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.
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 courten 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.
Affectionately, your own,
D. A. D.
Galveston, Texas, May 27, 1911.
My Dear Boy:—We were talking of the unit system of organization. There is little that is new about the system. Like many useful things in this world, it is mainly an adaptation of some very old principles and practices. From one viewpoint it is a rational extension of the simple principles of train dispatching. The standard code does not attempt to supply the place of judgment in a train dispatcher. It does not tell him when to put out a meet or a wait order. When his judgment dictates the necessity for any particular action, the standard code comes into play by prescribing forms, by imposing checks and safeguards, by simplifying methods, and by unifying practices. This gives greater opportunity for initiative and originality on the part of the dispatcher by making routine the detailed portion of the process. He has more time to think.
Because the unit system leaves so much to the thinking capacity of the men below, some people have found it difficult to understand. Many codes of organization attempt to cover in advance all the various cases that may come up. The unit system enunciates principles and prescribes methods, but leaves independence of action to the man on the ground. He is for the time being the judge as to what principle to apply. When men are carefully trained their first impulse is to do the right thing. This impulse has been dwarfed and deadened on many railroads by artificial restraints which make a man doubtful of his authority. The unit system reverses some old presumptions and puts the burden of doubt upon him who questions the official authority.
We have to take human nature as we find it, not as we think it should be. The master mechanic or the division engineer is riding on the rear of a train, at the company's expense, and tells a young flagman that the latter did not go back far enough. If the flagman does not tell the official to go to h——, the trainmaster probably will. The trainmaster says, "This ismydepartment, you have interfered withmyman." That is the old feudal conception. He is notmyman but the company's for service, and his own for individuality and citizenship. Let the master mechanic or the division engineer of many years' service report the flagman whose tenure may have been very brief. Human nature is such that the trainmaster, stung by an implied reflection, constitutes himself attorney for the defense. The papers grind through the baskets of the chief clerks. By and by, when everybody concerned has forgotten the incident, the papers come back with assurances of distinguished consideration and politely intimate that the case was not quite as bad as represented. The old official, in a measure discredited, soon stops concerning himself with flagmen. The management, the stockholders, and the public lose just so much possible protection through increased supervision. The salary and the expense account of the traveling official go on just the same.
On the Harriman Lines the master mechanic, like the division engineer, has the rank, title, and authority of assistant superintendent. Mind you, it is not assistant superintendent in charge of thus and so, but just assistant superintendent. An attempt to define duties in a circular of appointment might imply that all the responsibilities not enumerated would be necessarily excluded. So the assistant superintendent quietly speaks to the young flagman, who profits by the instruction, and the incident is closed without recourse to the typewriter. For the technical brief to the Supreme Court there is substituted the rough and ready but surer justice of the police magistrate. The employe still has the right to appeal just as he had before, but seldom or never does he exercise it. There are, of course, intelligent limitations to all authority. The mechanical assistant, or the maintenance assistant should not, for example, order the flagman to buy a new uniform. Common sense and courtesy have proved effectual safeguards against abuse of authority.
The underlying principle that responsibility breeds conservatism in action has operated to prevent those unseemly clashes of authority which many predicted. The good sense of the superintendents has served as an effectual balance wheel to maintain smooth running. The unit system does not deny or dispute the necessity for specialized talent for technical activities. It insists, however, that increased supervision of the countless phases of operation can be gained by utilizing all the official talent available. In many cases such increased supervision is a by-product. The maintenance assistant is inspecting track. The train stops. He cannot resume track inspection until the train starts. Meantime, he may be able to find time to see if the conductor receives his orders promptly, if the dispatcher uses good judgment, if the station forces are alert, if the public are being well handled, if the news butcher has his wares over several needed seats in the smoking car. He may even go to the head end and tell the eagle eye how the black smoke indicates that the fire boy could save his own back and the company's good money by less liberal use of the shovel. Anything very technical requiring the presence of specialists for all these things? Of course, if a special problem develops, such as a badly adjusted draft, it may be necessary later to get the more expert attention of a mechanical assistant. Often, however, before this stage is reached there can be rendered much economical first aid to injured operating expenses. This increased supervision, be it much or little, is clear gain for the company. It means more effort for the official, but that is what he is paid for. It is usually better in zero weather to have the old master mechanic and the old traveling engineer as assistant superintendents riding different trains on the road than to have them sitting in a comfortable office writing letters to each other about engines that failed last week or last month.
