The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-03-05
WHAT IS FREIGHT RAlE?
TER TER INTO ITS D0ETHRAiNxTIoN.
The Tramc Manager is serhe Man Be- hind the Rates-ThousanAo of Ex-
 perts Ever Busy Aaj9sting Del-
 icate cad Flexib16 nAtess, st

Boston, March 4.--What is a freigh'
 rate? That question has been puzzlinl
 thousands since the plan to place thu | establishment of rates in the hands o'
 the, Interstate Commerce Commission
 has come up in Congress. What il
 all this great bother and newspaper
 agitation about?" says the man in ths
 street. to whom the matter of fixing
 the charges for the transportation of I comodities seems. in the casual consid.
 eration. something simple enough
 something that anyone familiar with
 the broad principles of railroadine
 could reduce to national system as
 infexible as algebra. something that
 must be guided by the simple facts of the weight of the commodity and the number of miles 1t is to be carried.
 But the inquisitive person will still
 ask. What is freight rater The query was put to several experienced
 railroad men. One defined 1t as ."the
 value of the commodity (namely trAns-
 portation) that a railroad has to sell"
 Another called 1t the price charged
 for transporting . commodity between two points," Such a thing seems as-
 tonishingly simple. As Q matter of
 fact rate Is as elusive as Q greaSed pig.
 l Among the highest paid railroad men
 are the freight traffic managers. On all the great roads these men have un- der them c large stan of freight ex- perts. who are constantly hunting and
 pursuing and studying and adjusting
 in the matter of rates. If the traffic
 manager is paid such high salary and
 has such an elaborate stan under him.
 obviously his word must be of a su- | preme importance to the railroad. It
 Is. He Is the man behind the rate. | His main business is to catch the
 greased pig, to fix the rate.
 A traffic manager can no moro ostab- fish a freight rate by taking into con- | sideration merely the length of the haul and the tonnage of the commod- ity than a publisher can establish the value of book by considering the number of words and the cost of bind- ing. Some of the things the trafic manager has to consider in fixing his l rates are the value of the freight, the danger of damage to 1t and the costs of such damage, the costs of service, the conditions of competition to the shipper. not only at the shipping point. but also at all other points from which competition may come, and the laws Of supply and demand. These are all in addition to considerations of tonnage and mileage.
 Certain of these considerations are simple enough. Fine furniture, for instance, is more valuable than grain and it is natural that the rate for 1t should be higher. The same tonnage of silk or of granite might be packed in freight car; but the rate for silk will be higher. because it might easily be damaged if the car was overturned. while the granite could remain In the open without injury. Crockery, in the same way, is much more manageable than pig iron. Again. . haul over a country of steep grades and many turns will entail higher rate than a straight and level run. Thus, on level regions a road may move thirty or for. ty cars more easily than fifteen or twenty could be moved on a stretch of sharp grades or hills. At times q road may have great quantities of freight moving in one direction, while empty cars are clattering back in the other. and this waste of energy must modify prices. A community that manufactures a product in wbich there Is practically no competition can pay a higher rate than one in which there is much competition. And the rate is affected by the fact that the commod- ity may be- luxury or a necessity. for naturally fit makes less difference to the shipper of jasper and onyx what rate he pays than to the man whose commodity is building stone.
 When he reaches the consideration of competitive conditions against his road, the Freight Traffic Manager has a more delicate situation to handle. For instance. on the export side the compe- tition in foreign markets of like ar- ticles coming from and going to other ports than those of the United States is Ia big complication, "as for instance" points out MT. James B. Dill of New NorHn nfSr and Baltic, India, Australia, Canada and Argentine; cotton from India, from Egypt, and perhaps, in the future, from other parts of Africa; and so on, of each and every article. in the vary ing stages of its manufacture. To such competition the railroad rate here must be receptive.
 The railroad freight rates from New York to San Francisco are lower than from New York to some intermediate points because of the competition by water. similar situation exists in the rates between Boston and Portland, Maine; and again between New York and New Orleans, and between New York and Buffalo. The fact that the Hudson River and the Erie Canal are open to navigation seven months of the year affects the railroad rates.sot only for these months. but also for the entire year. The traffic manager must make his rates high enough to ensure a profit but at the same time low enough to attract the shipper who Is willing to pay something over the water route freight rate. in consideration of the quicker transportation by rail Rail- road rates in the case of lines running from port to port on the great lakes, where the roads must compete with the great freight carrying steamships are ground down to a minimum, while on parallel roads one hundred miles in- land rates may be considered higher. Moreover, the freight traffic manager may have to consider a peculiar prob lem of competition by other roads. For Instance, from Boston to Worcester by the Boston and Albany Is a distance of forty-four miles, while it Is seventy miles by the Boston and Maine. Rates must be kept up practically the same on the two roads. in spite of the d. vergance in mileage. The freight traf- ic manager is continually confronted by odd general conditions like this in his never-ending problem of the adjust ment of rates. From Chicago to New York, twenty-One routes, ranging from 912 tos1,376 miles, compete for traffic. and between Omaha and San Francisco there are five lines, of which the short est Is 1865 and the longest 2,724 miles.
 The rate adjuster is to a large extent the arbiter between the business inter- ests in the communities through which his road passes. He must know the commercial conditions of those com rnInItfes like A hook Hia ra ta avs4o..