Letters from an old railway official (second series)/Letter 11
LETTER XI.
THE PROBLEM OF THE GET-RICH-QUICK CONDUCTOR.
My Dear Boy:—Not so very long ago the wife of a passenger conductor, running out of a large southern city, sought the assistance of her pastor, a noted divine. She was worried by the fact that her husband was stealing the company’s money. With a good woman’s intuition she knew that the wages of sin is death; that sooner or later her husband would lose his job and his family its legitimate income. To her good, old-fashioned, unspecialized conscience stealing is stealing, whether called “embezzlement,” “holding out,” or “trouble with the auditor.” The fearless evangelist shortly afterward preached a powerful sermon against stealing, and included passenger conductors in his warnings. So incensed was the conductor in question that he announced his intention of disregarding the protection carried by the clerical cloth and of knocking the minister down. When the two met his bluff was called. The conductor, not the minister, came to his knees, not in fighting, but in prayer.
Here, my boy, is a canker sore that must be cured. Do not tell me that the Order of Railway Conductors is alone to blame. Do not tell me that in the lodge room the order side-tracks the eighth commandment for the working schedule. Do not tell me that the order will expel a member for any other offense rather than for stealing. Do not tell me that our problem is harder and our revenue less because Ed. Clark, the grand chief of an order thus lawless, was appointed by Teddy Roosevelt to sit in judgment on us from the high throne of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Tell me, rather, that we, the official class, are to blame; that we must cease to dodge responsibility. We, the educated and entrepreneur class; we, the elder brothers of society and industry, cannot shift the burden.
Please do not misunderstand me. There are many honest passenger conductors. I have known them on the road and in their homes. Some there are who deserve the more credit for withstanding temptation because of sickness or extravagance in the family. There are, however, too many dishonest passenger conductors. It is not enough for a man to be honest himself. The complexities of modern life make him more than ever his brother’s keeper. He must not only stand for the right but condemn the wrong. The Order of Railway Conductors must make the American people believe that it is a great moral force for honesty in all things. We, the officials, must help the conductors to bring about this happy result.
The clerk for the corner grocer will not steal from his employer as quickly as he will from a large corporation. The existence of a personal employer brings home the moral turpitude by visualizing the individual wrong committed. Coupled with this higher moral. incentive is the fear of detection through close personal supervision and interest. In a large corporation we have to approximate to this condition. The corporation, an impersonal creation, is vitalized by the men charged with responsibilities. The problem of organization is to give maximum effectiveness to this vitalization, to utilize to the fullest degree the personal equations of those entrusted with authority. Many railroads have lost control of their passenger conductors because of a fundamental misconception of the principles of true organization.
On the early railways the superintendent was the only officer the conductor officially knew. The superintendent, close to the president, was interested in the revenue as well as the disbursement side of the company’s ledger. If the conductor stole, if the returns were short on a day of heavy travel, the superintendent was among the first to know it, and to preserve his own reputation, and thereby hold his own job, promptly discharged the conductor. By and by some conductors graduated into superintendents. This new condition brought a new temptation. The conductor, if allowed to keep on stealing, and if favored with a run where the stealing was especially good, could well afford to whack up secretly with the superintendent. A few, a very few, superintendents yielded to this temptation. Along came the auditor with his mistaken theory that human nature can be changed and men made more honest by being put in “my department.” He said, in effect, “Take this away from the superintendent, who is dishonest and busy with other things; let this mysterious specialty of conductors’ collections be handled by the only honest department.” So the superintendent was relieved from responsibility for making his conductors render honest returns. He soon lost interest in that feature. The roads grew, and superimposed above the superintendent came first the general superintendent, and then the general manager, both also relieved from this responsibility to which the auditor clung with jealous tenacity. The conductor probably could not have told what principles of organization had been violated. He was the first to see the easier mark the company had become, the first to profit by the serious mistake that had been made. He found that his reports were checked by office clerks hundreds of miles away and entirely uninformed as to current conditions of local travel. The superintendent and the other division officials who rode with him and knew conditions were powerless to check him promptly and effectively because his reports and returns were going to somebody else over the hills and far away. These officials, because somebody else was responsible, did not seem to care very much. So the conductor stole under their very eyes and got away with it. Anything like this which begets a wholesale contempt for duly constituted authority is demoralizing to general discipline. The labor unions are not alone to blame for the spread of insubordination.
All men are students of practical psychology, whether conscious of the fact or not. The conductor found that to hold his job he must do well those things for which the superintendent and the division officials were responsible. So the bigger thief the conductor became the more careful was he about other duties. He was a crank on train rules, perhaps, or made courtesy to the public his watchword. All of this stood him well in hand. Sooner or later the spotter caught him and the auditor requested the general manager to order his discharge. When this got down to the superintendent or the trainmaster the conductor was called in. Instead of being berated for a thief, if he acknowledged the corn, the conductor was discharged, half sympathetically, half apologetically. The division official would have resented the imputation of harboring or encouraging a thief. To him the conductor was an efficient, faithful employe, meeting all requirements of service. If the conductor failed to please somebody else it really must be the fault of that somebody or the system. This feeling was not unnatural, since the detection came through a discredited channel, the spotter. Rare are the circumstances where secret service should be necessary. There is something inherently wrong in any system which has to gain routine information by indirect methods. The detective should not be necessary for checking the good and the bad alike, but only for following up those who become manifestly bad or notoriously corrupt. The most efficient system is that where open checking and inspection are so thorough that temptation is diminished by the ever-present thought of prompt and sure detection. This desirable condition cannot obtain where the system makes such important officers as the superintendent and the trainmaster unconscious attorneys for the defense, sometimes openly advocating reinstatement of a thief. On the contrary, from its impersonal nature, a corporation must be so administered as to gain the moral effect of every available force for right, to secure the help, however small, of every person connected with the administration. Views of composite efficiency must converge at a point sufficiently near to be of practical value, not so remote as to be of only theoretical interest. No system is perfect. Under any conditions the very size of a railway necessitates a trifling allowance for peculation which creeps in. This can, however, be reduced to a negligible quantity.
