Our Railroads To-Morrow Part 21

From Oxford to Oswego, in any new order of things, it might either be given to a combination of the Erie and Lackawanna or else to the New York Central--neither road probably would be bidding for the opportunity.

Return to New England. Just as the present Boston and Albany would make a good east and west main-stem from Boston through Ma.s.sachusetts to Albany for our newly created Southern New England Lines so would the erstwhile Fitchburg perform a similar office for the Northern New England Lines, which would include the Boston and Maine, Maine Central, Rutland, Central Vermont--probably, as to-day, right through to New London--and the Bangor and Aroostook. There would be left when this was done but two separate or "foreign" roads in the New England territory. And these would be "foreign"

in the fullest sense of the word--the Grand Trunk (just now being absorbed into the Canadian national railroad system) and the Canadian Pacific, which reach across Maine toward Canada's winter ports upon the Atlantic; Portland, St. Johns, and Halifax. It is not conceivable that these lines would be disturbed, any more that we should wish Canada to disturb the important links of the Michigan Central and the Wabash across the southwest corner of the Province of Ontario.

A good many people attempting this very difficult problem of regionalizing the railroads of New England have attempted to leave the Boston and Albany out of their calculations, which not only spoils the picture but makes the entire regional plan almost utterly senseless. Others doing the same thing have attempted to balance matters by giving the New Haven to the Pennsylvania, which is perhaps a little worse. That distinguished student of American railroads, Professor E. Z. Ripley of Harvard, who undertook recently a regionalization scheme at the behest of the Interstate Commerce Commission, fell into no such error. He gave New Haven to the Baltimore and Ohio, and I suspect did it knowing full well that the Pennsylvania, having been offered the New Haven long ago and having refused it, would probably not have a change of heart in the near future.

In its recent close new traffic alliance with the New Haven--an alliance whose outward expression consists very largely of some new through trains and sleeping-car services from New England by way of the h.e.l.l Gate Bridge and the Pennsylvania Station in New York City--the Pennsylvania undoubtedly has all of the New Haven that it can easily digest. Broad Street cannot be anxious to undertake the management of the Litchfield branch in Connecticut, or the Chatham one down Cape Cod way.

Yet I hear you asking Professor Ripley, if the Pennsylvania does not want to buy the New Haven, how much more so would the Baltimore and Ohio, whose terminals in New York are weak and whose finances generally are in a far more precarious condition, want to attempt the thing? Can the keen-minded Mr. Willard at Baltimore be more anxious than the keen-minded Mr. Rea at Philadelphia to undertake the management of jerk-water branches in Connecticut or in Rhode Island or down on Cape Cod? In answer to all of which a Harvard eye of deep wisdom would be winked. Mr. Ripley knows well that the New England railroad should be purely a regional railroad--or two regional railroads--and yet I think that he would be quite willing to embrace the suggestion of the Boston banker that its ownership--not an enviable honor to-day or apparently for many days to come--should be divided between the three or four or five trunk-lines that it serves.

This entire question of the probable ownership of the regional roads I have left until the succeeding and final chapter of this book. I do not agree in the opinion of many bankers that the regionalization of the roads should be attempted in a supine bowing to their financial results of recent years, and so should be based upon these showings. I believe that it should be based fundamentally upon the service needs of the communities that the regional roads of to-morrow will have to serve. The Southern Tier of the state of New York for too many years suffered set-backs from the fact that virtually its sole railroad servant was a historic line, which wholesale fraud had doomed to a lifetime of perpetual near-paralysis.

So much for New England. Such planning is typical of that which might be expected of any non-compet.i.tive regional plan. Along the entire outer or coastline rim of the United States the regional plan without compromise or variation works out pretty well indeed, all the way from the proposed Northern New England Lines that you have just seen out to the Californian railroad, or the Puget Sound Lines, which would immediately adjoin the Californian upon the north. Along the outer edges of the country it would be easy to devise. It is a pretty plan, and in its simplicity most beguiling. And yet when one comes to the center of the country this same simple non-compet.i.tive regional plan becomes almost utterly impossible.

After all we are working with things as they are and not merely with things as we should like to have them.

