Perhaps no other one improvement in railway service has added as much to the comfort and convenience of the travelling public as has this, which enables the passengers on any first-class train to eat their meals at leisure, when they want them, and to procure well-cooked and appetizing food, temptingly served amid pleasant surroundings. It is not so many years since the passenger was dependent for his food either on such supplies as he had brought with him, or upon hasty lunches in dirty depot dining-rooms, where the cold and unpleasant food was bolted in fear and trembling lest the train puffing outside pull away. Not that the proprietors of the dining-rooms themselves were wholly to blame for this condition, for they never knew how many customers they were going to have, trains were often late, fifteen or twenty minutes was the utmost time allowed for a meal by the management of any road, and not more than half of that was available for actual eating, while to keep free from soot and smoke and cinders a dining-room in a depot building was a task beyond human ingenuity.
After the meal, Mr. Schofield led the way to the rear of the diner, where, from the platform, they could watch the track spinning backwards from under them.
“Notice the absence of dust,” he said, and, indeed, as the train swept onward, there was practically no dust behind it. “We’ve accomplished that by washing the gravel before we use it as ballast, instead of dumping it in just as it comes from the gravel-pit, as we used to do. It only costs about half a cent a yard to wash it, and it makes it as clean as crushed stone.”
“It certainly makes it a lot cleaner back here,” remarked the man in charge of the dining-car. “We can keep the back door open now. The only time we have to shut it,” he added, suiting the action to the word, “is when we pass the stock-yards. Nobody can enjoy a meal with that scent blowing in upon them.”
The stock-yards consisted of long rows of flimsy frame buildings, lining either side of the tracks for perhaps half a mile just outside of Cincinnati. Here the thousands and thousands of steers, hogs, and sheep shipped in from the west were loaded and unloaded. Narrow runways led from the pens up to the level of the freight-car doors, and up and down these, incoming or outgoing stock was constantly ascending or descending, urged by prods in the hands of the stock-yard men. It was not a pleasant sight, and our two friends contemplated it silently as the train sped past.
“Man has a good deal to answer for in this world,” remarked Mr. Schofield, “and I sometimes think he’ll be called to account pretty severely for the suffering of those poor steers. They are bred out on the prairies, you know, are left absolutely shelterless in winter and freeze or starve to death by thousands. Those that manage to survive, are crowded into the stock-cars and shipped east. There’s a law requiring that they be fed and watered every so often, and that they be taken out of the cars after so long a time. But there’s nobody to enforce the law, and it’s pretty generally disregarded. It’s always been a wonder to me that the stock reaches the eastern markets at all.”
“What can be done about it?” asked Allan, soberly.
“The railroads can’t do anything. But the government could compel all stockmen to furnish adequate shelter and food for their stock in winter, and the torture of this long-distance shipping could be avoided if the big slaughter-houses were out in the stock-raising district, so that only the meat need be shipped. Do you remember,” he added, after a moment, “in Bellamy’s ‘Looking Backward,’ how incomprehensible and repulsive the thought of flesh-eating had become? Well, I believe Bellamy was right. Already there is a rapidly growing feeling against meat-eating, and the day is not so very far distant when it will be practically abolished. And a good thing, too.”
The train had run under the great train-shed, as they were talking, and five minutes later, Mr. Schofield and Allan were shown into the office of General Manager Round. It was a plainly-furnished, business-like room, typical of the man who occupied it—a man who had risen from the ranks and who had endeared himself to every man under him by justice, kindness and square-dealing.
“How are you, boys?” he said, shaking hands with both of them heartily. “Glad to see you. Sit down. Now, Ed, what’s this I hear about a strike?”