Arizona republican., 1896-12-22
CUTTING DOWN EXPENSES.
Rigid System of Economy for
 the Santa Fe.
By Retrenchmen mt in All Depart ments, MT. HiRginson, Assistant President, Hopes to Save His Company S2OO,OOO Year.

DENVER, Dec. 21.-C. M Higgin- son, assistant to the president of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad, has started in on a system of rigid and minute economy and the saving already accomplished has astonished the other officers of the company. Dur ing his recent visit to Denver with President Ripley he gave some details regarding his methods to local rail- road manager, who was so much inn pressed that he proposed to employ the same methods on the system under his control.
 Speaking of railroad economy" said the Denver man, mo railroad has ever been managed so economically as the Santa Fe system at the present time. A railroad of 1000 or 5000 miles is such big thing that hundreds of thousands of dollars are wasted in a thousand small ways. MT. Higgin- son was instructed to save money for the Santa Fe company and he got right down to bedrock. To begin with, he noticed that on every caboose on the road, the name of the road in full and the words, way car,' were painted on each side. He figured up the cost and found that he could save $7 every time a cabOose was painted by leaving off the words, way car,' and abbreviating the name to "A, T. & s. F. Now there are about 800 cars on the system repainted every year, which makes an annual saving of s, 800.
 'The same thing applies to the loco motives. It has been the practice to shade the painted letters in the name of the road, and by leaving off the shading he saves dollar or more in the lettering of each engine. On such a system as the Santa Fe an immense quantity of lubricating and illuminat- ing oil is used annually. Heretofore there has been much waste. En- | gineers got all the oil they wanted and 1 it was used lavishly. MT. Higginson looked into the question and having ascertained just how much oil should be used on an engine in month, with ordinary use, compared it with the quantity actually suppf4ed, and found that on the entire system the waste in one year from this single item was about $4,000. He gave directions to supply engineers with oil enough to keep their machines fabricated for a definite length of time and caused the engineers to be advised that they must make their allowance of oil hold out. In the matter of Illuminating oil
 he discovered that there had been g
 waste of S2,O00 to $3,OO0 year, and rigidly restricted the supply.
 'He investigated the stationery ac count and decided that money could bt saved in that department. Tone oi
 letter heads, envelopes, way bills
 manifests, vouchers, expense bills
 freight receipts, report blanks, etc.
 etc., are used on the system every
 year. He instructed all agents to b,
 careful in making acquisitions fol
 supplies and to order no more than
 supply for one month and in this wa,
 it was possible to keep. some check o1
 the use of these things. Even in tn, matter of lead pencils, pens, blotters and matches, there was found room fol retrenchment, for such small article are often used lavishly. I can se
 where Mr. Higginson's method vii save his company at least $2O0,O ! every year I intend to adopt hi plan in detail.''