular comes to gladden my heart and gratify my pride. This circular announces your appointment as general manager, a position of honor and importance, extensive in its opportunities for good administration as well as for wasteful neglect.

Some seven years ago, when you were a division superintendent, I wrote you a book of letters which caused us both to be taken more seriously than perhaps we shall ever be again. Can T. R. come back? I don't know, I am sure, but your old Dad can and will. For never before in our splendid profession of railroading has there been greater need for the wisdom of old age, the enthusiasm of youth, and the balanced execution of middle life. We, the railways, we the most scattered and, ergo, the most exposed of property rights, are the first of the outposts to receive and to repel the assaults of anarchy and its smaller sister, socialism. Subtle, sinister, and specious is the reasoning which supports the claims of those who single out the arteries of inland commerce as a thing apart, as something immune to the irresistible laws of cause and effect. Shall we sit idly by, because we have had our part? No, my son. In that inspiring painting, "The Spirit of '76," the old man and the boy, equals in enthusiasm, typify the soul love of liberty of an aroused people. Let you and I, therefore, do our little part to call to arms our brethren of a nation-long village street. Perhaps we are only hired hands of imaginary "interests." Perhaps, nevertheless, we are liberty-loving, God-fearing, right-thinking American citizens. Perhaps we do not need to be backed into the last corner before we turn and stand for the God-given rights for which men of all ages have been willing to fight and die. Perhaps the muck-rakers have not procured all the patents pertaining to perfection, potential or pronounced. But be that as it may, you and I can at least be heard, can have our day in the forum of public opinion, which after all is the court of last resort. In the language of Mr. Dooley, the decisions of the Supreme Court follow the popular elections.

What shall we do to be saved? First, put our own house in order that example may protect precept. It is a pretty good house after all. Only eighty years old to be sure, short in epochs of experience, but relatively long in æons of achievement. It already has some degenerate offspring, but mighty few when you consider the rapidity of forced breeding, the intensity of incubation. Transportation, acknowledged as second only to agriculture in the world's great industries, has advanced faster and further in eight decades than has agriculture in eight centuries. That is something to be proud of. Therein is glory enough for us all.

Unfortunately, pride goeth before destruction. In the bivouac of the living, glory is a mighty unreliable sentinel. Let us hang up pride and glory as our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. Let us don consistent practice and tenacious watchfulness for week-day wear. Let us cease to temporize with principle when such unmanly action seems easy and inexpensive. Nothing is so expensive ultimately as a violation of principle. A platitude, you say. So it is. The aforesaid T. R. has gained a great hold on the American people, at one time a strangle hold, by repeating platitudes over and over again. Great is the man who can measure the limitations of his fellows. Let us take a leaf from his book and repeat, reiterate, and reverberate the Ten Commandments, and the greatest of all commandments, the Golden Rule, alias the Square Deal.

It takes an abnormally intelligent people to grasp at first blush the truism that railways should charge "what the traffic will bear" for the same good reason that the corner grocer makes all the profit the business will survive. Therefore, put the soft pedal on cost of service and a fair return on capital invested.

Get on the band wagon and follow the able lead of the good old Railway Age Gazette in playing the logical tune of value of service rendered, of charging all the admission fee the show will stand. The people will not go to church to hear our preaching. We must reach them in the highways and the byways, in the moving picture shows, and through improvised Salvation Armies of self-interest. Do not expect the people to espouse a cause in which we are half-hearted. Either we are right or we are wrong. Either the government should own and run the railways, or the stockholders should retain possession and we, the intelligent entrepreneur class, should continue our scientific management—for scientific it has been.

In a world of complexities, filled with relative things, some truths are so absolute that they are axiomatic, some positions so pronounced that there is no middle ground. From Trafalgar there rings through the ages Nelson's signal, "England expects every man to do his duty." Its interpretation and its adaptation for us to-day mean that every railroad man, every home lover, every believer in property rights must defend the sound position of the railways, must anticipate the assaults of pseudo-socialism. The individual is the indivisible unit of society. The family is the consecrated unit of civilization. The home is the prime requisite for the family whose very existence depends upon the right of property, tangible or intangible.

You say that all railway men are doing something along this line. So they are, but nearly every one can do more if intelligently and persistently directed. We have taken too much for granted in believing that the legal department would look out for legislation, and the press agent for publicity. This phase, like many of our problems, is a question of organization, which itself as a science is a branch of sociology. On most railways some department—never, of course, our own—has unconsciously tried to be bigger than the whole company, in violation of the axiom that the whole is greater than any of its parts. When, by proper organization, we balance these departments—especially on the other fellow's road—we shall be in a better position to present a more united front in forestalling the arrival of the common enemy, prejudice and his principal ally, ignorance. "Men," says Marcus Aurelius, "exist for one another. Teach them, then, or bear with them." We, the railroads, have done our share of bearing. It is time to do more teaching. Before we can impart knowledge we must know ourselves, we must be sure of our own information.

Naturally, I want you to be the best general manager in the country. Therefore, if I am a little too didactic at times, you must be patient with me. Of course, you will have to work out your conclusions for yourself. Remember that I am too old at this teaching game to try always to think for other people. My job is so to state the propositions that you will reach the answers in your own way. Incidentally, the more you think you have discovered for yourself, the greater the credit due your teacher. Men are only boys grown tall. As grown-up children they seem to prefer the misfits of their own manufacture to the hand-me-down assortment from the shelves of stored experience. Too often the employing corporation pays the bill for educating an official for his duties after his promotion and appointment, for the cloth he wastes in selecting unwise patterns of procedure.

Most of our large corporations are still in a stage of industrial feudalism. In the middle ages the feudal baron and his methods were absolutely essential to preserve civilization for society. Without him and his forceful ways the relapse to barbarism would have been rapid. In the earlier periods of the large corporation the industrial baron and his ofttimes lawless audacity were essentials of corporate existence. As these great types die off, their system dies with them. Supply keeps close on the heels of demand. These feudal barons of industry and commerce are breeding no successors because none are needed. As a government of laws succeeds a government of men, so administration by system displaces administration by personal caprice. The scheme of progress now demands a higher type of corporation official, and he is being rapidly developed. Altruism, adaptability, consideration and courtesy are the more modern requirements. The successful official of to-day is more of a sociologist than ever before. He must study human nature from its broadest aspects. He must know the public, its whims and caprices, its faults and foibles, its intelligence and its strength. He must learn to know his men that he may see how many things they can do, not how few. Human nature is mighty good stuff. The more it is trusted the better it responds. The feudal baron did not know this. He was jealous of his own authority, because more or less conscious of his limitations, of the weakness of his system. Those who take up his self-imposed responsibilities must be better men. They must be so sure of themselves and of the science of their methods that they can trust others, can delegate authority to the man on the ground. The task of the general manager to-day is so to decentralize authority that the company can obtain the best thought of the humblest employe, that indivisible unit of society whom his feudal superiors have trusted too little. The most important unit of organization is the individual. Give him his due weight as a living, thinking man, and you increase the mass efficiency of the corporation.

This run is too heavy for stringing on one schedule. I am now giving you the first terminal figure, 12:01 a.m. at Problem. Next time if I can push you to Principle you can perhaps flag over a station or two toward the despatcher at Understanding, whose wires have been known to go down in stormy weather.

