Page:Hine (1904) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/68



May 22, 1904 My Dear Boy:—The evolution of the relative importance of the several departments in railroad work is an interesting study. The early railroads were short and usually had for president the most important man of affairs in the community, a banker, a lawyer, a publicist, a what-not. Frequently this man could not give his whole time to the road and he leaned heavily upon his superintendent, who, perhaps, had been the engineer in charge of construction. The superintendent of the early days was general manager on a small scale, and with limited facilities had to be a man fertile in resources. The superintendent of to-day is a better man, because the race improves all the time, but he performs duties of a decidedly different nature. It is idle to speculate as to just what he would do under primitive conditions. A return to such circumstances is impossible. We know that