hopeful phase of present development is the election to directorates of trained railway executives like L. F. Loree and H. I. Miller. The professionally equipped railway director is a desirable evolution. Supply always follows demand, and the broad solution will be a composite made up of many elements of progress which perhaps have not yet unfolded themselves to any of us.

It is a great game, this transportation business. The more you study it, however, the more you discover that it is amenable to the same underlying principles on which rest the great and small activities of the human race. Like all professions, it has its distinct technique. Like all professions, it suffers from the inborn tendency of human nature to segregate itself behind an exaggerated class consciousness. "We are a little different," or "You do not quite understand our peculiar local conditions," are the arguments with which ultra-conservatism has opposed progress in all ages, are the obstacles which make so interesting all real contests for principle.

I make no apologies for taking you in this letter from the witness stand of the west to the financial chancelleries of the east. When both the banker director and the general manager learn that signatures on letters and tram orders must be as sacred as when signed to bank checks, we shall be winning back a little of that old-time sense of personal responsibility which is so needed for improving composite efficiency to-day. What better epitaph could any man desire than this, "He helped to teach corporations to remember that lasting composite strength comes only from intelligent recognition of individual manhood?"

Affectionately, your own,

D. A. D.

  LETTER V.

LIMITATIONS OF THE CHIEF CLERK SYSTEM.

Tucson, Arizona, May 6, 1911.

My Dear Boy:—I have had a good deal to say to you at one time and another about chief clerks and the chief clerk system. From actual experience as a chief clerk I know that it is a trying position. It is because the railway chief clerks of the country are as a class such a splendid body of men that I am trying to do what I can to help them. Too many times a chief clerk misses promotion because he is such a valuable man that he has to stand still to break in all the new bosses who come along and leave him in the side track.

The chief clerk system as we know it to-day cannot long survive because it is too feudal in conception to reflect the spirit of a progressive age. We need a chief clerk to be a head clerk, a senior clerk, a foreman of the office forces, as it were. Much of the time on American railroads the chief clerk is in effect an acting official, acting trainmaster, acting superintendent, acting general manager, acting vice-president, and even acting president. As such he signs the name of his boss, the theory being that the latter, like a feudal baron or a king, is omnipresent within his own dominions. Not only does this outgrown conception violate the fundamental laws of matter; it often borders upon a breach of honor, integrity and good faith. Legal fictions are fast giving place to the law of common sense. Railway officials should not risk arraignment before the bar of public opinion for such indefensible practices.

When the chief clerk does business in the name of some one else the effect is dwarfing to all concerned. We do not get the effect of either one or two men, but that of a fraction of both. Again, the chief clerk is handling important correspondence with officials below of higher rank than himself, of greater compensation, and presumably of wider experience. Human nature is such that sooner or later the chief clerk, a junior, is telling an official, a senior, where to head in. Among the hundreds of railroad officials with whom it is my proud privilege to claim acquaintance, I have found nearly every one flattering himself, "My chief clerk never makes such breaks." To avoid awkward and embarrassing silences, I am learning to discontinue the acid test, "How about your boss's chief clerk?" So widespread a belief indicates a generic trait of human nature rather than a sporadic condition. Organization as a science seeks by proper checks and balances to minimize such amiable failings of human nature. Organized society preserves the effectiveness and dignity of its courts by allowing only a duly qualified judge to administer justice. The old clerk of the court may really know more law than the young judge, but only the latter can sit on the bench and decide causes. The lay reader must be duly ordained before exercising the full functions of a minister. The man who uses another's autograph signature in the banking business becomes a malefactor. Are we so different in the large corporations that we can with impunity ignore such safeguards?

The chief clerk system had its origin when railways were small and officials were few. On a division, for example, the superintendent was perhaps the only official and by common acceptance his clerk was really the next in rank. When a small tradesman or a small farmer goes away for a day his wife and boy may do the work without any one knowing the difference. In a larger enterprise there has to be an understudy in charge when the head is away.

You may have noticed that I use the word "rank" considerably. Rank is a practical necessity for the proper enforcement of authority. Rank makes its appearance as soon as society organizes for its own protection. Rank may be local, limited, changing and temporary as contra-distinguished from general, extensive, hereditary, or permanent, but it is rank just the same. The purest democracies clothe their chosen leaders with temporary rank. Before misconstruing the poetic aphorism of Robert Burns, "rank is but the guinea's stamp," remember that the guinea is only fluctuating bullion until the stamp of authority of government can be invoked.

Let me now enunciate a principle, which is this: "In modern organization the chief clerk as we now know him has no place. When the stage is reached that such a chief clerk seems to be needed, there should be another assistant this or that." Mind you, I do not say assistant to, because that little word "to" may give a sent-for-and-couldn't-come appearance. Nearly every week you notice the announcement of the appointment of an old chief clerk to the position of assistant to somebody. This is encouraging, since it permits him to do business in his own name. It also shows that railway officials are waking up to the distinct limitations of the chief clerk system. The discouraging feature is the failure to profit by centuries of experience of such well-handled activities as the Navy and the merchant marine. At sea the executive officer ranks next below the captain and is in effect, though not in name, the latter's chief of staff. The captain's clerk or the purser cannot hope to become executive officer and then captain without getting outside and working up through the deck. When railway executives and directors become better students of organization, the science of human nature, their stockholders will pay for fewer unnecessary experiments. One railway profits by the discoveries and mistakes of another, as to bridges and equipment, but rarely as to organization and methods.

The United States Army, copied largely from the English, has the assistant to system, calling such officer the adjutant. The rank of the adjutant has been raised to captain, or rather the grade from which the colonel can select his adjutant has been elevated to that of captain. The adjutant has thus gained, and many military men hope that he will eventually be the lieutenant-colonel, and as in the Navy, be the executive officer, and, in effect, chief of staff for the colonel. Since no officer of the Army or Navy permits another to sign his name the adjutant uses his own autograph signature, but preceded by the phrase, "By order of Colonel Blank"; objectionable because it is