With a father's blessing,

Your affectionate and rejuvenated,

D. A. D.

LETTER II.
BUILDING AN ORGANIZATION.

Chicago, April 15, 1911.

My Dear Boy:—Nearly every man entrusted with authority over his fellows flatters himself that he is a born organizer. Flattery is never more deceptive than when applied to one's self.

For every good organizer there are a hundred good administrators or managers. What often passes for good organization is first class administration. Yes, many a mother's son who reads this will exclaim at first blush, "That is just what I have been saying for a long time. It beats all how weak some organizations are. I am glad that my organization can stand the test of such criticism."

If elements of self-perpetuation are prime essentials of good organization, the Pharisee family are certainly entitled to bid in the preferred runs.

The corporation was evolved to supply a demand of society. Life, property, material, moral and spiritual welfare could not be left to depend upon the uncertain earthly existence of the leader or trustee. So, both rationally and empirically, by reason and by costly experiment, came the corporation to beat Death at his own game. Like all progress the corporation was resisted, because in the divine scheme of things the radicals never long outnumber the conservatives. Like all real progress the corporation idea won because it was needed. The corporation, whether governmental, religious, industrial or commercial, marks a distinct advance from feudalism by protecting the rights of the many against the caprice of the few. Because we have moved so fast might has often seemed to be right. Because the line of least resistance is the most attractive, we have sometimes backed down the hill and doubled when a good run with plenty of sand would have carried us over. Large corporations, including many railways, have often failed to attain maximum efficiency. Much of this can be traced to a neglect to carry out consistently in practice the sound working conception of the corporation. The corporation has helped society to emerge from political and financial feudalism. The interior organization and administration of most corporations, including government itself, are still too feudal in conception. The problem of to-day is so to eradicate this feudalism that the corporation can have the benefit of a free play of its constituent forces. Where feudalism exists the effective working strength is limited to the personal equation of the man at the head. The United States government is stronger than Washington, or Lincoln, or Taft. The Great Northern Railway measures its present acknowledged effectiveness by the man the Swedes call Yim Hill. The United States government grows stronger with every administration. The Great Northern Railway, too strong to be destroyed, faces a period of relative distress with the next dynasty. The Pennsylvania Railroad is stronger than such strong men as Scott, Cassatt and McCrea. Both the United States government and the Pennsylvania Railroad, although among the least feudal of large corporations, can still eradicate feudalism from their interior organization and administration. That, in good time, both will do so cannot be doubted. Inconsistencies between comprehensive conceptions at the top and narrow applications at the bottom are often overlooked. When disclosed and appreciated these incongruities soon give way under pressure of the broad policies above. We must build up from the bottom but tear down our false work from the top.

Organization is a branch of a larger subject, sociology, the science of human nature. Organization is not an exact science like mechanical engineering, for example. The variables in the human equation defy entire elimination. We check and recheck engineering conclusions. We compute and recompute material strains and stresses. We run and double back with the dynamometer car to try out our tractive power. We test and retest materials. We weigh and measure our fuel and our lubricants. We do all this for material things, which, because more or less homogeneous, are the easiest to measure. When we come to the really hard part, the judging of human nature, the co-ordination of the heterogeneous human elements, our self-confidence denies the necessity for preconceived practical tests. Because he is our man, because he followed us from the sage brush or the mountains, he must be all right. "Just look at our results." Right there, my boy, shut off and pinch 'em down a little. What are results? Does any one know exactly? One year they are operating ratio, another, train load, and later on, net earnings. In no storehouse do material things deteriorate to scrap value faster than does the intangible, indeterminate stock article, results. No, I am not a pessimist; I still see the ring of the doughnut on the lunch counter. But I do object to being fed on birds from year before last's nests. I believe the railways hatch out better results every year, but I also feel that improvement should and can be made even faster. It is largely a breeding problem. How best can we blend our numerous strains to produce a balanced output? Too often we try to do this by cutting off the heads of all the old roosters, whose craws really contain too much good sand to be wasted. A change of diet to a balanced ration may be all-sufficient.

The wonderful Nineteenth Century in the name of a proper specialization went too far. It over-specialized. The still more wonderful Twentieth Century will swing back to a balanced specialization. The medical colleges are learning that they can not turn out successful eye and ear specialists, the law schools that the constitutional or interstate commerce lawyer is the production of a later period. The successful specialist must first have the foundation of an all-round training. Broadly speaking, one applies everything of something only by learning something of everything. We all believe in specialization. Where we differ is as to the point where specialization stops and overspecialization begins. We all believe in religion. Where we differ is as to which is the main line and which the runaway track, as to which derail deserves a distant banjo signal and which an upper quadrant. Orthodoxy is usually my doxy. The great fear is always that the other fellow, being less orthodox than we, will try to put over some constructive mileage on us. Sometimes this causes us to make his run so long and his train so heavy that he ties up under the sixteen-hour law and we miss supper hour going out to tow him in. An empty stomach discourages drowsiness, and we may then stay awake long enough to realize that said other fellow was just as orthodox as anybody about trying to make a good run.

The corollary of specialization is centralization. The undesirable corollary of overspecialization is overcentralization. Get out your detour map, approach this proposition by any route of reasoning you please, and you will reach the same conclusion.

Railway administration to-day suffers most of all from overcentralization. Trace this to its source and you will find overspecialization of function, and its concomitant, an exaggerated value of certain constituent elements of administration. When in doubt, recall the ever applicable axiom that the whole is greater than any of its parts. Some people confuse the terms and ideas, concentration and centralization. Proper concentration in complete units by an earlier convergence of authority permits decentralization in administration. A lack of such early concentration makes centralization inevitable. Again, concentration of financial control is not incompatible with decentralization of administration among constituent controlled properties. When the big bankers have time to think out these propositions for themselves they will permit the railways to get closer to the people and hostile legislation will diminish if not disappear.

Organization as a science seeks to develop and to support the strong qualities of human nature. Organization likewise takes account of and seeks to minimize the amiable failings of human nature. Constitutional liberty insures the citizen protection against the caprice of the public officer. Administrative liberty demands an analogous measure of protection for the subordinate from the whim of his corporate superior. An amiable failing of many a railway president is to be satisfied with having everybody under his own authority, and to forget that the official next below may be embarrassed by having only a partial control. The general manager who insists the hardest that his superintendents are best off under his departmental system will squirm the quickest under the acid test of having the chief supply, the chief maintenance or the chief mechanical official report to the president. The superintendent who finds himself with a complete divisional organization is oblivious to the troubles of a distant yardmaster with car inspectors. When your old Dad was a ninety-dollar yardmaster some of his most important work was at the mercy of a forty-five dollar car inspector. The latter was under a master mechanic a hundred miles or more away, who in turn could usually and properly count on the support of the superintendent of motive power. The obvious inference was to relieve the yardmaster of responsibility for mechanical matters. From one viewpoint these mechanical questions are too highly technical for the yardmaster. From another they are matters of common sense requiring more good judgment than technical training. No, I would not put every yardmaster over the roundhouse foreman and the car inspectors. What I would do would be to make the position of yardmaster sufficiently attractive to impose as a prerequisite for appointment a knowledge of mechanical as well as transportation matters. Gradually I would work away from the switchman or trainman specialist to the all-'round man in whom I could concentrate authority as the head of an important sub-unit of organization. Instead of leveling downward, as the labor unions do, by assuming that the average man can learn only one branch of operation, I would recognize individuality and gradually develop a higher composite type. Because some car inspectors are not fitted to become yardmasters is no good reason for practically excluding all car inspectors from honorable competition for such advancement. When we build a department wall to keep the other fellow out we sometimes find it has kept us in. We blame the labor unions for these narrowing restrictions of employment and advancement. Look once more for the source, and you will find it among our predecessors in the official class, a generation or more ago. These officials insisted upon planes of department cleavage which the men below were quick to recognize. Railway manhood has been more dwarfed by exaggerated official idea of specialization with resulting departmental jealousies than by the labor unions.

