Railroad executive

“ For few practical railroaders will deny certain vast advantages to be gained by the complete centralization of our rail properties—not only in financing and in rate-making, but also in traffic solicitation and control, in expert staff study of mechanical and operating problems, and in the production of proper personnel, particularly for the filling of future executive positions. All of these functions and more too, the United States Railroad could and would undertake. ”

“ All men are more or less a product of conditions and environment. The railroad official of to-day lives from hand to mouth—the hand of expediency to the mouth of rapid-fire results. When more roads are like the Pennsylvania in having the stability which admits of intelligent, far-seeing, actual control by directors and executive officers, it will be easier. ”

“ The railroad companies, in every one of whose trains is a postal car, bearing the orders of the executive to subordinate officers scattered all through the wide country, and by which the domestic policy and operations of the government are directed, are its agents, also discharging most necessary, valuable, and efficient service. ”

“ Yet the station-agent leaning over his telegraph instrument in the bay of his office, and watching the Limited scurry by the little depot, and seeing the president’s big and gay private car hitched on behind, knows that that very executive in charge of many miles of railroad and thousands of men, came from another little country depot like this. The time may yet come when he himself will have a private car and a deal of authority. There is a great goal for every man in the railroad service. ”

“ To care for the engines while they are in use out upon the line, to see to it that engineers and firemen alike handle these mechanisms with economy and skill, is a responsibility that is placed upon the road foreman of engines of each division. He has supervision over smaller roundhouses but at any of the larger of these structures there is a roundhouse foreman in direct charge. The railroad long ago learned that its best economy rested in having plenty of executive control. ”

“ Long before the clear Washington morning had broken which succeeded that stormy April evening of 1917 when the United States first entered the World War, the railroad executives themselves had been feeling that there would need to be correlated and coöperative effort to make the rail transport system of the country adequate to meet the new and added burden to be laid upon its already sadly bended back. ”

“ As he was able more and more to overcome the long established competitive feeling between the railroad executives—to no small extent, perfectly natural and human personal jealousies—the more he was able to effect and extend these economies. The Railroad War Board which the railways had appointed early in 1917 and which was in many ways an anticipation of the coming of Federal control, despite its good intents and honest endeavors and real results, was constantly hampered by this competitive feeling even between its members. ”

“ It is a fair question, and one that demands a fair answer. Why should not our railroad structure in the United States to-day be rendering service at least as good as that which it rendered but ten or twelve years ago? Is it man failure, either in the lists of the rank and file or in those of the executives? ”

“ Its president, its general manager, its superintendent, and its traffic manager are vigorous young men who are forever running up to X, and dining or lunching with its Chamber of Commerce and its manufacturers—they call half of them by their first names. They are alert to the necessities of the town and of its people. But they operate a small railroad. They are not burdened with the detail or the worry of five thousand miles of line, or ten thousand or even twelve. It takes super-men to run systems such as these last. ”

“ When a railway official has become so pompous and consequential that he requires a special car, it is about time to look about for his successor. If we are to have a special-car aristocracy in this country let it be supported at the expense of some other interest.
Another railroad reform is needed on this side of the Atlantic. While the great majority of railroad officials are courteous and considerate, and perform their duties in [Pg 447] the most agreeable and acceptable manner, there are a few who do not properly appreciate the relation which they sustain to the patrons of their companies. ”

“ He infused his own energy and spirit into the management of the line, and gave new proof of his exceptional ability as an organizer and thorough railway manager. The finances could not have been conducted with better judgment and he quickly made the railroad the leading one in the Territory. ”

“ The American people have done much for the locomotive; and it has done much for them. We have already seen that it has greatly reduced, if not wholly destroyed, the danger that the Government will fall to pieces by its own weight. The railroad has not only brought our people and their industries together, but it has carried civilization into the wilderness, has built up States and Territories, which but for its power would have remained deserts for a century to come. ”

“ All the passengers are requested to walk. In single file we march over the bridge, and then await the train. It comes across, lightened of its load, slowly and safely. It is quite likely that in America the engineer would have put on all steam, and dashed across in a second, or, if not, he would have gone down a hundred feet, into a frightful chasm, and the verdict, if any were sought, would have been, “nobody to blame.” Fret as we do about the railroad management in Europe, it is safer and surer than ours. ”

“ It is in the interest of the conscientious and public-spirited railway man that there should be such governmental supervision of the railway traffic of the country as to require from his less scrupulous competitors, and from unscrupulous big shippers as well, that heed to the public welfare which he himself would willingly give, and which [222] is of vital consequence to the small shipper. Every important railroad is engaged in interstate commerce. Therefore, this control over the railroads must come through the National Government. ”

“ There are even humbler positions in the operating service, each of them demanding a fine loyalty and a fair measure of ability. Even the young boy who draws a baggage-truck knows that the path of advancement starts at his very feet; and the humble track-walker feels that a good part of the railroad safety and the railroad responsibility rests upon his broad shoulders. His is also a forlorn task, as he trudges back and forth over a section of line, hammer and wrench in hand, looking for the broken rail or other defect, slight in itself, but capable of infinite harm. ”

