CHAPTER XVII
THE G. P. A. AND HIS OFFICE
He has to Keep the Road Advertised—Must be an After-dinner Orator, and Many-sided—His Geniality, Urbanity, Courtesy—Excessive Rivalry for Passenger Traffic—Increasing Luxury in Pullman Cars—Many Printed Forms of Tickets, etc.
We have already called the division superintendent the Prince in the realm of railroad operation. But there is another, whom we see when we leave operation and consider traffic—another who might also be called Prince—Prince Charming. This prince of charm of the railroad is the general passenger agent. To a large proportion of folk he is almost the personification of the railroad itself. His signature, appearing upon each of the railroad’s tickets and time-tables, is multiplied a million times a year. In his own self he appears many, many times as the road’s mouthpiece. His evening clothes must always be kept in press and moth-balls, for his oratory is at all times close to the tap. His wit is ready, his tongue a good arguer for his line. At dinners of Chambers of Commerce and Boards of Trade, his urbanity is profound, his remarks to the point; and the road gets the advertising.
For the general passenger agent is per se, an advertiser. There are two affiliated and yet quite distinctive functions to his office. The older function, the one for which it was really created when railroads were young, is that of issuing tickets and selling them. The newer function, and to-day the all-important function, is that of keeping the road before the eyes of the travel-mad public—an advertising function. A few years ago, a big Eastern road had to change general passenger agents because of this very thing. The man who had held the job was in almost every way absolutely efficient. He had been reared in the routine of his office; he knew its vast details as well as any man might ever hope to know them. But he was a detail man, and there he stopped. The road needed more of a figurehead, a better advertiser. The late George H. Daniels was in many respects the best passenger agent that American railroading has ever known. He was the forerunner of the general passenger agent of to-day—a well-known figure in the great State that his railroad served, being interviewed by reporters—and lady reporters, too—on every conceivable subject in the public eye; addressing dinners in metropolitan New York, or in suburban Yonkers, or anywhere else in the State, with rare facility, yet now and then adroitly bringing in reference to the “four-track trail” by which he was employed.
Other roads took heed of Daniels. The general passenger agent became less and less a man of office routine and of ticket detail, more and more of a public figure. He called Mayors of important cities by their first names; he kept close to the pulsing heart of the public press by friendly intimacy with the reporters; spoke at two, three, four dinners a week. The Prince Charming of the railroad is, indeed, a development.
But behind the smiles of this prince, behind the phraseology of words spoken or written that glorify “the road,” there is a serious aspect of his life. He must capitalize that splendid urbanity, that jocose wit, into ticket-sales. In the beginning he was created to sell tickets, and sell tickets he must. On his ability to sell tickets, and not as a popular public figure, will he be measured by the board of directors—that delegation of grim-faced gentlemen, who place small market value on either urbanity or jocosity.
So, while the general passenger agent presents his smiling face to the outside world, he is a man of system, no mean executive there within the inner. He must organize to sell his tickets. There is an inner organization of no small moment in the passenger office of any sizable railroad. In the first place, the area from which traffic is to be drawn is divided into districts. General agents or assistant general passenger agents (the title varies widely on the different railroads) are assigned to each. This traffic area is far larger than the area covered by one railroad system. It is generally nation-wide, while some of the biggest of our railroads maintain ticket-offices in the large cities all the way around the world. They are to-day fighting almost as sharply for American traffic in Paris or in London as they fight in Clark Street, Chicago, or in Broadway, New York.