Therefore, my boy, let us get some of these inconsistencies out of our own optics before we talk too much about the dust that seems to blind the eyes of those who are exposed to the breezes of that world famous thoroughfare which faces old Trinity Church in New York.

Affectionately, your own,

D. A. D.

LETTER III.
THE GENERAL MANAGER ON THE WITNESS STAND.

Chicago, April 22, 1911.

My Dear Boy:—Did it ever occur to you how easily a bright lawyer could tangle up many an able railway official on the witness stand? Nowadays we have to spend more or less valuable time testifying about service, rates, capitalization, valuation, practices, methods, and a score of other things that become of public interest. Whether this is just or unjust, necessary or unnecessary, is beside the question. It is a condition, not a theory, that confronts us. The wise railway man, therefore, so orders his official life that it may endure the scrutiny of both the persecutor and the prosecutor, of both the inquisitor and the investigator, of both the muckraker and the political economist. It sometimes happens, since men are only boys grown tall, that public hearings are accompanied by stage settings for dramatic effect; that trifling inconsistencies are magnified into egregious errors. Let me picture part of such a hearing with a general manager on the stand:

Question: You testified, Mr. General Manager, on the direct examination that your road is well managed and has a highly efficient organization, did you not?

Answer: Yes, sir, we think we have one of the best in the country.

Q. Would you mind telling the able members of this Honorable Commission in just what your superiority consists?

A. Not at all, sir. In the first place, we have a great deal of harmony and work very closely together.

Q. Did you ever know a railway official who did not claim the same thing for that part of the organization over which he presided?

A. (Hesitating.) Well, now that you mention it, I can't say that I ever did. (Sudden inspiration.) But you know there is a great deal of bluffing in this world.

Q. (Drily.) What style of anti-bluffing device has your company adopted?

A. Of course, you are speaking figuratively. Such a thing isn't possible. We have a pretty good check in the fine class of men we have developed.

Q. Then, it is a sort of breeding process?

A. Yes, sir, that's it.

Q. To go a little further, has your company any patents on improving human nature?

A. No, sir, we don't claim that.

Q. Is it not a fact that your officials and employes are average citizens recruited and developed about like those of other roads?

A. That is hardly a fair way to put it, but I suppose they are.

Q. Why isn't it fair?

A. Because it leaves out of account the acknowledged efficiency that comes from having men well treated and contented, and better instructed than others. Some farms make more money than others because the old man gets more work out of the boys.

Q. Then your road has officials who can radiate more divine afflatus than others?

A. I didn't say that. We do the best we know how.

Q. What is organization?

A. Why organization is—let me see—why, organization is the name we use for the men—the people, the forces we hire to run our road. It is hard to give a concise definition. I might ask you what law is.

Q. That's easy, law is a rule of conduct. Now, tell me, please, who runs the road?

A. Why, the officers run the road, the men do the work.

Q. Did you not just say that you hire men to run the road?

A. I didn't mean that.

Q. Then in your business you are not very accurate. You say one thing and mean another.

A. No, sir; we may have more sense than you think we have. We spend a lifetime at this business and must learn something about it.

Q. Will you please tell this fair-minded commission just how you run the road, just how you attempt to minister to the needs of the intelligent people of this great commonwealth?

A. Now, sir, it is a pleasure to testify. You are getting away from definitions and technicalities and down to practical facts, where I feel more at home. I will be glad to tell you all about it. In the first place a railway is such a big affair that we divide it into departments.

Q. Excuse me, what is a department?

A. A department is—well—I can make it clearer by describing what it does. As I was saying, we divided it into departments, and a department is—well—a department is—why, something so different from everything else that we put it off by itself and hold the head of the department responsible for results. We are very particular not to interfere with the details of the departments.

Q. Pardon me, but the present members of this exceptionally able commission, inspired further I may say by the example of our patriotic governor, are accustomed to give profound consideration to these great questions. (Modest pricking up of ears of commission, with determined composite expression bespeaking relentless performance of a dangerous duty.) Please, therefore, tell us what your department does.

A. As I testified on the direct examination mine is the operating department; as general manager I have charge of operation.

Q. What does that include?

A. It includes transportation, and maintenance and new construction. It handles the business the other fellow gets.

Q. Who is the other fellow?

A. The traffic department.

Q. Of another company?

A. Why, no, of our own. It is just another department. It deals with the public, it gets the business, it makes the rates; excuse me—it recommends rates to honorable bodies like this commission.

Q. Then you in the operating department don't deal with the public?

A. Yes, sir, we do, more and more every year.

Q. Is the traveling freight agent in your department?

A. No, sir, he is in the traffic department.

Q. Then you have no control over him?

A. No, sir, no direct control, but as I said before, we all work very closely together on our road.

Q. It is claimed that there has been discrimination in car distribution in this state, because a traveling freight agent promised more cars to some shippers than the latter were entitled to according to the supply available. How about that?

A. I am unable to say.

Q. Getting back to your narrative, please resume the interesting description of your department.

A. As I was saying, we have several departments, each under a superintendent or other officer. We have a general superintendent, a chief engineer, a superintendent of motive power, a superintendent of transportation, a superintendent of telegraph, a signal engineer, a superintendent of dining cars, and a general storekeeper, all of whom we call general officers in charge of departments.

Q. I thought you said you are the head of the operating department.

A. Yes, sir; that's right.

Q. I don't quite understand. You say that there are eight departments in your department?

A. Yes, sir; that is what we call them. It always has been so.

Q. Then when is a department a department?

A. You see these are really not departments; they are just parts of the operating department which is really a department.

Q. Then, why not have definite designations?

A. I don't know. We have never thought it necessary. We are getting good results and giving good service to the public.

Q. What are results?

A. I am not sure; the longer I live the less certain I am about these things.

Q. I am glad to hear that. This impartial commission has been constituted because some railway officers tried to dictate what was best for this enlightened commonwealth. Now, tell us, please, what you think of the plan the United States government has of making the "bureau" the next unit of organization below the "department"?

A. I have never given government organization much attention. The part of the government that concerns me most is the Interstate Commerce Commission, which seems made up mainly of inspectors.

Q. Have you ever studied the organization of the federal courts, and of the army and the navy?

A. I can hardly say that I have studied their organization, but I have observed them some.

Q. Then you and your road do not give much attention to organization?

A. Perhaps not to theories. We are very practical. I never could see where a railway is like the government. They are very different.

