Charles De Lano Hine

“ 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?" ”

“ 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." ”

“ Transportation, the first handmaiden of progress, is in active attendance every day of the year. Those who worship at her shrine and follow her teachings must lead the strenuous life and love the voice of duty. The splendid, virile performance of the past, handicapped often by crude facilities and forced expansion, must and will be eclipsed under the intense, trying conditions of the present and the future. In no profession more than in ours is there eternity of opportunity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is not a careful trustee better than a careless owner? Railway officials are trustees as well as hired hands. Through long traditions of service, the government officer, however hampered by certain limitations that are inherent in government administration, forms a habit of mind which prompts first attention to his employer rather than to himself. On railways we are equally loyal, but are cruder in our manifestations. We have the feudal conception of "my railroad" rather than that of "the railroad on which I have the honor to be employed." ”

“ 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. ”

“ At first blush, in these days of doubting insinuation and hysterical aspersion, when a railway official is often denied the presumption of possessing common honesty, when the burden of proof is to show him as having average rectitude, such a statement may be construed by distorted minds as a plea for subtle forms of rebating. Tenuous as may seem the line here between right and wrong, it can in a given case be readily determined. Too often apparent complexities are only the result of an abstruse contemplation of abstract possibilities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whenever I see an announcement that a division has adopted the telephone for train dispatching, I always feel that there should be an accompanying apology for being several years behind the times. For years progressive young railway men advocated the telephone only to be assured by old-time dispatcher officials of the unwisdom of such a course. Time and practical tests have shown that not only is the telephone practicable for dispatching, but it actually makes operation safer because of the increased human touch. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A strike, like a war, is a terrible thing to contemplate. A surrender to principle and violation of the broad laws of true altruism can be even more terrible. Last year when the Pennsylvania, backed by its directors, called the bluff of the Trainmen, there was hope in many a breast that a lesson would be learned; that the rights of the community at large would be vindicated as against the unreasonable demands of the powerful few. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are, however, too many dishonest passenger conductors. It is not enough for a man to be honest himself. The complexities of modern life make him more than ever his brother's keeper. He must not only stand for the right but condemn the wrong. The Order of Railway Conductors must make the American people believe that it is a great moral force for honesty in all things. We, the officials, must help the conductors to bring about this happy result.
The clerk for the corner grocer will not steal from his employer as quickly as he will from a large corporation. ”

“ Telling a subordinate habitually to question the acts of his superior has the same cheapening effect as unchecked disregard of block signals. It puts higher authority in the undesirable attitude of exploiting a fad, or an over-worked system, rather than of demanding reasonable compliance with proper and logical requirements.
Have we not overdone the matter of low working stocks? Is it not more expensive for a railroad to carry too small a working stock of material and supplies than one too large? Is not the problem too extensive to warrant very rigid comparisons as between different roads? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is it wise under such a disparity of conditions to make the train-mile rigid and sacred? Why not pay men by the hour, with a monthly guarantee, and run trains sometimes light and sometimes heavy, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, to meet actual controlling conditions of traffic? When business happened to be light, equipment plentiful, and terminals open we would penalize ourselves in wages for slower movement, but would save in fuel, in engine house expense, etc. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The success of your administration will depend upon the manner in which you execute the wishes of your superiors and upon the methods you pursue, as much as upon the inherent merits of the policies themselves. Flattering yourself, as you probably do, at being the happiest of the happy in the medium line, see how safe a middle course you can steer. It will take another generation to eradicate feudalism in railroad administration. Those whom Fate, opportunity, or desire has landed in the railroad game must abide by the existing rules. ”

“ Why, the accounting department is going to be absorbed by the operating department. From the ashes of the ruins there will arise a department of inspection or efficiency which will do the things that the so-called auditors are now helpless to accomplish. Some of the men in this new department will be recruited from the earnest officials and clerks of the accounting department of to-day. These men fail to attain the result they so loyally desire, not from their own limitations, but from the fallacy of the system under which they work. ”

“ On the contrary, from its impersonal nature, a corporation must be so administered as to gain the moral effect of every available force for right, to secure the help, however small, of every person connected with the administration. Views of composite efficiency must converge at a point sufficiently near to be of practical value, not so remote as to be of only theoretical interest. No system is perfect. Under any conditions the very size of a railway necessitates a trifling allowance for peculation which creeps in. ”

“ Fear of censure for delaying some important train makes the conductor "leery" about starting and the dispatcher timid about directing a prompt movement. When we begin wrong, how not-to-do-it methods always follow. The chief dispatcher will let freight be delayed in a yard for a full train with power needed at the other end, if he can start a light caboose without its being included in the average train load showing. How much better, and how much easier, to run two fractional trains in the direction of unbalanced traffic than one light caboose and another dreary drag! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Perhaps it is the same habit of mind that causes me to deny greater rectitude to the man in the accounting department.
The user of material has undoubtedly been careless in many cases. Will he not become more careless if relieved of responsibility and informed that he cannot be trusted? When children err, the wise parent does not disown them. From his fund of riper experience, he helps them by impressive teaching to gain a proper viewpoint. Similarly, the general storekeeper should control the superintendent and teach the latter the most economical handling and use of material and supplies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The result is that our bookkeeper is too far away from the paying teller. The bookkeeper then arrogates to himself fancied qualities of a superior being blessed with a rectitude born of the guardianship of money. Yes, we must have the transactions of one man checked by another more or less disinterested. This is not alone a question of integrity, but concerns the failings of the human mind. The more conscientious and careful the engineer the more does he desire a check on his own calculations by competent persons. We accept the estimates of the engineer, swallow them whole sometimes. ”