Our Railroads To-Morrow Part 22

The Lehigh Valley Station, but slightly enlarged in its head-house accommodations, can easily be brought to meet the necessity of the other regional systems entering Buffalo--those of the New York Central, the Michigan Central, and the Pennsylvania. For it so happens that the present train-shed of the new Lehigh Valley pa.s.senger terminal lies parallel with and immediately adjacent to the tracks and platforms of the old Exchange Street Station of the New York Central. To make the head-house (the pa.s.senger, baggage, mail, and other facilities) of the Lehigh Valley Station accommodate the trains that now enter Exchange Street would hardly involve more than a rearrangement of these last groups of tracks and platforms, at an astonis.h.i.+ngly low cost and with an astounding degree of operating saving--this last a factor which seemingly enters but little if at all into the calculations of the men who design our dazzling new American railroad stations.

Economy enters into the operation of a pa.s.senger terminal as it does into that of a freight terminal--and what can be accomplished in this last direction we already have seen. The upkeep of the pa.s.senger, baggage, and mail facilities of a railroad station--even one upon a comparatively simple scale--will come to a large figure in the course of a twelvemonth.

Rochester is but seventy miles distant from Buffalo. It is entered by six steam railroads, which occupy five separate and distinct pa.s.senger stations. McAdoo brought this down to but four, yet recently the Pennsylvania decided that it could no longer share the occupancy of the handsome and commodious station of the Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburg, so it reopened its former individual pa.s.senger station, for three trains in and three trains out each day. We do not have to go as far as Vancouver to see the essential waste of the pride of the compet.i.tive system.

Rochester is a city of a little more than 300,000 persons. Two stations, anyway--two of the existing stations--and possibly but one--the excellent new station of the New York Central--would serve all the pa.s.senger needs of both her steam and her interurban electric railroads, and with no more than the slightest trackage rearrangement. And at an operating economy, as well as an economy to the purse and time of the average traveler who must cross the city from one road to another, that is not capable of quick estimate.

Cleveland has just embarked upon an extravagant union station project which, after all is said and done, is not to be a union station. For some of the more sensible of the railroads who come to her have refused to be beguiled by so obvious a real-estate scheme and one involving huge expenditures at the very time when the average American railroad is pleading poverty and reducing its expenditures because of that plea. The huge capital expenditure of that proposed new Cleveland pa.s.senger-station might be saved in a large part, and still that enterprising city be given a fine pa.s.senger gateway that would express worthily her great pride and her great wealth.

I have always had a feeling that with foresight--and _an abolition of foolish compet.i.tive pride_--the huge capital expenditure already made and yet to be made upon the new Union Station of Chicago could have been very largely saved by an enlargement and an adaptation of the existing pa.s.senger terminals of that city. The Northwestern for instance has a head-house out of all proportion to the train-house. A second train-house could easily have been built alongside of the present one without the real necessity of adding to the main frontage of the station upon Madison Street. Unquestionably new and much larger stations were and still are needed both at Dearborn Street and upon the lake-front. But these new stations will be needed even after the completion of the so-called Union Station, at an expense now estimated at well in excess of $50,000,000.

These other stations could have been built to a larger size without the expenditure of the $50,000,000, and the Chicago Union Station permitted to become a matter of history.

It is useless, it seems to me, to stress too heavily the wage of the American railroad employee when gross capital expenditures of this sort have been made and are continuing to be made; or the rate of the traffic return. Our railroads have been far too greatly burdened by these gewgaws.

Once in a while, of course, a station comes along, like the new Grand Central Terminal in New York, which is the fruition of a positive genius.

If all of our pa.s.senger terminals had the economic strength of the new Grand Central it would not have been necessary to write these paragraphs.

And I do not think either that it would have been necessary to raise the pa.s.senger-fares far from their before-the-war levels. But when one balances one Grand Central against a baker's dozen of Was.h.i.+ngton Terminals (with that overhead and operating cost of thirty-four cents a pa.s.senger) he sees at once the genuine value of that one Grand Central.

I can have no quarrel with the fine civic spirit that demands that the railroad station of the modern American city shall be the full architectural expression of its progress and its growth--in truth a city gateway. The exquisite monumental concourses of the Pennsylvania Station, the new Grand Central Terminal, and that at Was.h.i.+ngton have not been lost upon me, while the somber but ecstatic beauty of the interior of the Kansas City Station--to say nothing of the wonderful toys in Fred Harvey's drug-store there--gives me a new thrill each time that I pa.s.s through it.

But it does seem that we might sometimes use a little more sense and judgment in the planning of these stations. Monuments are quite all right in their way, if they do not cost too much to build and to maintain. Again let me ill.u.s.trate.

