Letters from an old railway official/Letter 15
LETTER XV.
MORE ON CIVIL SERVICE.
My Dear Boy:—We were speaking of railroad civil service, so called. As I told you before, our civil service is so far from the genuine article that I always feel like qualifying the term in some way for fear of being called in on the carpet for failure to cut the proper duplex. It is a great big subject, worthy of the most serious consideration, because it concerns men, not machines. Furthermore, it is a high type of man with whom we deal or should deal. We are all so busy that we say we concern ourselves with results. We all butt in too much on details, usually along the line of our early training. Yet, withal, we overlook some pretty long shots because we flatter ourselves we are too busy to place small bets.
Even after we have wasted so much of the building season that we give the contractor a bonus to rush the new line to completion in time to hold the charter, wouldn’t it pay us to have a care as to the kind of men we let him work on our right of way? Next year, when the grievance committees come up from the new division, we make them feel that it means something, it gives them a stamp of honor to work for our system. Why not begin a little farther back? Why not hook up in the beginning so that our different departments can get busy early in the game? Let the people who are to settle the new country help build and maintain the road. Let the immigration agent camp with the reconnoitering engineer. When the latter comes back to locate or retrace, let the former be interesting colonies. Let our own organization follow the surveyor’s flag. Let’s be our own contractor and get back more of the money he disburses. Why let a floating gang of Dagoes take so big a bunch of it back to sunny Italy? Why not spend it ourselves so that its recipients will use it to develop the country and hurry the origination of traffic? Let’s handle this coin both going and coming and cut out some of the empty haul.
The political revolutions in continental Europe and the famine in Ireland in 1848 brought to this country a high class of immigrants. We gave them work and schools. They helped build the railroads. Some continued on the roads after construction; others helped develop the surrounding country. Our flag made them free, and when civil war came they were among the bravest of its defenders. To-day their children and their children’s children, all Americans, rank high among railway officials and employes. Perhaps all this is a happen so; perhaps much of it is due to big, brainy men whose policies were not narrowed by specialization in departments. We are now doing little new construction. We should do it better than ever and in the full sense of the word. Is it enough to pass it up to the construction department?
Did it ever strike you that there may be many good reasons why both officials and employes may desire to transfer to another road? A young man, feeling the home nest too full, the local demand for skilled labor too light, has struck out for a newer country. He makes good. We find him in after years running an engine, working a trick, or, perchance, holding down an official job. Death occurs at the old home. Marriage brings new interests in another country. An invalid member of his family needs a change of climate. An unexpected development of a chance investment in a remote locality demands occasional personal attention. The orphaned children of a relative claim his protection. Any one of a dozen praiseworthy motives may prompt him to make a change, provided he can continue to derive his main support from the calling to which he has found himself adapted.
Would he be able to transfer without beginning over again at the bottom? Between the civil service of the companies and the seniority of the brotherhoods he would find it like making a link and pin coupling on the inside of a sharp curve. He would be lucky if he could get a regular job on another division of the same system. Let him persist in suggestions as to how the matter may be brought about, and the average official, hide-bound by precedent, will consider him nutty, a candidate for the crazy house instead of for another run. Who is the loser? Not only the man, but the company, which should have the benefit of his wider experience, of his peculiar interest in its territory, of the infusion of fresh blood which his advent would mean.
Suppose an official has resigned for any good personal reason, or because he couldn’t reduce the size of the engine nozzles fast enough to suit a new management. When he starts out to hunt a job his brethren of the profession receive him with sympathy. They promise to help him out. Each begs him to understand how impossible it is for him to catch the pay car on that particular line. Perhaps his informant has been on that company’s payroll only six months himself, but he waxes eloquent on the benefits of civil service, on the desirability of making their own men, of overcoming previous demoralization. This would be amusing if it were not a serious business. Each seems to flatter himself that he got aboard because of peculiar personal fitness, and inferentially denies such attribute of genius in the man on the outside. As a matter of fact, the recognition of outside talent is usually a consequence, of acquaintance, of happening to know the right man at the right time, of having previously worked with the appointing official. All this contains too much of the element of chance. When we reserve certain vacancies for men outside of the breastworks and select them in advance we shall get better results.
We have made our civil service frogs so stiff that our discipline has climbed the rail. We know it is so hard for a conductor or an engineman to get a job that we sometimes hesitate too long before we make an example for the good of the service by discharging a flagrant offender. If we knew that by and by he could hit on some road the vacancy reserved for outsiders we would have the benefit of the change. The man would learn a lesson, would not be debarred from his occupation, and would give better service on another road. Talk with your employes about this and you will be astonished to find how many will fall in with this idea of leaving open a door of hope by filling just so many vacancies with outside men.
Your official or your employe seeking a transfer or hunting a job will be impressed with the fact that all assistance rendered will be with a view to favoring him because he is a good, worthy fellow. He will not hear it put on the ground that any company is fortunate to have his services, that his future employers are being especially considered. If he has known from boyhood the territory and civilization where he desires to work, it will not be urged as a special qualification. Right here is where the most of us fall down. We too seldom make our subordinates feel that we are the gainers by having them in our employ. We are too likely to make them feel they are lucky to have a job. This may do for the indifferent men, but it puts no premium on superior ability and loyalty. It renders a discharge, when made, less effective as an example. You cannot treat all your men alike in all things. In a few things, collisions, stealing, booze-fighting, for example, you have to do so. In most things you must avoid destroying individuality. You must build up personal pride in each. Even sister engines of the same type do not steam or pull exactly alike. Man, made in the image of Deity, has pride, brains and courage to make more complex his disposition. Corporations have no souls. Railroad men have souls and good red blood. Their intelligence is an inspiration; their steadfastness, a psalm.