Identifier: scribnersmagazin16newy (find matches)
Title: Scribner's magazine
Year: 1887 (1880s)
Authors:
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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tive man, devoting his wholetime to the company which he serves.The chairmen of boards and committeesusually get some small fees, but nothingcomparable to what we should expect topay to presidents and vice-presidents. The shareholders vote a sum, say £5,000a year, to be divided among the direc-tors, and usually, I believe, this goesto the chairman, deputy chairman, andchairmen of committees. Sometimesthere is a specially salaried chairman,but not as a rule. But however able and zealous the di-rectors and their chairmen nia^ be, theirduties in any one board are ordinarilybut a small part of the interests of theirlives, and their meetings, although fre-quent enough for effective supervision,are not frequent enough for actual ad-ministration. And so we come to themost important and characteristic of all English railroad officers, the general manager. He is the real head of therailroad, for he has no president or vice-presidents between him and the board. 555 556 ENGLISH RAILROAD METHODS
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A Guard. He is typical, for he has abiiost alwaysrisen from a quite subordinate place, andembodies in liimself the knowled^re andtraditions of years spent in the actualpractice of a most arduous and compli-cated callinj?. As he has risen by fit-ness, throutrh sharp competition, he is aselected sj^ecimen, i)hysically and men-tally. It is no uncommon thing to find on the great Ameri-can railroads three, oreven four, Tice-j^resi-dents. One road thatlately went into thehands of receivers hadsix. The presidentand vice - presidentsare all salaried ofii-cers, and are expectedto give their wholetime to the companyand perform many ofthe duties which inEngland devolve up-on the general man-ager. There he aloneis responsible for thehourly conduct of therailroad from the topto the bottom ; he sitswith the board at gen-eral and committeemeetings, and whilehe is subject to theboards orders he isoften the guidingmind. But he couldhardly have got tohis place without anatural capacity foradministratio

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