Once upon a time a traveling engineer talked through a telegraphone to a dispatcher. The latter requested the former to have the freight train pull into clear to let another train by. The conductor was not in sight. He was probably in the caboose making out some of those imaginary reports about which grievance committees tell us and which are most in evidence during investigations of head-end collisions. So, this member of the ancient and honorable order of attorneys for the brotherhood told the brakemen where to head in. Whereupon with much professional profanity the trainmen declined, saying that no traveling engineer could tell them what to do. The superintendent took the brakemen out of service. They got back only on request of the traveling engineer to whom they apologized. While authority was vindicated, an undesirable situation had been developed. No matter how emphatic the vindication may be, it is as bad for discipline to have authority questioned as for a woman to have her virtue impugned. Since then the unit system on that division has made the traveling engineer an assistant superintendent, and the question of authority does not arise.
Out in that part of the country a fast train was pulling out of a terminal. The trainmaster was out on the road. His clerk signed the trainmaster's name to a message, telling the old passenger conductor to make a stop to deliver what to the clerk was an important letter, ran down and handed both to the conductor. The latter demurred, saying that under his running orders the stop would make him miss a meeting point. The clerk insisted and when the conductor disregarded the message the latter was taken out of service. This was done on the old feudal theory that the trainmaster's name and position must be respected. By the same reasoning a bank teller should honor a check on which he knows the signature is forged. Since then the unit system on that division requires everyone to do business in his own name. Employes obey the instructions of men shown by name on the time card, and are not at the mercy of clerks. The old trainmaster's name is more respected because it is signed only by himself and is not cheapened by use by Tom, Dick and Harry. (Anvil chorus: "Such things couldn't happen on our road." Perhaps not, but they do just the same, in a greater or less degree.)
When a conductor reports for train orders he has a right to know that a competent dispatcher is on duty. He cannot dictate, however, what particular dispatcher shall work the trick and give him his orders. The unit system carries this same principle to correspondence and reports. It denies the right of the employe to dictate what official shall handle a certain letter or report, under normal conditions. The report is addressed impersonally "Assistant Superintendent," and the office decides what official is most available. As a matter of common sense the expert in that line will be utilized. In his absence, however, his feudal representative, a clerk, will not act for him. The clerk may prepare the papers, but final action can be taken only by an official. Highly technical problems are sent to the absent official on the road or await his return. Each assistant may issue instructions, in his own name, to such subordinates on his own pay roll as roadmasters under the maintenance assistant, foremen under the mechanical assistant, yardmasters under the transportation assistant, etc., etc. Before these instructions leave the office, they should pass, like all correspondence, over the desk of the senior assistant (chief of staff) for his information and for the prevention of possible conflict and confusion. Here, again, is a principle of train dispatching. All orders concerning the running of trains go over the dispatcher's table. Should there not be a similar check imposed on official instructions and information imparted to hundreds of delicate, sensitive, human machines, made in the image of God?
Why are not communications and reports addressed "Superintendent?" Because there would be an implied obligation for the superintendent to act. This obligation cannot be admitted under normal conditions. Therefore, to be honest and straightforward, the address is "Assistant Superintendent." Under this system the employe knows that some assistant will see his communication, not the clerk of somebody else. If the employe desires a particular official to see his communication, he makes it personal by prefixing that official's name.
