Our Railroads To-Morrow. Edward Hungerford
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had worked so hard to upbuild, with feelings of great bitterness and regret. It felt down in the bottom of its heart that it had been discriminated against. When peace came again—if ever it should come again—and the railroads were restored to their private operators—if they ever were to be restored again—the Golden State Limited would have to start once again at the very bottom of the ladder.
The most notable consolidations of passenger service under the government administration came, however, in the central portions of the land. In the district about Chicago under private and competitive control there was (and to-day is once again) a great waste of through passenger-train service. With six competing railroads from Chicago to the Twin Cities, six to Omaha, six to Kansas City, four to St. Louis, and three to Cincinnati, and with almost every one of these roads trying to maintain a service as good as its competitors, if not better, there was and is a vast preponderance of through passenger-trains, many times to the cost of weaker or branch lines, even of well-to-do-systems. It is not at all uncommon for a branch line, particularly if it passes through a non-competitive district, to be paying with its all-too-few and overcrowded local trains for the extravagances of the underfilled through ones upon the main line. The little wheezy locomotive and the two forty-year-old battered day-coaches of the down local to Willettsburg or Sand Corners was and still is the upkeep of the lordly limited all-Pullman and aristocratic from the point of its crack new locomotive to the far tip of its brass-railed observation-platform. Do not forget that. And also do not forget that a good proportion of the voting population of any State lives upon the branch lines, which may have accounted in the past for some pretty radical railroad legislation and regulation. Here is a point that the average railroad operator, with his nose close down to freight ton-miles, may overlook. He may have and frankly express a contempt for the passenger service but it is at all times the chief point of actual contact between the railroad and its patrons.
Moreover from Chicago to the group of cities a night’s ride distant from it in several directions the plethora of superb trains moved in competitive squadrons. By that I mean, even though there were on four railroads between that city and St. Louis before the coming of the war fifteen fast through trains in each direction, there were to all practical purposes but three or four. For competition so bunched the trains that there was an important group of through expresses leaving Chicago at noon and another important group at midnight, with two or three less important slower expresses at nine in the morning and again at nine in the evening. An intelligent centralized management would seemingly have found it possible so to distribute fifteen through trains that there would have been a through train from Chicago to St. Louis—or the reverse—almost each workaday hour. The through service between New York and Washington and between New York and Boston is so distributed.
Even under centralized control, however, such an even distribution of passenger-trains between midland cities of the United States is not entirely possible. For even in the case which we have before us, there are important connections to be reckoned with, both at Chicago and at St. Louis. These trains must be met, and if the best through passenger-trains for the Southwest leave the St. Louis Union Station at about nine o’clock in the evening, the resident of Decatur, which is on the main line of the Wabash, and of Springfield, which is on the main line of the Chicago and Alton, should in all fairness have an equal chance at them.
Yet, despite this hindering factor, the McAdoo centralized authority succeeded in cutting the fifteen through trains in each direction down to nine and in slightly spreading the leaving times. The result apparently worked little hardship to the through traveler of war-time days between Chicago and St. Louis. The train on which he rode might be a little longer and a little better filled than usual, but its running-time and its equipment, save for the probable elimination of the observation-car, were virtually unchanged. And 15,706 train-miles and 9,538 tons of coal were being saved in Chicago-St. Louis passenger service each month.
But how about Monticello?
Monticello, Illinois, is not a big town, as big towns go. Yet it is an enterprising county-seat of some 2,000 people situated on the Chicago-St. Louis main line of the Wabash just a few miles north of Decatur. And it has definite rights. Do not forget that. In the old days of ante-bellum private control—sin-filled and really wasteful competitive control—there were four through trains and two locals through Monticello in each direction each day. And the Monticello banker or merchant who wanted to run down to St. Louis and come back at night had an easy affair of it. But with the government train consolidation he could get up in the middle of the night and catch the 2:30 train south or else wait for the next express at 4:05 in the afternoon. The Government was not particularly worried about him.
Let me repeat. Monticello has definite rights to adequate railroad transportation. And this holds true whether that transportation comes from the Government or the individual. Monticello—ten thousand Monticellos, if you please—has a considerable voting population. And once the real war emergency was passed and the Armistice safely signed, ten thousand Monticellos began asking if government operation was going to offer them no better relief from the ills of private operation. It was as nothing to them that there had been a saving of trains and of train mileage between Chicago and St. Louis with no apparent diminution of the service between those two metropolitan cities; they simply knew that there had been a great lessening of their own service. And while they were willing to accept such a lessening as a part of their war sacrifice they did not intend to accept it as a permanent transportation condition, either from the Government or from private capital.
This general plan held, however. There are some pretty big and powerful Monticellos between Chicago and the coast. Denver is one of them, Omaha is another, Kansas City a third. And because, to make a single instance, any one of these cities demands a fairly quick and efficient service to Portland and the Puget Sound points, it was necessary after a time to modify to some extent the simplified route plan and to give these intermediate points through train service, or at least through Pullman service.
These changes and others like them have brought great savings in passenger mileage. That cannot be denied, even though one is tempted to add a doubting corollary as to the shattering of the finest passenger service that any land ever has received. The war crisis demanded curtailments. The railroads themselves had recognized that, even before the coming of the McAdoo administration. From May 1, 1917, up to the end of that year their War Board succeeded in reducing the passenger service by 28,656,983 train-miles. Yet this was not a circumstance to the slashing done by the Federal Administration. In September, 1918, McAdoo reported to President Wilson that he had succeeded in eliminating passenger-trains to the extent of 47,420,000 additional miles a year, a really astounding total.
But in all probability the most popular economy of this sort that McAdoo succeeded in bringing about was in the consolidation of passenger terminals across the land, all the way from the biggest towns down to the very smallest. He began at the top in the city of New York. The Pennsylvania railroad since the opening of its wonderful new station in Seventh Avenue in that city in November, 1910, quite naturally had held it exclusively for itself and for its subsidiary, the Long Island railroad. In that tight stand it was right from every competitive point of view. It had taken the great engineering problem and its financial risk entirely upon its own shoulders; shrewd railroaders had shaken their heads dubiously as they contemplated the daring move; and there was no reason why it should share the fruits of its enterprise with its competitors.
But the competitive situation had been eliminated. Therefore McAdoo did not hesitate in personally ordering that the highly competitive Baltimore and Ohio, as well as the non-competitive Lehigh Valley (which up to that time had been using the old Pennsylvania station in Jersey City), should bring its through trains into the Pennsylvania terminal on Manhattan Island. (Incidentally, at the eleventh hour of the existence of the Railroad War Board the Pennsylvania had proffered the use of its station for this purpose.) The tickets of the B. & O. and the Pennsylvania between New York and Washington and intermediate points were moreover made completely interchangeable.
The Pennsylvania people did not enjoy these orders, even though they had proffered the station at New York. But they were good soldiers. The country was at war, and they complied readily with war-time orders, no matter how unreasonable they may have seemed to them.
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