Page:Hine (1912) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/174

. An outlying division with thin traffic may require only one set of dispatchers. When it becomes necessary to locate a set of dispatchers away from division headquarters, it is time to appoint another superintendent and create a new division, perhaps with only a light staff of all ’round officials. So important is the train sheet and so much of vital, human interest centers around a dispatcher’s office, that the far away superintendent must refer much correspondence to this detached portion of his office. The result is expensive circumlocution and a lack of human touch. The superintendent has in effect become a general superintendent too far away from real things. A trainmaster or a chief dispatcher is really carrying the responsibility of a superintendent without the title and authority necessary for smooth administration. I know several railways that are fooling themselves into the belief that they are saving money by having one superintendent for two dispatching offices. One of them has five superintendents and ten dispatching offices, really ten divisions in fact, if not in name. By a logical arrangement of territory these ten dispatching offices could be consolidated into seven division headquarters