THE PRESENT-DAY SITUATION

Yet our progress is by no means rapid; it easily may be described in the one word “halting.”

In the opening chapter of this book I directed attention to the ravages in the service of our national railroad structure that any man can readily find for himself. To discover, specifically, how the passenger train service across much of the land has been depleted he has but to turn over the pages of that ponderous tome, the “Official Guide of the Railways of the United States.” The many, many trains of yesterday that are missing to-day even after the partial reparations to this important branch of the railroad’s social obligation to the nation that the Railroad Administration made after the war crisis show the deletions that have been made. There too he might find how the speed of most of the trains that remain is slackened.

I have no argument to present for the excessively fast train in the United States; it is a risk and an extravagance that we can well afford to do without. One of the shrewdest moves that the New York Central and the Pennsylvania systems made was, some seven or eight years ago, when they lengthened the running time of their fastest New York-Chicago trains from eighteen to twenty hours. There is little doubt that the New York Central, at least, could operate a train between these two cities in sixteen hours or in a very few minutes in excess of that time by the use of the long straight tangents of its Michigan Central subsidiary across the southerly portions of Ontario and Michigan. But at what strain upon the men back of the enormously efficient machine, at what great risk to life and property!

Despite the proverbial reputation of the American for great haste in everything, we have had but little desire in this country for extreme high-speed trains such as our friends overseas take such keen delight in boasting about. A few years ago the world was running riot on train speed. We had our two rival eighteen-hour expresses between New York and Chicago, to say nothing of the once famous Empire State doing the 440 miles between New York and Buffalo in exactly eight hours. It was that train which a short distance west of Rochester once reached the unofficial speed of 112½ miles an hour, and held it for several minutes. There were a dozen mile-a-minute expresses between Camden, opposite Philadelphia, and Atlantic City, divided between the Pennsylvania and Reading systems. The latter road, in connection with the Central Railroad of New Jersey, ran fast expresses each hour of the day between Jersey City, Communipaw Station, and the Market Street terminal in Philadelphia, a distance of ninety miles, in an hour and fifty minutes. And the management of the New Haven was purposing to establish a four-hour train between New York and Boston—229 miles.

In those days our British cousins were maintaining our pace, or possibly going it a little better. Competing roads on each side of Great Britain all the way from London up to Aberdeen, its northernmost large city, were at each other’s throats. The London and Northwestern and the Caledonian railways, working together, operated a train from London to Perth which on the greater part of its run was scheduled for actual operation at 49½ miles an hour and which was given but two hours and five minutes for the 117¾ miles between Carlisle and Stirling. Finally the competition reached a point where these roads—the so-called “West Coast route”—had a regularly scheduled train from London to Aberdeen, 540 miles, in eight hours and thirty-two minutes. This was considerably better than the East Coast route—chiefly the Great Northern, the Northeastern, and the North British railways—ever succeeded in doing. Their best regular schedule, even though their route was seventeen miles shorter, was eight hours and forty-two minutes.

The best regular trains on the crack Chicago and Alton, the shortest route between Chicago and St. Louis, take to-day seven hours and forty-five minutes to traverse the 284 miles intervening between those two important cities. It is 451 miles across level country from Chicago to Kansas City by the double-tracked Santa FÉ—a distance ninety miles less than by the West Coast route from London to Aberdeen—yet the Santa FÉ’s best train between Chicago to Kansas City takes eleven hours and twenty-five minutes for the run. And even then it is not permitted to carry passengers; the best passenger time is five or ten minutes longer. I do not think that we Americans can be called speed crazy.

Great Britain also has now slowed her trains down. She progressed that way before the beginning of the war. A nasty accident or two close to the beginning of the century was responsible for the change; while the war itself, as in this country, slowed the fast train schedules to a vast extent. Now her service is back to its old general standard of reasonable (but no longer excessive) high speeds in almost every direction out of London. There are abundant service expresses running in an even four hours between that city and both Manchester, 184 miles, and Liverpool, 193 miles. Competition is supposed to have forced this service. Competition is forever supposed to be forcing service. Yet on the non-competitive Great Western railway I rode, but a few months ago, from London to Bath, 104 miles, in an even two hours, while across the Channel, I had ridden, but a few weeks before that, over the war-struck Eastern railway of France ninety miles from Paris to Rheims in just sixty seconds less than an even two hours.