“ There may be railroad authorities, but if the service as rendered by the American railroad to-day is the result of accumulated railway knowledge, then I cannot say that my respect for the usefulness of that knowledge is at all profound. I have not the slightest doubt in the world that the active managers of the railways, the men who really do the work, are entirely capable of conducting the railways of the country to the satisfaction of every one, and I have equally no doubt that these active managers have, by force of a chain of circumstances, all but ceased to manage. ”

“ One may further anticipate that, as the various tendencies here in question are developed, there will, not only inside but outside the service, be a greater disposition to adopt the view of the American authority already quoted in his suggestion that "the large public policies involved in railroad operation are to-day left to the doctrinaire or accidental publicist when they should be the subject of study and effective presentation by the highest grade of trained experts which the associate railroads could draw into their service." ”

“ Backward and forward through these arteries there passes and repasses an endless procession of commerce and travel. In times gone by these huge systems of national and international intercourse have, for the most part, been directed and kept in working order by boards of management more or less personal and irresponsible in their methods of administration. But within a few years a great change has taken place. A new partner, in the person of the railroad employee, has literally pushed his way into the manager’s office. ”

“ It was just six o'clock when the chief train-dispatcher who was tapping at a key, said:
"Here's something from headquarters."
We crowded close around him. His pen flew across the clip; the message was addressed to all division superintendents. It was short; but at the end of it he wrote a name we rarely saw in our office. It was that of the railroad magnate we knew as "the old man," the president of the system, and his words were few:
"Move the trains."
"Move the trains!" repeated the superintendent. "Yes; but trains can't be moved by pinch-bars nor by main force." ”

“ A permanent body of officials in such an organization would be undesirable, save of course the able secretary, for the reason that too long a separation from active service would beget an indifference to practical operating conditions. Under such a plan officials would have to be elected by name to prevent a company from unloading any old rail on the association. You know that some statistician has figured out that the average official life of a railroad man in any one position is only about two years. ”

“ Fair and humane treatment of employees cannot be carried any further.
Having in this way, for the present, made an end of the evidence as regards the men, let us now turn to the management. It will, I think, be admitted that the running and operation of trains on American railroads calls for some system of management and discipline that shall be absolutely untrammeled and free from outside influence or interference. In a word, the manager of the operating department of a railroad should be permitted to manage. ”

“ Any man who should have told these pioneers of the railway world that the United States would possess in the year 1889 a hundred and sixty thousand miles of railroad, enough to belt the world seven times at the Equator, would have been regarded as a lunatic. ”

“ Every effort will be made to build up a complete staff of officers and men from those now in the service and in New England, men who know the local conditions, and who will respond loyally to suggestions for the closest, most efficient, and most economical operation. These two pieces of work are even more important to the traveling and shipping public than to the owners, because the daily work of the railroad must be done, or people will starve or freeze, and business stop. This daily work cannot be done right if officers and men are harassed and worried. ”

“ I do not mean the brilliant fellow who forces his way to the top. Frequently it is the plodder, the man unseen, unknown, who is the most valuable human cog of the transport machine. [Pg 121] Will the railroad, huge machine that it is, find him out and give his loyalty, his industry, his energy—in many cases, his initiative too—the recognition that they demand? Can it do this even if it will? I have known many a railroad manager to complain to me that the reason he could not gain a greater efficiency out of his workers was because of the very scattered and attenuated location of his job. ”

“ Transportation salesmanship?
Properly played it is one of the most subtle games in the world, and one of the most fascinating—and for the railroad, one of the most profitable.
We have seen a good deal in the public prints in the last few years about the prime necessity of nationalizing the railroad in the United States in a far more thorough fashion than has ever before been even attempted. One of the potential dangers which forever faces a land as physically great as ours is the inherent possibility of its falling apart through its sheer size and weight. ”

“ He is the focal point of the entire system. More than that, he is its head and front. If he is anything less, the sooner he is out of his job the better for both the railroad and himself; for, although there is a great variety of departments in the organization of steam railroad transportation and each department will have still greater varieties of activities, there is but a single activity delegated to the office that bears only the modest word “president” in gilt letters upon its door. ”

“ The lowest-priced man in the train-service must understand the entire complicated theories of railroad operation to a T. He may be the man on whom responsibility—the responsibility for the safety of not one but many human lives—may suddenly be thrust. A gate-tender at a highway crossing has not ordinarily a place of gravest responsibility; yet in some least expected hour this humblest employee of the operating department may hold the fate of human life in the balancing of his steady hands.
Americans run the American railroads. ”

“ They are managing not merely a piece of property, but a vast and complicated organization of men, and an instrument of public service. In all these capacities their cares are equally great. The operating and the traffic departments are not less important than the financial department. The relations of the railroad to its employees, and to the business community at large, are even more perplexing than its relations to the investors. ”

“ Ninety-six per cent of this army of railroaders are engaged in the business of maintaining and operating the great avenues of transportation, an overwhelming proportion in the last phase of the business. The operating department is, to the average mind, the railroad. Its members are the men with whom the public come oftenest in contact; they are the men who are oftenest called upon to hazard life and limb in the pursuit of their callings. The romance of the railroad—a romance that is told in unending prose and verse—hovers over the men who operate it. ”