Railroad manager

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So important a factor has he now become in the councils of a railroad corporation that hardly a move can be made in the operating department without first consulting his rights and wishes. Not only is the power and influence of the railroad employee at the present day an important factor in railroad management, but, in the opinion of competent judges, the time is not far distant when manager and employee will meet on equal terms and together legislate for the interests of all concerned. ”

“ As matters stand to-day between labor organizations and railroad managers, it is very doubtful if by any practical system of supervision or discipline the rules for the safe and efficient running of trains can in all cases and at all times be adequately enforced. Thus the whole business resolves itself into a personal matter with us as conscientious railroad men. Singly and collectively, it is up to us to do the square thing, if necessary, in spite of the management.
As the case stands to-day, we railroad men are in a class by ourselves. ”

“ That the men should lack the faculty I speak of is not, under the circumstances, so very surprising; but that a great many railroad managers, as well, should remain uncertain and doubtful as to its fundamental importance, is by no means so easy to understand. ”

“ When railroad managers are held responsible for their own official acts, as well as for those of their subordinates, and when all railroad transgressions are visited upon their source in such a manner as to be remembered by the stings of disgrace and of a blighted career, unfaithful railroad managers will be extremely rare. ”

“ Illustrations of a similar nature can be multiplied indefinitely, but one will serve as well as a hundred to demonstrate the fact that railroad men as a rule give little thought to the matter, and that railroad managers, while quite aware of its significance and value, seldom go out of the beaten routine of their regular duties to impress upon their employees the importance of the issues at stake. The following somewhat remarkable illustration will throw additional light on the subject:—
On one of the busiest sections of a New England railroad a certain foreman has charge of a gang of men. ”

“ Railroad managers, therefore, sooner or later will come to understand that the one thing needed in the railroad business at the present day is to educate employees to appreciate the fact that successful and safe railroading in the future will have to depend, not upon the multiplication of safety devices or the reconstruction of rules, but upon the personal effort and conduct of conscientious, alert, and careful men. ”

“ Expert railroaders, removed for a season, short or long, from the details and the vexations of everyday problems and working with skilled technical experts and even recognized theorists, ought to and would accomplish wonders. I have hinted also at the possibility of a strong central organization in training and recruiting future executive personnel. Those possibilities might be carried much further, in the super-relationship between the American railroad and the rank and file of its employees. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The individual railways should be regarded as parts of a national transportation service. This does not mean all should be under one management. Indeed, the principal doubt of the efficiency of consolidations has been caused by the repeated demonstration that a great railway is made by good executives; and experience has shown that the mileage over which one manager can be effective is limited to a small fraction of our national mileage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The problem of railway management and operation has grown so intricate; so vast, so complicated and enormous, that it is a maxim that no one man, whatever his habitude, knows "how to run a railroad." The executive officer, the auditor, superintendent or actuary of twenty-five years' service, instead of having kept abreast of his employment, finds that his service has outgrown him, not in fact alone, but in proportion ”

“ Other railroaders whom he does not see, engine crews, changing each few hours upon his run, signalmen in the towers along the route, telegraphers, despatchers, train walkers, car inspectors help in their small but important ways to make his trip one of comfort and of safety. The entire organization of the railroad lends itself to that very purpose.
The railroad does not stop at the mere exercise of its great function as a carrier; it does not even stop with the exercise of its every ingenuity toward safety in its transportation ”

“ The battle in regard to this matter has long ago been fought and won by the men. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers is now in a position to tire out any board of railroad management in the country. ”

“ For the conduct of the trains which their locomotives pull, both engineers and firemen are directly responsible to the operating department. The master mechanic simply sees to it that the railroad’s property is maintained to a certain degree of efficiency and that the man who operates the locomotives is capable from every point of view. A reasonable amount of deterioration is expected, and each locomotive is expected to turn in to the shops for inspection, overhauling and repairs, at certain stated intervals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the wrecking-boss is not doing good work the superintendent can fire him to-morrow, or (what is far more usual) find him an easier berth somewhere on the division.
There are times when the work-train must be summoned, when laborers by the dozen must get to work to build new track. A wash-out may require a half-mile of track to be laid in a night, and the railroad can do it. A young man wrote a very able story for The Saturday Evening Post a few months ago, in which he told how an emergency track was laid across a highway bridge and a test fast-freight put through on schedule. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It should be the same with every employee in the permanent service of a great American railroad company. The possibility of his rising to any position in that service for which he showed himself qualified should be open before him and constantly present in his mind. Many of the most remarkable and successful men who have handled railroads in the United States began their active lives as brakemen, as telegraph operators, even as laborers on the track. Such examples are of inestimable value. They reveal possibilities open to all. ”

“ Yet in the investigation which ensued it appeared that the authorities of the Great Western Railway, being eminently "practical men," still entertained as respected the train-brake "very grave doubts of the wisdom of adopting [it] at [29] all;" while at the same time, as respected a means of communication between the parts of the train, it appeared that the associated general managers of the leading railways "did not think that any [such] means of communication was at all required, or likely to be useful or successful." ”

“ The relations, coöperative and otherwise, that exist between the men and the management of a railroad are intimately connected with the safety and efficiency of the service. Generally speaking, the public is quite ignorant of the nature of these relations. The men and the management may be working harmoniously with a constant solicitude for the safety and well-being of the patrons of the road ”