Four tracks, running the full length of the ship, generally fill the main deck of these trans-lake ships. The loading of the cars on to these tracks is accomplished at the stern, the bow being built high and, as we have just seen, somewhat after the fashion of an overhanging prow. The main deck is completely roofed over with cabins and deck-houses, so that, viewed from the rear, the ship seems to be an itinerant pair of railroad tunnels, dark and gloomy. The upper decks are gay with the resources of the marine architect—for the greater part of these boats offer accommodations for passengers as well as for from eighteen to thirty freight cars. These great ferries form valuable feeders to the Grand Trunk, the Pere Marquette, the Ann Arbor, and Grand Rapids & Indiana, and some minor routes crossing Michigan.
Similarly, car-ferries crossing Lake Erie from Cleveland to Port Stanley are considerable factors both in general merchandise and in the coal trade. Another Lake Erie route of heavy tonnage extends from Ashtabula, Ohio, to Port Burwell, Ontario. Within the last few years a car-ferry has been established across Lake Ontario, from Charlotte—which is the port of Rochester, N. Y.—to Coburg on the Canadian side, which has already developed for itself a considerable traffic.
But the car-ferries, extensive as they are, form but a small portion of the railroad interests upon the waters of the Great Lakes. Almost all of the great lines through those much-travelled waters are the property of some railroad system whose rails touch one or more of their terminals. Thus the Northern Steamship Company, running from Buffalo to Chicago and Duluth, touches the rails of its parent company, the Great Northern Railroad, at this last port. The Erie & Western Transportation Company—popularly known as the Anchor Line—also running from Buffalo to Duluth, is a Pennsylvania property. Both of these lines are operated for passenger service, as well as freight. The New York Central and the Erie cover the same territory with exclusively freight routes. The Rutland Railroad has a line all the way from its western terminal at Ogdensburg, on the St. Lawrence River, to Chicago. The Canadian Pacific and the Grand Trunk operate important lines through Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. Even a small road, like the Algomah Central, has its own freight and passenger steamboats running south from the Soo as far as Cleveland, Ohio. It is a pretty poor line with Great Lakes terminals that cannot boast some sort of steamship service of its own.
In the development of the coastwise and the inland waterways of the United States, the railroad may be doing the nation a far greater service than it imagines. For the general trend of railroad expansion in the country to-day seems to be toward a development of the auxiliary water-routes rather than toward their curtailment. The railroad has finally realized that some coarse commodities can be carried far more economically by water than by rail. It is to-day seeking to avail itself of that acquired knowledge. If competing and feeding trolley lines are good things for railroads to own—and the present-day judgment seems to be that they are—the same rule holds doubly good in regard to both competing and feeding water-routes.
CHAPTER XXVI
KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH THE MEN
The First Organized Branch of the Railroad Y. M. C. A.—Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Gift of a Club-house—Growth of the Railroad Y. M. C. A.—Plans by the Railways to Care for the Sick and the Crippled—The Pension System—Entertainments—Model Restaurants—Free Legal Advice—Employees’ Magazines—The Order of the Red Spot.
The historic gray Union Station, which still stands at Cleveland, housed what was destined to be the very first systematic effort of the railroad to get in touch and keep in touch with its men. In that building, once new and splendid, but now old and grimy, George Meyers, the depot master, gathered a group of railroaders on a Sunday away back in 1870. The man came again on a second Sunday, still again on a third; after a little while those Sunday afternoon gatherings became habitual, and a new kink in all the intricacy of railroading was established. The meetings were partly religious and partly social, and eventually they led to a distinct innovation in that depot.