Q. Is not human nature the same in its basic characteristics, whether employed by a railway or the government?

A. I suppose that it is, but many things about a corporation are different.

Q. Is not the government the largest of employing corporations with its citizens as the stockholders?

A. Perhaps so. I would rather go on and tell you something practical about our work.

Q. Pray do so.

A. You see, I am the responsible head, so that I insist upon being consulted about all important matters, and leave only routine affairs to be acted on by my subordinates.

Q. What are important matters, and what are routine affairs?

A. Why, the important things are those that I handle personally, and routine, well, routine is what comes along every day and is so well understood that it does not require my personal attention.

Q. Do you think any three men could agree upon what should be considered routine business?

A. I don't know. I had never thought of it that way. Many things have to be left to discretion. That is where judgment comes in.

Q. Whose judgment?

A. The judgment of the man handling the matter; in this case, my own.

Q. You have been here all day. Who is handling matters in your absence?

A. My chief clerk.

Q. You did not mention him before. What officer is he?

A. He is not usually counted as an officer, but is considered the personal representative of an officer.

Q. Does he sign your name?

A. Yes, sir; but puts his initials under my name.

Q. Suppose he forgets to put his initials. Could you swear to the signature in court?

A. I don't know. You understand that is only for routine business.

Q. Does he sign your name to your personal bank check?

A. No, sir; he does not.

Q. Then the company's business with the citizens of this state receives less careful attention than your own personal affairs?

A. No, sir; the company's business comes first with me. I am a poor man to-day.

Q. When you are away your chief clerk has to sign instructions to the general officers in your department?

A. Only routine matters.

Q. Does he receive a higher salary than they?

A. No, sir; a lower.

Q. What determines relative salaries?

A. Qualifications and experience.

Q. Then you have the less qualified and the less experienced man instructing higher officers.

A. It might seem so, but in our case we are very fortunate. My chief clerk is an unusual man, and is very considerate and diplomatic. He knows that I do not stand for inconsiderate requirements of others.

Q. From whom do you receive your instructions?

A. From our president.

Q. Always personally?

A. Not always; his chief clerk is authorized to represent him.

Q. Is his chief clerk as considerate for you as your chief clerk is for your subordinate officers?

A. That is a very delicate question. I would rather not answer unless the commission insists.

(Hearing adjourned for day. General counsel sends cipher telegram to president stating indelicacy of state officials is almost unbearable; that bankers and business men should petition governor to stop destroying credit of railways.)

All of which, my dear boy, is not as bad as it sounds, but, through difficulty of explanation, points the way to desirable improvements in railway administration.

Affectionately, your own,

D. A. D.

LETTER IV.
FURTHER GRUELLING OF THE GENERAL MANAGER.

Tucson, Arizona, April 29, 1911.

My Dear Boy:—After the commission kicked for rest, the general manager tied up in his caboose. Nobody was allowed to run around him and he was marked up first out the following morning. The commission not having any agreement about initial overtime, the attorney acting as yardmaster handed him a switch list and told him to dig out these loads:

Question: How many letters a day do you write?

Answer: I don't know, a great many.

Q. How many a day go out of your office?

A. I can't state exactly, probably a hundred or more.

Q. Then you do not see them all?

A. No, that would be impossible in such a large office.

Q. Does the chief clerk see them all?

A. I think he does.

Q. You are not sure then?

A. No, not entirely. I have had no complaints about that.

Q. Is the only way you know about how things are going to have a complaint come in?

A. Not exactly. I try to keep ahead of the game.

Q. Are the offices of your subordinates run in this same haphazard manner?

A. I do not admit that it is haphazard. The general method is the same.

Q. Who is in charge of the distribution of cars?

A. My superintendent of transportation.

Q. To whom are his instructions given?

A. To the division superintendents.

Q. Does he give his instructions personally?

A. The important instructions he gives personally. Of course, he cannot do it all alone. You understand that his department deals with individual cars and has an enormous amount of detail.

Q. How many men are authorized to sign his name and initials?

A. I don't know.

Q. Then you do not regard this as an important matter?

A. Not as important as some others. That is a matter for which the superintendent of transportation is responsible. I look to him.

Q. Do you think every man charged with duties should be allowed to select his own type of organization and decide as to his own methods?

A. As far as possible, yes.

Q. Then why not let each conductor make his own train rules, and each station agent keep his own kind of accounts?

A. Because confusion would result.

Q. Is it not a fact that on most American railroads six or eight clerks are signing the name or initials of the superintendent of transportation?

A. I don't know; very likely.

Q. Does not a similar condition exist in a smaller degree in most railway offices.

A. Yes, sir, that is the system.

Q. Then who are running the offices, the officials or the clerks?

A. I always supposed the officials. You see we could not afford so many officials.

Q. Has it ever occurred to you that by having more officials you might get along with fewer clerks?

A. No, sir.

Q. Who sign for the train orders on your road?

A. Our conductors.

Q. Have not conductors and operators been discharged for signing each other's names?

A. Yes, sir. We must maintain discipline. If the train orders are not respected, accidents will result.

Q. Then you have one policy for one class of employes, and allow your officials and clerks to be a law unto themselves?

A. Not exactly. As I said before we cannot afford so many officials.

Q. Whose initials are signed to your train orders?

A. The superintendent's.

Q. Why?

A. Because it has always been that way on our road. It makes the order stronger.

Q. If initials make an order stronger, why not sign yours, or the president's, or God Almighty's?

A. That would be ridiculous.

Q. Then it is not ridiculous to sign the superintendent's initials when he is at home in bed?

A. No, that is different. We wish to emphasize the fact that the superintendent is in charge of the division.

Q. Then why not put the superintendent's photograph on all the orders? Would that strengthen him with the men?

A. No, of course not.

Q. You have been talking about the superintendent; is he the same as the superintendent of motive power?

A. No, you do not quite understand. The superintendent has charge of a division and the superintendent of motive power, like the superintendent of transportation, has charge of a department.

Q. Then the word superintendent doesn't always mean the same thing?

A. No, sir, but no confusion results. You see, the heads of departments are general officers, while the superintendent is a division officer.

Q. Which superintendent?

A. The division superintendent.

Q. Is it not a fact that on some roads there is a question as to which has authority in certain matters, the division superintendent or the superintendent of motive power?

A. I believe so, but we do not have any such trouble.

Q. (Producing copies of letters furnished by discharged office employe.) Does not this correspondence indicate a heated difference of opinion between your superintendent of motive power and a division superintendent which had to be settled by you?

A. Oh, yes; I recall, I had forgotten that. That will not happen again.

Q. What guaranty have you against similar friction?

A. I have that all straightened out. Everybody is lined up and understands that I insist upon harmony with a big H.

Q. To prevent confusion and, therefore, to save money why not make titles sufficiently distinctive in rank to prevent conflict of authority?

A. We have not thought it necessary. I do not go as much on titles as some people. The old-fashioned way is good enough for me. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Q. How, then, if you ordered roses for a funeral, would you guard against the corpse being handed lemons?

A. By sending a note or a card.

Q. Signed by your chief clerk?

A. No, sir.

Q. Do you think it is honest to have your chief clerk signing your name while you are away at this hearing?

A. There is no intent to deceive.

Q. Do you not unconsciously try to convey the idea that you are in one place when you are really in another, or that you are acting when it is really an entirely different man who is taking action?

