The commissary or supply department of a railroad is not unlike that of a large army. Like a vast army, its necessities are many, and the various departments which make up the whole system must be provided with their necessary requirements in order to accomplish the end for which it is operated.

If, again, we regard a railroad as a huge animal, the quantity of supplies needed to fill its capacious maw is something overwhelming. It is always hungry, and the daily bill of fare (which includes pretty much everything known to trade) is gone through with an appetite as vigorous and healthy at the end as it exhibits in the beginning. Yet how few there are who realize the important part this one feature plays in the operation of the thousands of miles of railroad throughout the world! Upon the proper conduct of this department depends very largely the success of any road, so far as its relation to the stockholders is concerned; for while, as has been the case in the past, combinations and pools have aided in maintaining rates, and have served to increase the income, and attention has been paid to securing additional business in every possible way, the "out-goes" have often been overlooked, to the detriment of dividends and the general welfare of the property.

The supplies must be furnished in any event, in order that the various departments may perform their allotted duties—coal for the engines, stationery for the clerks, ties and rails for the tracks, oils for the lubrication of the thousands of axles daily turning, passage-tickets for the travellers, and a thousand and one things which are absolutely necessary for the safe and efficient conduct of every railroad in active operation. Each item serves its purpose, and, properly assimilated, keeps alive all the functions of one vast and complicated system. It is easy to see, then, the importance, first, of proper economy in buying, and then a correct and systematic distribution of all supplies. On the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, for instance, the annual supply bills aggregate more than $3,000,000, covering such supplies as those just mentioned, and, in fact, everything which is purchased and used in the operation of the road; so that on a large system like that, the commissary department requires no end of detail, both in the purchase and the distribution of all material.

The expenditure for lubricating oils, waste, and greases alone amounts to more than $150,000 per annum, while the outlay for fuel represents about $1,200,000, and this is comparatively a small sum, since that road is a coal road, so called, and the cost for fuel, as a matter of course, is reduced to a minimum. There the store-room system, which has now been pretty generally adopted by many of the larger roads, is fully exemplified. With a General Store-keeper in charge, all supplies purchased are accounted for through him, and distributions are made daily among the sub-store rooms, which are located at convenient points; and they in turn distribute among the various departments, for consumption, all accounting daily to the General Store-keeper at Reading.

To give an idea as to the quantity of material required in the service on such a road, it may be stated that from twelve to fifteen car-loads of supplies per day are shipped to various points. When we consider that an ordinary car will carry from fifteen to twenty tons of freight, we find that the annual requirements will average about four thousand car-loads, or, say, about fifty thousand tons, and if all the cars were made up into one solid train they would occupy fully twenty-five miles of track, and consume an hour and a half passing a given point running at the ordinary speed of freight-trains.

To account carefully for all this requires necessarily a large army of clerks and other assistants, though, with the fundamental principles correct, it is no more difficult to account for large quantities than for small. The supplies are purchased in the first instance, delivered at the General Storehouse, are there weighed or measured and receipted for, are then distributed on requisition, and finally delivered to the several departments when needed; are charged out to the various accounts, after consumption, and all returns and records are finally kept on the books of the General Store-keeper.

It would be a large army indeed which would require so much for its maintenance; and, remembering the hundreds of roads, small and large, throughout the country, the measure of one's comprehension is nearly reached in estimating the amount of money and the thousands of tons of material represented.

If the buyer of railroad stocks for investment, besides looking into the returns of freight and passenger business for his decision, would investigate carefully the method adopted for the purchase and distribution of supplies on any road in which he may be interested, he might get information enough to satisfy himself that a large portion of the earnings were dribbling out through this department, and that, as a result, his stock might eventually cease to be a dividend payer.