We have slackened our running time appreciably in the United States these days; very wisely, I think, in the case of the twenty-hour trains between New York and Chicago. As a matter of fact the Twentieth Century Limited, doing the 979 miles of the longer high-speed route between those two cities, from 2:45 o’clock one afternoon (Eastern time) to 9:45 o’clock the next morning (Central time), still makes a remarkable train performance. The Pennsylvania still has two or three of the mile-a-minute flyers in service between Camden and Atlantic City—59.7 miles in fifty-seven or fifty-eight minutes. The Reading has one or two of its flyers left, not only between those points, but between Philadelphia and Jersey City.

Yet this is about all of the mile-a-minute work. From here the slackening in time is appreciable until we come to the comparatively slow performances of the high-grades between Chicago and the cities that lie back of it. The New Haven no longer talks about a four-hour train from New York to Boston; it has lengthened its schedule between those cities. There also has been a slight lengthening of the one-time high-speed schedules between New York and Washington. There has been a let-down. The once proud Empire State Express now takes nine hours instead of eight to go from New York to Buffalo, while out upon the Pacific coast the tremendously high-speed expresses of the Santa FÉ between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the Saint and the Angel, which we saw but a little time ago being summarily dropped by the McAdoo administration, have never been restored. They are not likely to be restored.

The Southern Pacific takes thirteen hours and one-half for its best express between San Francisco and Los Angeles, a run of 475 miles. But a moment ago we saw the West Coast system of England doing 540 miles in eight hours and thirty-two minutes, and keeping it up month in and month out. Similarly the S. P. takes twenty-nine hours and ten minutes for its best train between Portland and San Francisco, a distance of 773 miles. It is 517 miles from Paris to Marseilles; the best regular express train between those two cities makes the run in twelve hours and thirty-three minutes. It is 652 miles from Paris to Nice; a regularly scheduled passenger train does it to-day in seventeen hours. And yet the French railway executives promise that they will do much better.

In these things we are not progressing. Take once again the worst of our national transport picture, the vexed New England situation. I have just referred to the slight lengthening of the time of the fast trains between New York and Boston, rather than any expected possible shortening of their schedules. The New York-Boston services of both the New Haven and the Boston and Albany roads are not typical, however, of the service that is being given New England these days; if it were there would be no large cause for complaint. It represents in fact the very top notch of the passenger service of the six most congested States in the Union, the very States which by all right and sense should to-day be enjoying the best passenger service, not the worst.

We have seen already the deplorable state into which the suburban service in and out of Boston has long since fallen. Boston is not all of New England, even though some Bostonians may so believe. Take the case of the Fitchburg. The Fitchburg started off as a railroad with good prospects. For it was bored the spectacular Hoosac tunnel (4¾ miles in length), upon the completion of which the Fitchburg became the short-line between Boston and both Troy and Albany. The lordly Boston and Albany meanders magnificently through the high hills of the Berkshires, and takes much longer for the process.

Unfortunately the little Fitchburg road never had much of a chance for its money. The close traffic alliances between the Boston and Albany and the New York Central, which preceded the actual leasing of the one road by the other, gave it little or no chance for through freight between New England and the West. Its short mileage and well-built line availed it nothing. Eventually it fell into the hand of the Boston and Maine and became, in large part at least, a local line, taking from the New York Central and the Delaware and Hudson such freight as the Boston and Albany would not or could not take. Yet for years it kept up a brave show. It ran between Boston and Buffalo and Chicago and Detroit and St. Louis sleeping-cars a-plenty. It had an excellent dining-car service too.

The dining-cars are gone from the Fitchburg these days. It has become indeed a very secondary stem of the Boston and Maine. Two parlor-cars ply their way daily on slow trains between Boston and Troy; recently a Boston-Buffalo sleeper was added to the service. The road has lost not only its name but its personality and its service too.

What is true of the Fitchburg is equally true of the erstwhile Housatonic. Equally true also is the fact that twenty-five years ago the best train between Pittsfield and New York made the run in an hour’s time less than the best train on that line consumes to-day. There were more trains too, just as there were more trains then on the New Haven and Northampton line, the Connecticut River, the New England, the Boston and Providence, and a dozen other little individual roads that long since lost their name, their prestige, their individuality, and, what is far more important, their intimate personal touch with their patrons and their employees.

The main line express trains of the New Haven between Boston and New York, either by the way of Springfield or by Providence, have not lost their excellence to-day, neither have the main line express trains of the Boston and Albany nor the Boston and Maine’s trains to Portland and points far beyond, although there are none too many of them and they are none too generous in their accommodations. It is in the branch line trains, just as in the branch line stations, that the New England passenger service has not progressed but has distinctly retrograded.