A careful study of the rival plans--non-compet.i.tive regional and highly compet.i.tive regional--has led me to a firm belief that the real solution of our problem of railroad organization in this country lies in a compromise between them. Were we to start afresh to plan the railroads of the United States, supposing that not a mile of track had been laid down between the Atlantic ocean and the Pacific and that our vision was sufficiently Aladdin-like to foresee the present growth of the land (really built up upon that very railroad development), we might well have adopted a purely regional plan, as did the French so long ago. But much as we may admire such a theory we cannot entirely ignore hard facts--the important properties already built and well developed, the recognized making and breaking points of traffic, the individual morale and tradition of the several roads--the sort of thing that we have shown, despite all of its recent labor troubles, still so existent upon the Pennsylvania and some other roads.

So in compromise we use the purely regional idea where the purely regional idea best serves high theory and the broad pathways of hard fact and established principle. We begin in New England and there we create an autonomous regional railroad--probably two, for reasons which we have already stated--each as we have seen with headquarters in New England's traditional capital, Boston.

Next we cross the Hudson River and tackle the great congested railroad district that lies between it and the thousand-distant cities of Chicago and St. Louis as a bloc. Here begins our problem in dead earnest. Shall we make two great regions of most if not all of it--the one to the north with the dark-green cars and the traditional name of New York Central, and the one to the south occupying all the rest of the territory down to the Potomac and the Ohio River with the wine-red cars and the traditions of the Pennsylvania? No, not unless we want to consider the operation of two great railroads of between twenty-five and thirty thousand miles of line each. If we are to have any sort of intensive or good operation this is out of the question. With twelve thousand miles to be operated, each of these roads at times already flounders.

No, I think that we can do better than that. We can easily make four long narrow regions, stretching from New York about four and five hundred miles to the west, and to these give auxiliary regions, or rather regional railroads, further on, to Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. The most northerly of these will be, of course, the New York Central, the unit management of which will be terminated or broken at Buffalo--as of other days--and to which will be handed the Delaware and Hudson, north of Albany, possibly the northern portions of the Ontario and Western, and some lesser properties. It might be possible to go even further and give the generally efficient even though somewhat unwieldy New York Central the Lehigh Valley, the Lackawanna, the Erie (east of Jamestown), the Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburg, and the rest of the Delaware and Hudson. But I hardly think that this would be practicable. We are trying, even in our theories, to keep our feet on the ground.

It would be better by far to take this last group and make it the second of our long, narrow northeastern regions--call it, if you will, the Erie-Lackawanna and place its eastern terminals at Albany, at New York, and, by means of the absorption of some sixty miles of the Reading, at Philadelphia too. This would make a well-balanced and compact group, fairly compet.i.tive and yet accomplishing great economies in the common use of trackage and terminals. The wastage in these things alone is hardly less than appalling, the opportunities for saving tremendous.

The third of this particular grouping of regions would be quite naturally the Pennsylvania. It too would be terminated as of other days, at Pittsburg, although, as we shall presently see, with its own auxiliary regional railroad it would go into the chief cities east of Mississippi.

And finally the Baltimore and Ohio! In an earlier plan, and in an earnest seeking for the simon-pure regional grouping of our railroads, I sought to thrust this historic property--not only one of the very oldest of our American railroads but the only one which has existed eighty years without a change of name or important change in its organization--into the melting-pot with its traditional rival, the Pennsylvania. But that would not go. Tho two metals refuse to amalgamate.

But suppose one takes the Baltimore and Ohio, chops it off at Parkersburg, at Wheeling, and at Pittsburg--as one did with the Pennsylvania--and adds to it the greater part of the Reading, the Central Railroad of New Jersey, the Western Maryland, and one or two much lesser properties. The result is a fairly compact property, sufficiently compet.i.tive in its reach to the larger terminal cities of its territory to appease those who must continue to bow the knee before that particular G.o.d of business, and yet enough unified to be easily handled from its traditional headquarters at Baltimore. That would seem to be more generally satisfactory than the obliteration of the Baltimore and Ohio, with its fine traditions, its good morale, and its general record of excellent service.