A. Perhaps so. I had never looked at it in that way. It is a generally recognized custom.

Q. You do not seem to regard the office part as very important, as you permit a lot of clerks to take final action all day long.

A. The office is not as important as the road. I try to give the most attention to the important matters on the road.

Q. You feel that by doing so the office will in a large measure take care of itself?

A. That is it exactly.

Q. Do you not think that most railway administrative offices have grown too large to take care of themselves?

A. You see, we keep in close touch with our offices on a railroad, because when away we have a telegraph or telephone wire at our command.

Q. What good does a wire do you if you are tied up in a hearing or a conference for two or three hours at a time?

A. I fear that I have not made clear to you just how valuable a man I have trained into a chief clerk.

Q. I fear that you have not. You seem to believe the old system is all right. Do you think the last word has been said or that your road has hit upon the best system?

A. The last word on these important subjects will never be said, but we have been getting along very well.

I shall not continue further in this letter the catechismal method, lest you accuse me of forgetting that you long ago graduated from the kindergarten. So you did; but when in doubt get back to early methods. After reading recently an article on scientific management, I had to recall my catechism to feel certain that handling pig iron is not the chief end of man. We all, you and I included, sometimes show up smaller than we really are, because we seem to think only in the narrow terms of the things to which we are closest. It once fell to the lot of a young official to escort over his road some of its directors, bankers from New York. Being an enthusiast for his section of country, being an operating man with an instinct for developing traffic, he talked of progress, of the economic and social welfare of the people. When he spoke of sugar planting, or of cotton growing, of blooded stock and dairy yield, the bankers asked, "How much does it cost to raise an acre?" or "What percentage of profit do they make?" He returned from the trip feeling that money must be their god, that his directors could think only in terms of dollars and cents. It dampened his ardor for a time. Then he was so fortunate as to ride for a few days with some of the really big modern bankers. He found himself listening with open mouth to their expression of practical sociological truths. He marveled at their recognition of the human element, and he understood better why the board sometimes turned down his recommendations. His only lament was that he could not see more of them. There, my boy, is the great misfortune, there is a problem to be solved. There is too much Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. The directors seem too far away. It is a step forward that the overlords of transportation are bankers who have won their way rather than hereditary descendants of once reigning families. Some method must be evolved to make for more elastic control. Annual inspection trips will not overcome that rigidity in administration at which the public chafes and from which it seeks relief in drastic laws. An interesting and hopeful phase of present development is the election to directorates of trained railway executives like L. F. Loree and H. I. Miller. The professionally equipped railway director is a desirable evolution. Supply always follows demand, and the broad solution will be a composite made up of many elements of progress which perhaps have not yet unfolded themselves to any of us.

It is a great game, this transportation business. The more you study it, however, the more you discover that it is amenable to the same underlying principles on which rest the great and small activities of the human race. Like all professions, it has its distinct technique. Like all professions, it suffers from the inborn tendency of human nature to segregate itself behind an exaggerated class consciousness. "We are a little different," or "You do not quite understand our peculiar local conditions," are the arguments with which ultra-conservatism has opposed progress in all ages, are the obstacles which make so interesting all real contests for principle.

I make no apologies for taking you in this letter from the witness stand of the west to the financial chancelleries of the east. When both the banker director and the general manager learn that signatures on letters and tram orders must be as sacred as when signed to bank checks, we shall be winning back a little of that old-time sense of personal responsibility which is so needed for improving composite efficiency to-day. What better epitaph could any man desire than this, "He helped to teach corporations to remember that lasting composite strength comes only from intelligent recognition of individual manhood?"

Affectionately, your own,

D. A. D.

LETTER V.
LIMITATIONS OF THE CHIEF CLERK SYSTEM.

Tucson, Arizona, May 6, 1911.

My Dear Boy:—I have had a good deal to say to you at one time and another about chief clerks and the chief clerk system. From actual experience as a chief clerk I know that it is a trying position. It is because the railway chief clerks of the country are as a class such a splendid body of men that I am trying to do what I can to help them. Too many times a chief clerk misses promotion because he is such a valuable man that he has to stand still to break in all the new bosses who come along and leave him in the side track.

The chief clerk system as we know it to-day cannot long survive because it is too feudal in conception to reflect the spirit of a progressive age. We need a chief clerk to be a head clerk, a senior clerk, a foreman of the office forces, as it were. Much of the time on American railroads the chief clerk is in effect an acting official, acting trainmaster, acting superintendent, acting general manager, acting vice-president, and even acting president. As such he signs the name of his boss, the theory being that the latter, like a feudal baron or a king, is omnipresent within his own dominions. Not only does this outgrown conception violate the fundamental laws of matter; it often borders upon a breach of honor, integrity and good faith. Legal fictions are fast giving place to the law of common sense. Railway officials should not risk arraignment before the bar of public opinion for such indefensible practices.

When the chief clerk does business in the name of some one else the effect is dwarfing to all concerned. We do not get the effect of either one or two men, but that of a fraction of both. Again, the chief clerk is handling important correspondence with officials below of higher rank than himself, of greater compensation, and presumably of wider experience. Human nature is such that sooner or later the chief clerk, a junior, is telling an official, a senior, where to head in. Among the hundreds of railroad officials with whom it is my proud privilege to claim acquaintance, I have found nearly every one flattering himself, "My chief clerk never makes such breaks." To avoid awkward and embarrassing silences, I am learning to discontinue the acid test, "How about your boss's chief clerk?" So widespread a belief indicates a generic trait of human nature rather than a sporadic condition. Organization as a science seeks by proper checks and balances to minimize such amiable failings of human nature. Organized society preserves the effectiveness and dignity of its courts by allowing only a duly qualified judge to administer justice. The old clerk of the court may really know more law than the young judge, but only the latter can sit on the bench and decide causes. The lay reader must be duly ordained before exercising the full functions of a minister. The man who uses another's autograph signature in the banking business becomes a malefactor. Are we so different in the large corporations that we can with impunity ignore such safeguards?

The chief clerk system had its origin when railways were small and officials were few. On a division, for example, the superintendent was perhaps the only official and by common acceptance his clerk was really the next in rank. When a small tradesman or a small farmer goes away for a day his wife and boy may do the work without any one knowing the difference. In a larger enterprise there has to be an understudy in charge when the head is away.

You may have noticed that I use the word "rank" considerably. Rank is a practical necessity for the proper enforcement of authority. Rank makes its appearance as soon as society organizes for its own protection. Rank may be local, limited, changing and temporary as contra-distinguished from general, extensive, hereditary, or permanent, but it is rank just the same. The purest democracies clothe their chosen leaders with temporary rank. Before misconstruing the poetic aphorism of Robert Burns, "rank is but the guinea's stamp," remember that the guinea is only fluctuating bullion until the stamp of authority of government can be invoked.

