Charles De Lano Hine

“ Educate your men to feel that neglect of this wise precaution is just as mortifying as to appear in public without clothes. In shoving long cuts of cars without using air, get your brakemen and switchmen to feel a pride in setting a hand brake on the end car to take the slack and save the jerk on the drawbars. Work for the old-time feeling of chagrin that came to the calloused-armed passenger brakeman, in the days of Armstrong brakes, when he did not go after them soon enough and let his train run by the station. The men are not to blame for this loss of pride and interest. ”

“ A superintendent should know enough about an engine to handle the enginemen just as he does the trainmen. When we have men successfully running engines who can barely read and write, it is a mistake to claim that a locomotive is such a sacred mystery that only the mechanical department can judge whether or not it is properly handled. ”

“ Really, now, do you think the general superintendent should perfunctorily approve your recommendation for trainmaster?
Men have been organizing armies and have been going down to the sea in ships for thousands of years. Let the railroads, which have been in existence only seventy-five years, draw another leaf from the lesson of the ages. The time is fast coming when an official cannot discharge a skilled laborer from the service without the approval of at least one higher official. We may not like it; we may say that such policies will put the road in the hands of a receiver. ”

“ The system of collective bargaining, of labor contracts, has come to stay. It is merely a question of how and with whom we shall deal. It is so easy to let out work by contract, to call on the supply dealer to help us out, that doubt as to our own powers of organization becomes habit of mind. We farm out our rest rooms, our temperance encouraging resorts, to the Railroad Y.M.C.A. Where comes in the company, whose existence makes occupation possible, whose capital is invested, whose property is involved?
Do you think we have made effort enough to let our men organize as employes? ”

“ Can we expect our car repairers, our sectionmen, to be loyal and faithful if we lay them off with necessary work in sight, simply to make our books look better? They know that later on we shall, at the last minute, at the scratch of an indefinite somebody's pen, put on a big force and with a hurrah, boys, rush it through. Is this fair? Is it not better to keep twenty men steadily employed than to have forty on half time? The unquestioned deterioration in the quality of our labor, in the morale of our forces, cannot all be laid on the union's doorstep. ”

“ He would be lucky if he could get a regular job on another division of the same system. Let him persist in suggestions as to how the matter may be brought about, and the average official, hidebound by precedent, will consider him nutty, a candidate for the crazy house instead of for another run. Who is the loser? Not only the man, but the company, which should have the benefit of his wider experience, of his peculiar interest in its territory, of the infusion of fresh blood which his advent would mean. ”

“ Reform has to begin at the top, and if the division is to be the unit the superintendent must be something more than a high-class chief dispatcher finding flaws in train sheets. It is not enough for him to be a star division engineer, a boss yardmaster. He must remember that his holding of any of these positions is ancient history, not to be forgotten, because valuable and instructive, but nevertheless a thing of the past. As the yardmaster and the dispatcher must scatter their trains, so the superintendent must keep his staff doing different things. ”

“ Feeling in an indefinite way the responsibility for an appalling wreck, the high official thinks he must do something. He butts in with some ill-considered instructions which breed distrust of the entire system of running trains, which discount the whole organization. This action may result for a time in an abnormal, unhealthy vigilance, which is certain to be followed by a demoralizing reaction. When a condition, like a man, gets the drop on you the only sane thing to do is to throw up your hands for the time being. Wisdom consists in looking for the true prime cause of the aforesaid drop. ”

“ If one should take too literally the talk of the officials on whom he calls he would wonder how the road ever ran before each held down his particular job; how there can possibly be any improvement made by those who come after. No, I do not advocate hiding one's light under a bucket in the cab all the time—only when running.
The world is getting to place more and more confidence in the man who thinks out loud. It trusts him because he is not doubtful of himself. The stunt of looking wise and not expressing an opinion when a suggestion is made is no longer popular. ”

