With the final result that the prospective traveler at Milan would probably find the Italian state railways about ready to make him a present of the island of Sicily if only he would have the graciousness, and the very good sense, to extend his voyage to and around that fascinating place.
Now turn that rule back. Henry Blank finds his way into the Grand Central or the Pennsylvania Station in the City of New York. He has a business errand which will carry him six hundred miles west of the Hudson River—for the first time in his life. He plans to go to Cleveland, stay two days there in which he will do the work of six, and then come right back to Broadway once more. But the ticket-seller—the expert seller of transportation—has studied the Italian school of railroading.
“Make it Toledo or Detroit,” he hints, “and we will make the mileage rate from Cleveland to either one of those towns a flat three cents a mile, instead of the 3.6 cents which the Interstate Commerce Commission made the law of the land in August of 1920.”
Blank hesitates. The ticket-seller does not.
“While if you can be tempted to go on from Toledo or Detroit to that smart young town, Chicago,” he urges, “we will bill you at the intervening distance between them at a mere 2.75 cents—a historic percentage, you will remember. From Chicago to the Missouri River, two and one half cents a mile. Two cents a mile flat on the next big lap, down to El Paso or Albuquerque or over to Cheyenne or Denver; lower all the time you go further west—until that New York-Cleveland ticket that you are buying of me now, Mr. Blank, will carry you all through California at a cent and a quarter a mile. You cannot afford to stay out of California at such a rate.”
And there is a strong probability that he will not.
My friend, the old railroader, snorts at this suggestion:
“What do you think that the California railroad commission is going to say about some fellow from Boston riding all over their State at a cent and a quarter a mile, simply because he bought a ticket from South Station down to Providence, and had it extended once or twice?” he asks. Then adds: “I don’t think; I know. They will say, ‘Very good, Mr. Southern Pacific, if you can afford to carry him at a cent and a quarter a mile, you carry the man in Stockton, who wants to go up to Sacramento or to Marysville, at the same identical rate per mile. That’s fair, and it’s our business to make you be fair!’”
At first glance it would seem as if the venerable traffic man is right; a second and third one however will show the possibilities of his being quite considerably wrong. If the railroad commission at Sacramento has one half the advertising sense that the rest of the Californians possess it is going to recognize that here is the way to popularize its States—in the best and broadest sense of the word, to nationalize it. Moreover, it will know that the man who buys a ticket from San Francisco or Stockton to Sacramento or Marysville will have his own opportunity to extend it, in just the same way and upon exactly the same basis. He can go riding all over Cape Cod at a cent and a quarter a mile, while the people around about him will be paying their 3.6 cents. Quid pro quo; turn about is fair play, and all the rest of the fine copy-book maxims of our boyhood days.
In front of me lies the hand-book of the Italian state railways in those blessed days of before-the-war. From it I find that I could have started from the Milan Union Station and made a circular trip through Bologna, Florence, Rome, Pisa, Genoa, and Turin back to Milan again for 157.5 lire, first-class or, at the then rate of exchange, a little more than thirty-two dollars. As a matter of fact the ticket sold at exactly the same rate from any other point upon this designated belt and from it was good in exactly the same way. We are using Milan here merely as a convenient point from which to study the system.