Descend beneath the obvious. Ignore even the sickening decline in railroad dividends, whether average or cumulative—the records of Wall Street will give you all that you want of these—and come to the deterioration of the roads as shown in hard and unsentimental figures. The condition of the locomotives and cars of almost all of our railroads had begun to decline seriously even before the days of the Railroad Administration. When that supreme governmental organization came into being it pledged itself to return to the carriers their properties at least as well and as fully equipped as upon the day it took them over. It did not quite succeed in doing this. The extent to which it failed, by the statistics referring to freight-cars alone, was as follows: In 1917, the year of private railroad operation immediately preceding those of government control, our national transport structure had 2,479,472 freight-cars, which was much less than it should have had. The roads had failed to build enough equipment to keep pace with the overwhelming increase of traffic, which almost at the very beginning of the World War had been thrust upon them. Under almost all circumstances they found it necessary to “scrap” or otherwise remove from service approximately 100,000 worn-out cars each year. For several years before 1914 their construction of new cars had barely more than kept pace with this annual loss.

Yet under governmental operation things went from bad to worse; despite its orders for 100,000 box-cars the Railroad Administration did not buy enough cars to keep pace with those that were being scrapped. In 1918 the total freight-car equipment of our carriers had declined to 2,397,943, in 1919 to 2,361,102, in 1920 to 2,352,911—in other words a total decline since 1917 of 125,561—while the normal increase of our transport plant called for an increase of at least twice this number of cars and certainly admitted no decrease whatever.

In this connection, I think that it is at least worth a paragraph in passing to notice that in the seven years ending with 1913 our railroads increased their freight traffic 39 per cent. In those same years they added 315,000 freight-cars and 8,100 freight locomotives to their existing equipment. In the seven years that ended with 1920 the traffic increased again—virtually in the same ratio, 38 per cent.—but only 143,000 freight-cars and 4200 freight-locomotives were added to the total rolling-stock. In 1921 but 20,000 new freight-cars were purchased and but 250 locomotives of all types. It is no wonder that many of our railroaders now view with real apprehension any return of heavy traffic.

Moreover not only the number but the condition of the individual cars has declined. A small Eastern city which I know very well indeed is a brisk point in interchange freight. It is also a water port of fair importance, to which a large number of coal-cars come in the average summer and autumn. Last autumn I noticed that many of these cars were in a pathetic state of disrepair. The yardmaster explained it to me.

“The first time they come through from the mines,” he said, “they will have their hoppers braced with a bit of timber so as to keep all the coal from spilling out upon the tracks before they even reach here. Somehow that timber will get lost before the car gets back to the mines again. The mine-bosses will put in a flooring this time. Fine business, that! The hoppers won’t work at all then, and thirty tons of coal have to be shoveled out by hand—at the present price of labor!”

Think of this single all-too-typical instance many times multiplied; combine this fact with that of the great decrease of freight-cars of any sort upon our rails to-day and you begin to get the measure of the true condition of our sick man of American business. To-day approximately 354,000 of the freight-cars of the United States are reported as being in bad order. And while a “bad-order” car may be, and frequently is, used for some forms of rail traffic (as for instance a leaky grain-car utilized for the shipment of automobiles) the fact remains that nearly 15 per cent. of our total freight-car equipment stands in great need of large repairs or of replacement, while 19 per cent. of our locomotives are so far gone that they have been thrust upon the sidings virtually abandoned. In another chapter we shall see how these locomotives might be rejuvenated and put to work again, more efficient than ever before. For this one however consider them nil and valueless to the American railroad.

It was partly to remedy conditions such as these as well as to provide for the return of the roads to private operation that the Transportation Act was passed. For there is not only a great rolling-stock shortage but virtually little or no extension of our railroad structure. As recently as in the decade from 1901 to 1911, 52,000 miles of brand-new line—a larger route mileage than that of almost any other nation in the world—were laid down. Since 1911 there have been virtually no new railroads in the United States. The comparatively small San Diego and Arizona railroad was completed but a year ago, but this was more than offset by the abandonment and removal of such lines as the Buffalo and Susquehanna and the Colorado Midland, to take two instances out of several. In 1920 only 314 miles of new railroad line were built in the United States, while 536 miles were abandoned. In 1921 service was discontinued on 1626 more miles of railroad. For six years past our total rail mileage has been going backwards, not rapidly but steadily and perceptibly; the small amount being constructed each year is being rapidly overbalanced by that which is being torn up. Our sick man of American business is a very sick man indeed.