So much then for our four regional railroads to lie north of the Potomac, west of the Hudson River and east of Buffalo, Pittsburg, and Wheeling. How about the region that lies immediately west of these three last important gateway cities? Shall we consider those great railroad States of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan (the lower peninsula), and Illinois as a great single non-compet.i.tive region, in full accord with the high theory of the regional plan? No, not if we have any real regard for the feelings of the residents of those four great States. A single railroad for those four States might be workable, but I doubt it. I even doubt if you could operate successfully either a single railroad for either Ohio or Indiana.

Illinois we shall leave out of consideration for the moment, while Michigan would probably be pleased as Punch to have her beloved Michigan Central returned to her as her own regional railroad, with its eastern terminals, as of yore, at Buffalo and at Suspension Bridge and its chief western one at Chicago--a single, independent, autonomous railroad property with a genuine presidential headquarters at the very important city of Detroit.

It is south of Michigan that the problem complicates. And here it is that I can only see to-day, and for many many hundreds of days to come, the retention of a pretty generally compet.i.tive transport plan. Regions, yes, if we still like the sound of the word. But regions which interlace so that in reality the word becomes a good deal of a misnomer. The New York Central Lines West (formerly the Lake Sh.o.r.e, the Big Four, and the Pittsburg and Lake Erie and the Lake Erie and Western), reaching from the terminal of the parent property at Buffalo out to Detroit, Chicago, St.

Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg, would have a president and real headquarters at Cleveland; the Erie-Lackawanna West would consist of the Wabash (east of the Mississippi River), the Nickel Plate, the Erie (west of Jamestown), the Wheeling and Lake Erie, the Clover Leaf and the Bessemer and Lake Erie. The Pennsylvania Lines West would be virtually as they existed prior to the recent after-the-war reconsolidation, but with the addition of a needed feeder into Detroit; and finally the Baltimore and Ohio West would consist of its present property plus the Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Western, the Monon, and the Hocking Valley--all with headquarters at Cincinnati. That interesting little cross-country road of the interesting Henry Ford, the Detroit, Toledo, and Ironton, might easily fit into the westerly region of the Pennsylvania, while the Baltimore and Ohio would be given at least a trackage entrance into Detroit over the Pere Marquette, so as to keep it on par with its three regional compet.i.tors. The rest of the Pere Marquette would be merged into the embracing Michigan Central.

Just as this region, almost immediately east of the Mississippi River, bids fair to remain compet.i.tive for an indefinite time, so is the territory immediately west of that great stream also bound to remain compet.i.tive. Reserve the greater part of Illinois Central for future and separate consideration, and now come to that Middle West territory. Are we going to create simon-pure regions there and ignore the fine traditions of properties such as the Burlington, the Rock Island, and the Santa Fe? No, not if we have any real sort of wisdom. North of them the problem is far easier of solution. The Milwaukee will merge quite easily into the Northwestern; although to operate the combined properties through to the Pacific coast would require at least three separate regional organizations--the Northwestern, between Chicago and the Missouri River, the Montana Lines from there to Spokane, and the Puget Sound Lines from there to the actual sh.o.r.e of the Pacific. Into these almost purely regional systems would also be merged the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific. The Burlington's line into the Twin Cities (St. Paul and Minneapolis) would cease to be. And in fairness to that road the Milwaukee's lines to Omaha and Kansas City would be withdrawn from the new Northwestern combination and parceled out between Santa Fe, Rock Island, and Burlington. Into such parceling would also go the always perplexing Chicago Great Western and the extraneous arm of the Illinois Central between Chicago and Omaha, running at right angles to the main-stem of that important system and to a larger extent disa.s.sociated from it.

It might be found more practicable to bring Union Pacific directly into Chicago over the rails of one or the other of these last two properties (Union Pacific's financial interest in Illinois Central already is a powerful one), although the Union Pacific's operating heads would probably prefer one of the routes between Chicago and Omaha discarded by the larger Northwestern grouping; the present Milwaukee between those two cities is better built and so more easily operated than Illinois Central or Chicago Great Western. Union Pacific for a long time has felt that it has the same right as its chief transcontinental compet.i.tor, the Santa Fe, to a direct entrance into Chicago. In a way such as this it would be brought to a parity with the direct, although longer, southern route.

