The answer is simple: tradition—hide-bound tradition—and cost. If I were to let my friend, the old railroad operator out there in the West, interrupt he would tell me that this last alone renders them quite out of the question. To which I should reply:
“If you were buying an automobile, would you rather have an automobile or a wheelbarrow?”
A few minutes ago we were discussing the electric locomotive in these pages. Without going into detail into its mechanical niceties we said that the average cost of one of these big units to-day is $150,000 to say nothing of proportionate cost of power-house and wires, without which, of course, it is quite useless. The average cost of the largest-sized steam locomotives to-day is anywhere from $40,000 to $75,000, which represents a real drop since the peak prices of the days of the war.
But this is not the point. The point is that the average railroad executive buys the electric locomotive upon the “say-so” of the manufacturer. If it cost $250,000 and he was convinced in his own mind that it was a necessity to him he would not stagger at the price or attempt petty economies by trying to buy it stripped of every efficiency device.
The average railroad executive does not buy steam locomotives that way. Oh, no. He says:
“Give us ten million dollars’ worth of new engines. I want them good engines, the best engines that you have ever built.” And then adds: “How many do we get to the peck, anyway?”
Quantity, not quality. It is one of our besetting American sins. How much? Not how good. How much? How big a number to be added to the next annual report in order to impress the stockholders? Nothing about refinements. Nothing about quality.
The builder takes down his blue-prints—the same old engine that he has been building for ten, twenty, thirty years past. No staff has worked to perfect that old-fashioned machine. He figures rapidly. His opponents are figuring against him. And finally he shoots in his bid. The railroad can buy a lot of locomotives for ten million dollars; a goodly quantity for one tenth of that figure if it is not too fussy about the details.
After which will you wonder when I say that no steam locomotive in the United States to-day represents anything like the ultimate possibilities of the machine itself? That is not true of the electric locomotive, where the last unit turned out from the shops is almost sure to be the best ever built. Let me illustrate.