CHAPTER XXXIIRUNNING THE RAILROADS
During the first nine months of our participation in the war the railroads did their best to meet the unusual and mounting demands upon their facilities and methods. But the entire railroad system had developed under the principle of competition and, composed as it was of so many diverse parts and divergent interests, all accustomed by theory, tradition and practice to competitive methods, it presently became evident that the coördinated management and coöperative effort demanded by the emergency would be impossible under continued private control. The immense increase in traffic caused by war conditions had strained the existing system to its utmost effort, and had resulted by the autumn of 1917 in hopeless congestion of freight at eastern terminals and along the railway lines far inland. There had been such rapid increase in operating expenses that the financial situation of the railroads was very bad, and, under the general financial conditions of the time, had become a serious menace. The country was at war and its first and most pressing duty was to prosecute that war to early and complete victory, which it could not do under the paralysis that was threatening the transportation system.
For the Government to take control of the railroadswas an almost revolutionary procedure, so opposed was it to American economic theory, conviction and practice. But the problem was rapidly being reduced to the bare alternatives of governmental railroad control or the losing of the war, or, at least, its long-drawn out continuance. But one solution was possible, and, disregarding all theory and all deeply rooted custom, the President, in accordance with powers already conferred upon him by Congress, took possession and assumed control of the entire railroad system of the United States at the end of December, 1917.
Management of transportation by rail and water was thereupon put into the hands of a Director General of Railroads, who thus found himself at the head of more than 265,000 miles of railway, many times the mileage of any other nation, and of 2,300,000 employees. There were about 180 separate operating companies having operating revenues of $1,000,000 or more per year each and several hundred more with less than that yearly revenue. The Railroad Administration, which decentralized its work by dividing the country into districts, each under a regional director, began its task in the face of weather conditions without parallel in the history of the country, which had already almost paralyzed transportation and were to continue for ten weeks longer.
There was a shortage of freight cars and of locomotives and the railroads, in common with all the country, were menaced with a shortage of coal, due mainly to the immensely increased demand and the breakdown of transportation. So great was the congestion of freight that in the area north of the Potomacand Ohio Rivers and east of Chicago and the Mississippi there were 62,000 carloads waiting to be sent to their destination, while along the lines west and south of that area there were over 85,000 more carloads held back by this congestion. Nearly all of it was destined for the eastern seaboard north of Baltimore.
In addition to the usual transportation business of the country, hundreds of thousands, mounting into the millions, of soldiers had to be carried from their homes to cantonments and from cantonments to ports of debarkation and billions of tons of munitions, food, supplies and materials of many kinds had to be carried from all parts of the country upon lines that converged toward eastern ports, while the immense war building program of the nation—cantonments, camps, munition plants, shipyards and ships, warehouses, structures of many sorts—called for the transportation of vast quantities of material.
By the first of the following May practically all of this congestion had been cleared up and through the rest of the year there was no more transportation stringency, although traffic grew constantly heavier until the end of hostilities. It will illumine the conditions under which the Railroad Administration achieved its results to mention a few of its items of transportation. During the ten months ending with October it handled 740,000 more cars of bituminous coal than had been loaded during the same period of the previous year. From the Pacific Northwest there were brought, from April to November, for the building of airplanes, ships and other governmental activities and for shipment overseas, 150,000 cars of lumber. During the year 630,000 cars of grain were carriedto their destination, the increase from July to November over the previous year being 135,000 cars. Livestock movement was especially heavy, showing in all kinds a large increase. Five hundred and sixty thousand carloads of material were moved to encampments, shipyards and other Government projects. From the middle of May to the end of the year the car-record office showed a total movement of 1,026,000 cars, an average of 5,700 daily.
Comparison of the physical performance of the roads during the first ten months of 1918 with that of the similar period in 1917, reduced to fundamentals, showed an increase in the number of ton-miles per mile of road per day, in number of tons per loaded car, in number of tons per freight train mile, in total ton-miles per freight locomotive per day. The constant purpose was to keep each locomotive and car employed to its capacity and to make each produce the maximum of ton-miles with the minimum of train, locomotive and car miles.
Highly important among the achievements of the Railroad Administration was the movement of troops. From the first of the year until November 10th there were transported over the roads 6,496,000 troops, an average of 625,000 per month, the troop movements requiring 193,000 cars of all types, with an average of twelve cars to the train. Outstanding features of the troop movement were that 1,785,000 men were picked up from 4,500 separate points and moved on schedule to their training camps, that 1,900,000 were brought into the crowded port terminals for embarkation without interference with the heavy traffic of other kinds already being handled there and in the adjacent territory, that 4,038,000were carried an average distance of 855 miles, undoubtedly the largest long distance troop movement ever made. During one period of thirty days over twenty troop trains were brought each day into the port of New York. During the entire period from January to November including these huge troop movements there were but fourteen train accidents involving death or injury to the men.
To all the necessities of the wartime effort of the railroads—the enormously increased quantities of freight that had to be moved expeditiously and the transportation of troops—was added a considerable increase in the ordinary passenger traffic. Notwithstanding the earnest and repeated requests of the Railroad Administration that only necessary journeys should be taken by civilians, a request that was, indeed, very generally heeded, and the increase in passenger rates, the passenger traffic all over the country was much heavier than in any previous year, the increase amounting in the region east of Chicago to twenty-five per cent.
