The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-04-23

attempts to establish a uniform classi- | hcation for the country have failed. At present, when goods are sent from lthe territory of one Classification 10 | that of another, they are generally classed according to the Classification | of the territory in which the greater part of the hauling is done. Thus. goods are shipped from New Haven | to New Orleans under the Southern Classification. In general. in the three main Classification Lists, commodities are classed according to the amount of space they occupy. their value, and the | expense of the railroad of carrying | them.
 The traffic manager. the man who fixes the freight rate tariff for rail- road, is one of the highest paid officers of the road. He has under him an ex- pert stan of assistants who are always |, studying and testing in the matter of | rates. The traffic manager of the New Haven road, for instance, not only | must fix the rate from each, of It's 046 stations to all the other sections on | the road, but to every portion of the | country. He must be an economic bar l ometer. He cannot, in making his rate, consider merely local commercial conditions; but must look closely to the general market conditions. Nor can he be guided solely by the compe- | tition of water routes or other rail- roads, but he must consider also the competition manufacturers along his territory have to meet, and fntercity competition in the same lines of com mercial effort. If his rates discriminate | in favor of one community against an- other, the manufactures of that com Immunity fall away and the business of the road suffers. If his rates are too ] low. the roads earnings are directly affected; if too high. trade languishes in his territory and the roads earn 1 ings slump.
 In short, 1t is the business of the traffic manager to seek that elusive | thing. the right, fair and equitable
 rate. As the freight business of the
 railroads of the country comprises | seven -tenths of their earnings, .hc l importance of this task is easily seen. And the traffic manager Is not a crea- | tor. but an interpreter of economic
 conditions. He is not a free agent.
 As General k. P. Alexander writes | ("The American Railway" Scribners,
 D. 172): Tt would be a more accurate | expression to say. not that these off,
 cers Uhe traffic manager and his as- | sistants) fix the rates, for If they did 1 few railroads would ever fail, but that l they accept and announce the rates | that are fixed by conditions of compe- | tition between different markets and products, and between different rail- roads and water lines. Among these
 complex forces railroad freight agent | Is nearly as powerless to regulate
 rates as a professor of grammar is to
 regulate the irregularities of English verbs"
 The traffic manager must possess a
 rare sense of economic proportion and
 a remarkable adaptability to particu- | lar conditions. The railroad prospers
 or fails through him. In proportion to | the fairness of his rate tariffs the bus | mess of the road increases. The pros-
 perity of the freight business of the railroad is interwoven with the pros perity of the communities on its line, and the traffic managers loyalty to his
 road and his efficiency as a traffic
 manager depend on his success in
 making fair and equitable rates. His | task is the supreme puzzle of railroad
 ing, the momentousness of which is | indicated by the statement of President
 Mellen of the New Haven road, that
 the amount spent each year in ad-
 justing freight rates by any of rhe | great railroads is greater than the en- | tire expenses of the Interstate Com | merce Commission.