MORE RAILROAD OPPORTUNITY
Let us now bring the motor truck into consideration. So far we have not
taken it into our plans. And yet it is the phase of automobile competition
that some railroad men frankly confess puzzles them the most. For it hits
close to the source of their largest revenue--the earnings from the
freight. It is a transport of things rather than of men. But that is no
fundamental reason why it should not become as much an ally and a feeder
of the railroad--as the passenger automobile, for instance.
The possibilities of the motor truck, under the development of good roads,
which already has grid-ironed the two coastal fronts of the United States
with improved highways and placed them here and there and everywhere
throughout the interior, are large. A wholesale meat vendor in
Philadelphia has used motor trucks with specially designed refrigerator
bodies to distribute his wares not only through the immediate suburban
territory in southeastern Pennsylvania and in adjacent New Jersey, but
right up to the very doors of New York City, itself. Florists, whose
greenhouses dot the Illinois prairies for fifty miles roundabout Chicago,
today are using fleets of these vehicles to bring their wares at top speed
either to suburban railroad stations or down into the heart of the
city itself--although this last is somewhat unsatisfactory owing to the
crowded streets of downtown Chicago. The motor truck is coming into
increasing use in Oregon and in Washington and in California. It is
proving a disturbing competitor to the small railroads upon the larger
islands of the Hawaiian group. And a company has just been formed to
introduce a motor-truck freight service to certain railroadless parts of
China--which are supplied with ancient but very passable highroads.
[Illustration: WHEN FREIGHT IS ON THE MOVE
The past two winters have seen the great black-breasted yards of all our
American railroads congested with traffic almost to the breaking point.
Executives, high and low, have lived in the yards for days and weeks and
months at a time trying to relieve the congestion. This terminal yard of
the West Shore Railroad at Weehawken, N. J., opposite New York City, is
typical of many, many others.]
Come back to the United States. Last winter, when the railroads of the
East struggled under a perfect flood tide of freight, due to the rush of
war munitions toward the seaboard for transshipment, they were compelled
to issue embargoes. That means, plainly speaking, that for days and
sometimes weeks at a time they were compelled to refuse to accept or
deliver many classes of freight. They gave their first efforts to moving
coal and milk and the other vital necessities for the towns which they
served with the rigors of an unusually hard winter to combat. It was a
long time before the embargoes were all raised--even with all the big
operating men in the East working from eighteen to twenty hours out of
twenty-four--in many cases living in their private cars set in the heart
of the most congested yards.
Bridgeport was one of the towns that was hardest hit by these embargoes.
While it is served by a single railroad, it is upon the main stem of that
road--a system that is reputed to be well equipped for the handling of
high-grade freight. But the conditions were unusual, to say the least.
Bridgeport found herself transformed almost overnight from a brisk and
average Connecticut manufacturing town into one of the world's greatest
munition centers. Prosperity hit her between the eyes. For a time people
slept all night in the railroad station because they had nowhere else to
go. And the fine new county almshouse was hurriedly transformed into a
huge hotel. Bridgeport swarmed with people. A single munition factory
there employed close to 20,000 people.
The railroad, long since hemmed in by the growing factory town, could not
rebuild its yards overnight. Neither could it look for relief toward the
other Connecticut towns. They, too, were making munitions and were in turn
congested. But by far the worst congestion of all was at Bridgeport. The
railroad people worked unceasingly, but for a time to apparently no
purpose. And for a time it was almost impossible for a package to reach
Bridgeport from New York or the West.
In this emergency the motor truck proved its worth. It so happens that
there is a factory in Bridgeport which manufactures a very heavy type of
motor truck. It put one of these in service between its plant and New
York--fifty-six miles distant over the well-paved historic Boston Post
Road. It brought emergency supplies of every sort to the factory doors. So
efficient did it prove itself in everyday service that a group of
Bridgeport manufacturers and merchants formed themselves into a
transportation company and placed other trucks in daily service between
their town and New York. And a little later when the New York terminals
became glutted with freight and hedged about with embargoes, the
manufacturers of Bridgeport began having freight billed to them at the
local freight houses in Newark. They extended their motor-truck service to
that busy Jersey town and so saved themselves many dollars. When, in the
course of a few months, the congestion was removed and freight conditions
at Bridgeport were normal once again, the motor-truck service along the
Post Road disappeared. It could not compete with the freight rates of the
railroad.[12]
But its possibilities as a feeder are enormous. Only a few days ago I
stood beside the desk of the traffic vice-president of a big trunk line
and looked over his shoulder at a huge map spread there. It showed the
main line and the branches of his railroad--from all these, stretching,
like a fine moss upon an old oak, the improved highroads. The mapmaker had
done more. By use of colors he had shown the automobile stage routes upon
these roads--those that carried freight and those that combined two or
three of these classes of traffic. The vice-president frankly confessed
that he was studying to see what practical use he could make of these
feeding motor routes.
