Charles DeLano Hine

“ Another avowed object is to get the division supply people closer to the train sheet, to give propinquity a chance to develop love, and to counteract that we-are-so-different feeling which comes on many railroads, not only in the spring, but under all signs of the zodiac. The logical development on divisions of considerable volume of supply business will be to make the division storekeeper an assistant superintendent. This method of store accounting is relatively closer to real transactions, especially where the division supply train is used, than might be supposed. ”

“ Have we not overdone the matter of low working stocks? Is is 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? ”

“ This mistaken theory is carried to the extent of denying to the division superintendent the custody of fifty shovels to be used by the emergency gang of fifty men which it is entirely within his province to order out to clear the road. The men he can command. The shovels, without which the men are useless, he must beseech from a storekeeper receiving, perhaps, one-third as much salary as himself. Of course, in an emergency, the superintendent takes the shovels, anyway. As I said before, it is a pretty poor system that breaks down in an emergency. The test of a system is an emergency. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As I understand it, their able director of purchases does not, as many people suppose, scrutinize all requisitions. Each of the eight vice-presidents and general managers has his own purchasing agent, who, under the broad policy of local autonomy, buys many articles as best he can. Those large items which experience proves can best be bought for all by the director of purchases, are so purchased under blanket contracts. For those items the local purchasing agent becomes an ordering agent. The point of it all is that no iron clad rule is laid down. ”

“ Transportation is the most exacting, the most diversified, the most far-reaching of commercial and industrial activities. It follows then, under the law of the survival of the fittest, that those who can survive in the art and science of transportation must be the fittest of the fit. ”

“ Frequently a railroad as a plant is adequate to manufacture more transportation than it can sell. The other fellow is getting too much of the competitive business. Investigation often shows that railroad solicitors can sell a shipper no freight or passenger transportation, because his salesman receives no orders from the railroad’s purchasing agent. ”

“ The general storekeeper and the local storekeeper, ambitious for low stock records, may hold down their requisitions. It is so easy to say that a telegram will bring a cylinder head or other spare part to the desired point. If meantime a big locomotive has been out of commission in a distant roundhouse for two or three days and a light engine has been sent to protect the run, there is nothing in the store accounts to reflect this needless expense. The individual batting averages are high, but some way the team is not winning games. ”

“ The underlying conception is that railroad stores are maintained to help make the wheels go around, that all supply activities should be concentrated upon the most economical manufacture and sale of transportation. ”

“ Too often apparent complexities are only the result of an abstruse contemplation of abstract possibilities. Give honest, fearless, practical treatment to each concrete case as it arises, indulge more in inductive reasoning which predicates laws upon facts, not facts upon laws, and complexity gives way to common sense. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One of the fallacies introduced by the store people is that the user of material cannot be trusted with its custody, because he will carry too much stock, due to an exaggerated view of future necessities. ”

“ Which policy is better is of course a question of opinion. A man’s views on organization and methods are largely a matter of temperament and association, just as his politics and religion depend usually upon heredity and environment. ”

“ At normal speed, the administrative machine should run well balanced. When the speed becomes great enough, higher authority should be a governor brought into action more or less automatically. Telling a subordinate habitually to question the acts of his superior has the same cheapening effect as unchecked disregard of block signals. ”

“ In between—that happy medium which I mentioned to you—stand the Harriman Lines with division stores under the division superintendent, who in turn as to supply matters is under the general storekeeper or other chief supply official, the latter already having in some cases the title and status of an assistant general manager. The man in direct charge of the one general store which is allowed each general jurisdiction is called a storekeeper. ”

“ Like the average miles per car per day, does not the equation contain too many variables to admit of a very exact solution? Can we compare effectively the dissimilar conditions involved in climate, distances from producing and distributing centers, character of predominating traffic, etc.? ”

“ This good work of the traffic department in creating wealth and developing industrial communities in territory local to a particular road may be largely lost to that road because its purchasing agent, consciously or unconsciously, fails to exercise proper and legitimate discrimination in the performance of his important function. ”