Bisbee daily review., 1911-06-25

 the incident to the trainmaster. and 1 the trainmsster. by the process oi human nature, would have defended : his particular branch of the service He would have taken the position l that the master mechanic had at ! tackled his management Such a clash between feudal lords is mol good for a railroad or a factory. , Typical Case of overspeeialiation 'IogcalIy. under the ancient plan . of doingthe big business of the
 country. managers and superintend ents become specialists. We special , ie it is one of the requirements ; of civilization. A man can not be a great physician and great mer- , chant simultaneously. My preach [ ments are against overspecialiation which hands the task along to the . other fellow. and. as ! have often said. sidesteps responsibility. Tn this hotel. when I pay my biil. l can not have a bellboy carry my travelling bag to the office. Telephone the clerk
 and he tells the bell boy. The bell
 boy The bell boy tells the head DOT
 Ter and the head porter sends me
 one of his assistants. Such circum-
 locution in hotels, of course, is con | trived so that fees may be properly distributed and that travellers may
 pay the wages of the employees. still
 it is typical of all our methods Of doing business. and is one of the fac tors entering into the causes of rear living
 A man in a wagon stops far mers home to purchase eggs. He carries the eggs to a village. he merchant there sends them to deal CT in a city. The dealer places the eggs in cold storage. In course ot time the eggs reach the consumer from the grocery keeper on the nearest corner. Many specialists have added the profits between the poultry yard and the kitchen, and the eggs are stale in the bargain. \ ct we boast of our intelligence and roint to our machinery as witnesses of our time-saving. labor-saying and money saving ingenuity
 The American people are eminent in applying their obsolete methods. Moreover, oyerspecializatiOn dwarfs the individual. The head of a de partment is ready enough to tell what can not be done. so he be- comes q negative man.
 Makes Business interesting.
 But" Mai Hine went on to say, you asked me about the unit sys- tenn in corporations. It is all that the other system is not Briefly, 1t Is a simplification of ways and means. IL does away with delay in the use less mechanics of administration, abolishes the waste of lost motion and makes business direct and hu-
 manly interesting. Carrying my il- lustratiou again to the railroad. the unit system transforms the division engineer. the master mechanic, the trainsmaster and the head dispatcher into assistant supeTintendents, with a senior assistant, or chief of staff In charge Of the office when the super iuteudent is absent. The idea IS borrowed from the German asgy. .Nevt. all of tbe assistant superin- tendents are brought to the main office. The master mechanic leaves his shop. but his foreman remains behind. Thus. when the superlntend- ent finds it necessary to communl- cate with that official. he does so by word of mouth believe in the personal touch Also, l believe m getting the atmosphere of whole railroad or factory under one rooi By the old way the superintendent would have called a stenographer ! and dictated a letter to the master mechanic. The next day the master mechanic would have called sten- ! ogranher and dictated an answer to 1 1-r-..-s~zTardar7F ROTh letters , Wuuld have been copied and later t would have gone into the files Of each office. waste of time, energy and ' qls faua-y The number oF letters I passing back and forth between the | men on the Hartman lines has been I reduced half a million annually.
 q an not opposed to records. be- I cause they are history. We can learn
 a great deal from history if we have i time for reading and for reflecting | on previous events. The files of a business office usually are ancient I history One is not so much con ! cerned with the past as he IS with the present and the future A lot 4 Of time and energy are thrown away on records and the valueless refine | ments and technicalities Of account
 
 often become SO ridiculous and bur T densome. in fact. that the purpose of the organization almost vanishes :. in the machinery of paper, ink and j. tables of figures. We have closed 100 Il offices of records and are using the ! clerks elsewhere to better advantage | At the single record office in Chicago ! we have the files bearing on 100000 ' men. scattered along 1S,000 miles
 of track, and handling S225, ,00e,000 of
 traffic a year.
 AIuays Man with a Lantern. i These things ] say in passing and | before ] came to fuller exposition
 of the main feature Of the unit sys tenn. which Is. as have remarked. i the creation of a body of active and
 skilled assistant superintendents. The
 trainmaster and all the rest may take
 turns in performing the duties of
 the superintendent There is always ! a responsible man, however, a. call
 Furthermore. out on the line an as- sistant superintendent, having lost
 his identity as a specialist, Is eiotAec