Any employe can address the superintendent by name for the same good reason that the humblest citizen can appear in his own behalf in any court in the land. Though the court is open, neither the citizen nor his attorney can normally dictate what judge shall hear his case. Authority is abstract and impersonal. The court exists if the judge is dead. The exercise of authority is concrete and highly personal. The court is silent until the judge speaks. Conversely, the superintendent as the head of the unit may address any employe direct without going through the assistant on whose payroll the employe is carried. Common sense and the personal equation of the officials concerned indicate how far this elastic feature can be carried. Courtesy requires prompt notification of the assistant concerned. Officials have superiors, and to attempt to convey the idea that each is a feudal chief, when in reality he is not, can result only in self-deception. The practice of each division superintendent reissuing verbatim in his own name instruction circulars from the office of the superintendent of transportation is misleading and ridiculous.
All instructions from general officers, including the general manager, should come to employes through the superintendent's office, not only to respect the integrity of the organization unit, but to preserve a history of the transaction in the authorized office of record—to get all the runs, including the general manager's special, on the right train sheet as it were. Whoever acts, whether the superintendent himself or an assistant, has at hand in one office of record full information for his guidance. You understand that the superintendent is boss. He may see any or all communications from employes as he thinks fit. Where previously he instructed his chief clerk what to bring to him personally, such instruction he now gives to his chief of staff. An employe who addressed "Assistant Superintendent" may receive a reply signed by the superintendent himself. This is an honest record, not a subterfuge. Some assistant, the chief of staff, has handled the paper as well as the superintendent himself. To the subordinate the superintendent is normally an incidental representative of authority entitled to the greater respect to be given his higher rank. To the general offices, and to co-ordinate units, the superintendent is an essential head of a component unit who must not be ignored. Therefore, since there is an implied obligation for the superintendent to answer superior authority himself, all communications from superior and co-ordinate authority are addressed impersonally, "Superintendent." A railway is so extensive that the superintendent should spend at least half the time out on his division. In his absence the chief of staff is allowed to communicate with the general offices and other divisions in his own name, but "for the superintendent." The superintendent may answer from the road himself, but in any case the general offices know who has really taken action. Going down on the division any assistant may sign, subject to review by the chief of staff. Going up to higher authority only the superintendent or his chief of staff may sign. The rights of the individual assistants are preserved by permitting any one to go on record to the general offices when he so desires. He writes his letter, addresses it "Assistant Superintendent," and takes it to either the superintendent or chief of staff and requests that it be forwarded. In this exceptional case a letter of transmittal is written setting forth the views of the superintendent. A cat may look at a king. A meritorious idea should not be throttled because it does not happen to appeal to the next superior.
When a division official on any road rides a train, he does not first thing try to tell the conductor what meeting points should be made. He usually says, "Let me see your orders," which is in effect asking the conductor what the dispatcher has said must be done. Protected by this vital information the official may then venture some suggestions. In the preliminary lecture explaining the unwritten laws of the unit system the new assistant superintendents are cautioned to apply the same principle. They are not to see how much trouble they can make, but how little. If the transportation assistant, for example, pulls up to a water tank at 7:20 a.m. and sees the section men just going to work, he does not jump on the foreman for being late, but quietly asks, "What are your working hours? What time does the roadmaster tell you to begin work?" The moral effect of the presence of an alert, observing official, armed with sufficient authority, becomes an asset of value to the stockholders. We have not enough officials to ride every train and cover every point. The more open, intelligent supervision we can get from each official the better should be the operation. Of course, if the officials were not experienced railway men a condition of nagging and rawhiding might result which would prove fatal. What the unit system does is to try to make potential the latent knowledge and ability which every official possesses in a greater or less degree. The old over-specialized system denies that this stored-up reserve exists to any practicable extent.
The fact that the title of assistant superintendent is uniform tends to bring out the real individuality of the different assistants. Each has to have his name on the door of his private office. As we hear less and less of "my department" and more and more of "this division," the references to "the trainmaster," "the master mechanic," etc., etc., give way to "Mr. A.," "Mr. B.," etc. The assistant superintendents have definite seniority, and when two or more come together under circumstances rendering it necessary, as at a wreck, the senior present takes charge and becomes responsible. Remember that rank and authority can be conferred by seniority in grade as well as by grade itself.
