THE G. P. A. AND HIS OFFICE
HE HAS TO KEEP THE ROAD ADVERTISED--MUST BE AN AFTER-DINNER ORATOR,
AND MANY-SIDED--HIS GENIALITY, URBANITY, COURTESY--EXCESSIVE RIVALRY
FOR PASSENGER TRAFFIC--INCREASING LUXURY IN PULLMAN CARS--MANY PRINTED
FORMS OF TICKETS, ETC.
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.
[Illustration: 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]
[Illustration: THE CONCOURSE OF THE NEW GRAND CENTRAL STATION, NEW YORK,
WILL BE ONE OF THE LARGEST ROOMS IN THE WORLD]
[Illustration: SOUTH STATION, BOSTON, IS THE BUSIEST RAILROAD TERMINAL IN
THE WORLD]
[Illustration: THE TRAIN-SHED AND APPROACH TRACKS OF BROAD STREET STATION,
PHILADELPHIA, STILL ONE OF THE FINEST OF AMERICAN RAILROAD PASSENGER
TERMINALS]
So, all in all, the life of the travelling passenger agent is no sinecure.
It is easiest when he is in the home territory of his road, rather
pleasant when that road is non-competitive. But when he is out in
"foreign" territory, fighting for a road which is hardly more than a name
to the folk with whom he comes in contact, his difficulties increase;
when, if his road is one of the weaker fry, its trains slower and less
frequent than some of the other trunk-lines, his difficulties increase.
The differential-fares by which the slower competing roads are permitted
by their stronger brethren to charge a reduced rate between important
distant traffic points were adopted to help to equalize this difficulty.
But the differentials do not count, neither do the differential lines now
get their share of the through business. Last year fifty per cent of the
passengers between New York and Chicago went on the eighteen-hour train,
even though the regular full fare of $20 in each direction is increased by
an excess fare of $10, aside from the Pullman rates. Twenty-five per cent
more travelled on the limited trains, which makes an excess of $5, in
addition to Pullman rates, in each direction. It begins to look as if the
American public were willing to pay for added comfort and convenience.
Pullman operation has doubled within the past ten years. Pullman
chair-cars are operated to-day on hundreds of miles of branch line
railroads that would not have dreamed of such a luxury a decade ago.
In fact, we are moving toward first-class and second-class passenger
service by leaps and bounds. Less than twenty years ago the New York
Central established its Empire State Express between New York and
Buffalo, and, by means of the almost marvellous resources of its
advertising department, made it the most famous train in the world. Save
for a single parlor car or two, it has always been a day-coach train, no
excess fare being charged. Yet for many years (in recent years its
running-time has been slightly lengthened) it was the fastest regular
long-distance train in the world. Still, in the judgment of railroaders
to-day, another Empire State would be a mistake, even though the original
is, day in and day out probably one of the most popular and profitable
express trains in the world. But the judgment is different: the Lehigh
Valley, running the competing Black Diamond, between New York and Buffalo,
has already found it advisable to make its equipment all Pullman.
* * * * *
Just as the travelling passenger agent forms the stock from which many of
the general passenger agents are finally formed, so does the country agent
aspire to the day when he will be given territory and sent out with his
gripsack, to sell transportation upon the road. Sometimes, though, as in
Daly's case, the road to traffic titles comes by way of the city
ticket-offices. These form an important function of the railroad's
passenger department. They are regulated carefully, through an
inter-railroad harmony, as expressed in the great national passenger
associations. We have already seen how they sell mileage-books and "scrip"
on their own account. For instance, a sort of tacit agreement specifies
how many ticket-offices a railroad may maintain in a given city.
Otherwise, the biggest and richest road might completely overshadow its
weaker neighbor in the number as well as in the magnificence of its
agencies. So an unwritten agreement, which is as strict in its way as the
law on cutting rates, states that this city may have so many offices for
any road, and that so many. It has become an exact rule.
The city ticket-offices, situated at advantageous corners in the various
busy centres of metropolitan towns, and towns having metropolitan
ambitions, save the average man a long trip, perhaps, to the station. They
will sell tickets, check baggage, answer innumerable questions. Answering
questions remains one of the big functions of the passenger-man.
Only recently, a sign was hung in a city ticket-office of one of the large
railroads in New York, which read:
"Remember that we are Here to Sell Tickets as well as Give Information."
That sign was a mistake. It was an affront to every person who entered
that ticket-office, and remember that every person who enters a
ticket-office is at least a potential passenger for the railroad that
operates it. It is only charitable to believe that the agent meant to say:
"Remember that we are here to give information as well as to sell
tickets," for the giving of information is a function of a passenger
ticket office. So important has this function become, that the railroads
have established desks in the largest of these city offices at which no
tickets are sold, but where questions are answered and railroad,
steamship, and hotel folders given out. "Public Service stations," the New
York Central has begun to call its city ticket-offices and, furthering
this idea of courtesy and affability, its general passenger agent has
opened a school for the training of its agents. They are taught to answer
questions quickly and accurately, and to be, above all things, courteous
to the persons who come before them and the potential travellers.
* * * * *
Just a final look before we leave this passenger department, at its
equipment. Its complications are large. Take this matter of tickets, for
instance. While the financial department of the road will receive the
money that comes in for their sales, and the auditing department takes
good care as to the accuracy of the agent's returns, the passenger
department has charge of printing and issuing the contract slips by which
it agrees to convey its passengers. There is a multiplicity of forms of
these, each bearing the signature of the general passenger agent.
