I rode with Henry. The softness and the sunshine of a perfect day in early summer, the knowledge that the old National Pike over which we were to travel was in the pink of condition, that we were to pass across the Stone Jug bridge and through the fascinating towns of Newmarket and Ellicott City was too much to be forsworn. And we had a glorious ride—the car filled and but one stop of ten minutes at the delightful Ellicott City, where Henry changed tires. But even with this detention I was at my hotel promptly at seven o’clock.
Henry makes the round trip from Baltimore to Frederick each day of the week, excepting Sundays, when his car is for general charter. Even on rainy days Henry’s car is almost invariably filled—he manages to carry eight passengers besides himself. With a maximum earning capacity of twenty-four dollars a day and an average of only a very little less, Henry is earning a very good living for himself, even when he figures on the cost, the wear and tear, and the depreciation of an automobile which is being driven about 100 miles a day.
There are many Henry Sewalls in and around Baltimore. Maryland today claims to have the finest highroads of any state in the Union. The cross-country jitney busses have not been slow to take advantage of this. They start at regularly appointed hours from a popular-priced hotel in the heart of the city and the hours of their arrival and departure are as carefully advertised and as carefully followed as those of a steam railroad. When they are all starting out in the morning, the scene is as brisk and gay as it must have been at Barnum’s Hotel in the Baltimore of nearly a century ago, when, with much ado and gay confusion, the coaches set out upon the post roads—for Frederick, for York, for Harrisburg, for Philadelphia, and for Washington.
Yet the railroads that radiate from Baltimore have not seen fit to fight these newcomers for the traffic of from ten to fifty miles outside the city. They have made particularly serious inroads upon the earnings of one of the smaller of these steam lines, which ordinarily derives a very good share of its earnings from its suburban traffic. There are good and sufficient reasons for the big railroads to hold their peace. Take Henry Sewall’s opposition. The direct rail route to Frederick from Baltimore is a line exempted from through passenger trains and very largely given over to a vast tonnage of through freight. The officers of the road have from time to time given thought to the possibilities of increasing the local passenger service on that very line. To do so, however, on the generous plans that they had outlined among themselves would have meant either one of two things—either they would seriously have incommoded the movement of the through freight—which is a railroad’s largest source of profit—or else they would have been compelled to add a third track to that particular line. The income from the increased local passenger service would not justify the expense in either of these cases. Therefore this railroad can afford to be indifferent to Henry Sewall and his gasoline coach.
Yet there is a broader way of looking at it. Out from my old home town in northern New York there radiates today nearly as complete a system of motor-bus routes as that from Baltimore. We have almost 300 miles of superb new state highways in Jefferson County. And Watertown—our county seat—is a hub of no small traffic wheel. These busses, despite the arduous winters of the North Country—Watertown is reputed to have but three seasons: winter and July and August—keep going nearly the entire year round. They are of course patronized all that time. And the railroad which serves almost the entire North Country loses much local passenger traffic as a result of them. It is the same system that I have just quoted as being the largest taxpayer in the state of New York—the chief contributor to its $100,000,000 system of highways. Yet it, too, is not fighting these jitney busses. On the contrary, one of its high traffic officers said to me just the other day:
“We realize that the automobile is hardly apt to be a permanent competitive factor in any long distance passenger traffic—and that is the only passenger traffic in which we see any real profit. And there is a still bigger way of looking at it. Every automobile that goes into the sections of New York which we serve means a movement of high-grade freight—the tires, the gasoline, the oils, the innumerable accessories that it constantly demands, mean more freight. Besides this, if the automobile is developing the man on the farm or in the little village we shall, in the long run, profit. The development of the entire state of New York means the development of our railroad.”
And that is a platform on which no business—no matter how large or how small it is—can ever lose.
But is there not a possibility that the railroad can regain some of the traffic that it has lost, temporarily at least, to the motor car? Is it not possible that the derided branch line may not be changed from a withered arm into a growing one? Amputation has sometimes proved effective. There is many and many a branch-line railroad, which probably should never have been built in the first place, whose owners have been wise enough to abandon it and to pull up the rails. Old iron has a genuine market value. Go back with me once again to the time when the trolley began to be a long-distance affair. We have seen already how a good many steam railroad men looked with apprehension upon their branch lines—and with good cause.
For a time it did look as if the electric railroad might become a genuine competitor of the steam railroad. A good many interesting fantasies of that sort got into print. An enterprising interurban trolley company over in Illinois put on trolley-sleeping cars between St. Louis and Springfield and St. Louis and Peoria. It was said that the day was coming when a man would ride in a trolley limited all the way from Chicago to New York—a real train, with sleeping cars and dining cars and Negro porters and manicures and an observation platform. The Utica (New York) Chamber of Commerce got tremendously excited over the matter and went all the way out to St. Louis and back in a chartered car taken right out of the press of traffic in Genesee Street.