The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1909-12-09
RAILROAD NEWS.
Men Who Handle Freight Pay
Railway Bills.
Freight Business Amounted to
Two Billion Last Year.
NO BRASS BUTTONS.
But the Freighters Are Real
M0neymakers for Roads.
Other Items of General Interest
in Railroad Circles.

Hats off to the man who handles the
freight. He wears no brass buttons,
rides in no vestibuled Pullmans, doesn't
get on to the first pages of the news
papers. and has no handsomely illus
trated booklets printed advertising the
swiftness and luxury of his trains, said
Henry M Hyde the other day He can
afford to leave all that sort of thing to
his brothers of the passenger service
For he-the freight man-is the chap
who pays the bills. In the last year.
while the passenger business was col
lecting $500, 900 from the public, the
freight man poured golden flood of
nearly two billions into the railroad
strong box. But for him there would
| for great terminals, long tunnels
through the mountains, and rock bal
lasted double tracks over the plains.
The conductor of the flyer boots
polished. nails manicured, uniform
spotless, is doubtless handsomer But
Mike and Tom and Johnny in their
overalls and blue jeans are the men
who make eighteen hour trains posi-
| BILE. When it comes to real railroaJing
the passenger people are ladylike anna
tours. The freight men are the real
thing.
Altogether there were $4,000, 600 pas
sengers who took railroad trips last
year. In the same time 1900 100000 tons
of freight went travelling. The average
passenger journeyed 80 miles, The aver
age ton of freight was hauled PAP miles.
Freight trains, in the aggregate. COW
cred almost ten times as many miles as
passenger trains. And tina. gives the
passenger service credit for all the
bodied freight man would laugh at
Freight Service Necessity.
Passenger service is a convenience
and luxury. Men can ride horseback
or walk. if that is necessary. But when
it comes to moving steel, and -four and
pianos, and lumber, ana hard coal it
takes freight cars, and lots of them.
The freight train is real agent of
civilization. It is the real creator of
wealth. After the explorers and the
pioneers and the missionaries have
worked for years and made little i'm
preston. the opening of a good, active
freight line will in a year turn howl
ing wilderness into a center of sweet
ness and light.
In 1860 a total of $4,000 tons of freight
was laboriously carted over the noun
tains to the Pacific coast along the old
Santa Fe trail Today, running along
practically the same route, single
freight train carries 1,500 tons of
freight straight through to San Fran
cisco. In IL hours a single road will
haul as much over the mountains as 1t
took II months to transfer so years ago.
And when it comes to real head work
and good management, the passenger
men are mere children in comparison.
Here's a single freight yard more than
five miles long. All told, it has a couple
of hundred miles of switches to be oper-
ated Into that yard on busy day $50
big freight trains may run, bringing
5000 freight cars, loaded with millions
of dollars worth of goods, bound east
and west and north and south Every
one of those trains may have to be split
up into it's units and the cars bound in
the same direction united again into
new trains. The man who has his work
to do is the yardmaster, and his job is
one that would drive any passenger
person into an insane asylum.