Charles DeLano Hine

“ You feel that a man from another division has been forced on you by the general superintendent; that you have suffered a personal affront because the promotion you recommended on your own division has not been approved. I am sorry to rule against you, but from your own story if anybody deserves six months twice a year, it is you and not the general superintendent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Where employment is made a lifetime business, where admission thereto is restricted to the lower grades and to younger men, public sentiment will not stand for letting the question of a man’s livelihood be decided by any one official, however fair and just he may be. ”

“ Safety and good administration may demand the man’s summary suspension from duty by the immediate official or employe in charge. If the man has been in the service a prescribed probationary period his permanent discharge will have to be approved by higher authority. Men will not care to risk having a recommendation for discharge disapproved. They will learn that the more carefully a discharge has been considered the less readily will a reinstatement be made. ”

“ Remember that a fundamental principle of highly organized bodies is that a superior cannot expect to select his own lieutenants. The next higher is always consulted and generally the latter’s superiors also. ”

“ These reach the lower grades and the general finds that he has not even the authority to discuss a private soldier from the service until the latter has been convicted by a court-martial of an offense covered by enactment of the legislative body of the nation. In every civilized country officers are commissioned by the executive head of the nation and by no one else. ”