There was no physical reason why that branch should not have been made into an interurban electric railroad a dozen years ago—the road that owned it has never found it difficult to sell bonds for the improvement of its property. Though no one paid particular attention to it at headquarters, a roving young engineer with a genius for making money, looked at it enviously—at the dozen prosperous towns it aimed to serve. A fortnight’s visit to the locality convinced him. He went down to a big city where capital was just hungry to be invested profitably and organized an electric railroad to thread each of those towns. Before the headquarters of the steam road was really awake to the situation cars were running on its electric competitor. And the people of the dozen towns seemed to enjoy riding in the electric cars mightily—they were big and fast and clean. The steam road made a brave show of maintaining its service. It hauled long strings of empty coaches rather than surrender its pride; but such pride was almost as empty as the coaches.
Sooner or later any business organization must swallow false pride; and so it came to pass that an emissary of the steam road met the roving young engineer and asked him to put a price on his property. He smiled, totaled his construction and equipment costs, added a quarter of a million dollars to the total, and tossed the figures across the table. The emissary did not smile. He reported to his headquarters and the steam railroad began to fight—it was going to starve out the resources of its trolley competitor by cutting passenger rates to a cent a mile. When the trolley company met that, the railroad would cut the rate in two again—it could afford to pay people to ride on its cars rather than suffer defeat; but they would not ride on its cars, even at a lower rate. And once again the steam road’s emissary went up the branch. He sought out the trolley engineer. The trolley man was indifferent.
“Well,” said the steam-road man, “we’re seeing you.” And at that he threw down a certified check for the exact amount that had been agreed upon at their previous conference.
The trolley man did not touch the paper. He smiled what lady novelists are sometimes pleased to call an inscrutable smile, then shook his head slowly.
“What!” gasped the emissary from the steam road. “Wasn’t that your figure?”
“It was—but isn’t now!” said the engineer. “It’s up a quarter of a million now.”
“Why?”
“Just to teach you folks politeness and a little common decency,” was the reply. And the lesson must have taken hold—for the steam railroad paid the price. The result was that it again held the territory and could regulate the transportation tolls, but what a price had been paid! Two railroads occupied the territory that was a good living for but one. The trolley line, now that it has begun to depreciate and to require constant maintenance repairs, vies with the desolate branch of the steam road, which runs but two half-filled passenger trains a day upon its rails. A tax is laid upon the steam-road property—a greater tax upon the residents of the valley—for operating man after operating man is going to “skin” the service in a desperate attempt to make an extravagant excess of facilities pay its way. The trolley line has already raised many of its five-cent fares to an inconvenient six cents—the steam branch is held fast by the provisions of its charter and the watchfulness of a state regulating commission.
And in the beginning the entire situation could have been solved easily and efficiently by the comparatively modest expenditures required to electrify the steam railroad’s branch.
A good many railroads have taken forethought. The New York Central found some of its profitable lines in western New York undergoing just such electric interurban competition and a few years ago it installed the electric third rail on its West Shore property from Utica to Syracuse, forty-four miles.