The scriptural warning that no man can serve two masters is still applicable. In our case the master is the corporation, represented at different times by various individuals clothed with authority. The conductor runs his train under the laws of the land, the policy of the president, the rules of the general manager, the bulletins of the superintendent, the assignment of an assistant superintendent, the orders of a dispatcher. He collects tickets and fares as directed by the general passenger agent and reports on forms prescribed by the auditor. The lower we go in the scale the fewer the superiors with whose instructions the employe comes in direct contact. The trackman knows authority only as its exercise is personified by his section foreman until the paymaster tells him to wipe off his feet before entering to receive his check. Therefore, put out a slow flag against too fast running over such low joints as "one boss," "complete responsibility," "divided authority," etc., etc., until you feel certain just what speed they will stand.
Affectionately, your own,
D. A. D.
Chicago, June 3, 1911.
My Dear Boy:—It has doubtless occurred to you how worthless as evidence are many of the office files. How can any one tell a year afterward whether the general manager or the superintendent ever saw the telegram on which his name is typewritten? On most roads any one of a half dozen or a dozen people may have dictated the message. How much better, as under the unit system, to have every man doing business in his own name! He can then supplement the written record with much more intelligent recollection of events related to the transaction. We dictate the most important telegrams, which pass unquestioned, without an autograph signature. This is common sense and just as it should be. When an unimportant letter is written somebody has to get out a pen and sign some name or other. How inconsistent! Why not, for certain kinds of correspondence, let the stenographer typewrite the name of the dictating or signing official, and then authenticate with the office dating stamp or a private seal mark? The office dating stamp should be kept under lock and key in official custody in order that it may be used for authentication, like the seal of a notary public. To save the labor of constant signing I predict that some time we may go back to individual personal seals carried on a finger ring or a watch fob. That is the way they authenticated documents at a time when the gentry felt themselves above learning to read and write.
If you have occasion to dictate a message over the telephone from your house at midnight, do not let the operator imitate your autograph signature, but have him print your name with a pen, pencil or typewriter. Also, take good care to have such messages sent to you afterward for you to check. Your time is valuable, but it cannot be put to better use for the company than in insuring the integrity of your individual transactions. It may be that no record whatever is necessary. With all our craze for accumulating files we do not record many telephone conversations. You must be the judge as to whether a record for your office is necessary, and in such exceptional cases state your wishes at the time. The farther down the employe the more zealous is he to escape possible censure by preserving unnecessary information. What we need is one complete record of a transaction rather than so many partial records. Many of the telegrams sent from a superintendent's office should, after sending, go to the main file room for consolidation with related papers under a subjective classification. It is more logical to file certain classes of messages by days in date order. For example, messages relating to train movements should usually be filed in date order since they are supplementary to the train sheets of that particular day, and the date would be the determining factor in tracing the transaction afterward. These two distinct classes of messages should be filed, the one under a subjective classification, the other under a serial classification. The good, old-fashioned way of rolling together all the messages of the day and cording them in a pile on the top shelf was all right in the day of wood-burners, but falls short in this day of higher pressures. Remember, too, that the telegraph office is a part of the same establishment. Wherefore, make a carbon copy of every telegram that is going down the hall to be transmitted.
If you wish to get real busy and cultivate patience, try to introduce a uniform filing system in all the offices on the road. Every fellow will tell you that the system in his office is best. The acid test is: "Will your system fit the president's office?" and the stereotyped reply is, "You see we are very different. Our local conditions are peculiar." So it falls out that when the agent writes his superintendent about office furniture, for example, the agent, if it is a big station, gives the subject a file number. The superintendent gives it a second number. If perchance the general superintendent, the purchasing agent, the general storekeeper, the general manager, and the president should happen to get hold of the papers, each office would affix a different number. You might have on the same railroad as many as seven different file numbers for the same subject. Remember that all filing systems are arbitrary. Whether you designate office furniture as seven, eleven, twenty-three, or forty-four, it rests in the breast of somebody to say what that designation shall be. It is like numbering trains, cars and locomotives, we take some arbitrary basis from which we build up a logical classification. Formerly, trains, cars and locomotives were given serial numbers in the order of creation. So were letters in an office. Now the proposition is too big and we assign series of numbers for classifications which are more or less self-suggesting. Any number of men have tried to work out a filing system based on the Interstate Commerce Commission classification of accounts. Any number of men have soon encountered limiting conditions which seem to preclude a satisfactory solution.