In the matter of buying, the result depends entirely upon the purchasing agent, and this position must necessarily be occupied by a man of honor and integrity, coupled with a reasonable amount of shrewdness and aptitude for such business. As this department covers to a greater or less degree pretty much all the known branches of trade, the buyer cannot, under ordinary circumstances, thoroughly master the whole field as an expert; but he can nevertheless inform himself in the most important articles of manufacture to the extent of preventing deception or fraud. The field is extensive, and the sooner railroad companies realize that the purchasing agent is not a mere order clerk, the sooner they will discover that their disbursements for supplies are very much less, and that the chief part of the leakage has found its source in this very department.

Exactly the same principles are involved in this matter as in the case of a thrifty proprietor of a country-store, whose profits each year depend materially upon the closeness and care with which his stock in trade is purchased from the wholesale dealers in a large city. A purchasing agent's experience is varied in the extreme, dealing as he does with all classes of salesmen and business houses. There is no end to the operations which skilful salesmen go through in offering their stock; but after some experience a sharp buyer will be able to fortify himself against the best of them—even against the clever vender of varnishes who disposed of one hundred barrels of his wares in small lots to different buyers, on a sample of maple-sirup. On the other hand, a salesman who, when a buyer asked him if his oil gummed, replied that "it gummed beautifully," lost the chance of ever selling any goods in that quarter.

As has been said, the ordinary or general supplies consumed in the operation of the average railroad include almost everything known to trade. Tobacco, for the gratification of the taste of a gang of men out on the road with the snow-plough, is not outside the list; and even pianos, for some trains (since the days of absolute comfort and possible extravagance have begun) for the benefit of passengers setting out on long journeys; nor do we lose sight of books, bath-tubs, and barbers. The practical feature involved, however, calls for an endless variety of expensive as well as inexpensive materials.

It is a safe rule to follow that anything which goes into the construction either of track, equipment, or buildings, should be the best. Care should always be exercised against the use of any material the failure of which might be the cause of loss of life, and consequently result in heavy damages to the company. Iron alone enters so extensively into railroad construction and operation that it is safe to say three-fourths of all manufactured in this country is consumed directly or indirectly in this way; and besides its use in rails and fastenings (the latter including spikes, fish-plates, and bolts and nuts), and in the many thousand tons of car-wheels and axles annually required, there must be reckoned the almost unlimited number of castings daily required in the way of brake-shoes, pedestals, draw-heads, grate-bars, etc. The lumber and timber for buildings, bridges, platforms, and crossings, and the large quantity of glass which is necessary, are among other large items of expenditure.

Lubricating and illuminating oils, paints and varnishes, soaps, chalk, bunting, hardware, lamps, cotton and woollen waste, clocks, brooms, and such metals as copper, pig tin, and antimony are only a few of the many articles of diet which a railroad requires to keep body and soul together, and give it strength to perform the great duty it owes to commerce and the public. After they have all served their purposes, such as cannot be worked over again in the shops, and are not entirely consumed, are consigned to the scrap-heap under the head of "old material"—an all-important consideration in the economical management of any road. On many roads very little attention is paid to the sale of scrap. As a general rule, the purchasing agent has charge of it, and if he shows any shrewdness in buying, he will exercise more or less ingenuity in selling. Most railroad scrap has a fixed value in the market. Quotations for old rails, car-wheels, and wrought iron are found in all the trade journals; but as in buying one can usually buy of someone at prices less than market price, so in selling he can often find a buyer who is willing to pay more than the regular quotation. As it is found not wise in the long run to purchase ahead on some prospective rise, so in selling it is equally true that holding scrap over upon the possibility of a rise in prices is not always for the best advantage.

