THOSE UNDIGNIFIED BOX CARS
Some methods of the men who control their movements
When Mademoiselle Susanna Vere de Vere, haughty and capricious, talcumed and beflounced, rides east at 10:00 a.m., ensconsced in green plushed parlor car comfort, think you she recognizes as she rolls along, the significance of the irregular hedge that flanks for miles her chosen pathway? Can she see in that jagged sky line of uneven box car roofs, so unlike the matched uniformity of the coral beads in her necklace—the source of the revenue which purchased the ornament? Probably not. Does Oliver Opulence across the isle, with fattening jowls and the latest periodical, attribute his golfing privileges and bank balance to the agency of the lowly freight car? No, not in the fullest measure.
The routine duties of John Jones Limited in to-day’s strenuous commercial struggle are based entirely on what freight service has done or will accomplish for them, and during conferences with their purchasing and traffic assistants, concrete equipment needs are dealt with daily but the vital usefulness of each empty car as a retainer and carrier are thought of only in an abstract way, yet they are as essential as the “G.T.R.” or three daily meals. Not until such time as the advent of an industrial calamity that will destroy them all, leaving coal man, merchant and bacon baron stranded high and dry, will shippers unanimously appreciate their individual worth, and not until then will cease the desire of corporate interests to haul their valuable loads along this or that favored highway of steel. Not a pulley in manufacture could turn without their direct aid, meagre would be the housewives’ meals and pelts again be their children’s portion if the wheels refused to whirr: then indeed, would Mademoiselle Susanna Vere de Vere understand the sudden death of Pullman palaces from commercial paralysis.
A tortuous string of seventy freight cars in motion is not what you would designate as a “harmonious whole” in appearance. They remind you of a herd of elephants with baggy pants traveling trunk to tail, nor do these incongruous, ill-at-ease assortments of traffic proletariat pick their company. The tall and the short, the lame, the halt and the blind they have always with them, and if a trig, shiny aristocrat once, costing approximately $1,200 to $1,500, (but to-day twice as much) that should be on his owner’s tracks, strays into line with this perambulating Coxey’s Army he soon gets the spots knocked off him, like a “rookie” enlisted with the regulars. They all receive awful treatment, they are side tracked, snubbed and roughly handled and though doctored, patched, likewise overburdened, they return more good for evil by feeding mice and men and machinery than any other medium. The funniest feature about these democratic go-betweens is that a loose jointed, squatty old party, rocking from side to side with the load in his protruding stomach and hardly able to keep step with the tribe, may have his “innards” stuffed with silks and satins to bedeck some slavish goddess of fashion who never appreciates what ship brought the feathers and finery to port—and such is human nature.
However, the officials of every railroad company from the president, traffic manager and “G.F.A.”, down the ladder to the journal oilers, make recompense, court the freight cars and strive mightily for the privilege of transporting their variegated contents and these are the men who make them make millions. It is a game with far reaching ramifications, a contest of competitors where brains and dispatch, service, sentiment and cold figures diversify the play. Some times it is as uncertain and exciting as draw poker with a brazen bluff cropping up, but the line that can deliver the goods usually scores and gathers in the ducats. The nets are out every hour of the twenty-four and they are out at every important geographical centre on the continent, making the sport in variety and complexion, more devoid of monotony than most mundane pursuits.
Traffic men seek every commodity from a carload of lemonade straws to a shipment of zinc dust from Japan for the Porcupine Mines, they talk on every topic from tunnel clearances to the effect of the Budget, and have interviewed specimens of the genus homo as yet uncharted by the phrenologists. They study tact and diplomacy, but few have equalled the art of a Manitoba farmer whom it has been said, kept himself in coal for the winter by making faces at the passing “C.P.R.” firemen and engineers. Customers’ wishes, siding accommodation, enclosures, cartage, part lots, classification, temperature, icing and a thousand other conditions influence the movement. Among freight men resourcefulness is an ever present adjunct in devising ways and means to enlist adherence, placate the public, overcome delay and get around an obstacle, recalling the expedient of a new shedman who was puzzled as to how he could load in the “way” car a piece of crated machinery too large for the door. He resorted to the alternative of removing the casing, then easily transferring the unwieldly consignment inside and after recrating, left the later problem to the man who would deliver the goods.
“Work well begun is half done” saith the old saw, and the sage was right. Starting on a few calls some pleasant morning with the outside atmosphere exhilarating, if your initial visit happens on one of those considerate, business gentlemen who can devote three to thirty minutes of his time to your mission, and concluding the X.Y.Z. road might be worse, promises a share of the traffic he has offering, you usually approach the balance of the day’s duties with optimism. Experiences multiply, but this feeling will probably carry you past the resentful individual who holds a little stock of your Company and refuses business because his security is temporarily dropping and it will likewise help to cement acquaintance with the cautious man who would like to but fears his couple of cars would be held up or lost should Canada and the United States drift into war. Emboldened to continue the good work, you harken to the complaints of one of your local agents, both officious and secretive—who sends all his correspondence in under separate cover and wonders why it don’t receive prompt attention when the chief is away. If diminuitive this representative might become a detriment and antagonize trade and his running mate is the agent appointed by the operating department who proves a thorn in the flesh of the Division Freight Agent by snarling, rat-terrier, dictatorial demeanor until the shipping body in unanimous resolution declare “that agent cannot leave quick enough to suit me”. Hot on the heels of the visiting “D.F.A.”, who is supposed by many to always have an easy time, bobs up an obsequious Hebrew at the period of great car shortage, with a tale of woe about a man coming upon him just as he was loading a few bales and shouting “Here, what are you doing with my car?” It developed that the blusterer could not procure a car himself and bethought him to pounce on the inoffensive rag man and purloin the coveted empty box car.
Fortified by an agreement with an anxious fresh fruit buyer, whereby he is guaranteed forty refrigerator cars in return for their haul homeward a few hundred miles, a call is made on a canned salmon distributor. This is his acknowledgment to your opening salute. “Who told you I had a car of salmon? I have no salmon and am not thinking of fish just now—this isn’t Friday”. However, he proved amenable to reason and issued a routing order.
A Grand Trunk Railway commercial agent related to me recently the following outline of a verbal castigation administered to himself by a mourner who must have been wearing indigo spectacles: “The idea of giving business to ‘U.M.C.’ lines, we’ll have no truck or trade with them. It is very indiscreet of you to dare to try; when you can compete on an equal basis with the ‘C.P.R.’ then come in”. A well intentioned, but premature overture earned one young general agent, new to his territory, an undeserved rebuke in response to his civil enquiries: “Well, I guess I hav’nt anything to say to you to-day”.