The efficient handling of all this enormous freight and passenger traffic was made possible by the policies that were adopted. The handling of the whole vast network of railroads as one system eliminated competition and the wasteful use of time, effort and equipment. The previous usage of the roads in accepting freight at the convenience of the consignor without regard to the ability of the consignee to receive it had resulted in the appalling congestion of terminals and lines in the autumn of 1917. The Railroad Administration based its policy upon the principle that the consignee must be considered first and that if he could not receive the freight it was worsethan useless to fill up switches and yards with loaded cars. In order thus to control traffic at its source a permit system was adopted which prevented the loading of traffic unless there was assurance that it could be disposed of at its destination. This policy proved to be the chief factor in the ability of the transportation system to meet the enormous demands upon it.
Modification of demurrage rules and regulations induced more rapid unloading of cars and their quicker return to active use. Consolidation of terminals, both freight and passenger, greatly facilitated the handling of cars. Locomotives that could be spared were transferred from all parts of the country to the congested eastern region. Coördination of shop work increased the amount of repairs upon equipment that could be done and kept locomotives and cars in better condition while new ones were ordered and work upon them speeded. Rolling stock and motive power were economized by doing away with circuitous routing of freight and sending it instead by routes as short and direct as possible, a policy which saved almost 17,000,000 car miles in the Eastern and Northeastern Region.
A plan was devised for making up solid trains of live stock and of perishable freight and also consolidated trains of export freight at Western points and forwarding them on certain days of the week directly and rapidly to their destinations. Passenger trains that had been mainly competitive and such others as could be spared were dropped, resulting in the elimination during the first seven months of Federal control of 47,000,000 passenger train miles—an economy in motive power and equipment without whichthe successful movement of troops would have been impossible. Equipment was standardized, making possible its universal use, and freight cars were more heavily loaded. In place of the separate ticket offices made necessary by private and competitive ownership consolidated ticket offices were opened in all large cities, 101 of these doing the work of the former 564. The result aimed at was both economy and a better distribution of the passenger traffic.
The Railroad Administration saw in the inland and coastal waterways and the coastwise shipping service an important possible aid in its task of making transportation equal to wartime needs, and so mid-Western rivers and Eastern canals were brought into coöperation with railway service and several coast-wise lines of steamships were made a part of its facilities.
The rental, or return, guaranteed to the railroad companies amounted for the year approximately to $950,000,000. Upon the advice of a commission appointed to investigate the matter of wages and living costs among railroad employees, wages were raised and threatened labor trouble thereby averted, the increase amounting to between $600,000,000 and $700,000,000 for the year. In the ten months ending November 1st the railroad receipts from freight, passenger and other sources aggregated over $4,000,000,000 and were almost as large as for the whole of the previous year. The receipts were greater by 20 per cent, but operating expenses also had increased by more than $1,000,000,000, the year 1918 breaking all records for both revenues and expenses. The increase in wages, in cost of coal, and in all maintenance and operating costs was responsible forthe increase of expenses, which would have been much greater but for the economies introduced. Freight rates were raised during the year to help meet the raise of wages, while a substantial increase in passenger rates was put in force both to help in that result and to discourage unnecessary passenger traffic during wartime conditions. There was a final balance against the Government, as between the net income of the roads and the guaranteed return to their owners, of between $150,000,000 and $200,000,000.
The sole purpose of the Government in taking over control of the railroads was to achieve a more efficient prosecution of the war by more rapidly forwarding our own war effort and by giving more effective coöperation to our war associates. Thus, early in the winter of 1918 the Western Allies made it known to the United States Government that unless the food promised by the Food Administration could be delivered to them very soon they could not continue their war effort. This was immediately after the Railroad Administration had taken charge of the railroads and was struggling with the freight congestion extending through the eastern half of the country, with coal shortage and blizzard weather. Every possible facility of the Railroad Administration and of the roads it was operating was brought to the emergency, and railroad officials and employees worked day and night, with the results that by the middle of March all the available vessels of the Allies had been filled with food and dispatched across the Atlantic, while at Eastern seaports were 6,000 more carloads ready for later shipment.
In carrying out this war-furthering purpose theRailroad Administration coöperated constantly with the other war administrative and war prosecuting agencies of the Government, the Food and Fuel Administrations, the War Trade and War Industries Boards, the Shipping Board, the Army and Navy Departments. Just as food, fuel, trade, industry, labor were each and all mobilized for war effort and all brought into harmonious and effective teamwork, so the transportation agencies were all bent, first of all, to the same purpose. Roads, motive power, freight and passenger equipment were devoted first to the necessities of carrying men from homes to cantonments and camps and thence to ports of embarkation and of moving food, munitions, supplies and raw materials to camps, to shipment points and to places of manufacture for war purposes. After these war needs were met whatever remained of transportation facilities was at the disposal of the ordinary commercial traffic of the country.
In order that the public might better understand the situation and in order also to better the service of the roads there was instituted a Bureau of Complaints and Suggestions which dealt with all dissatisfactions and considered suggested improvements. A very large number of the railroad employees of all kinds, efficient through years of service, joined the fighting forces of the nation or engaged in work more directly concerned with the war and so made it necessary to fill their places with untrained help. To remedy this condition training schools were established with successful results.
In the summer of 1918 all express companies were combined and placed under the management of the Railroad Administration and a little later telegraphand telephone companies, because of their refusal to accept an award of the War Labor Board, were unified and placed under the control of the Postmaster General, as, in the autumn, was done also with the cable companies.