When we were considering the electrification of the standard steam railroad in the United States in general, and the Boston suburban zone in particular, I called attention in a brief word to the fact that electrification would vastly increase the pa.s.senger capacity of the two great terminals of that city--South Station and North Station. I did not stop then to tell in detail of what it might mean to both of those two civic gateways, already badly crowded in the rush hours of the morning and the evening; of how it might avoid for twenty-five years or more the somewhat imminent present-day necessity of tearing them down and replacing them with far larger stations, at a huge capital expenditure. In South Station the fact that its builders of a quarter of a century ago had the wisdom and the foresight to place underneath the train-shed and head-house loop terminal tracks for future electric operation (tracks and platforms which have never been used and whose very existence is not even suspected by the majority of the people who use the station daily) might defer this necessity. At North Station the time for imperative and radical enlargement is close at hand, unless warded off by an electric installation upon most if not all of the many suburban lines that now enter that busy place.

Also in these chapters have I likened New England, in both its topography and its traffic problems, to Old England. Now may I go further and see in Boston fairly accurate replica of London, not alone in appearance--and that it is, with its Christopher Wren churches, its medley of old-time streets, its little parks and squares, and its general appearance of staid sobriety--but in its own local problems of transport. Into London come the tens of thousands each business day by surburban train, both steam and electric. Yet London has no station in size comparing with the North or the South Stations of Boston. Even Liverpool Street and Waterloo, which come the nearest, fall far short in mere physical bulk, though not in train operation. Yet I am thinking of Victoria--that marvel of conciseness and terminal operation.

Victoria--both of the stations that rest side by side and share the name in common--seemingly is no larger than the Broad Street or Market Street Station in Philadelphia. The combined station certainly is not as large as Broad Street, barely larger than Market Street. Yet in each business day more trains arrive and depart from its train-sheds than either at Broad Street or at Market Street.

How is this done? In the beginning the British railway man does not feel that when he builds a railway terminal he has to provide a great congregation place for the people. There is of course at great interchange points in the heart of this country--such as Kansas City or Atlanta or Cincinnati or Omaha or St. Paul--a real need for abundant waiting-room capacity where through travelers may be properly housed between their trains--for a number of hours, if need be. At more strictly terminal or near-terminal points such as Philadelphia or New York or Boston this necessity largely disappears, and the s.p.a.ce that is taken by huge waiting-rooms can better be used by more essential station facilities.

Victoria Station does not exceed ten platform-tracks in width. To handle more than 300 trains a day within this limited capacity means the very highest efficiency in train handling. Not only does it mean the maximum of prompt.i.tude in loading and unloading the trains but an adaptation of their schedules wherever possible so that an incoming train bringing pa.s.sengers into the station is used for a regular run taking other pa.s.sengers out again, and so the necessity of an "empty movement" into the storage-yards and back again is avoided. Moreover the very arrangement of the tracks and platforms themselves leads to efficiency in these things.

When but a few years ago it became necessary to enlarge radically the capacity of the side of Victoria Station belonging to the London, Brighton, and South Coast railway the engineers found that they would have to think twice before they accomplished their purpose. The station was but six tracks in width, divided into two groups of three tracks each--two of these alongside the platforms, with a middle one reserved for the switching of the locomotives backwards and forwards. It was not possible to increase this limited width. Upon the one side stood an important through street of London--Buckingham Palace Road--and upon the other the equally immovable twin-station of the Southeastern and Chatham railway.

Therefore the engineers did the one thing possible, short of the enormously expensive job of double-decking the station--they lengthened it, and at a comparatively low cost doubled its capacity.

To-day two long trains, standing one behind the other upon the same track, may load and unload their pa.s.sengers at the same time, and without the slightest confusion or difficulty. The high-level platform (the station-platform at the same height as the floor of the train), which Parliament forced upon the British railways many years ago, is a tremendous help to quick entraining and detraining. Why it has not been more universally adopted in this country it is hard to understand. It is in successful use both in the Grand Central and the Pennsylvania Stations in New York, but at very few other points. And this despite the fact that in order to serve these two highly important stations virtually all the Pullman equipment in the country now has been adapted to high-level platform use. Yet only the Pennsylvania has had the courage and the vision to adapt this very sensible form of platform to its intermediate stations.

It already has become a standard upon that great railroad.

