Letters from an old railway official/Letter 7
LETTER VII.
THE NEW TRAINMASTER AND CIVIL SERVICE.
My Dear Boy:—I have your letter telling about your new trainmaster. You feel that a man from another division has been forced on you by the general superintendent; that you have suffered a personal affront because the promotion you recommended on your own division has not been approved. I am sorry to rule against you, but from your own story if anybody deserves six months twice a year, it is you and not the general superintendent. The latter may have been lacking in tact; he may have been unduly inconsiderate for your personal feelings, but in making the appointment, which you admit is a good one, he has doubtless been actuated by a conscientious sense of duty. Remember that a fundamental principle of highly organized bodies is that a superior cannot expect to select his own lieutenants. The next higher is always consulted and generally the latter’s superiors also. The theory is that they are in a position to have a broader view, to size up more talent, to draw from the system at large, and to accentuate principles and policies in promotions and appointments. This theory is supported by practice, which goes even further. On most roads circulars signed by the superintendent and approved by the general superintendent announce the appointment of a trainmaster. Do not let this delude you into thinking the general manager has not been consulted. In fact, if you could drop a nickel in the slot and get a phonographic report of conferences on the appointment, you might happen to recognize the voice of the president himself before the machine shut off. All of which should convince you that the stockholders and directors have strewn other official pebbles besides yourself along the organization beach. You say that the relation of superintendent and trainmaster should be that of elder brother and younger brother. Very true, but do any of us ever select our brothers?
In a primitive state of civilization, when force is law, the military chieftain rules. He makes and breaks his lieutenants at pleasure. The oldest form of organization we have is the military, for armies are older than governments. Every nation has its birth in the throes of battle. Time passes and the chieftain finds his lieutenants insisting on permanency of tenure. Gradually they secure it, and channels of promotion and appointment are defined. These reach the lower grades and the general finds that he has not even the authority to discuss a private soldier from the service until the latter has been convicted by a court-martial of an offense covered by enactment of the legislative body of the nation. In every civilized country officers are commissioned by the executive head of the nation and by no one else. The general-in-chief may recommend, but he cannot appoint even a second lieutenant. Consider now a commercial organization. Do you think the high-salaried captain of an ocean liner can select his first and second officers without consulting his superiors? Does he select his own crew? Really, now, do you think the general superintendent should perfunctorily approve your recommendation for trainmaster?
Men have been organizing armies and have been going down to the sea in ships for thousands of years. Let the railroads, which have been in existence only seventy-five years, draw another leaf from the lesson of the ages. The time is fast coming when an official cannot discharge a skilled laborer from the service without the approval of at least one higher official. We may not like it; we may say that such policies will put the road in the hands of a receiver. That is just what the conductors said when we took away from them the privilege of hiring their own brakemen. It will come just the same. We may as well look pleasant and see the bright side. Where employment is made a lifetime business, where admission thereto is restricted to the lower grades and to younger men, public sentiment will not stand for letting the question of a man’s livelihood be decided by any one official, however fair and just he may be. Safety and good administration may demand the man’s summary suspension from duty by the immediate official or employe in charge. If the man has been in the service a prescribed probationary period his permanent discharge will have to be approved by higher authority. Men will not care to risk having a recommendation for discharge disapproved. They will learn that the more carefully a discharge has been considered the less readily will a reinstatement be made.
Some people think you cannot have military methods and organization on a railroad because it has no guardhouse. This is a mistake. Your old dad, after trying both, finds that railroads, in some respects, have a more powerful discipline than the army. A discipline based on bread and butter, shoes for the baby, love of home, and pride of family, which is the bulwark of the state, has in itself all necessary elements for maximum practical effectiveness.
Reinstatements, unless based on new evidence, are demoralizing to discipline, for the reason that the unworthy employe bumps back to a lower grade some deserving man, whose good service is then reckoned at a discount. Some passenger conductors become so color blind they cannot tell the company’s money from their own. They keep down the wrong lead until the auditor derails them at the spotter’s switch. The ex-conductor gets hungry, the sympathetic grievance committee, not knowing what is for its own best interests, intercedes. The management, dreaming of loyalty in coming strikes, reinstates the offender. Some young conductor, who, on the strength of his promotion, has married or bought a home, is set back to braking. This causes some brakeman to carry the mail to the extra list. He quits in disgust and another road, less sympathetic, gets the benefit of his training. Other reinstatements follow and more of the younger men quit. Years go on, a rush of business comes. The management look in vain for promotion material and wonder at the seeming ingratitude in quitting of so many good young men whom it was fully intended to promote—in the sweet by and by. This is not the experience of one road, but of many. Let us be just before we are generous.
Speaking of discharged employes, did you ever happen to be in a general office with an ex-passenger conductor, discharged for “unsatisfactory services,” but seeking immediate reinstatement; and have an ex-official, who left the service in first-class standing, come in and ask for the next official vacancy? The conductor might succeed, but the official would fall a sacrifice on the shrine of civil service, a fetich because, in its true meaning, so little understood.
I shall string a civil service limited for you on some other time card.