So completely has the old system broken down on most railways—there are a few exceptions—that it has become a farce. It is a sad commentary on organization that many roads are giving the passenger conductor up as a bad job and putting on expensive train auditors who usually are really not auditors, but collectors. They are called auditors probably because they are under the auditor. It is a principle of organization that the staff as such should never command the line. The staff reviews, inspects, audits, studies, advises, suggests and, perhaps, promulgates, but should never execute, except as a representative of the line, the latter being responsible for the results of operation whatever the operation may happen to be. The accounting department is a staff department. When it was given charge of a line function, fare collection, a principle was violated. Ultimate failure of the system was therefore certain and inevitable. The train auditor proposition fails to recognize this underlying cause. It further violates principle, intensifies the evil and wastes more money by increasing the number of staff men doing line work. Its direct effects are vicious and its indirect effects are demoralizing to discipline. How can the young flagman have due respect for his superintendent or other official when he sees the train auditor come to the rear platform and demand to see the pass of the official? If he is an old flagman it is a little hard for him to see why he himself or his friend, the old station agent, might not have been given this new job with its fine pay. Like his superintendent the flagman may have been in the service twenty or thirty years. The train auditor, only last week a country hotel clerk, mayhap, flashes on them both as a would-be superior being from a better world. Neither of the two can become very enthusiastic in helping the train auditor to protect the company’s revenue.
It is an awful reflection for the conductors to meet, that, although the railroads of this country are now spending hundred of thousands of dollars for train auditors, they are more than getting it back from increased collections turned in. Is not this more of a condemnation of the old system than a justification of the new? Whether or not the train auditor enters into collusion with the conductor, the former soon learns how easy it is to beat the system. When he does break loose he will be more reckless than the conductor. The latter probably had to work for years as a freight brakeman and a freight conductor to get where he is, and if he loses out may be too old to begin all over again. The train auditor gets his appointment too easily to value it very highly. Offsetting this is the fact that the train auditor is more amenable to some discipline because, as yet unorganized, he can not rely on the support of a labor union to secure his reinstatement. The auditor also has the advantage of examining character from a wider range of selection in choosing his train auditors. The train and engine services have been so badly over-specialized, as I shall show you some other time, that our choice is restricted to men whom the trainmaster happened to hire as extra brakeman years ago. These slight advantages in favor of the train auditor system have been given undue weight. We are all too much inclined to dodge responsibility, to take the course of least resistance and to pass it up to the other fellow. The company pays the bill.
The railways of this country are wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars every year by failure to make the conductors do their honest duty. I would like to have you immortalize yourself by saving your company its pro-rata share of this economic waste. The American people at heart are honest, and barring a few dishonest traveling men who short-fare conductors and train auditors with cash, will in the mass support you and the Order of Railway Conductors in any intelligent movement for honesty. On the other hand, if the people at large get an idea that you are omitting to use all the moral forces at your command they will organize some more special commissions to handle another part of your business for you. Do not let the people get the idea that where passenger fare stealing flourishes, freight claims increase because some freight crews are robbing box cars, and expenses increase because some officials are grafting.
If I were your president I would ask authority of the board of directors, a staff body, to say, as a line officer, to you, also of the line, that as chief operating official you are the only passenger conductor with whom the executive and staff departments will normally deal; that your tenure of office depends quite as much upon your ability to prevent stealing as to prevent accidents. To the auditor I would say that he is responsible for certifying to the integrity of all components of your operations by proper examinations after the fact; that he has access to all your accounts and records; that he has no direct authority over any operating men; that all his instructions must be in general terms duly approved by the proper executive. Then he would be a real auditor instead of a chief accountant. We would not have to call in the public accountant to do our real auditing. You would be a real general manager.
Assuming that the proposition is up to you, then say to each division superintendent that he is the only conductor on the division in whom normally you will be personally interested; that the conductor will send either the original or a duplicate of every report made by him to the superintendent’s office, addressing it impersonally, “Assistant Superintendent.” Let the superintendent understand that he and his assistant superintendents when riding over the road on duty at the company’s expense must openly check the train just as they check train orders. Pitch it on the high plane of self-evident routine duty for duty’s sake, above any thought of underhanded spotting. Give the superintendent as many assistant superintendents and clerks as he may need. Do not let him employ specialists for this one simple component of operation. Have him bulletin train earnings by conductors that the dear women may help the cause by sewing society discussion. Let him have the community understand that some explanation is expected from a get-rich-quick conductor. By this time it will dawn on the superintendent and his assistants that their jobs depend upon the prevention of stealing. Their unconscious sympathy with the thief will vanish. Because they are close enough to the proposition to give practical attention they will prevent stealing. I am aware that passenger conductors often run over more than one division. This presents no serious practical difficulty, although for many other good reasons also it is better, when practicable, for conductors not to run off the division. Pullman conductors run from their home district over the districts of several of their superintendents.
You and the auditor will have to work out the details as to the necessary bureau in your office, depositaries for money, interline relations and numerous other propositions which usually become self-suggesting when the broad working principles are established. You may, perhaps, need another assistant general manager for this work. You will not have the trouble a general manager in Mexico once did. His assistant general manager sold out, it is said, to the conductors. These conductors, mostly Americans, were an enterprising lot. They are also said to have bought the detective agency that was employed to check them up.
On some runs where the conductor is busy with numerous train orders you may find it better to make the head brakeman a collector, but never let him be a specialist independent of the conductor.