Take the case of Atlantic City. That town used to be a collection of wooden hotels, set along a sandy, pleasant beach, which were content with six or eight weeks of good business in midsummer. The railroads that stretched their rails down to it registered good earnings during that hot season, and they had to put in extensive plants to handle that six or eight weeks of heavy traffic. The extensive—and expensive—plants were idle a great part of the year, and there was a lot of capital wasted. The managers of the railroads told the summer hotel proprietors that, and asked why beach property should be a losing investment ten months out of the year. That was a new sort of proposition for a summer resort hotel proprietor but it seemed sound argument and the hotels extended their seasons at either end. They combined with the railroads in making attractive special rates for these duller parts of the season, and before long the spring was well nigh as popular and as profitable as midsummer.
Folk came over from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and up from Baltimore and Washington, to spend their summers at Atlantic City, and the scientific business-making there created a fashionable season for Northerners from Easter forward. The building of wooden hotels ceased, and fireproof structures of brick and stone, steel and concrete, began to rise along the beach. Capital ceased to lie idle at Atlantic City. The hotels began to keep open the year around, and the scientific method of the biggest of the railroads had been so effectual that it built a million-dollar bridge across the Delaware at Philadelphia to handle through traffic down to Atlantic City.
Still the railroads worked in harmony with the hotels, and the fashionable season began at Christmas instead of Easter. Before long they will make the fall fashionable, and then the hotels will be crowded all the year round. When there is a lull in the season they bring on half a dozen conventions and fill the trains and the hotels with the delegates. That Atlantic City plant does not lie idle much of the time. There are nearly 800 hotels there to-day—more than fifty of them huge structures—and on a busy day 300,000 people are along the famous boardwalk above the beach. In dull days the big hotels are comfortably filled. The hotel men have made fortunes, the railroads have added millions of dollars to their passenger earnings because of Atlantic City.
There you have the best example of this new creed of the practical railroader—making traffic. It is not a lost example. Across the land every city and town, every resort, from the haughty spa with a cluster of brilliant hotels down to the humblest inn that ever cuddled by the shore of a silvery lake, is taking notice of the creed. The farmer is bending himself to increase the yield of his land, while the railroad reaps a benefit. The marketman from town is reaching out for better sources for his needs; the railroad helps him and reaps a benefit. The resort hotel arranges a joint rate and ticket with the railroad, which covers both transportation and board for a “week-end” in the dull season, and the passenger receipts are swelled in some degree.
That is what the railroader calls making traffic.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE EXPRESS SERVICE AND THE RAILROAD MAIL
Development of Express Business—Railroad Conductors the First Mail and Express Messengers—William F. Harnden’s Express Service—Postage Rates—Establishment and Organization of Great Express Companies—Collection and Distribution of Express Matter—Relation between Express Companies and Railroads—Beginnings of Post-office Department—Statistics—Railroad Mail Service—Newspaper Delivery—Handling of Mail Matter—Growth of the Service.