Our Railroads To-Morrow

by Edward Hungerford

Mr. Hughitt is the last of the old guard of American railroad executives. He was born near Auburn, New York, in 1837, has lived in Illinois since 1854, and at eighty-five years of age is still the active controlling influence in the great Northwestern property. He has, to my knowledge, but one senior in the whole business, Chauncey M. Depew, chairman of the board of the New York Central railroad, who is eighty-nine years old; but Mr. Depew long since was very glad to relinquish the reins of operating detail of that great Vanderbilt property to younger and more energetic men.

Not so with Mr. Hughitt. His grip upon the Northwestern has been a firm one indeed. He has held his road to many old-time traditions. The lemon-yellow color of its passenger-coaches; the English fashion that it has of running its trains to the left upon double-track and not to the right, as is the ordinary American fashion; its generous, not to say profuse, local and suburban service—all of these are Hughitt. Since the death of the late Henry Clay Frick of Pittsburg and New York some years ago, there has been no one to oppose him. Frick could and frequently did. It is hard to conceive of any one successfully opposing Mr. Frick.

With Mr. Hughitt absolute dictator of Chicago and Northwestern there was none to oppose his arbitrary dictum in regard to Mr. Aishton. The fact that Aishton had been reared upon the property, that his record upon it was not only good but great, apparently counted for nothing. He was dropped. He had offended “the old man.” That was a heinous offense for which there was no possible excuse. Aishton’s powerful friends in the railroad world rallied to his defense. They elected him president of the American Railway Association at a salary reputed to be equal to that paid him by the Northwestern.

Apparently it is not only McAdoo who can afford to indulge his whim in personalities.

Before the Railroad Administration ceased its actual operation of the roads it began the restoration of much of the pre-war service, particularly of the passenger service. Soon after the signing of the Armistice and the removal of military pressure upon the carriers the important through trains that had been removed—the Broadway Limited and the Congressional chief among them—were returned to their former schedules, although not in every case with the same high degree of service as before. It was not, for instance, until the return of private control that the fastest trains between Chicago and the Pacific coast brought to their pre-war standard of approximately sixty-nine hours. The McAdoo administration as a war measure had lengthened this schedule to seventy-two hours.

Yet it was McAdoo who, once the war emergency was passed, removed the half-cent-a-mile extra charge that he had established against people who rode in Pullmans or other forms of sleeping and parlor-cars and left the fare at a flat three cents a mile—where it should have been suffered to remain in the interest of the railroads themselves.

The Interstate Commerce Commission raised it to 3.6 cents a mile, upon hints from the private operators of the roads. It is but fair to add, however, that there are certain members of the commission who long ago had conceived the idea that the passenger-rates were not bearing their proper burden of the costs of railroad operation. It is these men who have to-day steeled their hearts against any lowering of passenger-rates to a point where the service might at least have some competitive attraction against that of the automobile, publicly or privately owned or operated. In all this discussion at the moment of the possible lowering of freight-rates nothing whatever is being breathed of a readjustment of passenger-fares, with the single exception of a recent bill passed in the United States Senate for the enactment of a Federal statute compelling the roads to sell mileage-books at a low wholesale rate. This neglect of itself is, I think, a most unhealthy sign. While the 23 per cent. lowering of passenger revenues in 1921 as against 1920 is a fairly definite expression of that unhealthiness.

To my mind this is not entirely a question of the proper equalization of operating costs to revenues; the question of setting the tariffs of charges to a point where business shall again be attracted to the railroads, to my way of thought, is the real kernel of the problem. That is the way that the average merchant or manufacturer would look at the similar problems that confront him. To get the business the rates must be made attractive. If it then becomes necessary to reduce operating costs so as to exist at the lowered revenues, then the business man will move heaven and earth to reduce his costs.

Apparently the Interstate Commerce Commission does not see the question in this light. One understanding the complexion of its membership would hardly expect it so to see it. The commission is absolutely honest and, to a large extent, able; but it is generally dull. It has no traffic sense; no sense of salesmanship. It has no vision. It always looks backward, rarely forward. Being composed almost exclusively of lawyers,—long ago it was recognized apparently that it would be a fearful thing to place an honest, far-sighted, energetic railroad executive in its personnel,—it spends a great deal of time seeking for precedent. Therefore it hardly can be expected to look forward.

“What is the precedent?” it keeps asking. “How has it always been done in the past?”