# Letters from an old railway official (second series)/Letter 2

LETTER II.
BUILDING AN ORGANIZATION.
Chicago, April 15, 1911.
My Dear Boy:—Nearly every man entrusted with authority over his fellows flatters himself that he is a born organizer. Flattery is never more deceptive than when applied to one’s self.
For every good organizer there are a hundred good administrators or managers. What often passes for good organization is first class administration. Yes, many a mother’s son who reads this will exclaim at first blush, “That is just what I have been saying for a long time. It beats all how weak some organizations are. I am glad that my organization can stand the test of such criticism.”
If elements of self-perpetuation are prime essentials of good organization, the Pharisee family are certainly entitled to bid in the preferred runs.
The corporation was evolved to supply a demand of society. Life, property, material, ​moral and spiritual welfare could not be left to depend upon the uncertain earthly existence of the leader or trustee. So, both rationally and empirically, by reason and by costly experiment, came the corporation to beat Death at his own game. Like all progress the corporation was resisted, because in the divine scheme of things the radicals never long outnumber the conservatives. Like all real progress the corporation idea won because it was needed. The corporation, whether governmental, religious, industrial or commercial, marks a distinct advance from feudalism by protecting the rights of the many against the caprice of the few. Because we have moved so fast might has often seemed to be right. Because the line of least resistance is the most attractive, we have sometimes backed down the hill and doubled when a good run with plenty of sand would have carried us over. Large corporations, including many railways, have often failed to attain maximum efficiency. Much of this can be traced to a neglect to carry out consistently in practice the sound working conception of the corporation. The corporation has helped society to emerge from political and financial feudalism. The interior ​organization and administration of most corporations, including government itself, are still too feudal in conception. The problem of to-day is so to eradicate this feudalism that the corporation can have the benefit of a free play of its constituent forces. Where feudalism exists the effective working strength is limited to the personal equation of the man at the head. The United States government is stronger than Washington, or Lincoln, or Taft. The Great Northern Railway measures its present acknowledged effectiveness by the man the Swedes call Yim Hill. The United States government grows stronger with every administration. The Great Northern Railway, too strong to be destroyed, faces a period of relative distress with the next dynasty. The Pennsylvania Railroad is stronger than such strong men as Scott, Cassatt and McCrea. Both the United States government and the Pennsylvania Railroad, although among the least feudal of large corporations, can still eradicate feudalism from their interior organization and administration. That, in good time, both will do so cannot be doubted. Inconsistencies between comprehensive conceptions at the top and narrow applications at the bottom are ​often overlooked. When disclosed and appreciated these incongruities soon give way under pressure of the broad policies above. We must build up from the bottom but tear down our false work from the top.
Organization is a branch of a larger subject, sociology, the science of human nature. Organization is not an exact science like mechanical engineering, for example. The variables in the human equation defy entire elimination. We check and recheck engineering conclusions. We compute and recompute material strains and stresses. We run and double back with the dynamometer car to try out our tractive power. We test and retest materials. We weigh and measure our fuel and our lubricants. We do all this for material things, which, because more or less homogeneous, are the easiest to measure. When we come to the really hard part, the judging of human nature, the co-ordination of the heterogeneous human elements, our self-confidence denies the necessity for preconceived practical tests. Because he is our man, because he followed us from the sage brush or the mountains, he must be all right. “Just look at our results.” Right there, my boy, shut off and pinch ’em down a ​little. What are results? Does any one know exactly? One year they are operating ratio, another, train load, and later on, net earnings. In no storehouse do material things deteriorate to scrap value faster than does the intangible, indeterminate stock article, results. No, I am not a pessimist; I still see the ring of the doughnut on the lunch counter. But I do object to being fed on birds from year before last’s nests. I believe the railways hatch out better results every year, but I also feel that improvement should and can be made even faster. It is largely a breeding problem. How best can we blend our numerous strains to produce a balanced output? Too often we try to do this by cutting off the heads of all the old roosters, whose craws really contain too much good sand to be wasted. A change of diet to a balanced ration may be all-sufficient.
