Still, with all these simplified forms of tickets, a big road will hardly carry less than 5,000 standard forms. Then there will be anywhere from a dozen to twenty special forms a week that will have to be printed—for excursions, conventions, and special train movements of every sort. The ticket-printing bill of a big road will easily exceed $40,000 a year. Its folders will cost not less than $50,000, while the twelvemonths’ bill for newspaper advertising will more than exceed the combined figure of these two.
All these details come under the jurisdiction of that urbane general passenger agent. He supervises, in another department, the making and the readjustment of rates—this last a seemingly endless task.
To make up rate-sheets, either in the freight or in the passenger department, requires expert work. The fare between the same points on competitive railroads must, in the present order of things, remain equal. To cite an interesting instance: The A—— railroad long ago established $6.00 as its passenger charge from N—— to S——. The B—— railroad, although charging a higher rate per mile over its line, is obliged to meet this rate of $6.00 in order to secure business from N—— to S——, even though that makes many perplexing problems in its local rates. The B—— railroad mileage from N—— to S——, up its main line, is 288 miles—practically the same as that of its competitor. For the 146-mile ride to G——, the first large way-station, it charges $4.50, for the 208-mile ride to M——, the next, $5.00. If a man were to go over its line to S—— and stop off at G—— and M—— his fare from N—— to S—— would be $8.80. That is a typical case, and one that is repeated in every corner of the country. Where a road comes into competitive territory its rates must adjust themselves to those of its lowest-priced rival, otherwise it could hardly hope for a fair share of the business. So the rates must shade here and there; the rate-clerk must take good care to see that wherever it is in any way possible, no combination of tickets can be formed that will sell at less rate than a through ticket. When the rate-sheet is completed and copies of it forwarded to the railroad commission, it is, indeed, a sensitive organization.
But no sooner will the cumbersome rate-sheet be completed, before some little road off in a distant corner of the country will send a printed announcement of some slight change in its passenger charges. In an instant, the whole mighty fabric of the rate-sheet must be torn apart and reconstructed. If the St. Louis Southwestern, by reason of a single change in the rates of the little Blissville, Bulgetown and Beyond (with which it connects) is enabled to charge a few cents less than the rival Transcontinental, its rate-sheet must be torn asunder and a new one adopted.
Beyond the long desks where the rate-clerks keep at their tedious jobs of constant readjustment of local and through rates, the passenger department has located its ticket redemption bureau. It announces publicly its willingness to redeem unused portions of its tickets, and the work of figuring out the amount due on a ticket, sometimes half or three-quarters used, requires a rate-clerk of ability and patience. The redemption clerk holds a ticket up to the light for your inspection.
“They tried to put this over on me,” he says as he shows a local ticket which had been sent to him for redemption at full value. The pasteboard is filled with small burned holes. “The breezy young man who forwarded this exhibit to me claimed that he had used no portion of this ticket and then apologized to me for its condition. His small boy, he said, had burned it with Fourth-of-July punk.
“Punk? That was punk. The small boy did not do a thorough job. Every hole burned there was burned to hide a conductor’s punchmark. You can see the edges of three of them; and those three punch marks show that the ticket issued from B—— to T—— was used 300 miles from B—— to A—— and not used from A—— to T——. When that young man threatened us with trouble on that ticket deal, we threatened him with arrest. After that he shut up.”
So does the general passenger agent come in constant contact with the great American public. His outside mail is probably the largest at headquarters, and it contains letters of every sort, asking innumerable questions, praising and damning his road with equal interest and force. One letter will commend a courteous conductor, the next will find some fault with the dining-car service. It is not so very long ago that a big Eastern railroad sent out a general order that the raw oysters on its dining-cars should be served affixed to their shells, because a woman from Sioux City had written a positive assertion that the shells were being used over and over again for canned oysters.
Some of the railroads have already begun to systematize this whole matter of complaints. One New York City line which sells a large amount of transportation in small packages every day (two million passengers is its average in twenty-four hours) has a Harvard man at high salary just to receive those letters and give diplomatic answer to each of them. Each complaint is first acknowledged and then investigated; the person who made the complaint is notified of the final action taken. If a matter of fare is involved (the complicated transfer systems of New York make such questions frequent), and the company is wrong, it cheerfully acknowledges its fault and forwards car tickets as reimbursement. Many times when a conductor or a motorman has forgotten his manners, he is sent to make a personal apology to the aggrieved passenger, as a price of holding his position. That street railway company has won many friends out of persons who had complained to it, because of this method.