The Railroad Problem Part 14

That young man in the Chambersburg railroad office should be under a course of instruction today, as to the emergency use of his railroad, his division. The division is the operating unit of the railroad in America.

Therefore a scheme for the military use of the railroad should begin with its head, the superintendent. In the superintendent's office of every railroad division that may have possible military value, there should be a member of the army reserve corps, making the plan for the possible military use of his division. In the general superintendent's office there should be another reserve officer studying the schemes of the several divisions that center there. Similarly the process should be repeated in the general manager's and the president's offices, where authority converges still further. This is important work, vital training, if you please. It is hardly the sort of detail work to be placed upon the shoulders of a railroad executive, already burdened with a vast amount of other detail.

The best army training is that which simulates, as far as possible, the actual conditions that might arise in the case of real war. That is why the maneuvers that were held in the East at various times during the past decade have been of tremendous value. They should be repeated and the railroads should be asked to play their part at a moment's notice. To play that part well at so short a notice means planning in advance. The New Haven railroad recently, on the occasion of the Harvard-Yale game and the inauguration of Yale Bowl, brought sixty-five trains carrying 33,409 pa.s.sengers into New Haven between 9:26 A.M. and 2:00 P.M.--the record pa.s.senger movement in the history of American railroading. Not one of those trains was late, not even to the fraction of a minute. In the very first hour of the afternoon, 22 trains, 221 pa.s.senger coaches all told, arrived at an interval of slightly over two minutes--226 pa.s.sengers to the minute. And the detraining and entraining of these pa.s.sengers was accomplished with military precision.

But the New Haven's remarkable performance was the result of planning--planning to the last detail. No wonder that John A. Droege, its general superintendent, is qualified to speak of the military possibilities of the railroad. But Droege knows that advance plans are of vital necessity. Of course, our railroads have met difficult situations when it has become absolutely necessary. The Ohio floods of three years ago proved their ability to meet a great emergency in a great manner. In a few hours many miles of their tracks were completely washed away, hundreds of bridges destroyed, their lines thrown into apparently hopeless confusion. Yet the railroaders never lost their heads. They arranged to reroute their through trains. Then and there it was that the Lake Sh.o.r.e railroad--running from Buffalo to Chicago--showed its resources. For it took upon its broad shoulders the trains from all these completely blocked lines--the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Erie--and for long days tripled its ordinary traffic without apparently feeling the great overload.

Yet this traffic was in some sense routine and it was moving over one of the most generously equipped railroads in America. The military plan, as we have already seen, may have to make large strategic use of railroad lines of comparatively unimportant strength. It is here that the definite plan--from the superintendent's office upward--counts. It is gratifying to know that the military bill provides an opportunity for the construction of such a plan, gratifying to know that the War College at Washington has succeeded in its detailed study of the use of our railroads in time of war.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _An outline map of the United States showing the railroad routes of greatest strategic military importance._]

It is upon such a study that Mr. Willard was enabled to give the railroad presidents whom he summoned to the Federal Capital such a lucid statement of the parts that each of them and their railroads would be expected to fulfill. Further than this, they are yet to evolve recommendations for terminal yards and double trackings which in an emergency would probably prove of tremendous military value but for which there is no commercial justification whatsoever. It is expected that the United States government will pay for construction work of this sort. It is entirely fit that it should. There hardly can be two sides to this question. The only question comes as to how rapidly these needed improvements can be made, particularly the emergency terminals. It will be unfortunate, to say the least, to attempt to move an army of any real size into a seaport important in a military or naval sense, but inadequately equipped with terminal sidings. It takes, roughly speaking, one mile of railroad train to handle one thousand troops and their accoutrements. To bring an army of fifty thousand men--a very moderate army, indeed--into a smaller city would require the prompt handling and unloading of fifty miles of train.

These are the military railroad necessities which must be planned and built by the Federal government--without delay.

All these things are going to cost time and thought--and money. And it is because of this last factor that I have placed this entire question of the military development of our railroads at the end of opportunity and at the beginning of necessity--the immediate needs of the railroad, which we are now going to consider.

