136 Henry Ford's Big Economy but he has no tools with which just to injure the locomotive. "The practical side of having things clean, in addition to the pride it gives the men and the better work they do because of their pride, is that frequent cleaning means frequent inspection. For instance, the other day an engineer in shining up the driving rods of a locomotive discovered a crack in one of them. Ordinarily this rod would not have been cleaned and that it was cracked would not have been discovered at all. Instead, we should have had an accident and perhaps a costly one on the road. One of the largest economies we know is to put plenty of time and money into keeping things clean." LITTLE SAVINGS, BIG THE RESULTS HE economies are in big things and also in little things. The D., T. & l. The D., T. & I. stations, as well as all the plants of the Ford industries, are equipped with radio in addition to telegraph and telephone, and all three means of communication are constantly in use. The Springfield office of the railroad, for instance, handles about 150,000 radio messages a year and the Dearborn office about the same number. One of the Ford rules is brevity -in letters, in telegrams, in everything. Going through the files, an officer discovered this telegram: Answering telegram of July twenty-third. We have no record of Hocking Valley 721,516 being delivered to this line. He took the message out and put it on the bulletin board. Under it, he placed a rewriting conveying exactly the same information but with the number of words letters instead of telegrams should always be sent if the telegram is likely to reach its destination after business hours, and finally he warned that "Wire answer quick" should be cut out on the ground that the message being sent by wire discloses the necessity for an immediate answer. It is a rule that all materials and supplies be kept always in order and racks have been provided at every storage point so as to make apparent at a glance exactly what is on hand as well as the exact condition of what is on hand. At every car inspection point, all the supplies are in plain sight. The inspectors at these points, following the general rule, do more than inspect cars-for that would take only a part of their time. To keep the men busy through the full eight hours of the shift, therefore, at these inspection points not only are all the minor repairs made to the freight cars but, in what otherwise would be spare time, the men also repaint and rebuild the cabooses. Cutting out a little waste of time or material here and another there-that is the story. It keeps up day in and day out. Take the disposing of old railway ties. The railroad shops have to use a large amount of charcoal for various purposes. Southern Ohio used to produce a great deal of charcoal for iron smelting. Now the son of one of these early Ohio charcoal burners is back in this pioneer industry, but he is employed by the D., T. & 1. and uses the old ties. The worn out ties, instead of being burned along the right-of-way as is the usual empties to the Jackson, Ohio, shop yards railroad custom, are shipped in returning where they are piled in conical form, covered with sod and soil in the old reduced from twenty-four to ten. This is fashion, then lighted and allowed to the rewritten wire: smoulder for the eight or ten days neces Retel yesterday. No record Hocking Valley sary to carbonize the mass. The saving seven two fifteen sixteen. Then he went on to explain that numerals should be written out, that night is not a large one but it is a saving that pays and that is enough to put it into effect. That is the way everywhere along the line. |