Q. What is your particular business in connection with the railroad?—A. I have charge of the local finances and accounts of the company.
Q. You are not prepared to answer technically, then, questions that might be propounded to you, as has been developed in the examination by Mr. Catchings, about the cost of the operation of a car and the cost of the transportation of a ton of freight, passengers, etc?—A. I am as well prepared to answer the question as anyone. There is no one, as I said before, who knows what the cost is or can tell you definitely, simply for the reason that it is utterly impossible to fix the cost as between passengers and freight, for instance.
Q. What is the use of our investigation, then?—A. I am here before this commission; my time here, perhaps, represents ten dollars or ten cents. What am I going to charge it to? In this case perhaps to mail. In many expenses of railroads there are questions impossible to determine as to what expenditures should be charged to. You may make, as the General has, a comparison between the Flint and Pere Marquette, what he thinks is an approximate statement of cost; it may be more, and it may not. For instance, the Government of the United States requires that the mail shall be carried on fast trains—
Q You are going into quite an argument. You ought to be able to tell what it cost to haul the mail.—A. No, sir; I can not.
Q. You can not tell?—A. No, sir; nobody can tell.
Q. Could not your General Manager give us some information on that subject?
Mr. Chandler. He can tell how much their gross receipts are and what the gross expenditures are, and he can tell whether their whole business is done at a profit or not; but I do not understand that the railroads can subdivide their receipts and expenditures so as to tell whether any particular branch of it actually pays a profit or not. The previous witness undertook to do it, and I noticed, as he went on, that it was mere guesswork. Mr. Kirkman says he never has done it.
The Witness. I want to say, Mr. Loud, that this question of division of cost has been up before railroads and experts for forty years, and here is what the chief engineer of the Pennsylvania says in regard to it. He estimates that the cost, for instance, of maintenance of track and machinery increases with the square of the velocity.
By the Chairman:
Q. How much do you charge this maintenance of way?—A. What is the wear and tear of machinery and track from the passage of a particular train? No one can tell nor guess approximately. In an examination of this question I gave it, probably, the most exhaustive study that I have given any subject in my life, because so much depended on it—I searched all the records of Scotland and England and of the United States to determine, but unavailingly—