Letters from an old railway official/Letter 4
LETTER IV.
DISTANT SIGNALS ON CHIEF CLERKS.
My Dear Boy:—You write me that you have been kept very much in your office of late because the general superintendent has taken your chief clerk for the same position in his own office. You hope that your friend, the auditor, may be able to furnish you a good man who has such a thorough knowledge of accounts that you will be able to give less attention to such matters and therefore be out on the road that much more. You will pardon a father’s severity, but you are running on bad track, and my interest prompts me to put out a slow order for you. You have had the division a short time, it is true, but that is only a partial excuse for not having better organization than your letter unwittingly admits. You have been there long enough to have sized up the men on the division, and you should know where to put your hand on a man for practically any position. A good organizer does not wait for a vacancy to occur or even come in sight before thinking of the next incumbent. He is always into clear on such a proposition. He has thought it all out beforehand. He has in mind two or three available men for every possible vacancy that can occur, for every job on the pike, including his own. Wherever possible by judicious changing of men he not only has a man in mind, but he has given him some preliminary training for, perhaps some actual experience in, the position to be permanently filled.
The tone of your letter is half complaining because the general superintendent has taken your good chief clerk. Away with such a feeling; it is unworthy. You should feel flattered that your division had a chance to fill the vacancy. You should rejoice in the advancement of your faithful subordinate. Some divisions, like some officials, are known the country over as developers of talent.
Youth is proverbially quick, and I think sometimes that you youngsters are quicker at getting into a rut than are we old fogies. Why for a chief clerk must you necessarily have a man with office experience? Does it not occur to you that your office will be in better touch with its responsibilities if it is in charge of a man who has worked outside along the road? Why not look among your trainmen, your yardmen, your dispatchers, your agents, your operators, or even among your section foremen? Experience is a great teacher, but it can never entirely supply the place of native ability, of natural adaptability. Brains and tact are the essentials and each is comparatively useless without the other. Both must be developed by training, but such training does not necessarily have to take the same course for all men. Railroading as a business is only seventy-five years old, and as a profession is much younger than that. It is too early in the game to lay down iron-clad rules as to the best channels for training and advancement. Common sense demands that such avenues be broad and more or less definite. The danger is that they will be only paths and so narrow that they will wear into ruts.
Do not delude yourself into thinking that by going out on the road you can get away from the accounts. They are a flagman that is never left behind to come in on a following section. You can never get beyond watching the company’s dollars and cents any more than a successful musician can omit practice. Some officials think that the way to examine a payroll or a voucher is to see that all the extensions are accurately made, that the columns are correctly added. This mechanical clerical work is about the last thing an official should have to do. He should know how, but his examination should be from a different viewpoint. Primarily he must look to see if the company is getting value received for money expended. He must know that the rolls and vouchers are honestly made up, that agreements involved, if any, are carried out to the letter. The agreements may not be to his personal liking, may not accord with his ideas of justice, but the responsibility for that part is his superior’s, not his own. There is a proper channel for him to follow in attempting to protect the company’s interests, but that channel is not the one of a petty ruling on a minor question involved in a voucher or a payroll. Overtime, for example, is not a spook but a business proposition. If earned according to the schedule it should be allowed unhesitatingly. Before you jack up a yardmaster for having so much overtime, see if the cutting out of that overtime will mean the greater expense of working another engine. The constant thought of every official is how to reduce expenses, how to cut down payrolls. This habit of mind, commendable as it is, has its dangers. In any business we must spend money to get money. The auditor’s statements do not tell us why we lost certain traffic through relatively poor service. Their silence is not eloquent upon the subject of the business we failed to get. Figures must be fought with figures and many a good operating official has had to lie down in the face of the auditor’s fire because, from lack of intelligent study of statistics on his own part, he had no ammunition with which to reload. Do not feel that if you happen to advocate an increase of expense you are necessarily a discredit to the profession, a dishonor to the cloth.
There are few roads that would not save money in the long run by allowing each division say one hundred dollars per month for developing talent. The expense distributed to oil for administrative machinery would express the idea. It would then be up to the superintendent to work out original methods for spending this money to the best advantage. A bright young fellow with the ear marks of a coming official could be given training in various positions. While he is acting in a certain position, the regular incumbent could be sent to observe methods elsewhere or be given training in some other department. For example, while your candidate is running a yard, the yardmaster could be an understudy for a supervisor. A station agent could take the place of a section foreman, an operator the place of a chief clerk, and so on indefinitely. Do not understand me as advocating a wholesale shakeup or the doing away with permanency of tenure. The limitations of the majority of men are such that they are better left in one fixed groove. We grow to be narrow in our methods because men are narrow. What I want is for us to be broad enough in method to keep from dwarfing the exceptions in the ranks, and at the same time keep the parts of our administrative machine interchangeable. The original entry into the service is more or less a matter of accident as to department entered. Let us not leave a good man the creature of accident all his days. The company is the loser as well as the man. We complain because the trades unions advocate a closed shop, a restricted output, a limited number of apprentices. Is not their attitude a logical development of the example we have set? Like master, like man.
Let your new chief clerk understand that he is never to use your signature or initials to censure or reprimand any employe, either directly or by implication. That is a prerogative you cannot afford to delegate. It is all right if a complaint comes in for the chief clerk to investigate by writing in your name and saying: “Kindly advise concerning alleged failure to do so and so;” or, “We have a complaint that such and such happened and would like to have your statement;” but he should stop right there. It is all wrong for him or for you to add, “We are astonished at your ignorance of the rules;” or, “You must understand that such conduct will not be tolerated.” Wait until both sides of the case are heard. Then you alone must act. The division will not go to pieces while such matters await your personal attention. While you are learning that even a brakeman’s unpaid board bill may be satisfactorily explained, the brakemen are learning that even a superintendent can find the time to be fair and just. A lack of development of the judicial quality in chief clerks and their superiors has cost the railroad stockholders of this country many a dollar.