Excerpt from Twentieth Century Manual of Railway Station Service: Freight, Baggage and Passenger Departments

Business is being conducted on definite and scientific principles today, and as these principles are extended more generally, the man with technical knowledge will have a correspondingly greater advantage over the man who has only a foundation of meagre dimensions, a technical training picked up by hard knocks during active service.

In these days of competition, the railroads are constantly looking for young men with level-headed business judgment and sound horse sense, with minds trained to comprehend rapidly and correctly; to concentrate; to follow from cause to effect. To the young man about to enter the railroad service, let it be known that the object for which any railroad exists is to secure freight and passenger traffic at remunerative rates and to transport the same with economy and dispatch.

To obtain such results it became necessary for the railroad companies to create traffic, operating, and accounting departments, which are mutually dependent. The station agent is the recognized representative in his local ity of these departments, and is necessarily subject to the instructions of those in charge of securing, handling, and accounting for traffic.

Through the agent the business of the railroad company with its patrons is conducted. His position is one of responsibility, Since, in a great majority of cases, as much business is done over his counter as over that of any merchant in town. He is engaged in selling a commodity, namely, transportation - and, like all merchants, business methods are necessary to his success. Whether his station is large or small, his duties arduous or otherwise, such methods are equally necessary. He can not succeed, nor do the company justice - especially in a competitive station - unless he is active, industrious, and courteous, any more than a merchant can succeed who lacks these qualities.

Even if there be no competition at his station, precisely the same qualities are necessary for the same reasons, and because the railway com pany employing him desires to treat those who can not buy transportation of any other company precisely as well as it does those who can. For, as an idle, thriftless, or uncivil merchant invites the establishment of a rival store, so the agent may invite a competing railway unless he proves by his work and methods that the people are as well ofi with one good railway and one good agent as they would be with more.

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