"I know that half a dozen bridges on the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton have been destroyed and bridges on the Baltimore and Ohio have been washed away. We have lost one of our largest bridges on the main road to Chicago, at Zanesville, Ohio, and it will probably be six months before we will have another completed bridge there, although we will have some bridge there soon. We hope to have our main line to Chicago open in twenty-four hours, and our main line to Cincinnati open in the same time. We cannot tell when we will have our line to St. Louis open."
ESTIMATED DAMAGE
Conservative estimates of the damage to railroad property in the flooded Middle West, plus the loss entailed by the suspension of traffic, ranged from $10,000,000 to $15,000,000.
The entire railway system of Ohio and Indiana was practically put out of business for five days by the floods in the Middle West. To repair and replace the railways affected by this disaster, railway officials stated, would practically wipe out the surplus earnings of many railroads. In other cases dividends were threatened. The reason was, they said, that all such damage must be retrieved out of current earnings and could not be charged to capital.
As an illustration of how the railroads spend money in such an emergency, it may be said that the Pennsylvania sent one hundred and fifty expert bridge builders out West from New York in one day soon after the flood. These men received record wages; they traveled in sleepers, with special dining cars. The company was sending steam-shovels and pile-drivers on limited trains and a first-class laborer could get a private compartment quicker than could a financier.
"There will be improvements in railroading through all the districts every day from now on, but there will not be anything like a restoration of former conditions for months," said one railroad official. "It takes time to rebuild steel bridges, especially as the big steel plants have been experiencing a little trouble of their own."
FLOOD PLAYED HAVOC WITH MAILS
Storm, flood and fire in the Middle West played havoc with the United States mails. Postmaster-General Burleson announced on March 26th that the destruction wrought by the floods in Ohio and Indiana was so serious that it would be ten or twelve days before a regular mail service could be resumed with the remote districts.
Reports showed that never before in the history of the service had there been such a serious interruption to the mails on account of floods. There was practically no local service on the railroads in the territory bounded by Cleveland, Toledo, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Terre Haute and the Ohio River.
Mails to New York from points in Kentucky and Tennessee, from Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, Ohio, and all points south of the Ohio River came by way of Washington and were from five to seven hours late. The Arkansas and Oklahoma mails traveled by way of Chattanooga and Memphis.