Our Railroads To-Morrow

by Edward Hungerford

We have seen a good deal in the public prints in the last few years about the prime necessity of nationalizing the railroad in the United States in a far more thorough fashion than has ever before been even attempted. One of the potential dangers which forever faces a land as physically great as ours is the inherent possibility of its falling apart through its sheer size and weight. Under certain circumstances it might not be particularly difficult for us to disintegrate as a nation into groups of separate States, in fact if not in name—groups of States not particularly sympathetic or coöperative. We have had in our history already one very tragic instance of this very sort.

In order that this ever-present potential tendency may be overcome it is highly important that every possible measure be utilized toward binding the country more and more closely together. Transportation—railroad transportation in particular—forms an ideal binder. Utilized to its fullest degree it means that New England will know California better, and California New England. And each, knowing the other better, will understand better, sympathize better, coöperate better. If Minnesota goes to Louisiana and Georgia to Montana, each becomes more understanding, more tolerant, more closely bound, in almost every conceivable fashion.

Passenger traffic, brought to a high degree of development, will make such understanding possible. Little else can do it even half so well. Freight traffic will not do it—not at least to any particularly large degree. A better circulation of national periodicals will help; this ever-present problem of encompassing our perplexing problem of nationalization, of making a group of forty-eight separate States, separate in climate, in soil, and even to a perceptible degree in racial and language characteristics, into a more coherent and closely-knit state, was one of the most potent arguments advanced against the introduction of the postal zone system in this country.

But even the national circulation of publications will not accomplish quite as much as travel. The Easterners who journey to the west coast each winter are to-day full of understanding of the problems out there—what the Japanese question really means to the Californians and the whys and the wherefores of most of the lesser questions that perplex them. If there were as attractive rates from Los Angeles to Boston and New York as there used to be from Boston and New York to Los Angeles, the Californians might in turn be a little more tolerant at times of the political situation in Massachusetts or in New York. It is intimate knowledge that makes for real understanding.

To make my point even clearer let me take you far overseas with me—to Italy in the days before the coming of the World War. The Italian Government even then saw a most imminent necessity for far better national thought and understanding. How by practical planning could it best accomplish such a thing? A little study quickly enough showed how: by not only letting Italians see every corner of their land but by urging them to do so.

So a most attractive ticket plan was developed. In practice it worked somewhat after this fashion. A resident, let us say, of Milan, in the great high plains of the north of Italy, might have business which called him to Florence. When he went to Milan Union Station—or whatever it is that passes for a union station in Milan—the ticket-agent, who was well schooled in the active art of selling transportation, attempted to beguile him into buying a little longer ticket—to Rome, perhaps. His bait, his selling ammunition, if you will, was a rate per-mile from Florence to Rome much lower than that prevailing between Milan and Florence.

Very well, suppose that our resident of Milan was prevailed upon to go down and spend that long-promised week-end in the city by the Tiber. Bargain-sales have always spelled attractiveness, to men as well as to women.

“If only you would continue on to Naples,” suggested the ticket-seller, “you would find the supplemental fare so slight as to be a mere nothing to your purse.”

Very well again. Date the pasteboard up to Naples. Perhaps it would be a little warmer, a bit more balmy down there anyway than in old Rome.

“From Naples to Messina, it is a mere nothing, and the climate is still lovelier, and the supplemental fare much less per mile than even that from Rome to Naples.”