THE G. P. A. AND HIS OFFICE

We have already called the division superintendent the Prince in the realm of railroad operation. But there is another, whom we see when we leave operation and consider traffic—another who might also be called Prince—Prince Charming. This prince of charm of the railroad is the general passenger agent. To a large proportion of folk he is almost the personification of the railroad itself. His signature, appearing upon each of the railroad’s tickets and time-tables, is multiplied a million times a year. In his own self he appears many, many times as the road’s mouthpiece. His evening clothes must always be kept in press and moth-balls, for his oratory is at all times close to the tap. His wit is ready, his tongue a good arguer for his line. At dinners of Chambers of Commerce and Boards of Trade, his urbanity is profound, his remarks to the point; and the road gets the advertising.

For the general passenger agent is per se, an advertiser. There are two affiliated and yet quite distinctive functions to his office. The older function, the one for which it was really created when railroads were young, is that of issuing tickets and selling them. The newer function, and to-day the all-important function, is that of keeping the road before the eyes of the travel-mad public—an advertising function. A few years ago, a big Eastern road had to change general passenger agents because of this very thing. The man who had held the job was in almost every way absolutely efficient. He had been reared in the routine of his office; he knew its vast details as well as any man might ever hope to know them. But he was a detail man, and there he stopped. The road needed more of a figurehead, a better advertiser. The late George H. Daniels was in many respects the best passenger agent that American railroading has ever known. He was the forerunner of the general passenger agent of to-day—a well-known figure in the great State that his railroad served, being interviewed by reporters—and lady reporters, too—on every conceivable subject in the public eye; addressing dinners in metropolitan New York, or in suburban Yonkers, or anywhere else in the State, with rare facility, yet now and then adroitly bringing in reference to the “four-track trail” by which he was employed.

Other roads took heed of Daniels. The general passenger agent became less and less a man of office routine and of ticket detail, more and more of a public figure. He called Mayors of important cities by their first names; he kept close to the pulsing heart of the public press by friendly intimacy with the reporters; spoke at two, three, four dinners a week. The Prince Charming of the railroad is, indeed, a development.

But behind the smiles of this prince, behind the phraseology of words spoken or written that glorify “the road,” there is a serious aspect of his life. He must capitalize that splendid urbanity, that jocose wit, into ticket-sales. In the beginning he was created to sell tickets, and sell tickets he must. On his ability to sell tickets, and not as a popular public figure, will he be measured by the board of directors—that delegation of grim-faced gentlemen, who place small market value on either urbanity or jocosity.

So, while the general passenger agent presents his smiling face to the outside world, he is a man of system, no mean executive there within the inner. He must organize to sell his tickets. There is an inner organization of no small moment in the passenger office of any sizable railroad. In the first place, the area from which traffic is to be drawn is divided into districts. General agents or assistant general passenger agents (the title varies widely on the different railroads) are assigned to each. This traffic area is far larger than the area covered by one railroad system. It is generally nation-wide, while some of the biggest of our railroads maintain ticket-offices in the large cities all the way around the world. They are to-day fighting almost as sharply for American traffic in Paris or in London as they fight in Clark Street, Chicago, or in Broadway, New York.

For it is a fight and an endless fight, which the Prince Charming—he of the urbane smiles—must wage. Despite the constant consolidating processes of our railroads, there are few large territories that are the exclusive field of any one road. The most of them must fight for their business—particularly for their profitable long-distance business. The fight divides itself between the freight and passenger traffic departments. No wonder, then, that the general passenger agent must be a many-sided man.

From his district offices, there scurries forth a corps of smooth-tongued, quick-witted young men—the travelling passenger agents. These young men are skirmishers. They are up and down the steel highways of the nation, thirty days out of the month, skirmishing for business. Each carries in an inner pocket a wad of annual passes—such as might make any statesman green with envy. Those passes cover every steam line in the territory that is assigned to him and are return courtesy for the neat little cards which his road in turn issues to the traffic solicitors of other roads.

In other days these skirmishers carried forth business which sometimes approached cut-throat tendencies. The weaker lines in hotly competitive territory—lines which, running fewer high-grade trains and running them at slower speed—which were naturally at a disadvantage, sought to obtain at least their normal share of passenger traffic, by sharp work. After that their stronger brethren often showed their religious belief in fighting them by fire. Tickets were sold at less than advertised rates to certain favored individuals; sometimes a few passes, adroitly placed, did the business. In these days those sharp things are forbidden, and the young man, soliciting railroad traffic, who breaks the rules of the game runs the risk of worse than facing an angry boss, getting discharged; perhaps he can see the doors of a Federal prison opening for him.

