Charles DeLano Hine

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A judge may sit for one term in the equity court, then in the criminal branch, and next in a court en 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”