The freighter grins sympathetically at our lack of knowledge.
“Bless you,” he says. “That little fishing pond up there on the Banks isn’t big enough for a land which has 27,000,000 folks gathered in its cities. These cars have come in from big Yem Hill’s road—all the way from Tacoma up on Puget Sound—State of Washington. Some of those people who live in Boston might have a fit if they knew that their beloved halibut was born and raised in the Pacific Ocean; but that’s the truth of the matter.
“This fish (and some of it’s going straight to Boston to be sold in the very shade of Faneuil Hall), has come 7,000 miles to be eaten on the very shores of the Atlantic. When the fishing ship that caught this cargo was fifty miles off the docks, she began calling Tacoma with her wireless. The yardmaster of the Northern Pacific was ready there for the news from that rat-a-tap. He had a string of refrigerator cars ready; they were ready and set out along the wharf by the time the ship was made fast.
“Five minutes later the fish were being loaded into the cars. They had a gang of stevedores working there clock-like, as those fellows work around the big tents of a three-ring circus. First there went in a layer of ice, then a layer of fish, then another of ice. In thirty minutes the job was done. In forty-five minutes that string of fish-cars was coming east on an express-train schedule. It was knocked apart at St. Paul and again at Chicago. Here’s our share of the spoils, and we’re not loafing here on the old main line.
“We’re preference freight, if you please, and no old bumpety-bump with coal and ore taking the low-grade tracks. They sandwich us in among the all-Pullmans, even when we’re on the four-track divisions, for food is quick; food won’t keep forever; and those folks down in the city are getting hungry.”
He starts to say more, but the engine call halts him. The block is clear once again. The conductor catches a car step, the “preference” starts forward with all the rattling shakes and bumps peculiar to a long freight train. In a minute or two the red tail-lights are grinning at us from half a mile down the track. Another big freight goes scurrying by us—more market stuff, more meat, more fish for the hungry town, a town which houses 4,000 folk within a single congested tenement square. A third train follows; all refrigerator cars it is too. They come in quick succession, these market trains, to the metropolis. The railroad is doing its part. To-night again, the food is going up to the city.
The scene changes. Now we are off in the rolling country of up-State—dairy country, if you please. The railroad that stretches its thick black trail the length of the valley is no four-track line, with heavy trains coursing over it every three or four or five or ten minutes. This is but a single-track branch; in the parlance of the railroaders it is a “jerkwater”; and the coming of its two passenger trains and that of the way-freight each day are events in the little towns that line it. Still, even this little branch is doing its part in the filling of the city’s larder. This branch has the filling of the city babies’ milk bottles as its own particular problem.
At early dawn, the muddy brown roads that lead to the little depot there at the flour mills are alive. The farmer boys are bringing the milk to the railroad. Down the track a few hundred yards beyond the depot is the slick, clean, new milk-station. Over across the brook is the cheese-factory, deserted and given over to the gentle fingers of decay. Those two buildings tell the story of changing times; in their mute way they tell the growth of the American city.
In other days this township made cheese. To-day they drive the milk to the depot. Each morning finds a big refrigerator car, built in the fashion of passenger equipment, so that it may be handled on passenger trains, at the milk station. The farmer boys are prompt with their milk, it is checked and weighed and placed in the car, in cans and in bottles. Hardly has the last big ten-gallon can gone clattering into the car before the whistle of the warning local is heard up the line, just beyond the curve at the water-tank. While the train is at the depot, in all the bustle of the comings and goings at a country station, the engine makes quick drill movement and picks up the milk-car.
Farther down the line that same train picks up more milk-cars. By the time it reaches the junction where it intersects the main line it is a considerable train for a branch line. Indeed at the junction there are more milk-cars, from other branches that ramble off into the real back-country. There are enough of them now to make a train through to the city. The trainmaster has a good engine ready for every afternoon, and the milk express goes scurrying into town with passenger rights and on passenger schedules. You cannot hurry the babies’ milk through to town any too quickly.