For the first time, the reports to this Bureau cover the division of freight movement into the seven chief commodities; the separation of revenues from Mail and Express; the distribution of expenses for injuries and damages, and the summaries of expenses for maintenance of way and equipment, traffic expenses, transportation expenses and general expenses. It is believed that with the addition of these accounts the annual report of the Bureau has become so comprehensive as to warrant its publication hereafter at an earlier date, without waiting on the publication of the official statistics for the preceding year.
This year the Bureau has received reports from 368 roads operating 221,132 miles of line or approximately 94.4% of the mileage and carrying over 97% of the traffic of the country. Last year reports were received covering 216,460 miles. The increase of 4,672 miles fairly represents the actual increase of railway mileage in the United States for the twelve months.
In presenting these statistics, the writer has endeavored to make them as colorless summaries of facts as an earnest desire to arrive at the truth permits. Such comment as accompanies them will be confined to comparisons and elucidation and not to the furtherance of any personal theories.
For the sake of brevity, the Interstate Commerce Commission will be referred to herein as the "Commission"; the Commission's "Statistics of Railways in the United States" as "Official Statistics" and "the year ending June 30th" will be implied before the year named unless otherwise specified.
The statements as to foreign railways are compiled from the latest official sources available.
Here the writer wishes to record his personal appreciation of the assistance rendered by the executives and accounting officials of the railways, whose co-operation has made this report possible. In the midst of increasing burdens imposed on them in reporting to federal and state commissions and legislatures, the requests for information from this Bureau might have seemed excusably negligible. The completeness of the report itself testifies to the cordiality with which the Bureau's work is viewed.
Acknowledgments are also due to Federal and State officials for their uniform courtesy in responding to the many requests from this Bureau, and the writer has been much gratified to receive from the chief government railway official of one foreign country the assurance that he considers its Annual Report "one of the most comprehensive and useful compilations of statistical matter relating to railways that has come into his hands."
Slason Thompson.
Chicago, April 30, 1910.