It was significant that the railroad should be making so careful a study
of its new competitor, that it should be taking the first beginning steps
to recognize it not as a competitor but rather as a friend and an ally, a
feeder which eventually may be the means of bringing much traffic to its
cars. The motor truck running over a well-paved highway can easily reach a
farm or factory situated far from the steel rails.[13] It may save the
construction of expensive and eventually unprofitable branch-line
railroads just as the passenger automobile or motor bus has begun to save
the building of unprofitable street-car lines. If the farm fails or the
factory burns down, never to be rebuilt, the railroad does not find itself
with an expensive and utterly useless branch line of track upon its hands.
There is still another great freight-traffic opportunity for the sick man
of American business. It lies in the perfection and development of a
standard unit container. The idea is not, in itself, entirely new. A good
many men have been studying for a long time to develop a practical
receptacle that will obviate the necessity of constantly handling and
rehandling freight--always a great expense both at terminals and at
transfer yards. The remarkable development of the automobile truck during
the past five years has only emphasized the vital need of some such
universal container.
An ideal receptacle of this sort would be built of fiber or of
steel--better still, a combination of the two. Such a container would
roughly approximate in size the body of a small motor truck. Two of them
would fit comfortably upon the chassis of a large truck--three or four,
upon the frame of an electric car--for either city or interurban use. The
regulation freight car of the steam railroad would then consist of trucks
and frame--builded to receive from five to seven of the standard
containers. These containers would also be able to fit in the low hold
decks of a steamship with a great economy of room and therefore with a
great efficiency of service.
The manufacturer then would load the containers in his shipping room. Some
of them destined through under seal to large cities, such as New York or
Chicago or Philadelphia; others, carrying a variety of products to small
places, would be addressed to recognized transfer or assorting points.
This last method would be exactly similar to that employed by the
post-office department or the express companies in handling their daily
flood tides of small parcel traffic. The use of the universal container
would be directed more particularly, however, to heavier freight, both in
individual packages and in bulk. Coal or grain or lumber would hardly be
sent in a container. It might be possible, however, to ship flour and
sugar in the universal container, and entirely without the expense of
wrappings.
From the manufacturer's door--whether it were at street level, or in a
community industrial building fifteen floors above the street--the
container would go to the railroad frame car. By use of small-wheeled
trucks or overhead tractors it would be carried first to the waiting
chassis of the motor truck--in case the manufacturer was not able to
command railroad siding facilities for himself. The motor truck would
carry it to the freight terminal--overhead crane would make short shift of
loading the container and its fellows upon the frame car.
The rest of the journey would be that of ordinary freight, save that at
the destination the shipping process would be exactly reversed--the motor
truck performing its part of the work again, if necessary, and the
container going direct to the merchant or manufacturer with the least
possible delay and with no expensive intermediate handlings, with their
consequent labor expense as well as the possible danger from breakage.
This idea is not chimerical. Also, it is not inexpensive. It requires much
study to work out the details and when these have been brought into
practicability it would require much money for the initial investment in
containers. They would have to be built in large quantities, in order to
justify the large immediate expense to adapt any number of freight cars,
terminals, and warehouses to their use. But as to their efficiency and
their ultimate economy, few transportation men who have given much real
thought to the subject, are in doubt.
Such schemes quickly ally themselves with the entire problem of terminals.
"Terminals?" you say, and immediately think of what we were discussing a
few minutes ago--the Grand Central station and other monumental structures
of its sort. But those were passenger terminals. And now we have come to
the great opportunities to be found in the handling and the development of
the freight.
Perhaps you are not impressed with the importance of freight terminals.
They are not the impressive gateways of large cities; but in many, many
senses they are the most important. Through them pour the foodstuffs--the
meats, the fish, the vegetables, the fruits, the milk, the clothing, the
fuel, the thousand and one things, necessary for the comfort of man and
his luxury. Bar those gateways but for a single day and then see the panic
that would overcome your city.
