TRAFFIC DEPARTMENT

With the appointment of H. H. Gray, formerly General Agent at Kansas City, to the newly created position of Assistant General Passenger Agent at New Orleans, and of Joseph Hellen as Assistant General Passenger Agent at Los Angeles, a number of changes are announced in the General Agencies and on the Texas & Louisiana Lines.

F. W. Sedgwick, formerly General Agent at Denver, has been promoted to the position made vacant at Kansas City. E. H. Williams has been promoted from Traveling Agent to General Agent at Denver, and J. R. Maxwell, formerly City Freight & Passenger Agent, succeeds to Mr. Williams' position at Denver.

W. C. McCormick, formerly Assistant General Freight & Passenger Agent at El Paso, has been promoted to General Passenger Agent at Houston, relieving Mr. Hellen.

Edward McClannahan has been promoted from Division Passenger Agent at San Antonio to the position made vacant at El Paso.

Tom Hood, formerly City Passenger Agent at El Paso, is now Division Passenger Agent at San Antonio.

FEWER PERSONAL INJURIES TO. S. P. EMPLOYES

There was a decrease of 49 or 8.6 per cent in the number of injuries to employes during November of 1923 as compared with November, 1922, according to a report of R. J. Clancy, Assistant

to the General Manager. During November there were 520 injuries to various portions of the body while in November the year before there were 569 such injuries. This decrease is all the more encouraging since it was attended by an increase of 16.3 per cent in locomotive miles and an increase of 7.5 per cent in number of man-hours in industrial occupations.

The twelve mile route covered by the shop songsters included visits to the hospitals, jails and other institutions, and to homes, especially of Southern Pacific employes, where it was known that death had brought sorrow to the family.

Breakfast was had at a local cafe at 5 o'clock and half an hour later the club was on its way in machines furnished by members and friends, including W. Eberhardt, Alex Gibson, O. B. Whipple, J. C. Neph, and E. E. Edling. A carefully planned Course was followed, with the first stop at the city and county jail and the last at the county hospital, after which the entire party continued to the home of Director J. E. Weida before disbanding.

Through its activities the last few years the Glee Club has become well known in the northern part of the state. An annual concert is held early in the summer that has come to attract the attention of many music critics. For several years the club has been employed by the Sacramento Chamber of Commerce to sing in hotel lobbies, at railway stations and on street corners of the business section on New Year's morning, to cheer and entertain strangers in the city.

The club is self supporting and is composed entirely of Southern Pacific Shop employes who contribute their services. J. E. Weida is Director of the Club. Howard H. Thompson is the business manager.

AT DECEMBER MEETINGS

Fourteen safety meetings were held during December, attended by 611 committeemen and visitors, 612 safety suggestions were discussed, 16 papers on accident prevention read and reports received to the effect that 5,086 employes were talked to individually on safety matters by safety committeemen. The following men made talks at the meetings:

M. Downing, sheet metal worker. Sacramento General Shops & Stores: V. S. Burnham, trainmaster, Tucson Division: J. Neph, division storekeeper, Los Angeles Division; Superintendent G .E. Gaylord, Stockton Division; F. H. Webster, brakeman, Salt Lake Division Terminal & Shop; F. E. Sullivan, motorman, East Bay Electric Division: E. W. Davis, machinist, Coast Division; A. L. Shoupe, fireman, Shasta Division; W. H. Jones, engineer, Sacramento Division; Superintendent C. F. Donnatin, San Joaquin Division; J. W. Pummell, yardman, Western Division; W. Wilson, trainmaster, and F. C. Snooks, conductor. Salt Lake Division; R. McMullen, yardmaster, and S. McConnell, conductor, Portland Division.

J. B. Monahan, Supervisor of Safety, talked before the Tucson, Stockton. Sacramento, Shasta, Western and Portland Divisions and Sacramento General Shops & Stores safety committees.

SPARKS NEWS ITEMS

By J. N. PAYNE
Bulletin Correspondent

B. F. Guinan, emergency relief outfit foreman from West Oakland, spent a few days at Sparks recently renewing old acquaintances.

P. E. Carroll, gang foreman of car inspectors and repairers in the Sparks train yard, has returned from a visit to California points.

J. D. Burke, chief clerk, has returned from his annual vacation trip.

LONG BEACH STATION MEN TALK OVER PROBLEMS

Various subjects connected with freight handling and other matters common to station and traffic forces, were discussed at a well attended meeting of employes held at Long Beach January 16th. The meeting was arranged by Agent H. P. Clark and was attended 100 per cent by the station force.