If you had time, I do not doubt your ability to work out the best kind of a filing system, but you have not the time. If you had lived before George Stephenson you might have invented the locomotive, but George beat us all to it. If you had time you could work out a table of logarithms, or a table of trigonometric functions. Life is so short that it is better to use the tables that other people have prepared. By the same token, if I were you, I would save my company money by adopting Williams' Railroad Classification. It is an expansive, but not expensive, decimal system suitable for everybody from the station agent to the president. Among the roads that have taken it seriously are the Baltimore & Ohio, the Delaware & Hudson, the Pennsylvania, and the Harriman Lines, not such a puny lot. Others say of it as of the unit system of organization: "We are watching its development with much interest." In either case, if the stockholders and directors are complacent, you and I have no kick coming as to the number of years over which this inactive watchfulness may extend.
The manifest advantages of a uniform filing classification are the time saved in avoiding duplication of numbers, and the practical familiarity possible to officials and employes of all grades and locations. When a man is promoted or transferred, he does not have to learn a new filing system. Instead of the whole burden of filing being upon a file clerk, everybody can be helping to preserve the integrity and insure the efficiency of the system. It is not necessary to sit up nights and memorize filing numbers. Take the matter seriously, and in a short time you will unconsciously absorb the most important numbers, just as you get trains, cars, and locomotives in your head. Officials frequently have a disproportionate and exaggerated sense of the value of their own time. They are paid to think from their presumably wider understanding. If the official by one minute's thought can dictate the file number and later on save several hours of search in the file room, it is his duty to do so. All over the country file clerks tell me their troubles. The burden is, "If you will get the officials to respect the files as much as we respect the officials, it will all be easy." You know, my boy, that there are a whole lot of things that deserve to be taken just as seriously as we take ourselves. Consider this standard code of train rules again. With all its defects and shortcomings it is a vital force. Because it is standard it gains a respect as a result of lifelong drill and discipline of employes, regardless of changes in location or assignment. Therefore, standardize your files, and interest your officials. Rank imposes obligation, ornoblesse oblige, as the French say.
It is a much easier matter to start a new filing system than is generally supposed. Just begin. It is not necessary to renumber the old files. Give new numbers to all the old stuff that comes in, and in a month or two you will probably absorb nearly all that is of current interest. Then store the remainder of the old stuff as a dead file under the old system. Most of the old you will never need, but if you do, as occasion arises, locate under the old system and transfer to the new.
If you are putting up a new office building or re-arranging an old one, try and locate the main file room next to the telegraph office. Or put one over the other so that quick communication can be made by some such device as a chute, dumb waiter, or pneumatic tube. Telegrams received can then be hurried to the file room and related papers attached, when desirable, without taking the valuable time of an official to send to the file room for them. Here is a place for a really rational conservation of official time. The effect of effort should be in proportion to its intelligence and intensity rather than to its amount.
Experts long ago established the fact by time studies, and otherwise, that flat, vertical filing cases are the most efficient and economical. There are a number of satisfactory makes on the market. Like selecting a typewriter, it is largely a matter of personal preferment. The way to beat another man at his own game is first to sit in, play and learn. Gamblers would become extinct if all men lived up to this advice. Most railway officials regard organization as an exception to this precept because, as I said before, nearly every man flatters himself that he is a born organizer. Before you raise the stakes too high in trying to beat another man's game of organization, better first sit in and play it his way.