Let me now enunciate a principle, which is this: "In modern organization the chief clerk as we now know him has no place. When the stage is reached that such a chief clerk seems to be needed, there should be another assistant this or that." Mind you, I do not say assistant to, because that little word "to" may give a sent-for-and-couldn't-come appearance. Nearly every week you notice the announcement of the appointment of an old chief clerk to the position of assistant to somebody. This is encouraging, since it permits him to do business in his own name. It also shows that railway officials are waking up to the distinct limitations of the chief clerk system. The discouraging feature is the failure to profit by centuries of experience of such well-handled activities as the Navy and the merchant marine. At sea the executive officer ranks next below the captain and is in effect, though not in name, the latter's chief of staff. The captain's clerk or the purser cannot hope to become executive officer and then captain without getting outside and working up through the deck. When railway executives and directors become better students of organization, the science of human nature, their stockholders will pay for fewer unnecessary experiments. One railway profits by the discoveries and mistakes of another, as to bridges and equipment, but rarely as to organization and methods.

The United States Army, copied largely from the English, has the assistant to system, calling such officer the adjutant. The rank of the adjutant has been raised to captain, or rather the grade from which the colonel can select his adjutant has been elevated to that of captain. The adjutant has thus gained, and many military men hope that he will eventually be the lieutenant-colonel, and as in the Navy, be the executive officer, and, in effect, chief of staff for the colonel. Since no officer of the Army or Navy permits another to sign his name the adjutant uses his own autograph signature, but preceded by the phrase, "By order of Colonel Blank"; objectionable because it is sometimes a legal fiction. The adjutant system in the army works better than the assistant to system on the railroads, because the adjutant is relatively better trained for his position. Not only does the adjutant know office work, but he has learned practically to perform every duty required of non-commissioned officers and private soldiers. Very few assistants to could run a train, switch cars, handle a locomotive, or pick up a wreck. This is why soldiers and sailors have more faith in the ability of their officers than railway employes have in that of their officials. He who would be called Thor must first wield Thor's battle axe. We should office from the railroad rather than railroad from the office.

Since these things are so, as runs the old Latin phrase, I would recruit my office assistant from the road, from the head of a so-called department, from an official who has gained a face-to-face experience in handling men. The old chief clerk is the first man I would consider for appointment as one of my junior assistants. I would so assign him that he would get outside experience. Sunburn and redness of blood sometimes go together. For the pink tea contact of the telephone, for the absent treatment of the typewriter, I would ask him for a while to substitute the strong coffee of the caboose and the surprise test of the through freight. Office railroading has its origin in the mistaken theory of overspecialization, that office work is a highly-segregated specialty beyond the ken of the average man. The world advances, and as education becomes more general, as tenure is made more permanent, and employment more attractive, we can impose increased requirements. Suppose that it all could be so worked out that a generation hence no man would expect to be a railroad clerk until he had served some such outside apprenticeship as trackman, brakeman, switchman, or fireman, etc. This would mean that in an organization like the post office department every clerk in the department in Washington would have been graduated from some such outside position as letter carrier, railway mail clerk, country postmaster, rural free delivery carrier, etc. Every clerk in the war department would be a soldier and every clerk in the navy department a sailor. Then the papers that the clerk handled would have a living meaning for him. His action would be more intelligent. Pardon me a moment while I shake hands with the highly-conventional gentleman who is approaching—Mr. Cant B. Dunn. No introduction is necessary. We have met all over the United States, in Canada and in Mexico. We usually differ, but never quarrel, because each is so necessary to the other.

Sure, my boy, all these things can't be done right away quick, or before the Interstate Commerce Commission again asks for increased authority and larger appropriations. I do not expect to live to see the consummation, but hope that you may. I do expect to survive long enough to see a good start made along such rational lines of elasticity. Because we cannot accomplish it all at once is no reason for not making an intelligent beginning. If a compromise with principle is ever advanced its advocates should be prepared to pay the ultimate cost. Those questions on which the Federal Constitution compromised required the expensive settlement of civil war. Otherwise the Constitution has been elastic enough to cover nearly fifty states as fully as the original thirteen. It is even strong enough to withstand the latest political fallacy, the recall of the judiciary, as solemnly proposed out here in fascinating Arizona.

Remember always, my boy, that although the good old days have completed their runs, there are better days arriving and still on the road; that from beyond the terminal at the vanishing point of the perspective the best days are coming special because no railway time-table is big enough to give them running rights.

Affectionately, your own,

D. A. D.

LETTER VI.
PREVENTING INSTEAD OF PAYING CLAIMS.

Phoenix, Arizona, May 13, 1911.

My Dear Boy:—You ask me to give you my views on the handling and settling of freight claims.

I restrain my impatience and consequent desire to jump on you hard. Allow me, therefore, with expressions of distinguished consideration, to invite your esteemed attention to the fact that your valued request contains no mention of an intelligent desire for possible enlightenment on the most important feature of the problem, namely, the prevention of claims, the eradication of causes.

A railroad is a complex proposition. Seldom can we discuss one of its problems independently. So ramified are its activities that the penumbra of one shadow coincides with the outline of the next. Studied from the broadest view of railway administration, freight claims are found too often doing duty as a shadow which hides the real substance, poor operation. It was formerly the almost universal practice on American railways for freight claims to be handled and settled by the freight traffic department. It was felt that the man who secured the business, who dealt with the shippers, was the man to placate the claiming public. No, this did not always lead to rebating. It placed before the man hungry for gross revenue a temptation which he often resisted. Since the passage of the Hepburn act and the consequent inspection of claim disbursements by the Interstate Commerce Commission, the general trend of railroad practice has been to place the so-called freight claim department under the accounting department. Railroads are waking up to the fact that the new order of things means more than an accounting proposition; that in government regulation and supervision the whole matter of railway administration is involved. What we technically term "operation" is the largest of the component elements of administration.

The tendency of overspecialization has been to leave to the accounting or the legal department the matter of relations with the various branches of government, both state and federal. Since a part can never equal the whole the results have been disappointing. Railroads are learning by costly experience that traffic men and operating men must have an active part in these vital relations. Government in the long run reflects the spirit of its people. The American people as a nation are positive and constructive. The training of railway lawyers and railway accountants is often negative and resisting. The general counsel and the general auditor are inclined to tell us what we can not do. The traffic manager and the general manager, on the other hand, tell us what we can do. Out of it all should come a well-balanced administrative machine. We need the whole machine, not a specialized part, the positive as well as the negative elements, when we move alongside the reciprocating engine of government.

Again, putting a man in the accounting department does not make him any more honest than the rest of us. There is more logic in taking freight claims away from the traffic department than there is in placing them under the accounting department. The traffic man, the accounting man, or the legal man can settle or refuse a claim. None of these can eradicate its cause. Only the operating man can do this. Many roads cling to the belief that their wonderful interior combustion and hot air harmony give the operating department sufficient information to serve the practical purpose. My observation has been that this information is not sufficiently fresh; that it trails along too far behind the actual transaction. Some roads, like the Southern and the 'Frisco, have organized special bureaus in the operating department to minimize the causes of freight claims and to follow up discrepancies while the case is fresh; in other words, to investigate before the claim is filed. Sometimes this duplicates the work of the freight claim office and sometimes it does not.