CHAPTER XII

THE NECESSITY OF THE RAILROAD

In the entire history of the railroads they have never witnessed an outpouring of freight traffic such as came to their rails this winter and last, and congested their yards and lines in every direction. In addition to the high tide of traffic arising from a return of general prosperity the tremendous rush of munitions of war, destined overseas to the Allies from the North Atlantic ports, found the greater part of the roads suffering from the results of a decade of lean years and improperly prepared to handle any press of business. The causes that led to this lack of preparation, I have reviewed. Because of them the railroads were not ready even for a normal volume of traffic, to say nothing of the flood tides that came upon them. It was not possible to remedy the neglect before the tides began. And upon these traffic tides there also came at the close of 1915, one of the hardest winters that the East has known in many a long year. Days and nights and even weeks, the great freight yards of metropolitan New York, of Philadelphia, of Baltimore, of Boston, of Buffalo, and of Pittsburgh were swept by wind and snow, while the mercury hovered around the zero mark.

The record of their operating departments against these fearful conditions is a record of which the American railroads long may be proud.

Superintendents, trainmasters, general superintendents, and general managers moved into their biggest yards and lived there for weeks and months at a time--in private cars, bunk cars, and cabooses--right on the job. But the odds against them were overwhelming. It was not until the warm days of early summer that the congestion was relieved and the railroads able to lift the embargoes that, in self-defense, they had been forced to place upon the freight.

It is already known that the congested conditions are being repeated in the winter that ushers in 1917--probably in even worse measure. And the railroads even after a comparatively dull summer are not much better prepared physically to meet the situation. To have made themselves ready for any such flood tides of traffic as were visited upon them last winter would have meant the radical reconstruction of many great terminal and interchange yards as well as the building of cars and locomotives by the thousands--involving, as we now know, the expenditure of great sums of money. And this seemed out of possibility, although the orders for new rolling stock in the first ten months of 1916 exceeded the entire orders for 1915. You must remember that it is one thing to order rolling stock in these piping times of prosperity--quite another thing to obtain it from manufacturers far behind their orders and greatly hampered by shortages of fuel, of labor, and of raw material. Here once again the railroads are greatly hampered by their lack of fresh capital.

A little while ago--until the unprecedented floods of traffic began to descend upon them--the railroaders, big and little, all the way across the land saw their only relief in a granting of further increases in their rates, both freight and pa.s.senger. Even today the best-informed of them will tell you that the necessity still exists--must sooner or later be met--when the war tides have ceased and business in America returns to its normal levels once again. For while traffic may return to normal levels, the prices of both the railroad's raw material and its labor will not descend so rapidly, if, indeed, they descend at all.

Before the great wave of war prosperity came upon us, the railroaders were showing their pressing need of immediate relief in the form of rate increases and were making a very good case for their necessities. They showed with unimpeachable exactness the steadily mounting cost of labor and of materials. Instance after instance they showed where the many regulating bodies had aided and abetted in raising costs of operation but had not granted any income increases with which to meet these costs. No matter how much the Federal board and the various state boards might conflict in other matters, they always have seemed to be in general and complete harmony as to laying increased burdens upon the back of the carriers. Under the whip of labor, Congress pa.s.sed the sixteen-hour measure, a good bill for the railroaders but mighty expensive to the roads. The Full-Crew Bill, as we shall soon see, swept across the various states like a windborne conflagration across an open prairie. And after these the Eight-Hour Day! And all this while many of the states were also pa.s.sing bills reducing the price of pa.s.senger transportation to two cents a mile. A most unfair type of bill this, considered from any reasonable angle. For if it were profitable to carry a pa.s.senger at this figure--which I very much doubt--this type of measure still would remain arbitrary, unscientific, illogical--reasons which, of themselves, should utterly condemn it. Yet here is a sort of railroad bill to which state legislatures are most p.r.o.ne--of which very much more in a moment.

It was hopeless to expect this sort of a legislature to increase railroad rates--any more than the state regulating boards, which are the creatures of the various legislatures. The Federal commission down at Washington, did far better. With its usual breadth of judgment, it did not refuse to grant relief. After a careful survey by it of the entire subject, interstate freight rates were increased slightly; pa.s.senger rates much more generously. In fact it was the first time in years that many of the pa.s.senger fares had been given any very general increase. An old adage--which had become almost a fetish in the minds of the railroaders--was that the pa.s.senger rates were absolutely sacred; that any increases in the incomes of the roads must be borne by the freight.

Increases in pa.s.senger tariffs probably would be greeted by roars of protest from the public, rioting was not out of the possibility.[15]

As a matter of fact the interstate pa.s.senger rates were raised, and there was hardly a protest on the part of the public. The railroaders who had clung superst.i.tiously to their fetish had overlooked one big bet--the American public will pay for service. For super-service it will pay most generously.