* * * * *
While we were speaking of the new Grand Central station and the important
step it typified in the economic and efficient progress of our country, we
called attention to the allied facilities that were springing up
roundabout it--hotels, clubs, office buildings, auditorium, all of them
more or less closely affiliated with the business of the great north gate
of a metropolitan city. Is there any reason why the freight gateways
should not be the housing places of affiliated industries--industries,
if you please, more or less dependent upon the rapid movement of either
their raw material or their finished products? Suppose that the railroads
were ever to seek out and solve that fascinating problem of the universal
unit container. Would not the most fortunate manufacturer be he whose
shipping room, his entire modern and concentrated factory as well, was so
close to a comprehensive freight terminal as to permit the handling of his
containers, his other freight too, by means of chutes or elevators--with
even the motor truck, to say nothing of less modern forms of city
truckage, entirely eliminated?
[Illustration: THE BUSH TERMINAL
South Brooklyn, New York City.]
[Illustration: NEW FREIGHT TERMINAL WAREHOUSE AT ROCHESTER
Built by the Buffalo, Rochester, & Pittsburgh Railway. A modern
combination of freight house and storage warehouse.]
There is, on one of the harbor-shores of metropolitan New York, a city
within a city. It is located in Brooklyn, to be exact, and it occupies
somewhat more than a half-mile of waterfront--a waterfront cut into long
deep-water piers, of the most modern type and running far out into the
harbor. Back of these piers and connected with them by means of an
intricate, but extremely well-planned system of industrial railroad, rise
many buildings of steel and stone and concrete, almost all of them built
to a single type and differing only in the minor details of their
construction. On the many floors of this group of buildings are myriad
separate industries, widely diverse as to character and product but all of
them capable of concentrated location. Together they employ many thousands
of men and women and the high-grade freight which they send out each day
would pay a king's ransom.
In other days the greater number of these industries were scattered about
both Brooklyn and the Manhattan boroughs of New York. As a rule they were
remote from both freight houses and sidings. The freight-terminal
situation of New York, owing to the peculiar physical formation of the
city and its segregation from the mainland by several great navigable
rivers, the upper harbor, and the Sound, is most difficult of operation.
All the railroads find it necessary to lighter their freight over these
navigable streams, either upon car-floats or in other forms of vessels.
And, even under the most favorable operating conditions of light freight
traffic, there is constant danger of congestion.
But to a manufacturer situated on one of the narrow sidestreets of either
Manhattan or Brooklyn, the situation was infinitely worse. His problem was
to even reach the freight houses along the watersides of the town--a
problem to be imperfectly solved by the use of trucks. Fifty trucks in a
narrow street, crowding and jostling, mean infinite congestion and loss of
time. Add to this the prima-donna-like temperament of the average
truck-driver, showing itself in constant and protracted strikes, and you
can see why the manufacturers have flocked not only to that great
industrial city in South Brooklyn, but to others like it which have begun
to spring up in and around metropolitan New York. Not only is the trucking
expense entirely eliminated--the freight cars are waiting in the great
community shipping rooms in the ground floor of the very factory--but heat
and light and power are alike brought to a fixed and reasonable cost. And
the newest of these manufacturing buildings are fabricated so strongly
that it is both possible and practicable to raise a loaded box car to any
of their floors--to the manufacturer's individual shipping room, if you
please.
Here is an idea instantly adaptable to the freight terminal of any
railroad. A remarkably progressive small railroad--the Buffalo, Rochester,
and Pittsburgh--has recently built a freight terminal of this very sort at
Rochester. And there is hardly an important city reached by an important
railroad that does not offer many opportunities for the development of
freight terminals of this sort, terminals which, like the Grand Central
station, would bring direct revenue to the railroad which built them. In
this hour when the cost of foodstuffs is occupying so large a portion of
public attention, when a large part of the problem lies in the marketing
and storage facilities, or the lack of them, it might be possible to
develop the freight terminal as both a cold-storage plant and a market.
And all of this would tend to bring additional revenue to the railroad, as
well as to simplify greatly, if not to solve entirely, some of the great
transportation and terminal problems which are today troubling our cities
and our larger towns and which are making their food costs mount rapidly
to heights which the imagination has heretofore failed to grasp.
Already the residents of these communities are taking definite steps
toward relief. In the city of New York, Commissioner John J. Dillon of the
state Department of Food and Markets has proposed that the state erect a
public wholesale market house for the private sale or auctions of
foodstuffs of every sort and in every quantity. This market would be open,
on equal terms and without favor or prejudice to buyers of every sort. It
is believed that it would, in every way, tend to simplify the terminal
handling of foodstuffs and in just such measure help to reduce food costs
to the ultimate consumer.
Commissioner Dillon estimates the cost of such a market house at from
$3,000,000 to $4,000,000. Owing to a recent wave of stringent economy,
upon certain lines, at Albany, this suggestion of his has not been looked
upon with great favor by the executive branch of the state government. Yet
it is probable that in the long run a state which has not turned a hair at
a recently voted appropriation of $10,000,000 for a necessary addition to
its park lands will halt at a necessary appropriation of $4,000,000 to
reduce food costs in its largest city, even more to provide similar food
stations in its other large communities. We soon shall see how it has
voted $150,000,000 for a canal of little or no practical value. The
suggested expenditure for market houses is as nothing compared with that.
But before such market houses can be planned and erected comes the
opportunity of the railroads whose lines reach New York. If they can build
such terminals, or even adapt, temporarily at least, their present plants
to meet such a public and general need they will be proving themselves, in
truth, public servants.
If I may be permitted here and now to enter a _sotto-voce_ remark, it
would be that an absence of some such definite, modern, constructive
methods as these--not alone in regard to food transportation, terminal
handling, storage, and marketing, but as to speculation itself--is going
to bring the United States closer to a practical and nation-wide
experiment in socialism than the disturbed railroad situation has ever
brought it. It seems as if the Railroad's older brother, the steward and
purveyor of our great estate, was about to fall ill. I think that I can
see that tremulous, but stern nurse, Regulation, turning her attention
toward him. And I am quite sure that if he does break down at this time he
is going to know Regulation as the Railroad never has known her.
All these things are more or less intimately related to the question of
terminals--more rather than less. And they are all most intimately related
to the question of the freight-traffic development of the railroad.
"Get the terminals," were James J. Hill's repeated orders to his
lieutenants in the creative period of his railroads. Hill knew the value
of terminals, freight terminals in particular; he knew that it took a
freight car bound from east to west or west to east as long to go through
the city of Chicago as from Chicago to St. Paul--400 miles--and that is
why he set out to get his terminals in growing cities while the land was
cheap and the getting was good. Hill had vision. He was also tremendously
practical. It was the combination of these qualities that made him the
master railroader of his generation.
* * * * *
There is another form of transportation whose development always has been
and always will be directly connected with the development of the
railroads. I am referring to the use of the inland waterways of the
country--not merely the Great Lakes which today bear the most highly
developed commerce of any fresh-waterways in the world, but our rivers and
our canals. With the notable exception of the Great Lakes, which we have
just cited, we are decades behind Europe in the use of these waterways.
And to make a bad matter worse Federal legislation has sought to penalize
the enterprise of the railroads in any attempts to develop the use of the
waterways in their own interest. Just how this came about is a matter of
plainly recorded history; a story of the attempts of certain ill-advised
carriers to purchase and to strangle water lines, because of the
competition which they offered. But the railroads which operated the huge
grain and coal fleets on the Great Lakes were not throttling--they were
developing. And the success of their example was slowly but surely having
its effect on their fellows elsewhere across the land.
Fortunately the same hands that make a law may repeal it. And the odious
anti-railroad provisions of the navigation law that accompanied the
opening of the Panama Canal should be revoked at once. The railroads
should be aided and encouraged in the development, through their capital
and the use of their connecting land lines as well as their advantageous
waterfront terminals in almost all our cities, in developing a waterborne
traffic. Such a traffic, devoting itself chiefly, if not exclusively, to
the lower, coarser, and slower moving grades of freight would be a
tremendous relief to their rails; in the long run probably saving them
huge capital expenditures for the construction of third and fourth tracks
to relieve their overburdened double-tracks. Congestion on our railroads
is not always a question of overcrowded terminals.
Take that great, elaborate, and all but economically useless ditch which
the state of New York is just completing from the Hudson River at Troy to
the foot of Lake Erie at Buffalo--the outgrowth of the once-famous Erie
Canal. As a piece of engineering the new Barge Canal is a marvel. Its
locks are comparatively few, roomy, marvels of operating mechanism, its
fairway is generous--together these give a water pathway large enough for
a barge of 2,000 tons burden. Two thousand tons is roughly equal to forty
modern freight cars--a fair length train. Two of these barges would have
the tonnage equivalent of a full-length modern freight train. Fifty of
them would be a genuine relief to the crowded rails of the New York
Central's six tracks from Albany to Buffalo.
But the New York Central is not permitted to operate barges through the
new Erie Canal from Troy to Buffalo. Oh, no! and for that matter, not from
New York up the waters of the Hudson to Troy. The Federal regulation takes
care of the waters of the Hudson--and keeps them freight-desolate--the
sovereign state of New York prevents their passing through the sacred
portals of its new $150,000,000 canal. For, truth to tell, the new canal
was designed for but two or three real purposes; to keep the port of
Buffalo from falling into decay, to find jobs for numerous deserving
feeders at the public trough and keep down the local freight rates of the
New York Central, which it parallels for its entire length. If it
succeeds in these things--and it probably will--the men who control the
present destinies of the state government will probably lose no time in
worrying over the fact that the canal is practically completed, yet no
boats of the modern type for which it was builded have been launched--or
even planned. For a traffic not one one-thousandth of that at Panama, a
canal of half the size and half the cost has been constructed.
Seneca Falls has been made a port, and so has Rome and so has Holley--and
if the citizens of these sleepy towns doubt this they may go down and see
the wharves and warehouses, the docks and levees which a benevolent state
has wished upon them. And even if there are no boats to patronize these
wonderful establishments they are kept atrim, and throughout all the
watches of the night brilliantly alight. Perhaps the argosy is yet to plow
the waters of the Erie! One thing I know. I traveled on a night train on
the Delaware and Hudson not so long ago and chanced to see the great locks
of the Champlain Canal--twin sister to the new Erie--all the distance
ablaze with clusters of arc lamps. Traffic? Not a bit of it. There is no
traffic upon the Champlain Canal. And the gods in the high heavens must
laugh aloud as they read of "America Efficient" and night after night gaze
down upon the brilliancy of those glaring lights upon the unused lengths
of the canals of the state of New York.
"One hundred and fifty millions of dollars," groans the practical
engineer, "and the state of New York might have had instead of 350 miles
of canals, 1,000 miles of railroads, every mile of the needed improved
highways she has been building, many more beside. The overhead that the
freight will have to pay going through the expensive and extravagant new
canal is far greater than that of the best of railroads."
All of which is perfectly true. But, in the words of an economist of
another generation, it is a condition and not a theory which confronts us.
The canals have been built--but no vessels have been builded for them. The
waterways cannot remain unused. The state has two ways by which it may
force their use. It may build, equip, and operate its own barges and so
bring at once a widespread experiment in government transportation that
seems almost foredoomed to complete failure, or it may take steps to
induce, not only the New York Central, but the other railroads which link
New York and Buffalo, to build and operate barges upon the canals.
Remember that these railroads are more than merely links; local
freight-carriers between New York and Buffalo. And Buffalo, as you
probably know, is one of the larger of the terminals at the base of the
Great Lakes.
Each year millions of bushels of grain--other coarse freight as well--find
their way to its docks for rail transshipment to New York or Boston, where
in turn they may go into the holds of vessels for transportation overseas.
The Erie Canal is as much a link as any of these railroads. And, despite
the fact that the state of New York has been foolish enough to build and
maintain it exclusively from its own treasury, the fact remains that it is
a water avenue of national communication. A glance at your atlas will
satisfy you as to that.
Of one thing the state of New York may be certain. Private capital is not
going to build traffic upon the Erie and the Champlain canals--particularly
in view of the legislation which tends to discourage, if not actually to
prevent, a company of any real size or influence operating upon the canal.
The tendency of today is entirely toward centralization and consolidation.
And the small independent transportation company, deprived of feeding
traffic and adequate joint or independent terminals has a hard shift for
existence.
I have dilated upon the New York canals because they are typical of the
river opportunities that await the railroad throughout the rest of the
country. You think of the old-time river boat--you still can see a few of
them rubbing their blunt noses against the levees at New Orleans or
Memphis or St. Louis or Pittsburgh--and you laugh at me. I might reply by
calling your attention to the fact that the tonnage of the port of
Pittsburgh, which moves entirely on the muddy rivers that serve it, is in
excess of the tonnage of many of the greatest and most famous seaports in
the world--Liverpool to make a shining comparison. And as for the river
steamboat--it is capable of infinite development, of transformation from
the gaudy and inefficient carrier of ante-bellum days into a mighty
freight-hauler of today. The Great Lakes have witnessed a complete
transformation of the type of freight vessel upon their waters. The genius
that effected the revolution of their naval architecture is available for
the development of the river craft of the United States.
Need more be said? The opportunity awaits. Preceded by the necessary
repeal legislation, to which I have already referred, it is, at the least,
among the very largest of the opportunities that today await the sick man
of American business.
Perhaps by this time you are beginning to be genuinely interested in the
opportunity for the development of the freight traffic of the railroad. It
is not entirely an opportunity of the operating or the engineering
departments. Indeed, at the present time the greatest activities of the
traffic-soliciting forces of the railroad are given to its larger
customers--patrons whose shipments run in carload, if not in trainload
lots. The undeveloped field of freight opportunity for the railroad is the
smaller patron--the man who ships "less than carload," but whose traffic
fostered and increased would mean trainloads by the dozens, by the
hundreds, by the thousands. The railroads, through their industrial
departments already have begun to accomplish much along these lines. One
big road--the Baltimore and Ohio--has begun, on a very large scale, to
make an intensive study of the resources of the territory which it
occupies. It sends a corps of its investigators--college-trained men, all
of them, into a single small city and keeps them there for one or two or
three weeks. When they are done with both this field work and the review
of it back at headquarters, the road has in its archives at Baltimore a
book of 100 pages or more which is a complete record of that city, not
alone industrially, but socially and historically as well. And if the
town is clamorous for a new depot--most towns are--a study of this book
will do much toward giving the answer. It may show that it finally is
entitled to a new passenger gateway; and it may show also that it is
careless about its pavements and its lawns, about the upkeep of the public
buildings which it already has--in which case the railroad has a fairly
good reason for refusing a new station.
Other railroads are following these methods--most of our roads are quickly
imitative at least, even when they are unwilling to break precedent and
take a definite lead. Yet, in my own humble opinion, they have not begun
to even scratch the surface possibilities of traffic development.
The experience of the express companies is illuminating in this regard.
Confronted with the establishment of the parcel post and threatened for a
season at least with the loss of much of their small-parcel traffic to it,
they began to look about to find where they might develop a tonnage with
which to fill their cars and wagons. At that moment the cost of living was
making one of its periodic ascents. The express companies took advantage
of the situation and began the development of a food-products service
direct to the consumer. The idea was popular. It met with instant approval
and tided the express companies over the hardest period of their history.
* * * * *
These things are interesting in the abstract. In the concrete they may yet
spell the very salvation of the railroad. Two things are necessary,
however, to transform them from the abstract to the concrete--brains and
money.
I think that I have shown you enough already to convince you that brains
is not lacking in the conduct of the railroad, despite the extreme
difficulty which it is having today in gaining recruits from the best type
of young men who come trooping out from the preparatory schools, the
technical schools, and the colleges of the land. True it is that we have
not yet raised master railroaders to take the places of James J. Hill or
E. H. Harriman. Yet it is by no means certain that such master railroaders
may not be in the making today on our great overland carriers. Take such
men as Daniel Willard, the hard-headed, far-seeing president of the
Baltimore and Ohio, Hale Holden, the diplomatic and statesmanlike head of
the historic Burlington, Charles H. Markham of the Illinois Central, James
H. Hustis of the Boston and Maine, Howard Elliott of the New Haven,
William T. Noonan of the Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburgh, or Carl R.
Gray of the Western Maryland--these are men to whom the future development
of our railroads may safely be trusted.
Bricks cannot be made without straw. And these men cannot bring the great
sick man of American business back to health without our help--without the
help and cooperation of every thinking man and woman in the United States.
That cooperation must come without delay, not only to relieve the plight
of the railroad with which we already are familiar, but also to make it
possible for him to take advantage of the great opportunities which await
him. The average railroader--feeling that the cards were all against him,
that his credit at the bank was nearly nil, and that he must spend the
greater part of his time on the defensive, fighting legislation that he
believed to be grossly unfair--has not given much attention to these great
new ideas, vastly radical in their conception and requiring in their
execution much overturning of well-established methods and precedents. Yet
this is not to be interpreted as showing that he lacks vision.
For remember that the sick man of American business is not too ill to
realize his opportunity. But he knows that first he must regain his feet
once more before he can begin important creative work. He knows that the
lines along which he has been working for a long time have been cramped
and restricted--conservative, to put it mildly. But he also knows that
before he can begin on extensive creative work he must have several
things--money and, more than money, public aid and sympathy.
And of these things--the present necessity of our railroads--we shall soon
treat. But before we come to them we shall come to a consideration of a
railroad problem of recent compelling attention--a problem that is both
opportunity and necessity, and so deserves to be considered between them.