So bad have been freight loss and damage conditions on most American railroads that almost any kind of attention has resulted in improvement. Nearly every road can cite figures in defense of its particular treatment of the situation. There are many good ways. In the absence of an absolute unit of comparison the best way must be largely a matter of opinion. To me the logical and practical principle has been discovered by two of the best managed railroads in the country, the Chicago & North-Western and the Chesapeake & Ohio. These roads, among others, place their freight claims under the operating department, thus reserving the hair of the dog for treatment of its bite. With such a system the general manager controls the disbursements to operating expenses for which he is responsible. Under other systems the general manager accepts charges which he does not directly control. Some roads have endeavored to correct this last defect by requiring claim vouchers to be signed by the general manager and the division superintendent. This beautiful example of circumlocution is expensive. There are only twenty-four hours in a day, and even claim papers can not be handled for nothing. Furthermore, the claimant himself refuses to see the beauty of delaying payment to carry out a theory. In some states he has secured legislation penalizing railways for delay in settling intrastate claims. Can you blame him? The claimant aforesaid may happen to be a country merchant waiting for the way freight to come in. It brings him six boxes of groceries. In his presence, and that of the agent, the way freight brakeman drops and spoils a box. On many roads, not only is the agent not allowed to pay for this spoiled box, but is expected to require the indignant consignee to pay the freight on all six boxes before removing the other five. The consignee is told to file a claim, which then makes its weary round through the circumlocution office where clerks are called investigators. Such companies say in effect to the agent: "Yes, you are a good fellow; you get us a lot of business; you handle thousands of dollars of our money; you represent us in many things; you must understand, however, that a freight claim is a specialty requiring expert advice; a bad precedent might involve us in the future; you know, too, we might be criticised as opening the way to grafting by some other agents if we let you pay out money without authority from the accounting department; yes, we like your work and expect to promote you in the sweet by-and-by," etc., ad nauseam. Fortunately, these narrow views are giving place to more enlightened practices. On several railways in Texas most station agents are authorized to settle instanter certain classes of palpably just claims up to $20 or $25.

Among the practical advantages of claim control by the operating department are quicker recognition of lax methods causing claims, better discipline and morals of train and station forces, prompter settlement, and greater attention to seal records. The Chesapeake & Ohio makes surprise tests by breaking a seal and resealing the car with a different seal to see if the next man copies the last record, or actually takes his seal record from the car. This road also appeals to the human element. Claims settled are tentatively charged to the conductor or agent apparently at fault, and he is given an opportunity to explain. This is not real money, but a combination of Brown system, Christian Science coin, and 1907 clearing house certificates. The practical effect is very real, however. Each man learns to feel a responsibility which is reflected in a desire for a clean record. The general claim agent, who is under the general manager, sends monthly to each division superintendent a list showing the name of every freight conductor on the division, with number of claims, if any, charged to him on account of pilferage from train, rough handling, etc. The local divisions of the Order of Railway Conductors have been interested and feel some responsibility in keeping the work of their members upon a plane above the imputation of collusion with pilferage. Seek, my boy, to develop the higher natures of your men and you will be astonished at the response. Let them know that you know what they are doing, and it becomes easier for them to withstand temptation.

Freight claims are a fine example of an exaggerated specialty resulting in unnecessary centralization. The whole proposition can be decentralized for the good of the service. Because the division superintendent can not well settle interline claims of other divisions is no reason why his forces should not settle such local claims as concern his division.

A thorough study of freight claims will bring you early to a consideration of personal injury, stock and fire claims. The fad has been on many railroads to take these items of operating expenses away from their former location in the operating department and give them to the legal department. This exaggerated view of the laws of liability is partly responsible for the growth of the damage suit industry. It is another case of considering a part of the railway at the expense of the whole. We need legal advice and expert knowledge. The true function of the expert and the specialist is to see how much working knowledge he can impart to the layman for everyday use and reserve himself for the real complications which, if his tutelage has been sound, the layman will quickly recognize and bring back for expert assistance.

Not long ago I happened near a freight wreck. One of the cars in the ditch contained an emigrant outfit in charge of a man. This man was bruised, but not seriously injured. With the superintendent and the wreck train came a specialist, a claim adjuster for the legal department. He could settle only the personal injury. The damage to property was a freight claim and belonged to another department, the accounting, not formally represented at the impromptu function, and over which the superintendent as master of ceremonies had no jurisdiction. The various items of operating expenses involved on this occasion were in a decidedly diverged condition. What the spiritualist medium calls the control was in this case the office of a busy president some fifteen hundred miles away. Of course, the company spirit and common sense guided the superintendent, and he made the best of circumstances; perhaps risking criticism and censure for crossing sacred departmental lines. What do you think of a system that breaks down in emergencies? Is not an emergency a test of a system, a proof of its elasticity? Can we develop the highest efficiency of superintendents when we, the executive and general officers, place upon them the burden of departing from a system that fails to meet their practical problems? Is it not a species of unconscious administrative cowardice for boards of directors to impose implied and practical responsibility without conferring corresponding authority? Can such questions be ignored as exceptional, trifling, and captious? Do they not reach to the heart of railway organization and efficiency? Will the railways correct such errors themselves, or will they await once more the remedy by legislatures and commissions?

If a study of conditions does not convince you theoretically that one claim bureau should handle freight, stock, fire, and personal injury claims—in short all claims covering injuries to persons and damages to property—go down on the Chesapeake & Ohio and watch them do it practically. Instead of several specialists duplicating each other's itineraries, you will find some all-round claim men doing a variety of practical stunts. When they do strike a really different and highly technical case, they utilize the services of their best specialist in that particular line, not infrequently the general claim agent himself. Overcharge claims are very properly handled under their traffic auditor, being a matter of correction and not of operating disbursement. Were it up to me, I would make the general claim agent an assistant general manager, so that in claim matters he would have rank and authority superior to the division superintendent's. The division claim agent I would make an assistant superintendent, so that in claim matters he would have rank and authority superior to all employes on the division.

On this last division feature I once convinced my old friend, Cant B. Dunn, by a long, practical test.

Affectionately, your own,

D. A. D.

LETTER VII.
THE CHIEF OF STAFF IDEA.

San Antonio, Texas, May 20, 1911.

My Dear Boy:—Let me tell you something about a wonderfully effective human machine, the Confederate Army. I sit facing a Confederate monument which depicts a self-reliant son of the Southland, the type of man real railway training helps to perpetuate. Hard by is a shrine to valor, the Alamo, a reminder of the duty of altruism which an individual owes to his fellows.

Fifty years ago two great armies were organized to fight to a practical, working conclusion some of the indefinite compromises of the Federal Constitution. Each army was supported by the intelligent spirit of an aroused people. Each sought in its organization and operation to give the most effective expression to that spirit. Jefferson Davis and his advisers sought to profit by the experience of the old United States Army and to avoid inherent weaknesses in its organization. So the Confederate Congress created the grades of general and of lieutenant general, in order that a general might command a separate field army, a lieutenant general a corps, a major general a division, and a brigadier general a brigade. By thus more exactly defining official status, jealousies were minimized. Until Grant was made lieutenant general in 1864, the Federal Army had only two grades of general officers, major general and brigadier general. This led to confusion, to bickerings, and to petty jealousies. Since a major general might command such distinct and self-contained units of organization as a division, a corps, or a separate field army, numerous special assignments by the President became necessary.