That the adoption of a regional railroad system for this country would bring this and a hundred other needed improvements--both greater as well as smaller than these of the economical pa.s.senger terminal--I am not attempting to argue. But I do believe that the regional railroad system, with its setting of the compet.i.tive phase in its proper position in relation to the conduct of our roads, would be a powerful factor in bettering present conditions, and in a way that would bring wholesale operating economies all the way across the land. This, in turn, should be translated most promptly to the public in two ways--lowered rates and bettered service. Here then is always the nub of the situation; railroad efficiency accomplished through operating efficiency, not necessarily wage reduction but reduction in other costs as well, as long as they may be accomplished without detriment to the service. The service upon our American railroads has long since been reduced to a point where their actual efficiency and value as public servants have begun to be impaired.

From this time forward we must begin to puzzle out how their service may be bettered, and there is no better way for this than that which lies within a real correlation of their activities.

CHAPTER XVI

THE UNITED STATES RAILROAD

To a.s.sume infallibility or even great accuracy in sketching a regional railroad plan for the United States would be of course ridiculous. We have just had the mere suggestion of twenty-five or twenty-six railroads, some of them non-compet.i.tive monopolies and others quite completely compet.i.tive, in form at least, which is about all that our so-called compet.i.tive railroads are to-day. Still the great transport G.o.d of our transport world apparently must continue to be appeased. Form seems to please him. We shall grant him that. But in a national transportation plan which begins to a.s.sume any real form of high organization we shall not permit the component parts of it to indulge in internecine struggle. It is too expensive business.

So probably we shall begin the operation of our regional plan, which you already have seen outlined geographically, by first taking our thousand or more separate railroads--nearly 265,000 miles of line--and thrusting them together into a great single organization. This we might easily call the United States Railroad, even though it is to be in one sense not a railroad, from an operating point of view at any rate. For once we have centralized our great rail transport plant, we shall at once begin to decentralize it. We shall make many railroads of it. We shall follow in the main the scheme used by those vastly successful private organizations, Standard Oil and the Bell Telephone, and the equally successful government inst.i.tution, the Federal Reserve Bank, and set up regional and highly autonomous separate organizations. I began my planning of the regional railroad for this country with the number of separate units fixed at about the same as of these three organisms that I have just mentioned--approximately an even dozen. Gradually I found, however, that in as intricate or as extensive a business as railroading in the United States twelve or fourteen or even sixteen regional companies would not be enough. Perhaps twenty-six is not even enough. After all, that is but a detail. What we really are seeking now is the proper method of organization.

Our regional railroads, recentralized and each provided with a president and other directing and operating officers extremely local and sensitive to the territory which they would serve, would have left something behind them in the central organization which was created primarily for the business of rearrangement. For having transacted that immediate business the United States Railroad still would continue to exist as a permanent body, with its headquarters either in New York or in Was.h.i.+ngton. Its modus operandi would be the virtually continuous sessions of vice-presidents designated from its const.i.tuent railroads--one vice-president for each road, especially chosen for this purpose--together with the occasional meetings of the presidents and other executive officers. These men would form a congress whose powers along almost all phases of our national railroad would be virtually supreme.

Its greatest power--its greatest responsibility, if you please--would be the proper financing of our railroad structure. That problem is far too big to-day to be handled locally, even in the locality which we know as Wall Street, New York. And Wall Street has shown itself capable of taking care of some pretty large financing problems. Before we are done with our railroad financing, it may be necessary for no less a hand than Uncle Sam's to take hold of it, either by a.s.suming the bonded indebtedness of the roads and against this issuing his own bonds at a slightly higher rate of interest, or else by direct and complete owners.h.i.+p of the carriers.

I am not going into this vexing and highly controversial phase of the railroad question in America further than to say that I do not feel that this country is ready yet to accept government owners.h.i.+p and operation--particularly the latter. Please note that I have differentiated between these two. It is not often done. And yet in that very shading of difference may yet rest the solution of our entire railroad problem. At the conclusion of this book I shall refer to this again.

According to a man who has made a critical inspection of the outstanding securities of our American railroads and of whose ability and impartiality there can be no doubt whatsoever, these are represented chiefly in about ten billion dollars' worth of perfectly good bonds and about five billion dollars' worth of good stock, at least normally returning dividends. About $100,000,000 might be written off in poor bonds, that either are fraudulent or else never should have been issued, while there are four or five billion dollars par value of stock certificates which to-day may be regarded as fairly hopeless. Out of all these securities three quarters would a.s.say, which after all does not compare so badly with the estimate of value of from $18,000,000,000 to $20,000,000,000 which the railroads themselves place upon their properties.

These "good securities" in normal time average a return of from $750,000,000 to $800,000,000 each twelvemonth. Suppose that our Uncle Samuel, heeding what seems to be a rather certain voice of his people at this time to avoid both government owners.h.i.+p and government operation, should arrange that the "good" stock of the present railroads be turned in for that of the United States Railroad, which might either keep the stock issue in its own name or else at the proper moment divide it pro rata between its const.i.tuent regional roads? This certainly would not be either government owners.h.i.+p or government operation.