"But," you interrupt, "how about Southern Pacific in such a case? It is also a pretty warm compet.i.tor of the Santa Fe."

To bring both Santa Fe and Union Pacific into the Chicago gateway as transcontinental compet.i.tors and bar out Southern Pacific would be indeed grossly unfair. I have no intention of doing anything of the sort. Cross quickly with me from the Middle West territory to the lovely Pacific coast. Here again we think clearly in our own terms of purely regional railroads. Two of them would occupy the extreme coastal district all the way from the Mexican line to the Canadian. The most southernly of this twain is the Californian railroad, a fine, dignified name for a fine, dignified railroad extending well beyond the bounds of even the great Golden State, north to Medford, Oregon, and east to El Paso, to Albuquerque, to Salt Lake, and to Ogden. Within this huge and rather spa.r.s.e territory--spa.r.s.e as compared in a rail traffic sense with the territories west of the Mississippi River--we should have an absolutely non-compet.i.tive railroad, but under strict regulation operated for the greatest good of the greatest number. That has been done before in California; it is being done to-day and most successfully. The Southern Pacific is usually most responsive to its huge non-compet.i.tive territory.

It gives to it in most cases an adequate service.

New England lends itself to the non-compet.i.tive and highly economical regional railroad. So does the west coast too, but because of its giant sweep we give this last seaboard two regions, the one to the north of the Californian railroad, the Puget Sound Lines, extending, as we have seen, north from Medford, and west from Spokane as well as south from Vancouver, British Columbia, and northwest from Ogden, Utah.

East of these two great railroads--and yet neither of them too intensive for successful management by a single executive head--are the Colorado Lines, embracing roughly the main ma.s.s of railroad trackage within the State and extending north to Cheyenne and west to Salt Lake, by way of the present lines of the Denver and Rio Grande as well as by the yet uncompleted Denver and Salt Lake. It is a far smaller region than the two we have just considered, yet a territory of a considerable traffic and, because of its location, necessitating the most intensive sort of operation.

Now we begin to get these roads running down into the immediate Southwest from Chicago and into their proper relationship--the Rock Island, with its lines from Chicago, St. Louis, and Memphis, coming together and reaching to El Paso and out to the Colorado Lines near the eastern Colorado border; the Santa Fe, taking the original Missouri Pacific between Kansas City and St. Louis for a much-needed entrance into the latter city and touching the Colorado Lines at La Junta and the Californian both at Albuquerque and at El Paso; the Burlington shorn of its Twin Cities line, but given either the Missouri Pacific west of Kansas City or the former Kansas Pacific (to-day a detached but well-built branch of the Union Pacific) or both and terminating both at the Colorado State line and, by the acquisition of the Kansas City, Mexico, and Orient and the building of a few hundred miles of railroad, with the Californian somewhere in the general neighborhood of Albuquerque.

Here is balance. Here is a fair adjustment between logical compet.i.tors, the retention of compet.i.tion where it is not practicable to eliminate it, and its abolishment where it is feasible to uproot it and establish great operating economies in the wake of the change.

We are not quite done. We have hardly considered the South. It is very much ent.i.tled to consideration, with its great growth in the last few years and its wonderful opportunities of the immediate future. But because, like California, it still has its intensive growth in the future rather than in the past, it is not too late to bend it into the economic regional plan.

We left the Californian railroad with an important eastern terminal at El Paso. El Paso is in Texas, even though it is barely in it, and so becomes quite the logical western terminal of the Texas lines, which would exclusively cover in our scheme virtually the entire State east from Beaumont, Shreveport and Texarkana and south from Dallas and Fort Worth.

It might even be possible to give the Texas regional system a direct entrance into Kansas City by acquisition of the entire Kansas City Southern, but I would doubt the wisdom of this. It would have the effect of throwing the delicate compet.i.tive shading remaining about that very great railroad center considerably out of balance. For if Kansas City by direct line, why not St. Louis or even Chicago?