C. L. Herbst, Assistant Agent, Los Angeles, talked on O. S. & D's; A. H. Oberg, Chief Clerk to Superintendent W. H. Whalen, emphasized the importance of cooperation; F. J. Leary, Freight Claim Prevention Clerk, Pacific Electric, discussed claim prevention matters; and R. S. Fisher, District Freight Agent, Long Beach, talked on solicitation.

Visitors at the meeting included: W. R. Osborn, General Agent, J. Q. McQuigg, Agent San Pedro, and P. H. Mann, Agent Wilmington, of the Pacific Electric.

MAYS, GENERAL CHAIRMAN, DISTRICT 2, S.C.P.L.

Penn J. Mays, Machinist at the Bay Shore Shops near San Francisco, was recently elected General Chairman of the Shop Crafts Protective League, District No. 2.

Mr. Mays is one of the best known shop employes on the System and has been prominently connected with activities of the League since its organization in March, 1922, serving two terms as Chairman of Local 11 and has represented his Local at three conventions.

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By L. B. BANKS
General Agent, St. Louis

HE field of operations of the St. Louis Agency has for its hub the great City of St. Louis, with a population that makes it the largest city west of the Mississippi River and the fifth city of the country. The territorial boundaries embrace about two-thirds of Missouri, the southern half of Illinois, and a little less than the northeast quarter of Iowa.

The territory produces a heavy passenger business for the accommodation of which we offer two through Pullman sleepers daily to California, one via the Rock Island-E. P. & S. W. and our line to Los Angeles; the other via the Wabash, Kansas City-Union. Pacific Ogden and Southern Pacific Lines. In connection with this service we have many connecting lines at Kansas City, and others at Omaha, Ft. Worth and other junctions, which variety of routes permits us to offer passengers an almost unlimited choice of routes, service and scenery.

St. Louis is served by nineteen steam roads and three electric interurban lines, and the headquarters of six steam and two electric lines are located here. The Terminal Railroad Association, owned by the steam lines, operates all passenger trains in and out of the Union Station and also serves many of our industries.

The freight tonnage originating in the territory consists almost entirely of manufactured articles, with some grain and grain products. The principal industries which produce carload freight which we can handle are: automobile plants, which make both pleasure cars and trucks; breweries. producing beverages of malt, grape,

producing mostly structural iron and steel, although there are several large foundries turning out castings, large and small, of every description; enamelware plants; electrical works; packing houses; internal combustion engine works; paint and varnish works; soap factories; tobacco factories, shoe factories, and many others making one or more other products in large quantities.

The personnel of the Agency includes fourteen people: the general agent, three traveling agents, three city solicitors, chief clerk, and six clerks and stenographers. It is our aim to so select the force that the members may be constantly in line for promotion, and the traffic department offers intensely interesting and diversified employment and splendid opportunities for advancement to its members who give to their duties that degree of attention and application which are the requisites of advancement in any vocation.

The chief purpose of the Agency is, in common with all other agencies, to serve the traveling and shinning public as we would be served, and to afford a contact point between our patrons and our Company through which the current of better mutual understanding and business relationship may flow unretarded, to the betterment of both. To this end the active co-operation of our entire organization is most sincerely requested, that the unmistakable appreciation of the public so unstintingly given in the past, may ever continue and that whenever, in connection with transportation, the Public thinks "service" they will think "Southern Pacific."

"Watch the face of the clock and you will never be more than one of the hands."-Forbes.

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By GEORGE W. WEBER, Editor Weber's Weekly

HE man who works for a Public Service corporation, aspiring to advancement in position and salary, must take into consideration the financial condition of the company that employs him. Such a worker should investigate and particularly take into account two principal factors which must bear directly upon his own personal welfare as an employe of the company.

1. The Public Service: concern must be in a self-supporting condition. Especially, it must not be regulated as to price and character of service by public authorities in such a manner as to make it unable to deal fairly with its deserving employes.

2. The worker in a prosperous Public Service concern should establish his right to promotion and increased salary by demonstrating his worth and usefulness.