There has always been a demand for old iron rails, and recently use for old steel rails has been found. They are worked over at the rolling mills into crowbars and shovels, spikes, fish-plates, bolts, and other necessary things to be employed in construction and maintenance. Not long since an experiment with old steel rails was successfully performed, whereby they were melted and poured into moulds for use as brake-shoes. The result showed a casting of unusual hardness which would outwear three ordinary cast-iron shoes. This opens up an entirely new field in railroad economy, for with ordinary foundry appliances accumulations of old steel rails can be worked over and cast into all sorts of shapes and patterns to better advantage than selling them at a nominal price to outside buyers. While worn-out car-wheels will generally bring more money from wheel manufacturers than they command in the open market, it has not always been found the best policy to compel the mill from which the new wheels are purchased to take too many of them. It is apt to encourage the use of too much old material in the manufacture of the new; and while the company may consider that it is realizing much more money on sales of the old wheels than the market price, it does not take into account the inferior stock it is getting back, or the fact that possibly when the mileage is reckoned the wheels have signally failed to run as long as they ought. In the aggregate about ten per cent. of the original cost of all supplies purchased is realized out of the sales of old material. From cast-iron wheels and old rails, however, the percentage is much larger, for while at present new passenger car-wheels of this class, weighing about five hundred and fifty pounds, are worth about ten dollars each, they will bring in the market, when worn out after running say fifty thousand miles, about twenty dollars per ton. Four wheels go to the ton, which represents five dollars per wheel, or fifty per cent. of the original cost. With old rails the percentage is even higher, in the present condition of the rail market. Old iron rails are worth within four or five dollars of the price of new steel, and the old steel about seventy per cent. of the price of the new. These high percentages assist in making up for the materials which are entirely consumed in the service, and which never form a part of the ordinary scrap-heap, such as oils, waste, and paints.

While the majority of general supplies just mentioned briefly may be arranged for as required and purchased from month to month upon regular requisitions, there are certain staple articles which are provided for in advance by contract. Among them principally are the engine-coal, rails and ties, stationery, passage-tickets, and time-tables. More money is expended for such supplies than for any others, and contracts with responsible business houses, for their delivery at fixed prices for the limit of at least a year, are generally made to insure, in the first place, the lowest market rates and, again, to make the delivery certain.

Locomotive fuel is the largest single item of expense in the operation of any road, the consumption of it running up as high as a million tons per annum on some large roads; and while there are a few exceptional cases where wood is used as fuel, coal is the necessary element in nearly every case in America to-day.

Of the two general varieties—bituminous or soft, and anthracite or hard—it is safe to say that bituminous coal is the more economical, assuming that the grade employed is the best, this economy lying both in the original cost and the fact that the bulk of it goes to serve its purpose, there being comparatively little waste in the way of ashes; while the anthracite produces many ashes and clinkers, requires much more care and attention on the part of the stoker or fireman, and costs, as a general rule, about thirty per cent. more. Economy, however, should not be carried too far in any branch of the service, and if the passenger traffic be heavy the use of soft coal may be a great detriment. To a traveller there can be nothing more disagreeable than the smoke and cinders emanating from it; and if, besides this, the road be an especially dusty one, the combination of dust, smoke, and cinders will be quite sufficient to turn the tide of travel in some other direction and over another route.

For freight service bituminous coal is decidedly the best, and perhaps might not be out of place on short local passenger trains; but the company that provides hard-coal-burning engines for passenger trains, and soft-coal burners for freight, does about the right thing, and economizes as far as practicable in this particular. In making contracts for this important commodity the necessity of careful tests in advance is very apparent, and such trials are generally left with the best engineers and firemen; otherwise it might be difficult to get at all the qualifications. On some roads inducements offered to firemen have brought the consumption of fuel down to the most economical point, and it is surprising how much depends upon their good judgment in this matter.

Now that heating cars direct from the engines is coming into general use, and State legislatures have given the subject their consideration, the consumption of the domestic sizes of coal as fuel in cars is growing less; but this, too, is still a very important matter.