The Confederate Army had another feature of organization that was epoch-making. Samuel Cooper had been adjutant general of the United States Army, with the rank of brigadier general, issuing orders over his own signature from Washington "by command of" somebody else—Brevet Lieutenant General Scott or the Secretary of War. Because of his acknowledged efficiency in office work and administrative routine, Samuel Cooper was made adjutant general and inspector general of the Confederate Army. Did they give him the rank of brigadier general? No, sir; they made him a full general, and number one on the list, senior to Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston and G. T. Beauregard, who, as generals at one time or another, commanded separate field armies or territorial military departments. General Cooper at a desk in Richmond was the ranking officer of the Confederate Army. This detracted not one iota from the fame of Lee, the great soldier and the first gentleman of the South. On the contrary, the increased efficiency due to receiving instructions from a real superior, not under-strappers or chief clerks, made greater the reputation of Lee. From one viewpoint General Cooper was a high-class chief clerk for his President and the Secretary of War. From a broader view he was their technically trained, highly efficient chief of staff.

The Confederate Army gave in effect, but not in name, the chief of staff idea to the world as a great object lesson in the applied science of organization. Historians say that Jefferson Davis, himself a graduate of West Point, a veteran of the Mexican war, and Secretary of War in the cabinet of Pierce, meddled too much in military affairs when as President he should have been attending also to civil affairs. Be that as it may, the organization was elastic enough to meet just such variations of personal equation. Whether the President, the Secretary of War or the adjutant general (chief of staff) acted in a particular case, the subordinate knew who took the responsibility and that the action came from a real superior in rank.

The Confederacy fell. The passions of the time, the shortsightedness of prejudice, precluded the adoption at that time by the United States of any feature of the Confederate organization, however meritorious in principle and practice. It remained for the Germans, already applying the idea, to dazzle the world in 1870 and conquer France by the work of their general staff and its able chief, von Moltke. Not until after the costly lessons of the little war with Spain in 1898 did our Congress wake up and give the United States Army a general staff and a chief of staff. The new law includes several desirable features of elasticity. Among these is a provision for the selection by each administration of its own chief of staff. A permanent chief of staff might be an obstructionist or might become too perfunctory in compliance. The law wisely limits the selection of a chief of staff to about twenty general officers. This prevents playing untrained favorites. It permits any passenger conductor to be made superintendent, but forbids selecting an extra brakeman or the call boy. Furthermore, if conditions change or a new administration arrives, the chief of staff is not penalized for efficiency by losing out entirely, but reverts to his permanent status; the superintendent holds his rights as a conductor and bids in a good run according to his permanent seniority. This feature of good organization, the conferring of definite local superior rank, and the protection of the incumbent from unnecessary degradation, was discovered centuries ago by another effective institution, the Catholic church.

Life is a composite. The Army, like several railways, has been waking up to the fact that a lesson can be learned from the civil courts. A large city may have several courts and judges. A judge may sit for one term in the equity court, then in the criminal branch, and next in a court en banc. All the time there is only one office of record, one clerk of the court, with as many deputies as may be found necessary. When one judge wishes to know what another judge has done, the former does not write the latter a letter to inquire, but sends to the clerk's office and gets the complete record up to date.

Are the railroads above copying sound working principles of efficiency from such tried institutions as the Army, the Navy, the civil courts and the churches? Certainly not, as some roads are showing in a highly practical way. Such movements as these are but expressions of a cosmic tendency, greater and more powerful than any one branch of human activity. Such trends of progress are noted by observers who happen to be favored with a view from the watch towers and who are able to make suitable adaptations because they realize that ideas are greater than men, that practical devices are greater than their inventors.

Sound ideas often depend for their development and permanency as working practices upon some great exponent of acknowledged capacity for leadership. In 1870 Bismarck had baited on the French and von Moltke had planned their discomfiture. In 1870 General Robert E. Lee, entering upon the last year of his life, was president of Washington and Lee University at Lexington, Virginia, where Colonel Allan, of Stonewall Jackson's staff, was a prominent professor. There came to sit at the feet of these great teachers a mere boy in years, but an adult in intellectual grasp. This callow youth was of German lineage, but born and reared in New Orleans, a city stamped with the civilization of the French. Perhaps this modest youngster dreamed that twenty years later he would be a great railroad engineer—hardly, though, that in forty years he would, as a great railway operating man, be called the von Moltke of transportation. Strange, indeed, that this von Moltke, Julius Kruttschnitt, should find his opportunity for highest development under the Napoleon of our profession, Edward H. Harriman, himself among the last of the feudal railway barons. Stranger still that as this Napoleon was passing his von Moltke was starting the railways away from feudalism in interior administration by introducing within the latter's own sphere the chief of staff idea of the Confederate, the German, and the American armies. For, my boy, the unit system of organization on the Harriman Lines, of which you have read more or less, is primarily a substitution of the modern chief of staff idea for the outgrown, dwarfing, irrational government by chief clerks.[1]

The unit system of organization requires that an official, whether the head of the unit or an assistant, shall, when absent on the line, be represented at headquarters by the senior or chief assistant of the unit. Such senior or chief assistant is in effect, though not in name, the chief of staff. Normally, this senior is number one on the list of assistants, but whoever is so acting becomes, as above explained, the senior for the time being, and when relieved reverts to his permanent place on the list. Rotation for this chief of staff depends largely on the personal equation of the head of the unit and of his various assistants. In the last two years some divisions have not rotated the chief of staff at all. One superintendent who credits the system with increased supervision and notable decreases in expenses is now rotating his assistants in the senior chair every two weeks.

There are diverse views on the subject of rotation in general. My own opinion is that it may or may not be desirable. I incline rather to rotation because it seems to be a biological concomitant of rational evolution. Nature rotates her seasons and her types. Where, as in the tropics, there is less rotation we find more stagnation and quicker death. Many soils are impoverished by neglect of proper crop rotation. The other day in a terminal, I found a superintendent lately rotated, like a Methodist minister, from another division. Favored with a fresh viewpoint, he was having switch engines give trains a start out of the yard, and was taking off a helper engine which for years had seemed an unavoidable expense. For what was in this particular instance a case of over-specialization he was substituting engines which could more economically perform the dual functions of switching and of pushing.

Speaking of yards, see if you have not some bright fellows on your staff who can figure out a car record that can be taken by the mechanical men, the car inspectors, that will answer all the purposes of transportation, including claims. Instead of two sets of specialists, car inspectors and yard clerks, partly duplicating each other's work, see if you cannot develop one set of all 'round men with some interchangeability of function. No, you cannot do it all at once. Even if you have a workable scheme it will take a long time to establish. The Brown system of discipline required nearly twenty years for its complete extension to practically all American railroads, although in successful operation for nearly a hundred years at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The demerit system is better handled at West Point than is the Brown system on railways. This is because most of the officers are relatively better trained than railroad officials, having all been through the mill themselves. Better training cultivates the judicial quality. Too often the number of Brownies does not depend upon a fixed scale for a like offense, but rather upon how mad the superintendent is or on how hard he has been pounded by the typewriter in the offices above.

Before you condemn any system be certain that its apparent shortcomings are not the fault of your own interpretation and administration. We used to speak of engine failures alone. Nowadays we distinguish as between engine failures and man failures. Likewise there is a difference between a system failure and a man failure.