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Cooperation Wanted

Other conditions permitting, the right sort of worker will climb upward more rapidly than he who is indolent and unreliable. The work of the corporation has got to be done, and well done, or the public will complain-and, will have a right to do so. The Public Service corporation is the servant, not the master, of the people, and the worker in it must accept that he who serves the public most satisfactorily serves his company best. To take care of himself the man at the top must take care of the service, and the men under him have got to do the same. Wise general management to it that the fit and unfit workers are dealt with according to their merits. Another fact which the employe should take into account is that even the deserving worker cannot hope to find his proper place in the twinkling of an eye. He may have to be content to be a straphanger on the road to promotion longer than he likes; but, at length he will find a seat. road to the top is always crowded. The ambitious employe should not lose sight of the fact that in a large organization the process of screening the fit from the less worthy is necessarily tedious and requires time. Men must be time-tested as well as stunt-tested. Good men ahead of the ambitious and deserving cannot rightly be discharged just to make room for good men who may be in the ranks below. If the employe will look about him he will see that, in the long run, the capable and ambitious employe is well taken care of and that the high executive positions in the company as a rule

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are filled by that kind of men who have grown up with the company.

Class of Agitators

The first of the foregoing propositions is really the most important for the worker to consider. This is particularly true at this time when the effort of unthinking people is to so drastically regulate Public Service rates as to bring positive injury to the corporations performing the service. This tendency is promoted by two principal classes of agitators: first, there is the group who would change our system of government and economics to the Russian sort-wherein all property is owned by the government and the worker is detailed to duty the same as the conscripted soldier. The second group is made up of agitators who seek to endear themselves to the thoughtless of the voting population by appearing to be deeply concerned about the prices and service of Public Service cor

porations. Some of this latter group manage to obtain enormous payments from taxpayers' money to carry on impossible fights against different kinds of public Service Corporations-as lawyers-as experts. It is well understood that, as a rule, such persons divide what they get with those who appropriate the money to pay them. Most of the agitators are persons seeking to obtain election to public office. Often

Dr. Allan R. Powers, Southern Pacific district surgeon at Tracy, had some good luck on a recent hunting trip. He sent the above picture to prove it, laying claim, however, to only two of the fine bucks. Insert is of the doctor in the "rough."

on a reducethe-price-of-gas, or on a-seat-foreverybody, platform for offices in which, if elected, they would be without power to do anything as to such service regulation. Aldermanic candidates in middle-west cities are particularly in mind.

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The fact that the worker in Public Service concern must depend upon the prosperity of the company which employs him for promotion and better pay-and, perhaps even for continued employment makes his own interest to be the same as that of the company. If the company be on the down-grade it cannot put him on the up-grade. The worker and his employer are partners in this, as well as in other, particulars. That much needs further explanation.

Interests Are Alike

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What's the answer to it all? First, last, and all the time, that the direct personal interest of every public service employe is exactly the same as the corporation which employs him. And, that is to say that his own interests compel him to regard as a personal enemy those who seek to make the source of his living a football of politics to advance either communistic propaganda, to elect hungry officeseekers to office. To aid and abet, or to not oppose, company enemies is treason to the employes' own living resource. To be a bystander when his own home is being destroyed, amounts to helping the destroyer. The public service employe is not so blind that he will not see, nor so unwise that he will not take And, care of himself and his own. this does not mean that the defender of the company should merely refrain from uniting with the company's enemies in their fight on its It prosperity. means that he should take up arms against those who, to help themselves, disregard the welfare of others. To effectively take care of himself and the sources from whence he draws his living, he should educate himself in relation to the affairs of his company and the things which dangerous regulation may attempt to do to it. He should stand ready to come back at those who would rob his purse before his rightful pay finds its way into it. That's the answer.

N. Y. OFFICE XMAS CARD

An attractive Christmas circular was issued by the General Passenger Agent's office at New York. The greetings, signed by A. J. Poston, General Agent, and F. L. Pickering, Ass't. General Agent, and showing a group picture of the entire staff, were mailed to more than 1800 Southern Pacific patrons.

"When a man loses confidence in himself, he makes the vote unanimous."-O. B. Bulletin.

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ILLIAM W. SLATER, who

has been called the dean of railway signal engineers, and who was signal engineer for Southern Pacific Company for many years, died at his home in Oakland on January 17. He retired March 1, 1914, after 38 years and 10 months continuous service with Southern Pacific.

Southern Pacific, in its development of safety measures, has been a leader in signal work, and in that work Mr. Slater had a guiding hand. His efforts were an important factor in the fine record which won for the Company the Harriman medal, shortly after Mr. Slater's retirement, for having done the most of any railway in the country to increase and secure the safety of travel.

Mr. Slater had a most interesting career and his many friends delighted. to listen to his stories of the early days of the west, for he had vivid memory which retained names, dates and details.