Stationery is not only a very significant item, but also an expensive one. This includes all the forms and blanks used in the conduct of the freight and passenger business, and there is an endless variety of them—the inks, pens, pencils, mucilage, sealing-wax, and envelopes, besides many other odds and ends. Perhaps the envelopes represent one of the largest single items of expense in this line. The hundreds of thousands of them used in the course of a year, even at low prices, mean an outlay of many thousands of dollars. Agents must send in daily reports, there must be covers for all the correspondence passing between the different departments, while the daily average amount of outside correspondence is very considerable. It is surprising how many dollars might be saved in this direction, not only by a judicious contract, but by a careful use of the supply.

When a railroad company takes up the question of time-tables, it has a matter of importance to handle which on many roads receives very little consideration. When the passenger traffic is heavy, the number of travellers during the year running into the millions, the demand for time-tables is very large. This refers directly to the time-table sheets or folders, which every company must keep on hand at its stations, and in other public places and hotels, for the convenience of the traveller, in addition to the printed schedules which are framed and hung up conspicuously on the walls of its waiting-rooms. A neat and attractive folder for general circulation is very desirable, particularly if competition is very strong. There is more virtue in a neatly made up schedule of trains than one would suppose. One in doubt is apt to reason that the road is kept up in a corresponding condition, and that the trains are made up on the same plan, and consequently would prefer to go by that route rather than by one whose trains were advertised on cheap leaflets.

Fifteen thousand to twenty thousand dollars per annum for envelopes alone is spent on some roads, and twice as much more perhaps for time-tables.

Passage-tickets, including all varieties of regular and special tickets, such as mileage books or coupons, family trip-books, and school-tickets are also an item of large expense, the annual consumption covering many tons, which once used are of no value save as waste paper; yet they are absolutely indispensable in the operation of the road. Yearly contracts for these are made, and while the actual cost of a single ticket may not exceed one mill, the aggregate on a road carrying fifteen millions to twenty millions or more passengers per annum is considerable.

To induce the public to travel, and encourage shippers to send their freight to market over any road, attention must first be paid to the condition of the track and rolling stock.

It is not economy to allow anything to be out of repair, on the supposition that it is less expensive than it would be to spend comparatively little from day to day to keep it up. The day of reckoning will come in the end, and the sacrifice will be considerable. As the track is the fundamental feature, the cross-ties or sleepers and rails should be the best. Iron rails are practically out of date, and it is fair to assume that the time is approaching when wooden ties will be things of the past. Where the traffic is light, heavy steel rails may not be necessary; but it has been generally found economical to put in use rails which do not weigh less than sixty-seven or seventy pounds to the yard; an even greater weight than this is not ill-advised—they require fewer cross-ties to the mile, and in consequence the force of men required to keep the track in condition is less. Light rails are soon worn and battered out on a road over which heavy engines are run and large trains are hauled. The powerful locomotives now built require a well-kept track and a solid and substantial road-bed. Heavier and faster trains have tended to reduce the average life of rails, even though the weight of the rails has also been steadily increasing. Circumstances vary on the different roads, but it is safe to say that eight to ten per cent. of all rails in the track must be renewed every year. This brings the average life of the steel rails down to about twelve years, under ordinary conditions. On some divisions, however, where the traffic is frequent, and in yards where a good deal of switching is done, and the rails are under pressure constantly, the average is, of course, very much less—even as low as two or three years.

Aside from the durability of the timber employed, plenty of face for the rail bearings, and uniform thickness and length, are very important requirements in contracts for ties. While white oak is generally considered the most durable for this purpose, the growth of this timber is limited except in certain sections of the country, so that cedar, cypress, chestnut, and yellow pine are more commonly used than any other class. The millions of them used for renewals and new roads each year are gradually reducing our forests; and, like some of the European roads, we shall some day fall back upon metal, which (while its life may not be measured) will make so rigid a track that the traveller over long distances will be worn out with his journey, and the rolling stock will require frequent repairs and overhauling. The practice of creosoting cross-ties is growing rapidly, and this tends to increase their durability three or four times. While the first cost of such ties may be double that for the unprepared timbers, the result in the end is economical, for the labor alone required to take out an old tie and put in a new one costs at least twelve cents.

