Bisbee daily review., 1907-08-30


 story about a freight cars-box cars flat cars. plain. ordinary, everyday freight cars. It is the freight car that makes the Pullman possible. It was the freight car that last year earned fifty-five millions of dollars for the New York Central. as against an earn ing of twenty-eight millions to the credit of the passenger car. It was the freight car that last year earned one hundred and ten millions for the stockholders of the Pennsylvania, as against an earning by the passenger car of thirtyone millions. And 1t is because the homely freight car means so much to the big systems that a new rule has gone into effect whereby railroad that holds the freight cars : Of another will have to pay a penalty Sf 50 cents a day for every day it Goes so, instead of $1 day after the i first thirty, as heretofore.
 The new rule is like an improved time lock on a big bank safe. It dis courages the car thief The rule forces him to the conclusion that it is cheap CT to play square than to tinker with time locks. This story of the confis- cated freight car belongs to no partic- ular place or class. It concerns the flat car loaded with structural steel in San Francisco. the boX-car rushing across the continent with oranges Tor New York, the empty gondola on a wharf in Boston. There is hardly a person that does not enter into the story in some way or another. The sufferers are not confined to the big contractors putting up skyscrapers in lower Manhattan or the Southern mill master who sees his fabrics lying idle in his warehouses because he cannot obtain cars to bring them to market. The burden falls as well on the owner of Newport villa who cannot open his ballroom because the decorations have been delayed in transit and the new arrivals in the Bronx sitting mis- erably in an unfurnished flat because their household gbods are delayed somewhere between New York and their old hoIne in Chicago
 Railroad men do not like the term ear thief" As they saw it, one rail road may take the freight cars of an- other and use taem for an indefinite time. As they p1t it, the cars are absorbed" or detained or icon. fiscated''-not stolen. Yet years have been spent in devisi1g rules to eEl the abuses and cause the pulses of traffic to beat more steadily. There are penalties, demands, elaborate methods of detecting delinquents, and finally the boycott that spells ruin to the offender-therein lies the TO- nance of the stolen car.
 To fully comprehend the signifi- canoe of the stolen freight car it is only necessary to picture the ebb and flow of traffic through the country day by day. A New Yorker takes a fast express train at Grand Central station for Chicago. He passes scores of freight trains quite unheeded. It is all so much a matter of course that he cannot realize that the locomotive that draws him and the grimy. snos.- ing engine which pulls the freight trains travel on an average, 33, ,{05 miles in year. In other words, Y the engine could go straight ahead. it would journey around the world and retrace the journey nearly half way back in 365 days. Every mile he travels means at least a quarter dol lar spent in the engine cab. Every fifteen miles covered means ton of ccsi.
 Pullman. the New Yorker believes that the railroads passenger traffic is the only part of the road that is worth while As a matter of fact, the freight and passenger trains are acting over again the old fable of the tortoise and the hare The slow moving freight takes a siding to let the limited express pass. The freight train makes the passengers speed possible. Freightless, and with only the passenger traffic to depend on, there is hardly railroad in the coun- try that would not quickly go to a bankruptcy court within a year.
 On the New York Central system, with it's $500 miles of tracks, more than one half of the income comes from the freight, approximately a quarter from it's passenger service, and the rest fEom carrying the mails the express service and miscellaneous charges. The figures are freight in- come, S54,S24 ,2S2; passenger income, | S2S, S,56S,77S. total earnings, S92 .0S9.- 76S. Every mile of road yields $14.- 547 in the freight service, s9,S99.59 in the passenger, mail and express trains combined. The passenger pays 5S cents on the average.
 The Pennsylvania Railroad east of Pittsburg puts the case even more concisely. The 3,Sl9 miles of road 1 east of Pittsburg and Erie and its equipment cost $250, 1909, ITS. or $65, | era mile. The gross earnings of I
 SS2 Of this, s31 ,231 900, or 20 per cent, was received from passengers; i sl09, ,960 ,SSS. or 73 per cent from freight. The rest came from express