So the fellow who skirmishes for the weak road has a hard time of it in these piping days. Passenger traffic, like kissing, seems to go by favor nowadays; and how hard the travelling passenger agent works to curry that favor! He drops off a local at some way-station, there is a smile and perhaps a cigar for the country-boy who sells tickets there, for the Interstate folk have not sent any one to prison yet for offering either a smile or a cigar. The T. P. A. knows that the local agent cannot, under the rules that govern him, recommend routes that connect with and extend beyond the line which gives him employment. Still, sometime the country agent may be approached by a man who demands that a connecting road be suggested for him, and the T. P. A. can see that man, without even shutting his eyes. If the country agent will only remember the nice T. P. A. that the Transcontinental sent in there a month before, and the good kind of cigars he dispenses, the Transcontinental may get a part of the haul on a long green ticket. Perhaps the man will be taking his wife, and there will be two of the long green tickets. Perhaps there will be a whole party to be routed over the Transcontinental—the T. P. A. can imagine almost anything as he swings overland in the dreary locals from way-station to way-station.

Sometimes a wire from his chief quickly changes his schedule. The Magnificent Knights of the Realm—or some other impressive order of that sort—are to hold their annual convention at Oshkosh, and the T. P. A. must hustle down to Bingtown to see that Transcontinental gets the haul of the delegation that will go to Oshkosh from the bustling little community. He scurries into Bingtown to locate the officers of the local lodge of the M. K. O. R. there. On the train there may be a T. P. A. from some rival system—they are all partners in misery. The Transcontinental man will probably drop off the opposite side of the train at Bingtown from the crowded depot platform—it’s an old trick of the T. P. A.—and be tearing over the pages of the Bingtown directory before that train is out of town again. Once located, the officers of that lodge of M. K. O. R. must be pleasantly instructed in the advantages of Transcontinental—the speed of its trains, the safety of its operation, the convenience of its terminals, the scenic splendors along the way, the excellence of its dining-car service; all these things are spun with convincing eloquence by the travelling passenger agent.

A few years ago, two travelling passenger agents, whose lines supplement one another to make a through route across the continent, went down into an Eastern manufacturing city to land business bound west to a national convention of one of the biggest of the fraternal orders. There were other passenger men heading toward that same territory, and the two men from the connecting lines made an offensive and defensive alliance. When they reached this town, they found that the chief officers of the local lodge were two city detectives and a police justice. All three of the city officers showed little enthusiasm about the coming convention. The passenger men took off their coats—figuratively—and pitched in.

For three days, they ran up an expense account that must have all but paralyzed the auditors of their companies, but they accomplished results. After the first day of entertainment, the police justice said that there would be an even dozen of them for the three-thousand-mile run, which was going some. Most passenger men would have rested content on those laurels, but this combination used that first day only to whet their appetites. They started briskly out on the second, a little fagged, but still in fighting trim, and by that night the two detectives united in promising one or two filled Pullmans. The third day saw the two traffic solicitors nearly dead, and the well-seasoned city officials just in fine trim. The trim must have been fine, for that night they completed arrangements for one of the biggest special train movements of that year: two hundred and fifty enthusiastic brethren went three-quarters of the way across the continent and back as a result of the work of these passenger men.

Once a travelling passenger agent went nearly too far in this entertainment business. He got business, miles and miles and miles of it, but he also got drinking far too heavily. One day, when he came into the general offices very much the worse for entertaining, he bumped into no less a man than the president of the road. That president was a strict old soul. He had church connections, and he used to lecture his Sunday School class on the evils of the liquor habit. He decided to make an example of this young whelp of a passenger agent from off the road.

But just as the sentence was about to be pronounced, the general passenger agent interfered. He went straight to the president and the wrath of an honest man was in his eye.

“We don’t intend to have drunken men working here,” the president kept saying. “It’s the example—”

“If he drinks,” said the G. P. A., “it’s my fault, and I’m the man to let go.”

The president let his eyeglasses drop in astonishment.

“You?” he said.

“I’m guilty,” said the G. P. A. “This man goes everywhere to get business for us, and he gets it. He kneels with the preacher, he talks high art with the Browning societies, and he gets drunk with the drinkers—all in the name of this railroad system. Now we propose to kick him out, still in the name of this railroad system.”

The president saw the point, and together they took hold of the T. P. A. and made him a decent, sober man. To-day he is one of the most efficient officers of that very road, and he owes it all to that broad-minded G. P. A.