The general store-room is properly the intermediate stage, so far as supplies are concerned, between the different departments of the road and the Auditor, who charges up all material used to the different accounts into which his system is divided. Properly, everything in the nature of material, however small, directly or indirectly passes through the Store-keeper's books. An account is kept with each locomotive, station agent, switchman, and flagman, so that to a penny everything consumed in the operation of a road is accurately known. To accomplish this the Store-keeper, of course, must be a good accountant, and at the same time be more or less of an expert in railroad material. Under an economical administration of his affairs he is able to save a great deal of money for his company. By his system, with the aid of data from the mechanical department, he can tell the average number of miles run during the year to a pint of oil or a ton of coal; the number of pounds of coal consumed per mile run, as well as the number of pints of oil for the same distance. He can give in detail the cost in cents per mile run for all the oil, tallow, and waste, fuel, and other supplies consumed, and can account to a nicety for all the lanterns, brooms, hardware, and other material which he has received and distributed.

The following statement of averages represents fairly what it costs to run a locomotive under ordinary conditions:

Averages.

Cost in Cents per Mile Run.

He will find that some engineers and firemen are more extravagant than others, and that some station agents and flagmen do not perform their respective duties with near so much regard for economy as others do under exactly similar circumstances. In such cases a report is made and a reminder from the Superintendent follows, calling attention to such carelessness. The result is apparent at the next monthly comparison.

Prompt payment of all supply bills helps to insure economy, and any company unable to make its payments promptly and regularly, suffers to a greater or less extent always; for a firm not able to know whether its accounts are to be settled in thirty or ninety days cannot afford to allow all the discounts which it otherwise might, and this may mean an extra expense every year of many thousands of dollars.

So far as the employees are concerned, it is for the best interests of the company to have a fixed time for the pay-day. They need their money and should get it regularly. Any road on which the men are paid at uncertain times may be subject to incalculable losses. It is apt to provoke dishonesty and carelessness. The road which is bankrupt and forced to pass its pay-day to some indefinite time is always hampered by some of the most inferior class of servants in the market. Except in some instances where special laws have been passed requiring railroad companies to meet their pay-rolls oftener, once each month is generally recognized as pay-time, and on large roads it would be simply out of the question for the pay-rolls to be made up correctly and the men paid off sooner. The paymaster is the wage-distributing medium, and by virtue of his generosity will command as much respect as the President of the road. No officer's face is more familiar than his, and surely no one connected with the institution is looked for with more eagerness by the hard-working employees. It is no easy task he has to perform, and the responsibility for the millions of dollars paid out in this way annually is very great. This responsibility, however, has been very much reduced on some roads, where wages are paid by checks entirely. Under some circumstances this system will not work satisfactorily, especially on a road running through a sparsely settled country. The employees may have to stand a good round discount to some store-keeper or tradesman in order to secure their money. The best and most satisfactory return for services can be nothing less than solid cash; it encourages better attention to business and relieves the men from possible annoyance and inconvenience. The Paymaster's car, which is virtually a moving bank or cashier's office, and arranged conveniently for the payment of money to the men as they pass through, is generally run "special," upon notice in advance to all foremen or heads of departments, either by telegraph or, as on some roads, by the display of special signal flags, which are carried on the front end of the locomotive of some regular train the day before the car is run over any division. In this way all men employed along the line of the road, whether at or between stations, are notified of the Paymaster's coming, and it does not usually require any other inducement than this to bring them all out. There is nothing that will prompt them to jump higher and run faster than the whistle of the pay-train as it comes around the curve to the station. Men have been known to forget their names, and do other foolish things under the excitement of drawing their month's pay. The fellow who said he could not write all his name when requested by the Paymaster to sign the pay-roll, but offered to write as much of it as he could, after some deliberation made a cross on the sheet with all the care and nicety he could muster. Others who could not write have been very slow to admit it, and have pleaded haste as an excuse for not doing so. So far as Italians are concerned (and what railroad service is now complete without its gang of Italian laborers?), they are usually designated by numbers, and in some cases their foremen have thought it well to name them after prominent statesmen or other public men, or possibly some of the head officials of the company. To run across twenty-five or thirty Daniel Websters on the same road is not surprising, and the President of the company himself is liable to have a half-dozen namesakes throughout the different divisions of his road. A cage of jabbering monkeys is not a more amusing spectacle than some gangs of Italian laborers receiving their month's pay.