Mr. Slater was born at Urbana, Ill., in 1849. He first came in contact with the railroad when he earned his first money during vacation periods in 1862 and '63 as a news vender on trains in the east, working with the then youthful Thomas A. Edison, now the great inventor. He later became a telegrapher, as did Edison, and served in this capacity on the funeral train of President Lincoln. He came across the plains before the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, riding a mule across the portion of Utah where the rails of the Central Pacific were later laid.

He opened the first telegraph office in Ogden in 1869, being employed by the construction department of the Union Pacific. He came to California in the same year and went to work for Southern Pacific. He was stationed at San Jose, Warm Springs, San Jose Junction, Niles and Mountain View, during the period when much construction work was going on. In 1870 he returned to his home in the east, owing to illness, and returned to Southern Pacific service, at Oakland Wharf as a telegrapher in 1875.

Between 1870 and 1875 he worked on railroads in the east, was a cattleman and rancher in Colorado, and took a trip on a sailing vessel to Australia. Unable to get employment at Melbourne he shipped as "handy boy" from there to New Castle, and from there to Hong Kong. After a stay of several months in China he shipped as a sailor on a vessel to the United States.

Mr. Slater became dispatcher at Oakland Wharf and while he held this position the first electro-pneumatic interlocking plant at Oakland Wharf

was installed. From his youth, he was interested in electricity and its applications and he watched the installation of the plant with interest, and when

WILLIAM W. SLATER

not on duty as dispatcher, spent a great deal of time at the tower. More signal apparatus and interlocking plants were installed, and Mr. Slater's interest in the work being observed, he was appointed Master of Signals in 1885, when it became necessary to have this someone to specially supervise work. He was given the title of Signal Engineer in 1898 and his jurisdiction was extended from time to time until it included both the Atlantic and Pacific Systems.

Mr. Slater was a pioneer in the extension of automatic block signaling and in the development of standards for signal work of extensive proportions.

A summary of his principal achievements includes the development of the interlocking and signaling in the vicinity of Oakland, Sacramento and Los Angeles prior to 1901-which was Southern Pacific's first step in the block signal system for its through main lines. His standards of construction and principles of signaling. which he established have served as guides in the development of this Company's signal work and that of other railroads. Some of the devices he originated are still in use, while others which were first in use have of course been developed, improved or supplanted.

Mr. Slater is survived by a widow, and by two daughters by a former marriage. Funeral services were held in Oakland January 19, 1924.

Ticket Clerk Commended

C. C. Gunn, ticket clerk at the Third Street Station, San Francisco, has received the appreciation and congratu

lations of Hazen J. Titus, of that city, for his considerate attention and thoughtful services.

MEET THE PUBLIC

l'aluable advice for Southern Pacific employes, particularly those who deal with the public over the office counter, aboard the trains, or in other capacities will be found in the following statement made by G. W. Luce, Freight Traffic Manager, to officers, agents and employes of the Freight Traffic Depart

ment.

In commencing the New Year, I desire to bring to the attention of all who deal with the public that you are the real representatives of the railroads and, to be successful representatives, it is necessary to possess and cultivate:

Personality

Always present a good, neat appearance. A shave every morning will refresh you, brighten your countenance and make you feel more kindly toward all you meet. Walk with a determined step, head up, with a smile, and you will have three-fourths of the world with you. Make a good impression by being straight-forward, sincere and obliging. Profuseness and unkept promises are harmful.

Knowledge of Your Duties You must know your duties in every detail. Know your tariffs, routes and service, location of points, etc. Perseverance

This qualification must be used cautiously. Obstrusiveness is not perseDo not be, or appear to be,

verance.

impatient.

Confidence

If you have personality and perseverance and full knowledge of your business, confidence is assured, but with these lacking you will not possess confidence.

Knowledge of Human Nature Study it: Know your man! It is a fact that no two persons have the same view point or temperament, hence, all cannot be approached from the same angle. The successful representative appreciates this and acquaints himself, as far as possible, with the likes and dislikes of those with whom he comes in contact. Do not get into any prolonged argument, but do your best by intelligent discussion, to explain away any misunderstanding on any subject and, in so doing, indicate you are interested.

In conclusion let me emphasize this important fact: The success of any representative rests entirely with himself. He must use his brains, figure out his own plans, establish for himself the reputation that "his word is his bond," and, above all, he must have faith in the work he has undertaken, together with confidence in himself to perform it.

It is purely a matter of personal, untiring, honest effort to gain the confidence of anyone. There is no rule. The points I have made may assist you, but your success rests entirely with yourself. To accomplish anything necessitates work, and the satisfying of the public is by no means an exception.