Edward Hungerford
Our Railroads To-Morrow
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066128524
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
IN INTRODUCTION
Do you chance to recall the story of Frankenstein, of the man-made monster, who, having been created, arose to slay the man who had created him? The railroad to-day is in much the position of the man who created the Frankenstein. Having in no small sense created the modern world, having riveted its very sinews of commerce together, it now stands in apparent danger of collapse. The world over, it is at least in peril of bankruptcy. Everywhere it is in trouble. One of the greatest if not indeed the greatest of factors in our social and commercial structure to-day is flying the signals of distress. Its perplexities are upon all tongues. Their solution seemingly has become the problem of all men. The railroad is almost the single great unsolved economic problem of the entire world to-day.
The sweep of a great war, the débris of men and of human understanding that followed in its wake, the new and independent position of labor everywhere, the vast increases in fuel and in raw material costs—all have contributed to the serious embarrassment of our railroads. But never to their breakdown. Please remember this. It is a common phrase these days to allude to “the breakdown of the railroads.” But it is an incorrect phrase, decidedly incorrect.
Even in Russia, where transport conditions to-day are the worst anywhere in the world, there has not been a complete railroad breakdown. The Russian railroads after nearly a decade of overburden are to-day functioning—after a miserable fashion, to be sure, but functioning none the less.
For, truth to tell, a necessary railroad structure may never break down completely. It may descend into the valley of deep woes, it may crawl on its stomach in the despair of seemingly hopeless disease, but it may never quite die. That is out of the possibilities of the thing. Dying, a railroad dying? It must never die. A factory, a merchandising establishment, even a whole town may struggle along fitfully for a number of years and then decide to quit, leaving but a forlorn group of ruins as a memento of vanished enterprise. But a necessary railroad may never quit. When a rail highway of any real importance ceases to operate, civilization itself, begins to crumble. For a railroad is a not alone life but also a life-giver. Upon it depends virtually all the life of the community it serves, not merely commercial life but political and social as well. Which means that the mere suggestion that the railroad structure should cease to function is unthinkable. And here thrusts to the front the vexing problem of how not only to enable it merely to live but to enable it to live in the fullest strength, to grow apace withal, to more than keep pace with the growth of the community that it is designed to serve.
For nearly a hundred years now we have been upbuilding the railroad structure of the world. America pioneered in its creation. Our fathers and our fathers’ fathers cannot now remember the day when the call of the iron horse was not heard across the land. The railroad train has become part and parcel of our lives. And even though in these days with our motor cars at the curb we may have come to scorn the railroad train for our own short travels, we know full well that it brings the milk to our doorstep, the coal to our bins, the provender to our larders. It helps weave the fabric upon our backs, build the shoes upon our feet, form the hats upon our heads. At every corner, every turn, we are dependent upon the railroad. Therefore there is not a man or a woman in the entire United States to whom its present plight should not be of the keenest interest and importance.
We were promised a complete solution of our transport troubles with the hurried passage two years ago of the Esch-Cummins Bill, now known officially as the Transportation Act. Have we reached that solution, or anything like unto a solution?
You do not have to ask the average man twice for an answer to that question. He knows. If he is a business man he knows doubly well. He knows that for the last ten years our American railroad system has been in something of a decline. A decade ago it was at the zenith of its efficiency. For eighty years it had been climbing upward; for the last ten it has been slipping backward. Oh, yes, I do know its war record. It was a fine record and one of which every American should be duly proud. There is hardly a physician, however, who has not seen a patient, terribly sick, under the stress of great emergency rise magnificently to a definite situation of supreme importance. So four years ago rose our sick man of American business. And now he has gone to bed more ill than ever before while many doctors quarrel about his case.
And still he functions. The sick-abed man of our American business still renders the all-necessary service that none but him really can render. Fortunately perhaps American business itself at this moment is not in the very best of health. One shudders to think what would happen if industry all the way across the land were again in its top notches of production. It is not the least of the perplexing phases of this all-perplexing railroad problem of ours—the question, when traffic shall again rise (as it certainly will) to normal volume, to say nothing of any abnormal volume, of how our weakened railroad structure will meet it.
That it recently withstood severe tests is of course no indication that it could again withstand such strains. All the way across the land our railroad functioned in the recent ordeals through which it has passed—which of course is not saying that it could do this again. It quite naturally worked at its best in the western sections of the land, where there are both less congestion and comparatively larger rail transport facilities. Yet