Perhaps you do not believe this?

If so, consider this: When you travel you probably pick out the newest and the finest hotels in the towns you visit; you are considerably provoked if they do not give you a room with private bath each time. You scorn the old-time omnibus from the station--nothing but a taxi will do for you. And when it comes to picking trains....

Do you know what are the most popular trains in America today? The most expensive. The most popular and crowded trains between New York and Chicago today are the twenty-hour overnight flyers which, for their superior accommodations and their shortened running time, charge eight dollars excess over the regular fare. Night after night these trains run in two, sometimes in three and even four sections, while the differential lines--so called because of their slightly inferior running time and accommodations--almost starve to death for lack of through traffic. The same thing is true between New York and Boston, where the excess-fare trains are the most popular and hence the most crowded. The rule seems to hold good wherever excess-fare trains are operated.

There is a great deal of hard sense to prompt the operation of these excess-fare trains. For instance, take two men--one rich, one poor--and imagine them going, say from Boston to San Francisco. They make several stops on the trip. The rich man, after the way of his kind, tarries in the fine hotels of two or three cities along the route. He pays five dollars a day for his rooms in these taverns, and from two to four dollars apiece for each of his meals. The poor man stops in those same cities. He pays from fifty cents to a dollar for his lodging each night and his meals will cost him nearer twenty-five than seventy-five cents each. Each of these men suits the necessities of his pocketbook and each finds suitable accommodations at the prices he wishes to pay.

Yet the rich man and the poor man pay practically the same long-distance through fare--a trifle over two cents a mile--for the journey. Of course the rich man may have his drawing-room in a smart train that is formed almost exclusively of Pullman cars and the poor man may ride in day coaches and free reclining chair cars all the way; but the railroad's revenue is practically the same from each of them.

Here, then, is the rub!

Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief--until comparatively recently, and then in only a few cases, have they represented any difference in the railroad's income account. For our railroads, with a few exceptions, long ago bartered away one of the large functions of their pa.s.senger business.

I am referring to the building and operation of the sleeping and the parlor cars--a business carried forth today almost exclusively by the Pullman Company. Great reticence is shown by the railroads in speaking of their contracts with the Pullman Company, yet it is generally known that, save in a few notable cases, that company pockets the entire seat-and-berth revenue of its cars. The railroad derives no income from hauling them. And it is not so long ago that most of our railroads paid the Pullman Company an additional toll of from three to five cents a mile for hauling each of its cars over their rails.

It is hardly fair to scold the Pullman corporation for having driven a shrewd bargain years ago, when it was far-sighted, with a generation of railroaders, now almost past and gone, who were very near-sighted about the steadily growing taste of Americans for luxury in travel. It is only fair, in addition, to state that it has been generally progressive in the maintenance of its service and equipment; it has been in the front rank in the subst.i.tution of the steel car--which the modern traveler demands and which has been a definite factor in creating the definite plight of our great sick man today--for the wooden coach.

If the Pullman Company has moved slowly in the retirement of the barbaric scheme of upper and lower berths giving into a common center aisle, that is not to be charged against it either. This is not the time nor the place to discuss these cars in detail. But it is pertinent to make a brief comparison of them and the compartment cars of England and the Continent.

"Are you willing to pay the price for them--all of you travelers, I mean?"

says the big railroad traffic-man blandly when you go to him about the matter. "It costs you almost twice as much for a stateroom from Paris to Ma.r.s.eilles as from New York to Buffalo--two journeys of approximately the same length. Are you willing to stand for an increase in railroad rates instead of paying the European charges for sleeping-car staterooms?"

You say, quite frankly, that you do not object to paying six dollars for a compartment from New York to Buffalo, or even seven dollars for the slightly more luxurious drawing-room--a feature, by the way, which is existent in practically every Pullman sleeping car and ready for the use of the exquisite traveler. You recall that it was not so many years ago that the railroads themselves answered this very question--by demanding that there be at least one and one-half standard pa.s.sage money presented for the use of a compartment; two full fares for the use of a drawing-room. Up to that time those few roads that were progressive enough to use solid compartment cars in regular service paid for their generosity. There are but nine compartments or drawing-rooms in the standard Pullman all-compartment car. And if it happened, as frequently it did happen, that these compartments were all occupied singly, the railroad derived but nine pa.s.senger fares for hauling one of the very heaviest types of coaches. A day coach of similar weight would carry from 80 to 100 pa.s.sengers. The new ruling, however, has helped to equalize the situation.

