The Railway Library, 1909. Various

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      "Now, what chance is there for more roads between New York and Chicago, or between any Atlantic city and any large city in the west? During the ten years from 1898 to 1908 the railroad mileage in the United States increased about 24½ per cent., the passenger business increased 125 per cent., and the freight business increased 148 per cent. The additional burden was placed on the railways, with an increase of over 148 per cent. in the tons moved. What is it costing the Pennsylvania road to get into the City of New York? I do not know the exact figures, but I have seen it estimated from time to time at one hundred millions of dollars to secure passenger facilities in the City of New York. When I think of these things and see what you have here I think that we have reason to congratulate ourselves, and I think that we had a narrow escape from being compelled to do our business west of Commercial street in place of where we are today. There are no places that I know of today where there is any room or any use for any other large railway enterprise.

      "The Milwaukee & St. Paul are coming to the Coast—and we are glad they are there. At different times, when people largely interested in that enterprise talked with me, I said, 'By all means build to the Coast; extend your road—if you do not, somebody who has more enterprise than you will take the business and will keep it on their own rails and you will not get a share of it.' But when that enterprise is finished, I do not know, north of the Platte River, where there is room for another railroad or occasion for one. There will be branches built, and they are necessary for the development of the country. You had expended, and there is being expended now, a very large sum during the last two years.

      "The Northern Pacific and the Great Northern, within the State of Washington, have spent millions of dollars between Portland and Spokane. It ought not to frighten you; it will not wipe you out; you have your roots deep in the ground and they will stay there.

      TACOMA IS WAKING.

      "Now, I find in summing up the present population of the new country between Blaine and Vancouver—Portland is on the other side of the Columbia, although, fortunately, the state line does not limit our commerce or our right to trade with each other—there are over 700,000 people living on the line of the railway between Blaine and Vancouver. Portland claims 200,000, and I feel sure that she must be near that figure. Portland has grown rapidly, and I think possibly the young men have taken a sheet out of your book. There was a time when they were altogether too wealthy in Portland. Every man had business of his own to attend to and was so deeply engaged in it that he overlooked the business of the city. They did not take hold. You could come there if you were willing to bear all the expense and take what you could get. But Portland has had an awakening, and I believe that Portland, notwithstanding its remoteness from the sea, will have a good growth. It has a good country behind it and there is no reason why it should not have a good growth.

      "Another city down here where we were beautifully entertained last night, Tacoma—I remember when we came out here they really did not need us and we did not want to force ourselves on them, and so we stayed right here. But I think, and I hope, that Tacoma is getting its eyes open and that it wants more railways. We don't ask much; we want the privilege of a place for foothold, a place to do our business at our own expense; and I think that we will probably succeed in getting it—I hope so.

      GROWTH PLEASES HIM.

      "I wanted to come back to your city here. I was more than surprised at your growth and I am more than gratified. I rather gathered that you had grown fast and that possibly you wanted a resting spell, but I don't see that there is any rest for you now. I think that you will go on as you have begun, and I was more than glad to see what you are doing in the way of adjusting your street grades. It is inexpensive; the burden may be hard upon some people, and difficult to carry, but it will cost infinitely less to do it now than in five or ten years, after those streets were lined with buildings that had cost a great deal of money and you could not afford to throw them away. Lay your foundations right and the structure will take care of itself.

      "It will grow by degrees, and, when it is finished it will be part of a complete whole and you will be glad you did it. We have a good many communities to take care of along our railway, and with every one of them we have always the feeling that their prosperity means our prosperity. They have to earn the money before they can pay it to us, and what they do pay us we think is a small part; but we expect the railway business must depend upon close management and small savings.

      "Take the dividend of the Great Northern railway. Three copper cents in moving a ton of freight ten miles pays our dividends. A ton of freight on a country road would be a fair load for a farmer's wagon, and ten miles would be a fair day's work if he returned the same night. We do that. Our dividend amounts to about 3 cents—a little less than three copper cents—for moving that load of freight. We find that we have neither poisoned the air nor the water and you have all the highways that you had before we came, but we give you a better one and a cheaper one.

      MUST HAVE MONEY.

      "And remember that you never can injure the railway without injuring yourselves. The railway has only two sources from which to get money. It must either earn it or borrow it, and if it borrows, and borrows judiciously, the rate of interest ought not to be high, but whatever it is, high or low, you pay it. Sometimes people who do not know better think that they are serving a good cause to stick the railway—the company is rich—a personal injury case or something of that kind—but it is a railway and they can afford it—stick them. Now, who pays the bill? Can we charge that up to the construction of a station?

      "It is a part of the expense, and the law says that you must pay us for the use of our property enough to pay our expenses and our taxes, and a reasonable return upon the investment, so that all is charged in your bills.

      "We had in one thriving city on the Great Northern, I recall, a suit for $20,000. A young brakeman stumbled against a pile of cinders that it was represented the trackmen threw out from between the rails and poured water upon it, and it froze in the winter and was solid, and as he was running alongside of his train he stumbled and fell and was injured—some great injury to the spine that wrecked his entire nervous system, and we inquired and found out how the coal got there, and our experience and education have made us suspicious; we took the cinders to the laboratory and had them analyzed and absolutely they were anthracite, and there never was a ton of anthracite coal burned in a locomotive in the State of Minnesota; we followed it up and we found that the man who brought the suit—a professional suit bringer—had, with a brakeman and his own son, taken the cinders from his own office and piled them there and poured water on them. Now, I speak of that just as an illustration of some applications of that Golden Rule.

      COMPARES RAILWAY COST.

      "Your future growth will depend on yourselves hereafter, as it has largely depended upon your own efforts in the past. The commerce going to and from the Pacific Coast cities by the sea is being largely carried in foreign bottoms. There was a time when the American nation was a nation of seafaring men, but that does not apply any longer, and I am sorry that that is so. I believe that the people of the United States, I believe that the genius of the country is just as able to carry upon the sea as upon the land. As matters stand today, any bay or inlet where a foreign flag can force its way inland into our country they can call to us to drop the bundle and they take it from us and we can't help ourselves. Now, we ought to be able to help ourselves, for on the land we have so far surpassed the others that there is no comparison.

      "In Great Britain their average railway cost is $234,000 per mile. In the United States it is a little less than $60,000 per mile. In Germany it is about $110,000, in France about $140,000, in Austria about the same. Now let us see what they do with their two hundred and thirty-four thousand dollar machine and their one hundred and ten and one hundred and forty. In Great Britain they move an average of five hundred thousand ton miles to the mile of road at a cost of $2.16 for every hundred miles. In Germany they move about seven СКАЧАТЬ