Page:Hine (1912) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/51

 we have a telegraph or telephone wire at our command.

Q. What good does a wire do you if you are tied up in a hearing or a conference for two or three hours at a time?

A. I fear that I have not made clear to you just how valuable a man I have trained into a chief clerk.

Q. I fear that you have not. You seem to believe the old system is all right. Do you think the last word has been said or that your road has hit upon the best system?

A. The last word on these important subjects will never be said, but we have been getting along very well.

I shall not continue further in this letter the catechismal method, lest you accuse me of forgetting that you long ago graduated from the kindergarten. So you did; but when in doubt get back to early methods. After reading recently an article on scientific management, I had to recall my catechism to feel certain that handling pig iron is not the chief end of man. We all, you and I included, sometimes show up smaller than we really are, because we seem to think only in the narrow terms of the things