On smaller roads, the number of forms of local tickets is greatly reduced
by writing or stamping the name of the destination on tickets. On a single
branch line, with 25 stations, just 600 different styles of printed
railroad tickets would be required otherwise; you can imagine the number
of styles required for an average system of 1,000 stations. Fortunately,
for the passenger department, the use of simplified forms of tickets,
where adroit cutting and tearing makes possible the use of a single ticket
form for an entire division, has reduced the big ticket-printing bills.
Only recently, a machine, on the order of a cash register, has been
invented, from which a ticket, accurately stamped and dated, with the
destination indelibly printed, can be delivered as demanded.
Still, with all these simplified forms of tickets, a big road will hardly
carry less than 5,000 standard forms. Then there will be anywhere from a
dozen to twenty special forms a week that will have to be printed--for
excursions, conventions, and special train movements of every sort. The
ticket-printing bill of a big road will easily exceed $40,000 a year. Its
folders will cost not less than $50,000, while the twelvemonths' bill for
newspaper advertising will more than exceed the combined figure of these
two.
All these details come under the jurisdiction of that urbane general
passenger agent. He supervises, in another department, the making and the
readjustment of rates--this last a seemingly endless task.
To make up rate-sheets, either in the freight or in the passenger
department, requires expert work. The fare between the same points on
competitive railroads must, in the present order of things, remain equal.
To cite an interesting instance: The A---- railroad long ago established
$6.00 as its passenger charge from N---- to S----. The B---- railroad,
although charging a higher rate per mile over its line, is obliged to meet
this rate of $6.00 in order to secure business from N---- to S----, even
though that makes many perplexing problems in its local rates. The
B----railroad mileage from N---- to S----, up its main line, is 288
miles--practically the same as that of its competitor. For the 146-mile
ride to G----, the first large way-station, it charges $4.50, for the
208-mile ride to M----, the next, $5.00. If a man were to go over its line
to S---- and stop off at G---- and M---- his fare from N---- to S----would
be $8.80. That is a typical case, and one that is repeated in every corner
of the country. Where a road comes into competitive territory its rates
must adjust themselves to those of its lowest-priced rival, otherwise it
could hardly hope for a fair share of the business. So the rates must
shade here and there; the rate-clerk must take good care to see that
wherever it is in any way possible, no combination of tickets can be
formed that will sell at less rate than a through ticket. When the
rate-sheet is completed and copies of it forwarded to the railroad
commission, it is, indeed, a sensitive organization.
But no sooner will the cumbersome rate-sheet be completed, before some
little road off in a distant corner of the country will send a printed
announcement of some slight change in its passenger charges. In an
instant, the whole mighty fabric of the rate-sheet must be torn apart and
reconstructed. If the St. Louis Southwestern, by reason of a single change
in the rates of the little Blissville, Bulgetown and Beyond (with which it
connects) is enabled to charge a few cents less than the rival
Transcontinental, its rate-sheet must be torn asunder and a new one
adopted.
* * * * *
Beyond the long desks where the rate-clerks keep at their tedious jobs of
constant readjustment of local and through rates, the passenger department
has located its ticket redemption bureau. It announces publicly its
willingness to redeem unused portions of its tickets, and the work of
figuring out the amount due on a ticket, sometimes half or three-quarters
used, requires a rate-clerk of ability and patience. The redemption clerk
holds a ticket up to the light for your inspection.
"They tried to put this over on me," he says as he shows a local ticket
which had been sent to him for redemption at full value. The pasteboard is
filled with small burned holes. "The breezy young man who forwarded this
exhibit to me claimed that he had used no portion of this ticket and then
apologized to me for its condition. His small boy, he said, had burned it
with Fourth-of-July punk.
"Punk? That was punk. The small boy did not do a thorough job. Every hole
burned there was burned to hide a conductor's punchmark. You can see the
edges of three of them; and those three punch marks show that the ticket
issued from B---- to T---- was used 300 miles from B---- to A---- and not
used from A---- to T----. When that young man threatened us with trouble
on that ticket deal, we threatened him with arrest. After that he shut
up."
So does the general passenger agent come in constant contact with the
great American public. His outside mail is probably the largest at
headquarters, and it contains letters of every sort, asking innumerable
questions, praising and damning his road with equal interest and force.
One letter will commend a courteous conductor, the next will find some
fault with the dining-car service. It is not so very long ago that a big
Eastern railroad sent out a general order that the raw oysters on its
dining-cars should be served affixed to their shells, because a woman from
Sioux City had written a positive assertion that the shells were being
used over and over again for canned oysters.
Some of the railroads have already begun to systematize this whole matter
of complaints. One New York City line which sells a large amount of
transportation in small packages every day (two million passengers is its
average in twenty-four hours) has a Harvard man at high salary just to
receive those letters and give diplomatic answer to each of them. Each
complaint is first acknowledged and then investigated; the person who made
the complaint is notified of the final action taken. If a matter of fare
is involved (the complicated transfer systems of New York make such
questions frequent), and the company is wrong, it cheerfully acknowledges
its fault and forwards car tickets as reimbursement. Many times when a
conductor or a motorman has forgotten his manners, he is sent to make a
personal apology to the aggrieved passenger, as a price of holding his
position. That street railway company has won many friends out of persons
who had complained to it, because of this method.
But here is the general passenger agent of a big steam road, who holds a
considerably different view of this very matter.
"We never get in writing on one of these complaints," he says. "We send a
man every time to make the matter right, and the man must be a diplomat.
He must understand human nature, and so well does he understand it, that
he makes the matter right in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred--turns an
enemy into a friend, a liability into an asset, makes a firm patron for
our road."
"Liabilities into assets!" That then is the work of the general passenger
agent and his remarkable department. "Liabilities into assets!" In these
days of cold judgments upon the managements of the big railroad
properties, such a man is worth his weight in gold to a big system. He
measures his worth in the assets that he brings to it.