Letters from an old railway official/Letter 9
LETTER IX.
CORRESPONDENCE AND TELEGRAMS.
My Dear Boy:—You have asked me to say something more on the subject of correspondence and telegrams. In these days of push the button for the stenographer, letters and telegrams are longer than when the officials themselves wrote out communications in long-hand. It therefore usually remains for employes like yardmasters, conductors and operators to preserve the good old terse style of the past. Some of them send messages that are models of comprehensiveness and brevity. When you run across a man who is an artist in that sort of thing keep an eye on him. The chances are that he uses the same good judgment in all of his work; that he accomplishes the greatest possible amount with the least possible effort; that he takes advantage of the easiest and best way; that he has the prime requisites of a coming official, namely, a cool head and horse sense.
Of course, the matter of terseness can be run into the ground. Clearness should not be sacrificed to brevity. There is a happy medium between the off agin, on agin, gone agin, Finnegan, of the Irish section foreman and the regretsky to reportsky of the Russian general. The point to be gained is to avoid repetition and unnecessary words. When wiring your office that you will go east on Number Two, the word east is superfluous for the reason that on your road Number Two can not possibly run west. For years in our train orders we used the phrase, right of track. Then somebody was bright enough to think that as Stonewall Jackson is no longer hauling locomotives from one line to another over the Valley turnpike in Virginia, the words "of track" might be cut out. Similar amputations have been made in the morning delay reports of many roads.
Human nature is so prone to grasp at the shadow rather than the substance that men cling to words rather than to ideas. When you have written a bulletin directing something to be done, do not discount your faith in its effect by the introduction of our good old friend, “Be Governed Accordingly.” We get in the habit of doing a thing simply because we have always seen it done and know no other way. We paint on the sides of our cars such unnecessary words as baggage, chair, dining, parlor, furniture, stock, etc., etc., just as though these cars were never used for anything else; just as though the words really served some useful purpose. The people who do not know the different kinds of cars are beyond the reach of instruction through such information. You have heard of the man who entered the dining car by mistake and asked, “Is this the smoking car?” Whereupon a waiter grinned and replied, “No, suh, this is the chewin’ cah.” The Pullman people years ago discontinued the use of the words “sleeping car” on their equipment. It is not of record that the voices of the car inspectors and the switchmen on the outside have awakened any more passengers than usual on account of such omission.
We borrowed from the army and the navy the idea of uniforms for employes, brass buttons, gold lace and all. Lately soldiers and sailors are wearing plainer, simpler service uniforms. We, however, have not taken a tumble, perhaps because no one has hit us with a club, or run into our switch shanty and knocked it off the right of way. The cap is the essential feature of a trainman’s uniform. He doesn’t exactly talk through it, but its badge and ornaments identify his responsibilities and proclaim his authority. Add to the cap a plain blue uniform suit with the detachable black buttons the tailor furnishes, and you have a very satisfactory result. The cap then becomes the only difference between the costume for the road and that for the street. Where tried, it has been found that men wore their best suits on duty and on the street, and kept their worn and shabby suits to wear around home. At present on nearly all roads, as the uniform is too conspicuous to be worn off duty, the men are tempted to defer buying a new uniform until the old becomes very shabby. It has been found that freight crews are easily induced to take advantage of the contract price to buy such plain uniforms for street wear. Such freight crews can be provided with extra caps from the office in emergencies and be utilized to advantage; sometimes reducing the amount of deadhead mileage in making special one-way passenger movements. The street railway of at least one large city has tried this system of plain uniforms with excellent results. Why should the most of us be so timid that we must have a precedent before we can endorse a proposed plan? Like a successful after-dinner speaker, I am responding to the toast on expression by talking about other things.
In writing important letters or instructions it often pays to take the time to sit down and make a rough draft with a lead pencil. If you have the dictation habit so firmly fixed that this is irksome, revise the first draft made by the stenographer. Except when writing in the familiar style, the third person should be used rather than the first or second. The use of the second person should be carefully avoided in formulating general instructions; its use in special instructions to a few individuals is sometimes, but rarely, permissible. In writing or dictating telegrams figure roughly what the message would cost the company for transmission at commercial rates, and its probable reduction if the price per extra word came out of your own pocket. As far as possible avoid letting your initials become cheap by being used by too many people. If the management do not disapprove, encourage your subordinates to do routine business over their own initials or over symbols, as S. for superintendent (G. S. for general superintendent, and so on), so that when your initials come over the wire they will indicate personal attention and final action. This, too, has been tried successfully in contravention of the fallacy that unquestioning obedience must be rendered even when it is known that the official’s initials have been signed by the office boy. It may be remarked in passing, that appreciation and fame await the individual who will be able to coin some short and expressive words to replace such awkward and cumbrous designations as superintendent of motive power, engineer maintenance of way, assistant to the first vice-president, etc., etc.
Did you ever think how desirable and practicable it would be to adopt the Government method of addressing the office instead of the incumbent by name? We do this with train orders, and usually in addressing station agents. We should also address “The Superintendent, Getthere Division, Suchtown, Somestate,” and not use his name unless it is intended as personal and to be opened by him alone.
In all correspondence remember that a reprimand, expressed or implied, may be taken in a very different sense by the recipient from that intended by the sender. Your old dad has maintained satisfactory discipline among quite a bunch of men on more than one trunk line without ever writing a letter of reprimand or sending a hot message over the wire. The advice of the famous politician to walk ten miles to see a man rather than write him a letter is paraphrased for our business to mean rawhide yourself fifty or a hundred miles over the road to jack up a man rather than play him a tune on the typewriter. Another useful injunction is that of a famous soldier and diplomat, “Never underrate yourself in action; never overrate yourself in a report.”