If this is true in the technical operation of a railroad it is even more true in another great phase of its management—its salesmanship. Long-range transportation salesmanship is to-day a real fundamental weakness of our American railroad. Let me illustrate. Here is its competitor in the form of a local truckman coming along and, if you please, not keeping within his proper economic bounds, but soliciting business up to a hundred-mile or a 150-mile haul. He probably is “Tom” to his fellow townsman, a personality, a real human being, and not a mere machine. A corporation is always at a handicap. And other things being equal, or even a little against him, he gets the business.
In earlier chapters of this book I have set down what has seemed to be the real opportunity for the redemption of the branch-line and local services of our railroads, by the use either of small electric or of gasolene-motor units, but in all cases with such a frequency of headway as to render theirs a genuine service. Yet I would not give a fig for such a step if it could not be handled for the railroad by a competent executive right on the spot—no matter now how small his rank or title as long as he has real authority to go ahead or act. A canny minor executive of my acquaintance suggests that the average division superintendent should be given large traffic salesmanship authority. There are some things against such a plan, and many things in its favor.
But it seems to me that the installation of a motor-bus service on a branch or group of branches of any railroad is a local salesmanship and an advertising problem, as well as a merely operating one. The schedules should be carefully thought out in advance, and with some regard to the convenience of the people who are expected to make use of them. They cannot be properly made from a hundred miles away. In fact it would be a good idea to have a neighborhood referendum in regard to these schedules. As an advertising device alone it would be well worth while, while the trained soul of any good advertising man would suggest local “copy” for the newspapers of the vicinage calling attention to the safety features of the motor-bus upon the railroad as compared with that lack when the selfsame vehicle travels upon the highroad. Without such intensified study and promotion methods I cannot believe that the mere introduction of the small passenger unit upon our standard railroads is going to meet with any pronounced success, either for the roads or for their patrons.
Now we are dipping into the edges of a fascinating topic indeed and one that recently has sunk into a rut in the United States—transportation salesmanship. In these late years the traffic managers of our railroads have either become glorified rate-clerks or else trained special pleaders before the Interstate Commerce Commission or the State regulatory bodies. There is no department of railroading in which initiative seemingly has died so dire a death as in the traffic department. There, too, precedent rules, and seemingly with an iron hand. No man dares defy it.
The other day the British railways went back to their ingenious before-the-war plan of making very low rates for week-ends, but always upon trains that were not ordinarily crowded. If a man wanted to start out on a Saturday and return say on a Sunday evening or even early Monday morning, a most attractive rate lured him into the adventure. It was obvious that the rate would not be taken advantage of by business men—to the real disadvantage of the regular commercial rates—as little or no regular business can be transacted over the week-end; while a certain disinclination to ride at the high regular rates—high to-day in Britain, as everywhere else in the world—is overcome by the bargain-counter quality of the rate itself. And new riders are gained.
This is good business. It is real business. It is more; it is traffic science upon a railroad. For it is the genuine creation of business.
A few weeks ago (January, 1922) the New Haven announced another extensive slash in its passenger-train service. Its service was already but a mere shell of what it was twenty, or even a dozen years ago. It gave decreased travel as a reason for the slash.
But what was the New Haven doing to gain new business? Was it advertising? Was it improving the intensive details of its service? Was it trying to induce people to go in odd hours upon its trains? Not a bit of any of these. It was reducing trains. It controls the night boats upon the Sound—and operates these upon the same schedules upon which they were operated more than fifty years ago, save as they gradually are being permitted to die of dry-rot and so are eliminated. For at least a quarter of a century not one improvement has been made in the operation of the Fall River Line. And even when the press of midsummer traffic forces a double service in each direction each night no one in the management has the initiative to suggest “staggering” the schedules so as to give any diversity of service whatsoever.