Our Railroads To-Morrow

by Edward Hungerford

But in all probability the most popular economy of this sort that McAdoo succeeded in bringing about was in the consolidation of passenger terminals across the land, all the way from the biggest towns down to the very smallest. He began at the top in the city of New York. The Pennsylvania railroad since the opening of its wonderful new station in Seventh Avenue in that city in November, 1910, quite naturally had held it exclusively for itself and for its subsidiary, the Long Island railroad. In that tight stand it was right from every competitive point of view. It had taken the great engineering problem and its financial risk entirely upon its own shoulders; shrewd railroaders had shaken their heads dubiously as they contemplated the daring move; and there was no reason why it should share the fruits of its enterprise with its competitors.

But the competitive situation had been eliminated. Therefore McAdoo did not hesitate in personally ordering that the highly competitive Baltimore and Ohio, as well as the non-competitive Lehigh Valley (which up to that time had been using the old Pennsylvania station in Jersey City), should bring its through trains into the Pennsylvania terminal on Manhattan Island. (Incidentally, at the eleventh hour of the existence of the Railroad War Board the Pennsylvania had proffered the use of its station for this purpose.) The tickets of the B. & O. and the Pennsylvania between New York and Washington and intermediate points were moreover made completely interchangeable.

The Pennsylvania people did not enjoy these orders, even though they had proffered the station at New York. But they were good soldiers. The country was at war, and they complied readily with war-time orders, no matter how unreasonable they may have seemed to them.

In a similar fashion the Southern Pacific people made wry faces over the order that admitted the Santa Fé into their ancient train-shed and “mole” at Oakland, opposite San Francisco. Their position was not so well taken however. Even in the competitive era the fast ferry-boats of the Santa Fé, coming from its rail terminal at Richmond, had entered the same terminal with the S. P. at San Francisco—the great union ferry-house at the foot of Market Street. And had not the Santa Fé, as the longer route, been compelled as a war measure to sacrifice its two pet trains between San Francisco and Los Angeles and San Diego, the precious Saint and the Angel?

These consolidations—there were many similar ones in the freight terminals as well—went on all the way across the land. Where there were two or more engine-houses in a place fairly close together, and it was humanly possible so to do, they were consolidated. Trackage at terminals was simplified; for instance at Chicago the trains of the Baltimore and Ohio and Pere Marquette systems, which formerly had entered their passenger stations by a rather circuitous route, were now sent in to them over the tracks of the Pennsylvania, and a saving of approximately seven miles and forty minutes of running time made.

Certain captious critics of Mr. McAdoo’s constructive policies have seen in these terminal and other physical consolidations of the several carriers a deep-laid plot to “scramble the railroad eggs,” which means so to weld the properties together that they could not be easily separated again. Despite the fact that the “unscrambling” has indeed been no particularly easy task, I do not see in McAdoo the deep-dyed villain that so many others perceive. I think that he consolidated these terminals and other operating devices in the interest of real war-time efficiency and economy, and for no other reason. That would seem at this time to be an impartial verdict upon his actions.

I am also setting these things down in some detail because they too are essential to a proper understanding of the final results of the nation’s first sweeping experiment in centralized and governmental railroad control. The most of these operating economies were the accomplishments of the Railroad Administration of the sort which some time ago I characterized as obvious. Now consider a few of them that were strange—marvelously strange, you may prefer to put it:

The Railroad Administration sought as one of the first of its economies the consolidation of the various city ticket-offices that competition long ago had set out in the larger cities of the land, as well as the complete abolition of the so-called “off the line” offices—agencies in cities more or less remote from the actual territory of any given railroad. So far, so good. So far was obvious and sensible economy. If an office here and an office there had been retained for the essential travel needs of the roads and their office forces and furniture had been brought together wherever it was necessary, the others being either abandoned or temporarily closed, there would have been no complaint. But the “winning of the war” took the strange effect in most of the large cities of the land that the Railroad Administration hired new office space—in Chicago it took virtually the entire ground-floor of a huge new sky-scraper on a ten-year lease at $65,000 a year—and installed elaborate and expensive new mahogany office equipment. In New York alone four of these great new offices were fitted out, and many of the smaller and cheaper offices, abandoned, stood idle for months, while the rent went merrily forward.

These things were inexcusable. So were many others. Apparently the ordinarily astute first director-general made a great mistake at the outset. He did not realize perhaps that he was attempting to do two things at once—trying to solve an acute war problem as well as a great economic one that had been gathering urgency for nearly a decade before the coming of the World War. That at least is a kind construction to place upon his policy. And if it was indeed his policy it was not so very different from that which was followed those days by many other large activities down at Washington. Apparently we have not yet learned that almost any war problem is separate and distinct from those of our great social economic questions that are forever showing themselves in one form or another. For instance a good many of us confused the problems of the capitalization and labor of the railroads with that of taking them over as an emergency war measure, just as we repeatedly mixed up all sorts of social and economic problems with the making of an emergency war revenue tax.

Such apparently is also a fair construction to place upon Mr. McAdoo’s remarkable activities in setting great forces of designers and draftsmen at work to create new “standardized” locomotives and cars for our temporarily nationalized railroad system. He made a widely circulated statement that he had found “2303 different styles of freight-cars and almost as many different descriptions of locomotives” and that these presently would be reduced by his experts to twelve standard types of freight-cars, and to six standard types of locomotives of two weights each. Unquestionably our railroad freight equipment has stood and still stands greatly in need of much standardization, although the roads themselves long ago established enough of this to permit common operation of their cars. But I doubt if such a standardization program had any real part in an emergency war plan. I never have been able to reason that out to my own satisfaction.