Do not be afraid to trust outlying offices, like those of your superintendents, to run their own files. Have them inspected as often as may be necessary to insure uniformity and efficiency. Do not forbid their adding numbers as emergencies arise. Assemble these new subjects periodically, say once in six months, for standardization, and amplify the working numbers if necessary. You must allow for differences in the human equation. Some men are strict constructionists, and some are broader. Some men classify under a few subjects, while others subdivide to a greater degree. You know the old story of the man who was indexing and feared that something might be overlooked. So under the caption, "God," he put the cross reference, "See Almighty God." Without a retrospective study of actual performance you cannot well say just how many sub-numbers shall be used in a given office, any more than you can determine in advance how many train orders a certain dispatcher should put out under the standard code. Among the advantages of using a card index for running a file is that by counting the live cards we know the number of subjects in actual use. This is not inconsistent with book numbers, the book then being used as a reference encyclopedia from which subjects are entered on cards as fast as each necessity arises.
Remember that while immutable principles must eventually triumph over local conditions, much depends upon considerate application. The local condition didn't just happen, but had its origin in some reason, good or bad, perhaps once convincing but now outgrown. Sometimes the reason is so vital as to be a principle in itself. In our beloved Southland there are local conditions of society which do not obtain elsewhere in this country. True Southerners thank God that human slavery has been abolished. They are striving earnestly and successfully to adjust conditions created in the birth pangs of a social revolution. Well managed railroads like the Louisville & Nashville adjust their working policies to these basic conditions. Nearly a decade ago Samuel Spencer, as president, felt that the Southern Railway needed an infusion of new operating blood and a rotation of types, both excellent things in themselves, but, as experience showed, easily overdone and carried to an irrational degree. With native talent at hand for the developing he imported to the proud old civilization of his birth some rough and ready brethren of the western prairies. These earnest men and their followers knew how better than they knew why. They were long on art, but short on science. Demoralization and wrecks, attributed to inadequate facilities, cost the road much public confidence, cost the stockholders hundreds of thousands of dollars, and finally, in an awful tragedy, cost the able president his useful and honored life. Fate accorded to outraged sociology and her smaller sister, organization, terrible and undeserved retribution. For, barring this one mistaken policy, Samuel Spencer was an earnest patriot and a constructive railway statesman. As a youth he served in the Confederate army. Through life devotion to his flag was a passion. As a man and a gentleman his character was unblemished, his integrity was stainless. Peace to his ashes. Success to the Southern. Its great traffic strength, actual and potential, rests on the broad foundations laid by Samuel Spencer. Prosperity to the railroads. By constant search for the lessons of human efficiency to be drawn from such experiences as these, they prove their broad claim to scientific management.
Affectionately, your own,
D. A. D.
Chicago, June 10, 1911.
My Dear Boy:—You have asked me to tell you something about line and staff. The term line is used to indicate the direct sequence toward the active purpose of the organization. The line officer exercises a direct authority over men and things. He is the incarnation of administrative action. The staff is supplementary to the line as equity is supplementary to law. The staff officer is the playwright. The line officer is the actor. The actor is usually too much absorbed with the technique of his art to write new plays. The line officer, as such, seldom originates new methods, because he is too close to his everyday problems of administration to cultivate perspective. The ideal staff officer has had experience in the line.
The line with a railroad—its fighting force, so to speak—is the operating department. Because they are staff departments the offices of the other three, namely, accounting, traffic, and executive, legal and financial, can close from Saturday noon until Monday morning. The operating department, being the line, keeps the road open and the trains moving. Because of the poverty of our language, we now encounter some difficulties of expression in explaining all the various ramifications of line and staff. A staff department, because of its size, may exercise line functions within its own interior administration. Thus, the auditor organizes his office forces under appropriate chief and subordinate officers who, within the accounting department itself, exercise the authority of line officers. When such accounting officers get outside their legitimate sphere and endeavor to act as line officers in the operating department, expensive friction begins. This feature I shall discuss with you later. Suffice it to say that at present the hardest of all problems is to keep line and staff in economical balance. Staff departments then may within themselves exercise line functions. This grows rather from necessities imposed by size than from inherent nature of function. The first staff officer was an adviser and exercised no authority, except that of polite inquiry, because there was no one whom he could properly command. So the line, the operating department, soon grows so big as to require staff officers within itself, people who have time to think out improvements because they are not burdened with administrative responsibilities.
