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 passenger. 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 passed 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 passing bills reducing the price of passenger 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 passenger 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 prone—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; passenger rates much more generously. In fact it was the first time in years that many of the passenger 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 passenger rates were absolutely sacred; that any increases in the incomes of the roads must be borne by the freight. Increases in passenger 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 passenger rates were raised, and there was hardly a protest on the part of the public. The railroaders who had clung superstitiously 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 passenger 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 substitution 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 Marseilles 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 passage 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 passenger fares for hauling one of the very heaviest types of coaches. A day coach of similar weight would carry from 80 to 100 passengers. 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 sturdy raises in interstate passenger 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 passes, 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 advertisement 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 FÉ 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 FÉ. “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 FÉ 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 passenger 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 advisement a scheme by which it would make a ticket charge of one-half cent a mile extra for those of its passengers 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.

A certain big railroader out in the Middle West has very determined opinions in regard to the possibility of the passenger end of the railroad receipts being increased. Like many of the big operating men he affects a small regard for the passenger service. And this despite the fact that if you touch the average railroader, big or little, upon his tenderest spot, his pride in his property, he will talk to you in glowing terms of the “Limited,” the road’s biggest and fastest show train—showy from the barber shop and the bath in her buffet car, to the big brass-railed observation platform at the rear. He will not talk to you at length of his freight trains, but he will prate unceasingly of Nineteen’s “record”—how she ran ninety-eight per cent on time last month, a good showing for a train scheduled to make her thousand miles or so well inside of twenty-four hours.

This big railroader of the Middle West does not, however, take your time in mere boasting of his operating record. He comes to cases, and comes quickly—to the question of increased passenger rates when our present flood tide of traffic has descended to the normal.

“See here,” he tells you when you are seated in his big, comfortable office, “here are the figures. They speak for themselves. Take New York, for instance. There were 120,750 commuters entering and leaving that big town each business day last year. With an average ride of fourteen miles for each commuter, we have a total passenger mileage of 1,014,300,000 miles in that metropolitan district. The passenger traffic from New York westward to Chicago and beyond in the same time was 234,482 passengers. Multiply these by the average rail distance between the two cities, 960 miles, and you have another 225,083,520 passenger-miles. Now to this add 163,620 commercial travelers, each riding an estimated average of fifty miles a day—2,454,300,000 miles for these—and you have a total of 3,693,683,520 miles—or approximately ten and a half per cent of the passenger miles on our steam railroads last year. This ten and a half per cent of the passenger travel was participated in by 518,832 persons—a little bit more than one-half of one per cent of the total population of the country. If this rule holds good it follows that five and three-tenths per cent of the population of the United States, or 5,194,000, received in an average year all the benefits of the passenger-carrying establishment of the railroads.

“The average journey upon our railroads last year was thirty-four miles; therefore, a round trip between New York and Chicago represented twenty-eight average trips; a round trip between New York and San Francisco ninety-two average trips. We can agree that the bulk of the passenger travel consists of commuters, commercial travelers, men on business trips, and persons traveling for pleasure; in proportion about in the order I have given them. If these figures show anything, they show that the great bulk of our passenger mileage is used by a class which we may call constant travelers. I believe that it is a reasonably safe assumption that at least four-fifths of the 35,000,000,000 passenger-miles made last year were used by this class of travel, probably representing less than 10,000,000 of the population of the country. This same 35,000,000,000 of passenger-miles distributed equally among our entire population produces 357 passenger-miles per individual.

“It is a simple matter for the artisan, the farmer, or the man in the street, without Wanderlust in his blood, to figure out for himself that if he and each member of his family do not travel their 357 miles in a single year then he is helping to pay for the passenger service of the railroads in the form of increased freight charges.

“I myself have always maintained that the passenger revenues of our railroads do not render their proportion of the cost of operation. The Interstate Commerce Commission has upheld the same contention, as anyone can see by its recent decision granting increases in passenger rates proportionately much higher than the increases in freight rates. These figures of mine show how a privileged class, representing ten per cent, or, at the widest calculation, not more than twenty per cent of the population, have been receiving transportation at far less than the actual cost; while the remaining ninety per cent of the citizens of the United States have paid the freight—literally.”

The railroader’s figures are interesting—to say the least. And we must assume that he has not forgotten the fact that there is one great economic difference between the freight and the passenger traffic. The one must move, and, save in the few cases where waterborne traffic competes, move by rail; a large part of the other is shy and must be induced. If this were not true the big railroads would be advertising for freight business as steadily and as strongly as they advertise for passengers. Of course a large proportion of folk travel because necessity so compels, yet there is a goodly proportion, a proportion to be translated into many thousands of dollars, who travel upon the railroad because the price is low enough to appeal to their bargain-sense. In this great class must always be included the excursionists of every class. These folk must be lured by attractive rates. And as a class they are particularly susceptible just now to the charms of the railroad’s great new competitor—the automobile.

It was only two or three years ago that the round-trip ticket at considerably less than the cost of two single-trip tickets and the twenty-dollar mileage book, entitling the bearer to 1,000 miles of transportation, prevailed in the eastern and more closely populated portion of the United States. The price of the mileage book was raised to $22.50. Within a short time it is likely to go to $25. And there are shrewd traffic men among the railroad executives of the country who today say that within twenty years it will cost five cents a mile to ride upon the railroad—as against an average fare of two and a half cents today. And I do not think that, in view of the advances in cost—as well as that great necessity in making good that loss in both physical and human equipment, to which I have already referred—the public will make any large protest. The average man does not wish to ride upon a railroad that is neglecting either its property or its employees. He is willing to pay a larger price for his transportation if only he is assured that this larger price is going to make his travel more safe and more comfortable in every way.

Therefore I do not think that it is going to be very hard for the railroads to gain necessary advances in fares—particularly if they will not forget one big thing. The success of the Twentieth Century Limited and the other trains of its class ought not to be lost upon the railroader. With service he can trade for increased rates. There are many large opportunities for the railroad along these lines, in both freight and passenger service. A progressive desire to enter into these opportunities will probably bring the railroad many of the advances that it so sorely needs. And I am not sure but that such a spirit would also do much toward securing for it the very necessary unification of regulation—not alone of its income but also of its outgo—that it so earnestly seeks at the present time.