A plan was devised for making up solid trains of live stock and of perishable freight and also consolidated trains of export freight at Western points and forwarding them on certain days of the week directly and rapidly to their destinations. Passenger trains that had been mainly competitive and such others as could be spared were dropped, resulting in the elimination during the first seven months of Federal control of 47,000,000 passenger train miles—an economy in motive power and equipment without which the successful movement of troops would have been impossible. Equipment was standardized, making possible its universal use, and freight cars were more heavily loaded. In place of the separate ticket offices made necessary by private and competitive ownership consolidated ticket offices were opened in all large cities, 101 of these doing the work of the former 564. The result aimed at was both economy and a better distribution of the passenger traffic.

The Railroad Administration saw in the inland and coastal waterways and the coastwise shipping service an important possible aid in its task of making transportation equal to wartime needs, and so mid-Western rivers and Eastern canals were brought into coöperation with railway service and several coast-wise lines of steamships were made a part of its facilities.

The rental, or return, guaranteed to the railroad companies amounted for the year approximately to $950,000,000. Upon the advice of a commission appointed to investigate the matter of wages and living costs among railroad employees, wages were raised and threatened labor trouble thereby averted, the increase amounting to between $600,000,000 and $700,000,000 for the year. In the ten months ending November 1st the railroad receipts from freight, passenger and other sources aggregated over $4,000,000,000 and were almost as large as for the whole of the previous year. The receipts were greater by 20 per cent, but operating expenses also had increased by more than $1,000,000,000, the year 1918 breaking all records for both revenues and expenses. The increase in wages, in cost of coal, and in all maintenance and operating costs was responsible for the increase of expenses, which would have been much greater but for the economies introduced. Freight rates were raised during the year to help meet the raise of wages, while a substantial increase in passenger rates was put in force both to help in that result and to discourage unnecessary passenger traffic during wartime conditions. There was a final balance against the Government, as between the net income of the roads and the guaranteed return to their owners, of between $150,000,000 and $200,000,000.

The sole purpose of the Government in taking over control of the railroads was to achieve a more efficient prosecution of the war by more rapidly forwarding our own war effort and by giving more effective coöperation to our war associates. Thus, early in the winter of 1918 the Western Allies made it known to the United States Government that unless the food promised by the Food Administration could be delivered to them very soon they could not continue their war effort. This was immediately after the Railroad Administration had taken charge of the railroads and was struggling with the freight congestion extending through the eastern half of the country, with coal shortage and blizzard weather. Every possible facility of the Railroad Administration and of the roads it was operating was brought to the emergency, and railroad officials and employees worked day and night, with the results that by the middle of March all the available vessels of the Allies had been filled with food and dispatched across the Atlantic, while at Eastern seaports were 6,000 more carloads ready for later shipment.

In carrying out this war-furthering purpose the Railroad Administration coöperated constantly with the other war administrative and war prosecuting agencies of the Government, the Food and Fuel Administrations, the War Trade and War Industries Boards, the Shipping Board, the Army and Navy Departments. Just as food, fuel, trade, industry, labor were each and all mobilized for war effort and all brought into harmonious and effective teamwork, so the transportation agencies were all bent, first of all, to the same purpose. Roads, motive power, freight and passenger equipment were devoted first to the necessities of carrying men from homes to cantonments and camps and thence to ports of embarkation and of moving food, munitions, supplies and raw materials to camps, to shipment points and to places of manufacture for war purposes. After these war needs were met whatever remained of transportation facilities was at the disposal of the ordinary commercial traffic of the country.

In order that the public might better understand the situation and in order also to better the service of the roads there was instituted a Bureau of Complaints and Suggestions which dealt with all dissatisfactions and considered suggested improvements. A very large number of the railroad employees of all kinds, efficient through years of service, joined the fighting forces of the nation or engaged in work more directly concerned with the war and so made it necessary to fill their places with untrained help. To remedy this condition training schools were established with successful results.

In the summer of 1918 all express companies were combined and placed under the management of the Railroad Administration and a little later telegraph and telephone companies, because of their refusal to accept an award of the War Labor Board, were unified and placed under the control of the Postmaster General, as, in the autumn, was done also with the cable companies.

CHAPTER XXXIII
THE WORK OF WOMEN FOR THE WAR

While the women of the United States did not enter war service by means of work in industries and auxiliary organizations to the extent of their enlistment in England, because the man-power problem had not yet, at the end of hostilities, become serious in this country, the many and varied kinds of work for the war in which they did engage was of great importance and it had the devoted and enthusiastic aid of almost every woman and girl throughout the land. From the mother who sent her sons across the ocean to the little Girl Scout who ran errands for a Red Cross chapter, they were ready for any sacrifice it should be necessary for them to make and any service they could render. Their spirit was as high, their patriotism as ardent and their wish to serve as keen as that of their husbands, fathers and brothers, and their spirit and their service were essential factors in the war achievements of America. Their spirit was always the same, but their services were of the greatest variety, being, for the greater part, such as they could render without leaving their homes. Being undertaken in addition to their usual duties in the care of homes and families, their war labors were less outstanding and much less likely to impress the superficial observer than if they had been detached from woman’s usual environment. But they were none the less essential.

The shutting down or curtailment of non-essential industries and the rapid expansion of those directly or indirectly engaged in war production shifted many women already possessing some degree of industrial training into war work plants of one sort or another, while the need for workers and the desire to give service of direct consequence led many women to enter factories who had not before undertaken industrial work. Among the latter class were many of collegiate education, or of independent means, or engaged in office work who were moved by patriotism to undertake factory work for the war. The flow of women into war industrial work increased steadily throughout the year and a half of our participation and would have been very greatly augmented if the war had continued long enough to call the men of the second draft from their situations.