Geniality, urbanity, courtesy are the major part of a travelling passenger agent’s equipment, as they are part of his chief’s in these days, when the rates have ceased to enter into the fight for traffic.

Rates?

The rates must be the same nowadays by all routes of the same class; and so the T. P. A. must bring out the excellence of his line, leaving none behind because of a false sense of modesty. He is silent about other roads, save as they may lead to and from the system that he represents. You want to go to Kickapoo. You could go to Milltown by the Transcontinental and get from there to Kickapoo most easily by the main line of the St. Louis Southwestern, but the travelling passenger agent frowns his first frown at the very suggestion. The St. Louis Southwestern is the worst competitor that Transcontinental has for passenger traffic, and the T. P. A. does not propose to send business over its rails. So he ignores your suggestion.

“We have our own line into Kickapoo,” he tells you—the old smile returning. “You won’t have to leave Transcontinental.”

And such a line! It happens to be a branch of the worst jerkwater type. To reach Kickapoo over Transcontinental you must go to Milltown and change from the comfortable Limited to a less comfortable train, which takes you to Quashalong Junction. There you find a seat on a local which jogs along at twenty miles an hour for the greater part of the afternoon until you get into Miller’s Forks. When you reach Miller’s Forks you almost abandon hope. For the thirty-mile stretch from that cross-roads over into Kickapoo is a grass-grown stretch of half-neglected track over which a combination freight and passenger-train—adequately described on the time-card as mixed—ambles once in twenty-four hours. By the time you have finished that trip you will have arrived in Kickapoo without leaving the rails of the Transcontinental, but you will also probably have registered a vow never to travel on them again, if they can be avoided.

Right there is a traffic mistake. If the T. P. A. had been wise he would have swallowed his hatred of St. Louis Southwestern and recommended that you use it for that stretch from Milltown to Kickapoo. He let his zeal for his road overrun his business judgment. A good many of them do. Only the other day a man walked into a railroad station of a small city in the Southern Tier of New York State and announced that he wanted to hurry through to Binghamton.

“We have a train in five minutes, our 12:12,” said the agent, all smiles.

The man hesitated. He wanted to do two or three errands in that small city before he went on to Binghamton, and so he asked the leaving time of the next train.

“Nothing until 6:18,” the agent told him.

“That will be too late for me to get into Binghamton,” the passenger said. The agent did not reply, but turned his attention to other persons who were waiting at the ticket-window. But the man from Binghamton was still perplexed. An agent of the news company who ran the stand in that station, came over and helped him out.

“The —— (mentioning a rival and paralleling road) gets a train out of here for Binghamton at 3:30,” he explained.

The passenger thanked the news-agent, for his problem had been lightened and started out for the other station. When he was gone, the ticket-seller summoned the newsman and threatened to have him fired.

But there is a new order of things coming to pass even in this hot rivalry for getting passenger traffic. Long ago, C. F. Daly, who is to-day vice-president in charge of traffic for the New York Central lines, was in charge of the city ticket-office of the Burlington, in Omaha. Those were days when no loyal traffic-man was ever supposed even to breathe the name of a competing road. But Daly held his loyalty firm, and still went straight against that absurd rule. If a woman came into his office and, after the way of some women travellers, finally decided that she wished to travel over the rival Northwestern, he would not let her get out of his office. He would give her a comfortable seat, and perhaps a magazine or paper to read, and send one of his office-boys over to the Northwestern office to buy a ticket for her. Sometimes before the office-boy could get out of the place the woman would change her mind in favor of the Burlington. If she did not, Daly did not worry. He knew that he was of the new order of railroaders.

Come back, for a final moment, to the travelling passenger agent. He may be forgiven an over-zeal for the line which employs him, for that has been his training from the beginning, and—which is far more to the point—he is being measured by the results that he accomplishes. The road does not pay him a salary and pay his heavy expense account (which the auditor generally permits to contain various unvouchered items for entertainment) without expecting results.

If he is a new man in the territory, he is measured against his predecessor. Afterwards, he is measured month by month, against the corresponding month of the preceding year. All tickets which were sold from his territory, and in which his road shares, are credited to his influence. It becomes a matter of cold calculations and of dollars and cents. If this April does not show an increase over April of last year, the T. P. A. must make a mighty good explanation to his chief. It will have to be famine or pestilence or something nearly as bad to justify the slump in ticket sales. An insinuation on his part that a reduction of the service of his road was responsible for the slump would never be accepted at headquarters.

The New York Central Railroad is building a new Grand Central Station in New York
City, for itself and its tenant, the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad