rather curious developments have been the result. For short journeys
the ticket often resembles the small oblong of pasteboard with which
we are all familiar. For longer journeys it consists of a narrow strip
of coupons, sometimes nearly two feet in length. If this is
"unlimited" it is available at any time until used, and the holder may
"stop over" at any intermediate station. The "limited" and cheaper
ticket is available for a continuous passage only, and does not allow
of any stoppages _en route_. The coupons are collected in the cars by
the conductors in charge of the various sections of the line. The
skill shown by these officials, passing through a long and crowded
train after a stoppage, in recognising the newcomers and asking for
their tickets, is often very remarkable. Sometimes the conductor gives
a coloured counter-check to enable him to recognise the sheep whom he
has already shorn. These checks are generally placed in the hat-band
or stuck in the back of the seat. The conductor collects them just
before he hands over the train to the charge of his successor. As many
complaints are made by English travellers of the incivility of
American conductors, I may say that the first conductor I met found
me, when he was on his rounds to collect his counter-checks, lolling
back on my seat, with my hat high above me in the rack. I made a
motion as if to get up for it, when he said, "Pray don't disturb
yourself, sir; I'll reach up for it." Not all the conductors I met
afterwards were as polite as this, but he has as good a right to pose
as the type of American conductor as the overbearing ruffians who
stalk through the books of sundry British tourists. In judging him it
should be remembered that he democratically feels himself on a level
with his passengers, that he would be insulted by the offer of a tip,
that he is harassed all day long by hundreds of foolish questions from
foolish travellers, that he has a great deal to do in a limited time,
and that however "short" he may be with a male passenger he is almost
invariably courteous and considerate to the unprotected female. Though
his address may sometimes sound rather familiar, he means no
disrespect; and if he takes a fancy to you and offers you a cigar, you
need not feel insulted, and will probably find he smokes a better
brand than your own.
A feature connected with the American railway system that should not
be overlooked is the mass of literature prepared by the railway
companies and distributed gratis to their passengers. The illustrated
pamphlets issued by the larger companies are marvels of paper and
typography, with really charming illustrations and a text that is
often clever and witty enough to suggest that authors of repute are
sometimes tempted to lend their anonymous pens for this kind of work.
But even the tiniest little "one-horse" railway distributes neat
little "folders," showing conclusively that its tracks lead through
the Elysian Fields and end at the Garden of Eden. A conspicuous
feature in all hotel offices is a large rack containing packages of
these gaily coloured folders, contributed by perhaps fifty different
railways for the use of the hotel guests.
Owing to the unlimited time for which tickets are available, and to
other causes, a race of dealers in railway tickets has sprung up, who
rejoice in the euphonious name of "scalpers," and often do a roaring
trade in selling tickets at less than regular fares. Thus, if the fare
from A to B be $10 and the return fare $15, it is often possible to
obtain the half of a return ticket from a scalper for about $8. Or a
man setting out for a journey of 100 miles buys a through ticket to
the terminus of the line, which may be 400 miles distant. On this
through ticket he pays a proportionally lower rate for the distance he
actually travels, and sells the balance of his ticket to a scalper. Or
if a man wishes to go from A to B and finds that a special excursion
ticket there and back is being sold at a single fare ($10), he may use
the half of this ticket and sell the other half to a scalper in B. It
is obvious that anything he can get for it will be a gain to him,
while the scalper _could_ afford to give up to about $7 for it, though
he probably will not give more than $4. The profession of scalper may,
however, very probably prove an evanescent one, as vigorous efforts
are being made to suppress him by legislative enactment.
Americans often claim that the ordinary railway-fare in the United
States is less than in England, amounting only to 2 cents (1_d._) per
mile. My experience, however, leads me to say that this assertion
cannot be accepted without considerable deduction. It is true that in
many States (including all the Eastern ones) there is a statutory fare
of 2 cents per mile, but this (so far as I know) is not always granted
for ordinary single or double tickets, but only on season,
"commutation," or mileage tickets. The "commutation" tickets are good
for a certain number of trips. The mileage tickets are books of small
coupons, each of which represents a mile; the conductor tears out as
many coupons as the passenger has travelled miles. This mileage system
is an extremely convenient one for (say) a family, as the books are
good until exhausted, and the coupons are available on any train (with
possibly one or two exceptions) on any part of the system of the
company issuing the ticket. Which of our enlightened British companies
is going to be the first to win the hearts of its patrons by the
adoption of this neat and easy device? Out West and down South the
fares for ordinary tickets purchased at the station are often much
higher than 2 cents a mile; on one short and very inferior line I
traversed the rate was 7 cents (3-1/2_d._) per mile. I find that Mr.
W.M. Acworth calculates the average fare in the United States as
1-1/4_d._ per mile as against 1-1/6_d._ in Great Britain. Professor
Hadley, an American authority, gives the rates as 2.35 cents and 2
cents respectively.
British critics would, perhaps, be more lenient in their
animadversions on American railways, if they would more persistently
bear in mind the great difference in the conditions under which
railways have been constructed in the Old and the New World. In
England, for example, the railway came _after_ the thick settlement
of a district, and has naturally had to pay dearly for its privileges,
and to submit to stringent conditions in regard to construction and
maintenance. In the United States, on the other hand, the railways
were often the first _roads_ (hence rail_road_ is the American name
for them) in a new district, the inhabitants of which were glad to get
them on almost any terms. Hence the cheap and provisional nature of
many of the lines, and the numerous deadly level crossings. The land
grants and other privileges accorded to the railway companies may be
fairly compared to the road tax which we willingly submit to in
England as the just price of an invaluable boon. This reflection,
however, need not be carried so far as to cover with a mantle of
justice _all_ the railway concessions of America!
Two things in the American parlour-car system struck me as evils that
were not only unnecessary, but easily avoidable. The first of these is
that most illiberal regulation which compels the porter to let down
the upper berth even when it is not occupied. The object of this is
apparently to induce the occupant of the lower berth to hire the whole
"section" of two berths, so as to have more ventilation and more room
for dressing and undressing. Presumably the parlour-car companies know
their own business best; but it would seem to the average "Britisher"
that such a petty spirit of annoyance would be likely to do more harm
than good, even in a financial way. The custom would be more excusable
if it were confined to those cases in which two people shared the
lower berth. The custom is so unlike the usual spirit of the United
States, where the practice is to charge a liberal round sum and then
relieve you of all minor annoyances and exactions, that its
persistence is somewhat of a mystery.
The continuance of the other evil I allude to is still less
comprehensible. The United States is proverbially the paradise of what
it is, perhaps, now behind the times to term the gentler sex. The path
of woman, old or new, in America is made smooth in all directions, and
as a rule she has the best of the accommodation and the lion's share
of the attention wherever she goes. But this is emphatically not the
case on the parlour car. No attempt is made there to divide the sexes
or to respect the privacy of a lady. If there are twelve men and four
women on the car, the latter are not grouped by themselves, but are
scattered among the men, either in lower or upper berths, as the
number of their tickets or the courtesy of the men dictates. The
lavatory and dressing-room for men at one end of the car has two or
more "set bowls" (fixed in basins), and can be used by several
dressers at once. The parallel accommodation for ladies barely holds
one, and its door is provided with a lock, which enables a selfish
bang-frizzler and rouge-layer to occupy it for an hour while a queue
of her unhappy sisters remains outside. It is difficult to see why a
small portion at one end of the car should not be reserved for ladies,
and separated at night from the rest of the car by a curtain across
the central aisle. Of course the passage of the railway officials
could not be hindered, but the masculine passengers might very well be
confined for the night to entrance and egress at their own end of the
car. An improvement in the toilette accommodation for ladies also
seems a not unreasonable demand.
Miss Catherine Bates, in her "Year in the Great Republic," narrates
the case of a man who was nearly suffocated by the fact that a slight
collision jarred the lid of the top berth in which he was sleeping and
snapped it to! This story _may_ be true; but in the only top berths
which I know the occupant _lies_ upon the lid, which, to close, would
have to spring _upwards_ against his weight!
A third nuisance, or combination of benefit and nuisance, or benefit
with a very strong dash of avoidable nuisance, is the train boy. This
young gentleman, whose age varies from fifteen to fifty, though
usually nearer the former than the latter, is one of the most
conspicuous of the embryo forms of the great American speculator or
merchant. He occupies with his stock in trade a corner in the baggage
car or end carriage of the train, and makes periodical rounds
throughout the cars, offering his wares for sale. These are of the
most various description, ranging from the daily papers and current
periodicals through detective stories and tales of the Wild West, to
chewing-gum, pencils, candy, bananas, skull-caps, fans, tobacco, and
cigars. His pleasing way is to perambulate the cars, leaving samples
of his wares on all the seats and afterwards calling for orders. He
does this with supreme indifference to the occupation of the
passenger. Thus, you settle yourself comfortably for a nap, and are
just succumbing to the drowsy god, when you feel yourself "taken in
the abdomen," not (fortunately) by "a chunk of old red sandstone," but
by the latest number of the _Illustrated American_ or _Scribner's
Monthly_. The rounds are so frequent that the door of the car never
seems to cease banging or the cold draughts to cease blowing in on
your bald head. Mr. Phil Robinson makes the very sensible suggestion
that the train boy should have a little printed list of his wares
which he could distribute throughout the train, whereupon the
traveller could send for him when wanted. Another suggestion that I
venture to present to this independent young trader is that he should
provide himself with copies of the novels treating of the districts
which the railway traverses. Thus, when I tried to procure from him
"Ramona" in California, or "The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains"
in Tennessee, or "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" in Ohio, or "The
Grandissimes" near New Orleans, the nearest he could come to my modest
demand was "The Kreutzer Sonata" or the last effort of Miss Laura Jean
Libbey, a popular American novelist, who describes in glowing colours
how two aristocratic Englishmen, fighting a duel near London somewhere
in the seventies, were interrupted by the heroine, who drove between
them in a hansom _and pair_ and received the shots in its panels! Out
West, too, he could probably put more money in his pocket if he were
disposed to put his pride there too. One pert youth in Arizona
preferred to lose my order for cigars rather than bring the box to me
for selection; he said "he'd be darned if he'd sling boxes around for
me; I could come and choose for myself." However, when criticism has
been exhausted it is an undeniable fact that the American Pullman cars
are more comfortable and considerably cheaper than the so-called
_compartiments de luxe_ of European railways.
It is, perhaps, worth noting that the comfort of the engine-driver, or
engineer as he is called _linguâ Americanâ_, is much better catered
for in the United States than in England. His cab is protected both
overhead and at the sides, while his bull's-eye window permits him to
look ahead without receiving the wind, dust, and snow in his eyes. The
curious English conservatism which, apparently, believes that a driver
will do his work better because exposed to almost the full violence of
the elements always excites a very natural surprise in the American
visitor to our shores.
The speed of American trains is as a rule slower than that of English
ones, though there are some brilliant exceptions to this rule. I never
remember dawdling along in so slow and apparently purposeless a manner
as in crossing the arid deserts of Arizona--unless, indeed, it was in
travelling by the Manchester and Milford line in Wales. The train on
the branch between Raymond (a starting-point for the Yosemite) and the
main line went so cannily that the engine-driver (an excellent
marksman) shot rabbits from the engine, while the fireman jumped down,
picked them up, and clambered on again at the end of the train. The
only time the train had to be stopped for him was when the engineer
had a successful right and left, the victims of which expired at some
distance from each other. It should be said that there was absolutely
no reason to hurry on this trip, as we had "lashins" of time to spare
for our connection at the junction, and the passengers were all much
interested in the sport.
At the other end of the scale are the trains which run from New York
to Philadelphia (90 miles) in two hours, the train of the Reading
Railway that makes the run of 55 miles from Camden to Atlantic City in
52 minutes, and the Empire State Express which runs from New York to
Buffalo (436-1/2 miles) at the rate of over 50 miles an hour,
including stops. These, however, are exceptional, and the traveller
may find that trains known as the "Greased Lightning," "Cannon Ball,"
or "G-Whizz" do not exceed (if they even attain) 40 miles an hour. The
possibility of speed on an American railway is shown by the record run
of 436-1/2 miles in 6-3/4 hours, made on the New York Central Railroad
in 1895 (= 64.22 miles per hour, exclusive of stops), and by the run
of 148.8 miles in 137 minutes, made on the same railway in 1897. The
longest unbroken runs of regular trains are one of 146 miles on the
Chicago Limited train on the Pennsylvania route, and one of 143 miles
by the New York Central Railway running up the Hudson to Albany. As
experts will at once recognise, these are feats which compare well
with anything done on this side of the Atlantic.
In the matter of accidents the comparison with Great Britain is not
so overwhelmingly unfavourable as is sometimes supposed. If, indeed,
we accept the figures given by Mullhall in his "Dictionary of
Statistics," we have to admit that the proportion of accidents is
five times greater in the United States than in the United Kingdom.
The statistics collected by the Railroad Commissioners of
Massachusetts, however, reduce this ratio to five to four. The
safety of railway travelling differs hugely in different parts of
the country. Thus Mr. E.B. Dorsey shows ("English and American
Railways Compared") that the average number of miles a passenger can
travel in Massachusetts without being killed is 503,568,188, while
in the United Kingdom the number is only 172,965,362, leaving a
very comfortable margin of over 300,000,000 miles. On the whole,
however, it cannot be denied that there are more accidents in
American railway travelling than in European, and very many of them
from easily preventable causes. The whole spirit of the American
continent in such matters is more "casual" than that of Europe; the
American is more willing to "chance it;" the patriarchal régime is
replaced by the every-man-for-himself-and-devil-take-the-hindmost
system. When I hired a horse to ride up a somewhat giddy path to the
top of a mountain, I was supplied (without warning) with a young
animal that had just arrived from the breeding farm and had never
even seen a mountain. Many and curious, when I regained my hotel,
were the enquiries as to how he had behaved himself; and it was no
thanks to them that I could report that, though rather frisky on the
road, he had sobered down in the most sagacious manner when we
struck the narrow upward trail. In America the railway passenger has
to look out for himself. There is no checking of tickets before
starting to obviate the risk of being in the wrong train. There is
no porter to carry the traveller's hand-baggage and see him
comfortably ensconced in the right carriage. When the train does
start, it glides away silently without any warning bell, and it is
easy for an inadvertent traveller to be left behind. Even in large
and important stations there is often no clear demarcation between
the platforms and the permanent way. The whole floor of the station
is on one level, and the rails are flush with the spot from which
you climb into the car. Overhead bridges or subways are practically
unknown; and the arriving passenger has often to cross several
lines of rails before reaching shore. The level crossing is,
perhaps, inevitable at the present stage of railroad development in
the United States, but its annual butcher's bill is so huge that one
cannot help feeling it might be better safeguarded. Richard Grant
White tells how he said to the station-master at a small wayside
station in England, _à propos_ of an overhead footbridge: "Ah, I
suppose you had an accident through someone crossing the line, and
then erected that?" "Oh, no," was the reply, "we don't wait for an
accident." Mr. White makes the comment, "The trouble in America is
that we _do_ wait for the accident."
When I left England in September, 1888, we sailed down the Mersey on
one of those absolutely perfect autumn days, the very memory of which
is a continual joy. I remarked on the beauty of the weather to an
American fellow-passenger. He replied, half in fun, "Yes, this is good
enough for England; but wait till you see our American weather!" As
luck would have it, it was raining heavily when we steamed up New York
harbour, and the fog was so dense that we could not see the statue of
Liberty Enlightening the World, though we passed close under it. The
same American passenger had expatiated to me during the voyage on the
merits of the American express service. "You have no trouble with
porters and cabs, as in the Old World; you simply point out your
trunks to an express agent, give him your address, take his receipt,
and you will probably find your trunks at the house when you arrive."
We reached New York on a Saturday; I confidently handed over my trunk
to a representative of the Transfer Company about 9 A.M., hied to my
friend's house in Brooklyn, and saw and heard nothing more of my trunk
till Monday morning!
Such was the way in which two of my most cherished beliefs about
America were dissipated almost before I set foot upon her free and
sacred soil! It is, however, only fair to say that if I had assumed
these experiences to be really characteristic, I should have made a
grievous mistake. It is true that I afterwards experienced a good many
stormy days in the United States, and found that the predominant
weather in all parts of the country was, to judge from my apologetic
hosts, the "exceptional;" but none the less I revelled in the bright
blue, clear, sunny days with which America is so abundantly blessed,
and came to sympathise very deeply with the depression that sometimes
overtakes the American exile during his sojourn on our fog-bound
coasts. So, too, I found the express system on the whole what our
friend Artemus Ward calls "a sweet boon." Certainly it is as a rule
necessary, in starting from a private house, to have one's luggage
ready an hour or so before one starts one's self, and this is hardly
so convenient as a hansom with you inside and your portmanteau on top;
and it is also true that there is sometimes (especially in New York) a
certain delay in the delivery of one's belongings. In nine cases out
of ten, however, it was a great relief to get rid of the trouble of
taking your luggage to or from the station, and feel yourself free to
meet it at your own time and will. It was not often that I was reduced
to such straits as on one occasion in Brooklyn, when, at the last
moment, I had to charter a green-grocer's van and drive down to the
station in it, triumphantly seated on my portmanteau.
The check system on the railway itself deserves almost unmitigated
praise, and only needs to be understood to be appreciated. On arrival
at the station the traveller hands over his impedimenta to the baggage
master, who fastens a small metal disk, bearing the destination and a
number, to each package, and gives the owner a duplicate check. The
railway company then becomes responsible for the luggage, and holds it
until reclaimed by presentation of the duplicate check. This system
avoids on the one hand the chance of loss and trouble in claiming
characteristic of the British system, and on the other the waste of
time and expense of the Continental system of printed paper tickets.
On arrival at his destination the traveller may hurry to his hotel
without a moment's delay, after handing his check either to the hotel
porter or to the so-called transfer agent, who usually passes through
the train as it reaches an important station, undertaking the delivery
of trunks and giving receipts in exchange for checks.
Besides the city express or transfer companies, the chief duty of
which is to convey luggage from the traveller's residence to the
railway station or _vice versa_, there are also the large general
express companies or carriers, which send articles all over the United
States. One of the most characteristic of these is the Adams Express
Company, the widely known name of which has originated a popular
conundrum with the query, "Why was Eve created?" This company began in
1840 with two men, a boy, and a wheelbarrow; now it employs 8,000 men
and 2,000 wagons, and carries parcels over 25,000 miles of railway.
The Wells, Fargo & Company Express operates over 40,000 miles of
railway.