“ We have made our civil service frogs so stiff that our discipline has climbed the rail. We know it is so hard for a conductor or an engineman to get a job that we sometimes hesitate too long before we make an example for the good of the service by discharging a flagrant offender. If we knew that by and by he could hit on some road the vacancy reserved for outsiders we would have the benefit of the change. The man would learn a lesson, would not be debarred from his occupation, and would give better service on another road. ”

“ Maintenance of equipment as well as maintenance of way suffers from too much comparative statement. Some new official pulls our power to pieces to show us how they used to build up train-mile records on the Far Eastern. The crowded rip tracks reflect the tractive power of the big engines. Bad orders, the bane of a yardmaster's life, the teasers of the traffic man's tracers, block our terminals. Our shopmen and our car repairers, despairing of full time, move away. Yet withal we are serene, for are not we operating just as cheaply as they did at this time last year? ”

“ Able men devote their lives to the solution of problems of practical railroad operation, to making maximum net earnings for their employers, only to be discounted by the financial writers. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. The same writers who, to hear them tell it, can save financial panics by sound advice to the country bankers, who can instruct our Uncle Samuel how to handle his navy, who can hurry Russian troops to Manchuria, can tell us just how to run our railroad, just how many tons we should pull per train. Invention is the handmaiden of progress. ”

“ When your supply train has to tie up away from a night roundhouse, let the crew take short turns as watchmen. Incidentally the train might serve as an object lesson as to the endurance and capacity of men, the length of runs, and the care of an engine. If your labor contracts do not permit you to man your own train, do the necessary toward an amendment of such unwise schedules.
The more you think of the increased efficiency of the service, of the ultimate economy, of the smoother administration, the more you will cuddle up to the notion of a company train. ”

“ Business comes from an increase in population, from development of resources, from the growing sentiments of the human race. Life owes its origin to love, which originates in sentiment. The family, directly traceable to sentiment, is the unit of civilization. The way to have our heads rule our hearts is not to forget that we have hearts.
Business is so attractive because it is chock full of sentiment which can be made an asset. ”

“ Let us not leave a good man the creature of accident all his days. The company is the loser as well as the man. We complain because the trades unions advocate a closed shop, a restricted output, a limited number of apprentices. Is not their attitude a logical development of the example we have set? Like master, like man.
Let your new chief clerk understand that he is never to use your signature or initials to censure or reprimand any employe, either directly or by implication. ”

“ As West Point was the nursery of the early constructing engineers, many of the early roads were built and operated by military men, whose impress in railway methods has survived to this day. When the civil war was over the railroads gained for their service thousands of men whose ability had stood the stern test of camp and battle, men who could meet unexpected conditions. These men bore the brunt in the wonderful railroad development that secured forever the commercial greatness of our country. ”

“ Railroad men did not patent the air brake or devise the sleeping car. All this is natural, because in any profession where one attains excellence in a given method his mental vision may become contracted; he may reason in a circle.
Every once in a while we are appalled by a terrible collision in a terminal, the result perhaps of some poor devil of an employe not appreciating fully the meaning of "all trains." To the innocent bystander the switch engine and cars are just as much a train as the Pullman flyer with its two little green markers on the last car. ”

“ Do not wait for disaster or for investigation by your superiors to tell you that a loose practice prevails. Get such information with your own senses or from observations of your staff.
It is vigilance, eternal vigilance, that is the price of safety. Teach your men that a hundred successes do not justify an avoidable failure, that twenty years of faithful service cannot condone criminal carelessness. A fundamental is that when backing up there should always be a man on the rear end. ”

“ You may know that you are stronger and better than the official who gets the preferred run. You may know that it would be best for the company to have you run around him. All the men on the division may unconsciously feel your superior ability. They may all swear by you and make your name almost sacred around the lunch counter and the caboose track. All this will not count for full value if you do not please your superiors. When the general manager comes on your division you must be ready for any kind of a statistical run. He has not time to wait for you to oil around. ”

“ After such accidents, for a brief period, we hear a great deal about act of Providence, presumptuousness of man, fallibility of the human mind, surprise checking, discipline of employes, company spirit, governmental supervision and a lot of other more or less unrelated subjects. Are we not to blame for not having met the issue squarely? Is it not time that we legislated to recognize the scores of engines chasing through our terminals, from freighthouse to yard, from engine house to station? ”

“ His caboose rides rough; its stove smokes; the caller doesn't give him time enough for his wife to cook breakfast; the yardmaster saves all the shop cripples for his train; he can't trust the ignorant engineers; the brakemen are all farmers, and the signal oil won't burn. If you tell him that's all right, that you will try and correct all these things when the car accountant's office stops kicking on his wheel reports, he will look at you in sympathetic sadness and bewail the modern tendency to make clerks of conductors. ”

“ Some people think you cannot have military methods and organization on a railroad because it has no guardhouse. This is a mistake. Your old dad, after trying both, finds that railroads, in some respects, have a more powerful discipline than the army. A discipline based on bread and butter, shoes for the baby, love of home, and pride of family, which is the bulwark of the state, has in itself all necessary elements for maximum practical effectiveness. ”

“ Some passenger conductors become so color blind they cannot tell the company's money from their own. They keep down the wrong lead until the auditor derails them at the spotter's switch. The ex-conductor gets hungry, the sympathetic grievance committee, not knowing what is for its own best interests, intercedes. The management, dreaming of loyalty in coming strikes, reinstates the offender. Some young conductor, who, on the strength of his promotion, has married or bought a home, is set back to braking. ”

“ My Dear Boy:—The progressive president of a rustling railroad has recently gone on record as regretting the too rapid introduction of big engines. To which from many an ancient office, from many a greasy roundhouse comes a loud amen. The fad for big engines, the slavery to the ton mile, the rack of the comparative statement, have cost the granger roads a pile of good coin. ”

“ Overtime, for example, is not a spook but a business proposition. If earned according to the schedule it should be allowed unhesitatingly. Before you jack up a yard-master for having so much overtime, see if the cutting out of that overtime will mean the greater expense of working another engine. The constant thought of every official is how to reduce expenses, how to cut down payrolls. This habit of mind, commendable as it is, has its dangers. In any business we must spend money to get money. The auditor's statements do not tell us why we lost certain traffic through relatively poor service. ”

“ You may not live to see electricity displace steam for heavy motive power, but you had better not gamble all your life insurance on such a proposition.
The tendency has been to limit all the utilities of a railroad to transportation. Before long we shall, for a time at least, be going to the opposite extreme. Some of us have entered the pension and life insurance business, some own coal mines directly or indirectly. Should we not manufacture our own ice at various points as needed and cut out some haul? Should we not control the banks in the cities and towns where we disburse so much money? ”

“ The man who has successfully filled both is usually equipped to go against almost any old official job, without having to back up and take a run for the hill. The curse of modern civilization is over-specialization. The world grows better and produces stronger, better men all the while. Perhaps this is in spite of rather than on account of highly specialized organization. No industry can afford to be without the old-fashioned all around man who is good anywhere you put him.
The work of the yardmaster is more spectacular than that of the dispatcher. ”

“ We may pity the unfortunate blunderers, just as we may pity a drunkard or a thief, but their usefulness to us should be over. They may start in again, but it must be on some other road. Our duty to the public and to our stockholders demands that the safety of a train should be sacred. One of the most absurd conclusions is to measure the punishment by the amount of damage, according to how straight the track happened to be, according to how hard they happened to hit. Some railroad sins can be forgiven, but drunkenness, chronic or periodic ”

“ If it were definitely understood that every so often, say every fifth vacancy in certain grades of officials and employes, a man would certainly be selected from outside the service, I believe that we could remove the feeling of uncertainty. We would in a large measure attain the result we have thus far missed. We would build up organizations with enough fresh blood to stand the test of time.
Brains and adaptability are not a natural monopoly. God Almighty hasn't given any road a New Jersey charter broad enough for incorporating a trust of the most efficient men. ”