Upon the stock portion of this trade our good Uncle Samuel would arrange to guarantee a 4 per cent. dividend annually (possibly 4-1/2 per cent.) and try to standardize and pay a 6 per cent. one. That sounds a little different from the Transportation Act, does it not? As a matter of fact, it is hardly conceivable that even a 4-1/2 per cent. guarantee would ever become a serious drain upon the United States Treasury, while the fact that the stock end of the capitalization of this railroad which is not a railroad would never be permitted to exceed more than 35 or 40 per cent.

of the whole would be a real help in the situation.

If the roads that belonged to the United States Railroad found themselves earning more than 6 per cent. upon the entire property a tripart.i.te even division could be arranged of the excess between their stockholders, their employees, and the Government. It is hardly conceivable, however, that such a condition would long continue without a demand arising for a downward revision of the rates. It is a question that would settle itself rather automatically most of the time.

The stock distribution of the new centralized company of the holders of the existing stock-certificates of the present companies would be in the ration of the new standard dividend of 6 per cent. to be paid by the U. S.

R. R. to the dividends maintained by the present companies for an average period of a certain number of years before the adoption of the scheme.

Thus the stockholders of the Santa Fe railroad who have been receiving 6 per cent. would probably have a chance to make an exchange upon even terms; those of the Northern Pacific, who have been receiving 7 per cent.

would gain one and one sixth shares of the new stock for one share of the present. New York Central stockholders would have five sixths as many shares of the new stock as of the old.

"Do you think that many stockholders would be willing to exchange their certificates upon this basis?" asks my querulous old railroad friend from out of the West.

I do not _think_ anything of the sort. I believe that they would have to form many lines to the right of the security-holders who could not get to the places of transfer quickly enough. Uncle Sam holding the bag? Uncle Sam's credit back of our transportation system? Let me ask you, Old Railroader, if you have any fondness for Liberty bonds in your own strong-box?

While the stock would be called in and reissued, the bonds of the American railroads--between ten and eleven billion dollars' worth and returning an average of 4.30 per cent. during the period of government control--would be called in, princ.i.p.al and interest, by the United States Treasury, and, as we have just seen, new government bonds issued against them--at just enough lower interest to make the thing a profitable banking transaction for our Uncle Sam.

The essentials of this plan are not my own. They are those of the Hon.

George W. Anderson of Ma.s.sachusetts, a most hard-headed and far-seeing jurist, who has had a remarkable experience in transportation law, including some years as a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission. I am putting it forward here for just what it is worth--nothing more. It is most interesting, and seemingly most workable. Judge Anderson and I differ, however, in one large essential. Trained Federal officer that he is, he sees centralization as the one panacea for the situation, which is a characteristic att.i.tude of the Federalist, from the days of Alexander Hamilton until these.

I believe myself that the United States Railroad, should it be found necessary to incorporate it, should be made a Federal corporation and nothing else. The State charters of the present-day railroads would be made virtually null and void once the roads ceased to operate as separate concerns. It is possible, I will admit, that litigation might arise in regard to this delicate point. But in the steady decline of States' rights in all our political life I can have no great anxiety as to the final outcome of such litigation. Apparently the Federal Government and not the separate State has the power to-day.

I hold myself that once the centralized organization has been created--and I shall refer to its opportunities again in a moment--prompt decentralization is quite as essential to the situation. The Boston and Albanys, the Lackawannas, the Bessemers, all the other successful small railroads of our present-day situation arise to bid me go very easily indeed when I suggest any national centralization of actual operation or of the actual relations.h.i.+p between the carriers and their workers. And Sentiment also crooks a warning finger. I know what she means by her glance.

It would be pathetic, nay tragic, to remove an American railroad name like the Pennsylvania or the Northwestern, to try to paint out the red cars of the one line and the yellow ones of the other. New York Central is too good a name to be sc.r.a.pped. The same is true of Baltimore and Ohio. How can we prate of morale and then dare to take from under it the things that are its chief support? After all does sentiment count for nothing? And tradition? Have we not possibly become a little too materialistic a nation?

On the other hand Southern Pacific means but little to-day as the name of a railroad which reaches as far north as Portland, Oregon, and as deeply into the heart of the country as Ogden. The Californian railroad has a sense of dignity that ought to appeal to every man of that great State.

Such a sense too has the Puget Sound Lines.

What's in a name?

Everything. Sentiment. Tradition. Morale. Progress. Dollars and cents, if you will force me to be materialistic.