To return to the excess-fare trains. It now looks as if they were the only way through for a majority of the trunk-line railroads. Gradually railroad heads have been warming to them; and the rush of traffic to their cars has been almost as astonishing as the lack of protest to accompany the st.u.r.dy raises in interstate pa.s.senger fares.

It is a little more than twenty years ago that the fast-running Empire State Express was placed in service between New York and Buffalo. It was a railroad sensation. The fastest mile ever made by a locomotive, to which we referred when we were speaking of the men in the engine cab, was made on a fall day in 1893, by the Empire State speeding west from Rochester.

The train in that day, and for a long time afterward, was composed of day-coaches--save for a single parlor-car; and barring pa.s.ses, about every form of railroad transportation was accepted upon it, without excess charge. It quickly became the most patronized railroad train in the world and a tremendous advertis.e.m.e.nt for the New York Central, which operated it.

Yet this tremendously historic and popular train is regarded by the expert railroaders of today as a mistake. It is a mistake that probably would not be repeated today. If the Empire State was to be added to the time card tomorrow, it would, in all probability, be an excess-fare train--a little bit more luxurious perhaps, but certainly more expensive. And travelers would continue to flock to it as they do to those staunch extra-fare trains between New York and Boston--the Knickerbocker, the Bay State, and the Merchants' Limited.

The railroads of the West were, for a long time, seemingly barred from establishing "excess-speed-for-excess-fare" trains by physical limitations which seemed to make long-distance high-speed trains impracticable. For you must remember that in the case of the New York-Chicago excess-fare trains the extra charge is based exactly on shortened time. For each hour saved from the fixed minimum of twenty-eight hours for standard lines between the two cities one dollar is added to the standard fare. So it is that the Twentieth Century Limited and its counterpart on the Pennsylvania, each making the run in twenty hours, add eight dollars to the regular fare of $21.10. But, if these trains are delayed--for any cause whatsoever--they will pay back one dollar for each hour of the delay, until the standard minimum fare is again reached.

Yet the western railroads have taken hold of the situation with a bold hand.

"We shall put a winter train from Chicago to Los Angeles and San Francisco that will be _de luxe_ in every sense of the word," said the Santa Fe four or five winters ago. "We shall have the very best of train comforts--library, barber shop, ladies' maids, compartments a-plenty--and we shall charge twenty-five dollars excess fare for the use of this train."

Railroad men around Chicago received this news with astonishment.

"You don't mean to say," they gasped, "that you are going to guarantee to cut twenty-five hours off the running time between Chicago and the Pacific coast?"

"We are going to run the new train through in five hours less time than our fastest train today."

"Five dollars an hour! That's going some!" whistled railroad Chicago.

"Five dollars an hour--nothing!" replied the Santa Fe. "We are going to charge for luxury--not for speed. We are going to charge folks eighty-five dollars for the ride between Chicago and San Francisco instead of the standard price of sixty dollars; and we are going to have them standing in line for the privilege of doing it! They will come home and boast of having ridden on that train just as folks come home from across the Atlantic and boast of the great hotels that have housed them in Europe.

You never hear a man brag of having ridden in a tourist-sleeper."

The Santa Fe was right. It gauged human nature successfully. Its _de luxe_ train at twenty-five dollars excess fare has become a weekly feature between Chicago and the Pacific coast the entire winter long. Its chief rival has also installed an excess-fare train--in connection with its feeding lines, the North Western and the Southern Pacific. This train runs daily the year round and so charges but ten dollars excess fare between Chicago and San Francisco. But in the case of neither of these trains do they refund fare-excess in case of delay. They feel that the two big pa.s.senger roads of the East made a distinct mistake when they established that basic principle.

Truth to tell, America these days is bathed in luxury. America stands ready to pay the price; but America demands the service.[16] And the lesson of the excess-fare trains is one that the railroader who thinks as he reads may well take to heart. Some of them are giving it consideration already. One big road has had for some time past under advis.e.m.e.nt a scheme by which it would make a ticket charge of one-half cent a mile extra for those of its pa.s.sengers who chose to ride in sleeping or parlor cars. In this way it would compensate itself for the lack of any portion of the Pullman Company's direct revenue.