No, that would hardly do. The Iron Mountain reaching in a splendid strategic position from St. Louis to Texas, shorn of its wretched mesalliance with the Missouri Pacific and given instead the Alton and certain portions of the 'Frisco and Missouri, Kansas, and Texas systems, would make an excellent feeder for the Texas Lines right through to Kansas City, to St. Louis, and Chicago, and still avoid the operation of too many miles or too attenuated a single system under one executive head.

Meanwhile the compet.i.tive factor in the compet.i.tive territory which we have permitted to remain within the land would be appeased by the fact that the Rock Island, the Santa Fe, and the Burlington would also bind the Texas Lines to Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago. Our plan continues to balance, and to balance extremely well.

The Texas Lines would have still another compet.i.tive entrance into Chicago. We will take the Illinois Central--deleted, if you will recall, of its rather superfluous line to Omaha--and make it the main-stem and core of a far larger railroad which we may well give the more dignified and embracing t.i.tle of Mississippi Valley railroad. From New Orleans straight north to Chicago, west to Beaumont, northwest to Shreveport and to Little Rock, possibly east to Mobile, and northeast to Birmingham--here is the making of a really dominating and yet very logical regional railroad. It also might and probably would be both practicable and possible to make it live more closely to its name and give to it the line along the eastern bank of the upper Mississippi, between St. Louis and St.

Paul, now operated by the Burlington.

There still remains the southeastern corner of the United States--and right here our problem reaches its final and most perplexing phase.

Whether to rearrange it in two or three simon-pure regions or to have two or three competing systems within a comparatively large regional district is a question not easy of correct solution. I believe that the latter is the solution most likely to come, however. The inter-ownership of the Atlantic Coast Line and the Louisville and Nashville railroads is a factor not easily to be ignored. Ranged against this combined system--which in its final ent.i.ty probably would include the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis and the historic Georgia railroad--is the huge Southern railway, upon which much thought and money has been expended within the last ten or twelve years, and which would meet it at virtually every important compet.i.tive point.

Only two other important railroads occupy this southeastern territory, south of Virginia--the Central of Georgia and the Seaboard Air Line. The first of these is the property of the Illinois Central and yet could not logically be made a portion of the Mississippi Valley railroad which we were outlining but a minute ago. The economic thing probably would be to parcel out these two properties, and several smaller ones, between the new Atlantic Coast Line and Southern railway combinations and finally retain for each of these their present valuable entrances into the City of New Orleans.

A great portion of the Seaboard Air Line lies in Florida, but Florida like New England and Texas and California lends herself quite readily to the absolute non-compet.i.tive regional plan. A Florida railroad would be touched by the Atlantic Coast Line and the larger Southern railway at Jacksonville, at Pensacola, and at intermediate points.

And finally, Virginia! She too lends herself to the regional plan, with the sole exception of the north and south lines of the Southern and the enlarged Atlantic Coast, the first coming north toward Washington through Charlottesville and the second through Richmond. The rest of the rails in both of the Virginias might very logically be grouped into a single great efficient system which would stretch from tide-water in the neighborhood of Norfolk back over the mountains to the Ohio River, and even beyond it to Columbus, to Cincinnati, and to Lexington. That the chief business of such a railroad would be the transport of coal goes without saying. With its vast combined water terminals in the neighborhood of Hampton Roads, it would be in a dominant position either for the export of its bituminous fuel or for its further shipment, both north and south, by the highly economical water lines along the coast.

Economy is indeed a watchword for this plan. I shall not attempt to take your time or dull your interest in its details by giving you too many of them. A very few single but rather typical examples of the savings to be made, were it ever to be placed in effect, will be ill.u.s.trative. Here for instance is that so-called Southern Tier of New York--the long row of counties which lies for nearly two hundred miles against its Pennsylvania line. Many years ago the historic Erie pushed its rails through the Southern Tier. From its main line--originally built from Piermont-on-Hudson to Dunkirk, New York--it gradually shot branches north into the heart of the Empire State to Canandaigua, to Rochester, and to Buffalo. Eventually it made an interlacing of these branches, and in those days--when men hardly dared dream of the motor-car or the improved highway--the branches generally were profitable.