Hold tightly to this thought, my boy. The plane of differentiation between line and staff usually follows a cleavage based upon size rather than upon relative importance of function. The first line officer needed no staff, because he had time to think as well as act for himself. The first superintendent looked after the repairmen himself. The first master mechanic came into being not because he was so different from everybody else, but because the superintendent had become too busy to do it all himself. By and by the master mechanic forgot this basic fact and, unconsciously exaggerating his own specialty, began to feel that the railway is incident to shops and equipment rather than shops and equipment incident to the railway. The last five years have witnessed a decided improvement in this undesirable condition. Just at present the store department Indians are the tribe most in need of being rounded up on the operating department reservation for eye wash and vaccination against distorted perspective.
The operating department of a railroad is, or should be, a real department, complete and self-contained. It consists of such important component elements or branches as maintenance of way and structures, maintenance of equipment, transportation, telegraph, signals, stores, purchases, dining cars, etc. Let us not waste any time discussing the relative importance of these components. Æsop centuries ago did that better than we can. His fable of the quarrel among the organs of the human body teaches us that while all are important each is useless without the others.
Individually the general superintendent, the chief engineers, the superintendent of motive power, the superintendent of transportation, the superintendent of telegraph, the general storekeeper, and the superintendent of dining cars, are line officers exercising direct authority in a defined sequence. Collectively they constitute, for consultation, the general manager's staff. When all have the rank and title of assistant general manager, this duality of function is the more pronounced and valuable. For the feudal notion of unbalanced components is substituted the cabinet idea of comprehensive deliberation, unified administration and devotion to a common purpose. (Anvil chorus: "It's that way on our road now.") Perhaps so, but if so, what assurance have your stockholders and the public that the same happy condition will obtain ten years hence? Each head of the nine executive departments in Washington is a line officer running his own department. At the President's cabinet table he becomes a staff officer deliberating upon the problems of all. The attorney-general should be called secretary of law, and the postmaster-general secretary of posts. Then all nine would have the uniform title of secretary. The position of secretary to the president, an assistanttoproposition, should be abolished—usually I prefer the gentler expression, "title discontinued." His duties should be performed by the secretary of state, who is always the ranking member of the cabinet. In the first cabinet, that of George Washington, the secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, was in effect, though not in name, prime minister and chief of staff. Foreign affairs, then an incidental feature, are now so extensive for a world power that we should have another department under a secretary of foreign affairs, leaving the secretary of state as senior to be the able righthand man of the president. Here again the size of the proposition, the volume of business, is the proper determining factor.
On a small railway the chief engineer as a line officer may be able to do all the engineering himself. As the business grows he requires such special staff advisers as an office engineer, a locating engineer, a bridge engineer, a tunnel engineer, a signal engineer, etc. Some roads make such engineers line officers by giving them extensive authority over working forces. Usually I believe this is a mistake. It seems better for these engineers to be real staff officers, thinking, inspecting, warning, instructing (in the sense of lecturing), improving, designing and perhaps sometimes installing, but never directly operating or maintaining. The same general reasoning applies to the mechanical bureau when the business of the chief mechanical officer attains a volume necessitating the help of such valuable staff officers as a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, a testing engineer, etc.
When the telegraph came to supplement the railway, men stood in awe of its invisible effects. Soon the telegraph man said in effect, "This is a wonderful and mysterious specialty which you fellows cannot understand. Let me, the expert, handle it for you." So he segregated unto himself a so-called department on the plea that it is so different. By and by the division superintendents woke up to find their telegraph hands tied. Appeals to the general superintendent or general manager proved fruitless. So the division linemen usually report directly to the superintendent of telegraph. They often stay around division headquarters until the chief dispatcher is able to jar them loose and get them out on the road. Then they go to the scene of trouble, look wise and get the section foreman to dig the hole and do most of the work. Why not, therefore, hold the section foreman responsible for ordinary wire repairs in the first place? Let every section house have a pair of climbers, a wire cutter and pliers with whatever simple outfit may be necessary. If unusual troubles develop or a line is to be rebuilt send the most expert help available, but while on the division let such help be under the authority of the superintendent. We need an expert at the top as chief telegraph and telephone officer to tell us all how to do it. The volume of business will usually warrant making him a line officer with the rank and title of assistant general manager. He should not deal directly with operators and linemen any more than a general superintendent under normal conditions should instruct an individual conductor or a chief engineer communicate direct with a section foreman. The integrity of the division as an operating unit should be respected.