Up to a decade ago our railroads were still busy increasing and enlarging their terminals, double-tracking their single-track lines, and three-tracking and four-tracking their double-track ones. The Union Pacific was achieving the distinction of being the first long-distance double-track line in the great West; in the East the Erie, the Lackawanna, and the Baltimore and Ohio were completing their remarkable series of cut-offs. All this has ceased, even though the necessity for its continuation has not ceased. For if the country does not absolutely stand in need of new trunk-lines to-day there still is a vast and unanswered demand for feeder branches in many, many corners of it, for duplication of tracks upon existing and badly overcrowded single-track and double-track lines. New York, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburg—other important cities as well—fairly cry aloud for a revision and extension of their terminal facilities, and cry in vain.

Rates have been increased, comparatively recently, to a point, as we have seen, not only higher than the most imaginative of our rail traffic experts might have dreamed five years ago but, as I have remarked already, to one where the traffic instead of being attracted to our carriers is actually being driven away from them; and some of the wiser executives have come to the point of asking the Interstate Commerce Commission for a modification of rates. From a niggardly policy of former years toward the railroads in regard to rates, this body, in professed obedience to the Transportation Act, raised them to the prohibitive point. Now it is beginning to see the error of its ways and, as we have seen at the behest of actual railroaders, is lowering certain of the freight charges, although not in any general or particularly scientific fashion. Recently the commission responded to a large public pressure by permitting the roads to reduce their freight rates on farm products 10 per cent. for a test period of six months, with the possibility that further freight rate reductions will be made.

And finally, as we all know, wages are now being reduced. Already they have been brought down half a billion dollars a year, and in all likelihood they will be even further lowered. As to the justice or wisdom of all this we shall talk presently. The fact remains here and now that a generous step has been taken in bringing down the greatest single item of the cost of conducting railroad transportation, while some of the other costs, chiefly materials, to-day are being reduced automatically by the steady fall in market quotations of supplies of every sort. The situation slowly but surely is working itself through.

On the other hand, what does the public demand in this railroad situation? What is the opinion of the Man on the Station Platform? Surely he has a voice in the matter. He rides on the train, if not daily as a commuter, then perhaps as often as every week or every fortnight. He talks. He observes. He forms conclusions. And some of these last might be accepted as fairly indicative of his needs as a constant patron of the railroad in both its freight and its passenger services.

The Man on the Station Platform believes first and foremost that transportation in this country, as well as in all others, is not merely railroads or motor-trucks or canal barges—not even aËroplanes, if you please—but a scientific correlation of all of these agents of transport. He believes that each must have its own field in which it reigns supreme because in that field it is the cheapest and the most efficient form of transport. And therefore in that field should be recognized as supreme and so developed.

I share these beliefs of my friend who stands on the shady platform awaiting his up-local. I cannot see these agencies in the long run and in the fullest understanding as competitors but as correlators, if such a word may safely be coined. Each should supplement the other. In the full understanding of modern business competition has little real value; in the conduct of public utilities it has none whatsoever. We learned long ago that in gas-works or in water-works, in telephone service, even in the traction facilities of our largest metropolitan cities, it was no lasting help in the long run but merely an added expense burden upon the community, and so should be eliminated or at least brought down to its lowest possible level.

Here then is perhaps the greatest of the burdens that the man outside of the railroad can wish to see removed from it. There are others: the neglect of the fine intensive salesmanship of transportation, which should have been brought to the fore years and years ago; the opportunity for the development of electric traction, of the container system of handling goods, which oddly enough brings us back again to the correlation of the several agents of American transport and the elimination of our absurd competitive plan.All of these things will have had our attention before I am done. The question is one that demands a great deal of attention. The condition of our rails, instead of growing stronger each day, daily grows more precarious. It is obvious that this condition cannot long continue—the service greatly reduced and impaired, the men sullen and ofttimes working at direct cross-purposes to the management, the rates raised to the point where traffic begins to refuse to come to the stations, the financial condition so depressed that railroad securities will not sell under the absurdly uneconomic prevailing conditions, no thought whatsoever being given to the morrow.

Out of this miserable mass we must raise a program, definite and distinct and statesmanlike, as sound as the program under which we changed our money situation from periodic chaos to vast and proved stability. It must be a program of progress, not a continuation of the absurd artifice of competition years after every other business has found that its economic strength comes in correlation and not in competition, but a genuine progress—progress in the physical fiber of our railroad structure, using the electric motor, the gasolene motor, the industrial terminal, the package container, a dozen other steps as well; progress in the really fine science of selling transportation; progress in human relationship. In such progress there is nothing chimerical, nothing even remotely approaching the fantastic. And in such progress, and nowhere else, can one hope to find a solution of our railroad problem of to-day that even approaches permanency.