The Rochester branch, about one hundred miles in length, was typical of many of its fellows. It diverged from the main line at Painted Post, just west of Corning, and for the next forty miles threaded a very rich and prosperous valley situated between deep hills. It was a small railroad but essential, and for many years it prospered, to a moderate degree at least.

Then in the early eighties there came a compet.i.tor through that narrow valley. The rich Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western, ambitious for a line of its own into the growing Buffalo gateway, in 1882 and 1883 laid down its rails alongside the Erie--along the main line all the way from Great Bend, Pennsylvania, just a few miles east of Binghamton, New York, to Painted Post, and along the Rochester branch as far as Wayland. The new railroad was a main-stem; double-tracked it gave frequent and swift service. The little Rochester branch line of the Erie shriveled up and all but died.

In the regional organization that you have just seen me outline, I have brought together the rich Lackawanna and the poverty-stricken Erie, along with the Lehigh Valley, the Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburg, the southerly divisions of the Delaware and Hudson, and the Ulster and Delaware railroads. It takes no large amount of imagination to forsee that such a combination--and most railroad executives and broad-visioned bankers will agree that it is a logical one--can greatly simplify operation in southern and western New York and abandon miles of railroad that should have been abandoned many years since.

In effect, this Erie-Lackawanna system would have at least two separate main lines from its combined terminals at New York (how effectively these might be combined we discovered when we saw the possibilities of the electrification applied to the suburban traffic of the New York metropolitan district) all the way to Binghamton, a little more than two hundred miles distant. From that point west to the brisk small city of Corning the traffic could be consolidated upon one of these main lines, possibly three-tracked or four-tracked, and the other abandoned--a quick and easy solution of some perplexing grade-crossing problems in the communities that it would thread. Similarly the old antiquated Rochester branch of the Erie could be abandoned all the way from Painted Post to Wayland. The parallel double-track would render it of no further use.

I could take the atlas maps of western New York and show you many, many more miles of railroad which could be abandoned profitably to-day, not to the hindrance but to the positive benefit of the communities which they are supposed to serve yet no longer serve, efficiently at least. But let us turn our attention from trackage to terminals and for the moment consider the chief city of western New York--the chief in size at any rate, Buffalo. Twelve steam railroads to-day enter Buffalo and share four main pa.s.senger-stations there. The Lackawanna has a handsome new terminal at the harbor-front, into which enter not only its trains but those of the Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburg and the Nickel Plate lines. The Lehigh Valley has an almost equally new and handsome station, which it shares with the Grand Trunk. The Erie plays the lone hand in a very ancient building, while the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Michigan Central, and one or two other roads are housed in the Exchange Street Station, which is fairly antediluvian in its antiquity and its inefficiency.

For some years Buffalo dreamed her dreams of a real union station, which would rise majestically from the lake-front in the neighborhood of the historic court-house and jail where Czolgosz, the a.s.sa.s.sin of William McKinley, met his trial and his just fate. Travelers who have had to pa.s.s through Buffalo and who have been compelled to change from one railroad to another there shared these dreams of a station into which all the trains should pa.s.s. But the city authorities and those of the railroads came to an absolute _impa.s.se_ in the matter. The New York Central, for instance, did not want to continue backing its through New York-Chicago pa.s.senger trains into the Buffalo station. It proposed as a compromise a union station somewhere east of Clinton Street. But "somewhere east of Clinton Street" is _decla.s.se_ to Buffalo, and the big lake-front town would have nothing of that.

So while mayors and general managers and high-priced engineers and all the other bigwigs stormed and argued the Lackawanna people and the Lehigh Valley people went right ahead and built their own pa.s.senger stations. It is not conceivable that these large handsome stations would now be abandoned. In the creation of the regional plan it is not necessary. It becomes obvious from the beginning that the many trains of the Erie-Lackawanna would easily fill the Lackawanna Station to repletion and permit of the final abandonment of the ancient Erie pa.s.senger-house with one of its most exasperating rail grade-crossing problems in the land as a perplexity always attendant upon its operation.