The wonderful Nineteenth Century in the name of a proper specialization went too far. It over-specialized. The still more wonderful Twentieth Century will swing back to a balanced specialization. The medical colleges are learning that they can not turn out successful eye and ear specialists, the law schools that the constitutional or interstate commerce lawyer is ​the production of a later period. The successful specialist must first have the foundation of an all-round training. Broadly speaking, one applies everything of something only by learning something of everything. We all believe in specialization. Where we differ is as to the point where specialization stops and overspecialization begins. We all believe in religion. Where we differ is as to which is the main line and which the runaway track, as to which derail deserves a distant banjo signal and which an upper quadrant. Orthodoxy is usually my doxy. The great fear is always that the other fellow, being less orthodox than we, will try to put over some constructive mileage on us. Sometimes this causes us to make his run so long and his train so heavy that he ties up under the sixteen-hour law and we miss supper hour going out to tow him in. An empty stomach discourages drowsiness, and we may then stay awake long enough to realize that said other fellow was just as orthodox as anybody about trying to make a good run.
The corollary of specialization is centralization. The undesirable corollary of overspecialization is overcentralization. Get out your detour map, approach this proposition by any ​route of reasoning you please, and you will reach the same conclusion.
Railway administration to-day suffers most of all from overcentralization. Trace this to its source and you will find overspecialization of function, and its concomitant, an exaggerated value of certain constituent elements of administration. When in doubt, recall the ever applicable axiom that the whole is greater than any of its parts. Some people confuse the terms and ideas, concentration and centralization. Proper concentration in complete units by an earlier convergence of authority permits decentralization in administration. A lack of such early concentration makes centralization inevitable. Again, concentration of financial control is not incompatible with decentralization of administration among constituent controlled properties. When the big bankers have time to think out these propositions for themselves they will permit the railways to get closer to the people and hostile legislation will diminish if not disappear.
Organization as a science seeks to develop and to support the strong qualities of human nature. Organization likewise takes account of and seeks to minimize the amiable failings ​of human nature. Constitutional liberty insures the citizen protection against the caprice of the public officer. Administrative liberty demands an analogous measure of protection for the subordinate from the whim of his corporate superior. An amiable failing of many a railway president is to be satisfied with having everybody under his own authority, and to forget that the official next below may be embarrassed by having only a partial control. The general manager who insists the hardest that his superintendents are best off under his departmental system will squirm the quickest under the acid test of having the chief supply, the chief maintenance or the chief mechanical official report to the president. The superintendent who finds himself with a complete divisional organization is oblivious to the troubles of a distant yardmaster with car inspectors. When your old Dad was a ninety-dollar yard-master some of his most important work was at the mercy of a forty-five dollar car inspector. The latter was under a master mechanic a hundred miles or more away, who in turn could usually and properly count on the support of the superintendent of motive power. The obvious inference was to relieve the yardmaster ​of responsibility for mechanical matters. From one viewpoint these mechanical questions are too highly technical for the yardmaster. From another they are matters of common sense requiring more good judgment than technical training. No, I would not put every yardmaster over the roundhouse foreman and the car inspectors. What I would do would be to make the position of yardmaster sufficiently attractive to impose as a prerequisite for appointment a knowledge of mechanical as well as transportation matters. Gradually I would work away from the switchman or trainman specialist to the all-’round man in whom I could concentrate authority as the head of an important sub-unit of organization. Instead of leveling downward, as the labor unions do, by assuming that the average man can learn only one branch of operation, I would recognize individuality and gradually develop a higher composite type. Because some car inspectors are not fitted to become yardmasters is no good reason for practically excluding all car inspectors from honorable competition for such advancement. When we build a department wall to keep the other fellow out we sometimes find it has kept us in. ​We blame the labor unions for these narrowing restrictions of employment and advancement. Look once more for the source, and you will find it among our predecessors in the official class, a generation or more ago. These officials insisted upon planes of department cleavage which the men below were quick to recognize. Railway manhood has been more dwarfed by exaggerated official idea of specialization with resulting departmental jealousies than by the labor unions.
Therefore, my boy, let us get some of these inconsistencies out of our own optics before we talk too much about the dust that seems to blind the eyes of those who are exposed to the breezes of that world famous thoroughfare which faces old Trinity Church in New York.
Affectionately, your own,
D. A. D.