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.
My Dear Boy:--You tell me that you are conducting labor negotiations these days. As I understand it, all the old grievances have been merged; after eliminating all demands introduced for trading purposes it is simply a question of more money. This simplifies the proposition. The union gets all that it can and the general manager gives up only what he must. Simple, but barbaric. Such innocent bystanders as the public and the stockholders may get hurt in the process, but that is part of the penalty for being innocent bystanders. We are in a transition period. All the hot air fests that you are now holding are probably necessary to blow the chaff away from the wheat. Sooner or later the irrevocable law of supply and demand must operate to place the whole matter of the compensation of labor upon a more scientific basis. At present it is rather the strength of the particular union than the relative justice of its demands.
Our predecessors of two generations ago did many fine things, but they overlooked some basic propositions. Suppose that fifty or sixty years ago when a brakeman expected to be promoted to a conductor they had said: "Fine, my boy. You have the ear-marks of a conductor. You understand, of course, that we have no conductors who cannot run an engine. We will arrange, without money loss to you, for you to fire two or three years. When you assure us of your ability to run an engine we will begin to commence to talk about making you a conductor." Later on a man with this splendid all-around training could have specialized along the line of his greatest aptitude. We would not see freight tied up in terminals waiting for firemen, with a board full of extra brakemen. There would be an elasticity of assignment that would work out for the good of all concerned. We would not have the fireman straining his back to shovel fifteen or twenty tons of coal while a different breed of cat, a brakeman, rides on the fireman's seat and forgets to ring the bell when the train starts.