The pay-department can be made very systematic, and to promote economy and accuracy it is absolutely necessary that it should be. The Paymaster is not simply a medium through whom wages are distributed. He may be one of the most important officers of his company, and ferret out frauds and dishonesty which otherwise might never be discovered. He knows all the men, and they, of course, know him. In fact, he is the only one connected with the road whose recognition among all the employees is absolutely certain.

Some idea of the enormous amount of money earned annually by the railroad men in this country may be formed from the statement that it requires about $1,000,000 per month to pay twenty thousand men, and there are a good many roads on which the average monthly pay-roll embraces from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand names; in some cases even more.

When the pay-rolls are all turned over to the Paymaster, properly approved by each head of department, he notifies the Superintendent or Trainmaster of his proposed trip, mapping out in detail the route, which is usually the same each month. The signals or telegrams are sent ahead to the various foremen, and the car is ordered ready for the journey. The funds are arranged in denominations to suit the circumstances, with plenty of small change, and enough money for a day or two only at a time is provided. The pay for the flagmen at crossings, and switchmen on the road, as well as for the agents at small stations, is generally done up in envelopes, and, as the train speeds by, the packages are handed or thrown out at the proper places; and sometimes, to warrant a safe delivery, a forked stick is used, into which the envelope is put, thus giving it plenty of weight and saving it from being tumbled about promiscuously on the ground. Much time is saved in this way, and the pay-train is able to keep well out of the way of any regular train which may be following. So the pay-car flies along, only stopping at some large station where the number of employees engaged is sufficient to warrant it. These are quickly paid off, however, and the journey is continued. Perhaps at some junction a freight crew is met; and as these fellows have to get their money when they can, a stop is made on the road to give them a chance to do it. At some stations are found two or three gangs of section or track men, a watchman, an agent and his assistant, a pumper, and possibly a mail-carrier. Perhaps a discharged trainman will turn up also, who may have part of a month's pay coming to him.

Later in the day it may be a shop gang of five hundred or one thousand men, consisting of carpenters, painters, machinists, and boiler-makers, and these are paid in order, each set of men by itself. There is no noise or disturbance, everything goes like clock-work, as all pass through in regular order, each gang or class preceded by its foreman, and the men arranged in line in the order in which their names appear on the pay-rolls. When night comes, and two or three hundred miles of road have been covered, the balance of the funds is carefully locked up in the safe on board, the car run in upon some convenient siding, and the engine housed for a wiping and a thorough preparation for the next day's run. The car is generally provided with comfortable beds for the Paymaster and his clerks, and during the paying-off time they practically live in the car. This insures early starts in the morning, and on large roads the necessity for haste is very apparent, where possibly two or three weeks are consumed each month in paying off the rolls.

The average traveller, spinning across the country at forty miles an hour, is not apt to think of the countless details involved in the make-up of the train in which he rides or the track over which he is wheeled; but when he considers how safely the millions of passengers are annually carried over the one hundred and fifty thousand miles or more of railroad in this country alone, he may be brought to realize that quite as much depends upon the quality of the material entering into the construction of the train and tracks as upon the efficiency of the engineer in the cab, or the conductor, brakeman, switchmen, and train-despatcher who perform their respective responsible duties in connection therewith. Feeding a railroad, then, means a great deal more than the majority of mankind supposes.