By and by the signals followed the telegraph. Once more the management allowed the specialist to put it over at the expense of the good old wheel horses in the regular line organization. The embryo signal engineer said, "This wonderful and mysterious development is really something different this time. It is absurd to suppose these stupid old section foremen can learn anything about electricity." So the signal engineer was allowed to build up a new department. He went out on the ranches or in the barber shops and hired signal maintainers. A new department is liberally treated because its activities are a fad for the time being. These signal maintainers in a few months absorb so much magnetism from the field of the signal engineer that they are qualified experts to whom the rest of us must not say anything. They have easier work, if not better pay, than the faithful section foremen of perhaps twenty years' service. The old section foreman has a "savvy" of the railroad business, an intuitive knowledge of the requirements of train movement that it will take the fresh young maintainer years to acquire. Then we wonder why it is so difficult to secure loyal section foremen. Sometimes a belated effort has been made to let in the section foremen on the signal game. It is difficult, however, to get the signal people to take an appreciative and sympathetic interest in men who are not in "my department." Therefore, to prevent your track forces being thrown out of balance it will be better for a few years to keep the signal engineer on most railways as a staff officer without permitting him a line organization for operation and maintenance. Say to your roadmasters and section foremen that they will, at the company's expense, be given instruction in signals. When the signal engineer, the expert, pronounces them qualified by examination or otherwise, let them understand that there is a small automatic increase in pay. Transfer to branch lines the few who prove hopelessly deficient. The track laborer who can qualify to look after a particular signal is worth a few cents more a day to the company and should be so advised. If you start with the presumption that the man below is too dumb to learn you handicap him and probably doom him to failure. If you make him believe that he can learn what men of the same class around him are learning, that you, his elder brother, are in duty bound to help him, you will be astonished at the response of his latent intelligence. The great managers of the feudal period were forceful drivers. The great managers of to-day and to-morrow are great teachers, the greatest of all experts, because they show the man below how to do it. Lots of men know how. A good many know why. Comparatively few have that rare and valuable combination of knowing both how and why. It is not a happen so, but a response to the law of supply and demand, that men of the Woodrow Wilson type are coming to the front in our political life.
Getting back to signals. On a road of more than one or two tracks, it may be advisable to segregate your signals from your track. Here again the dividing line is volume of business rather than fancied importance of function. Signals are important, but so is the track. Each is an incidental component of railway operation, not the whole operation itself. On most railways the section foreman should be the responsible head of a complete sub-unit for everyday maintenance and inspection, including track, bridges, fences, poles, wires and signals. This may involve giving him more help or a shorter section.
One of the problems of line and staff is to determine what is intelligent rotation between the two. The line officer, dealing with men rather than ideas, may get into a rut of practice which prevents his seeing the beauty of the rainbow which the untrammeled staff officer may be tempted to chase too far. Some officers succeed brilliantly at originating or developing ideas in the staff and fail miserably at handling men in the line.
True individuality about which men prate the most is that which is understood the least. Our Army and Navy are insisting that before being staff officers, all officers, except surgeons and chaplains, must first learn to handle men by serving in the line; that crystallization in the staff must be prevented by periodic rotation to definite tours of duty in the line. The railway of the future will probably carry extra numbers of line officials in the various grades that some may be available for detail to the staff, that we may better co-ordinate our studying and our working activities.
People say that our good friend, Harrington Emerson, able and sincere, will unconsciously give the staff the best of it; while your old dad, on an even break, will be found on the side of the line. If they are correct, it leaves plenty of room for the other fellows in between. One of the delightful foibles that make human nature so interesting and so lovable is the inborn conviction of the average man that, "though H be a conservative and K a radical, I am always the happy medium."
Affectionately, your own,
D. A. D.