The Washington herald., 1911-06-18
By JAMES B. MORROW.

Chicago, June 1.-THE leather-faced
foremen OF a railroad section called to
man, saying: Here, drop that wheel
barrow and take a shovel What do you
know about machinery
With this little fragment from the loud
monologues heard out on the tracks,
Mai. Charles De Lano Hine illustrates
the economic vice of overspecialization.
Man" he says, ''exaggerates his
speciality. bookkeeper will stop work
until an Office boy can be found to fill
his inkstand. In the government navy
yards, until recently, If a carpenter need
ed a piece of iron he would not borrow
it of the maChinist, but would wait until
II could be bought and brought in from
outside"
Professionally, Maj. Hine is an or
ganization expert-a specialist himself
Railroads, ordinarily, are his employers,
:but he viii work anywhere If the task
is big enough for a man of his parts.
Last summer he had a desk at the White
House for two months. Half of each
year, however, he exclusively gives to
the Hartman lines, out on the road
and at terminals and accounting CEN
,ters. I saw him just after his return
from Mexico, where he was called to
modernize the methods Of its great sys-
TEN of government-owned transportation.
To-day he may be in New York. To-
morrow he may be in ST., Louis. At the
end of the week he may be on the Pa
icific Coast. He travels more than $1,000
miles year, and his acquaintance starts
in the offices of presidents and managers,
and extends to the men who run the
trains and keep the rights OF way free
from weeds and grass.
Resigned to Be a Brakeman.
Efficiency, possibly, is an overworked
word. The Germans do not think so.
Neither do progressive business men in
the United States. Only an efficient
army, whether with guns or with pig
iron, cotton, machinery, pork, beef.
wheat, and corn, can win the battle for
which II was trained. Maj. Hine is a
military mamie resigned from the army
to become a brakeman. What he might
have done to prepare the country against
its enemies bearing arms, he is now do
ing against fits competitors for the trade
of the universe. While other efficiency
engineers are devising means to produce
cheaply, he is taking up the slack in
conveyance so that a bushel OF wheat, a
sheep. or a steer may be hauled from
the West to the Atlantic seaboard with
out any loss OF time or motion.
Edward H. Hartman" he said to me,
was the Napoleon Of railroads. He had
no predecessor and he will never have
a successor. julius Kruttschnitt direc-
tor OF maintenance and operation of the
Hartman systematic Union Pacific, the
Oregon Short Line. the Oregon Railroad
and Navigation Company, and the South
ern Pacifc-is the Won Moltke Of rail
transportation. called on him one day
and explained my unit plan Of organiza-
tion. We bargained the next day. On the
third day, I started for California. to be
gone for six months. didn't have time
to send home for my clothes. All the
baggage ] had was a suit case
So began g revolution In the way or
doing lhirgs on one Of the worlds great
est railroads. But Hine had been a
soldier and a valise was as good as a
trunk. Since then he has put his scheme
OF simpliheation into operation on twen-
ty-three OF the thirty-one divisions con-
stituting the Hartman system. As
small boy, at the edge Of a village IN
Virginia, he began feeding his fathers
chickens on definite plan Of eo-ordins-
tion. giving corn 70 the most combativo
hens first. In their order Of ferocity and
then to the rest. which stood at q dis