The mirror., 1923-05-31

railroads of this country carry 1,75O,OOO,-
600 passengers covering mileage of
forty-six billion. They run much faster
than the freight trains over which they
have the right-of-way but earn only $2.7S
for every mile they run while the freight
train earns $6.S1 for the same distance.
If we could load the voluminous amount
of freight that moves in years time into
one train of cars it woud be $4,000 miles
long. The national balance sheet of work
accomplished in a recent year showed that
1,096,O00,000 tons of freight were loaded
into cars and that the average ton was
moved sol miles. The average haul of
freight is constantly increasing because
of the steady increase in the spread be-
tween the areas of production and the
areas of consumption. In 1900 the aver
age haul of freight was around 1872 miles;
in 1911 it was 25S miles, and in 1921 it
was $50 miles. The average length haul
of perishable food products is 1,400 miles.
An example of the spread between the
areas of production and the areas of con-
sumption may be had by observing the
daily life of man, who we will say
lives in California. He gets out of bed
at the alarm of an Illinois clock, buttons
his Chicago suspenders to Detroit over
alls, washes his face with Cincinatti soap
in Cleveland wash basin and drys it
ON Rhode Island towel; he then sits up
to Portland table, eats St. Paul meat,
Minneapolis -four and North Dakota po-
tatoes cooked with Austin lard on St.
Louis cookstove burning Pennsylvania
coal. He is now ready for the days
work, so he cranks up his Moline tractor
turning Oklahoma oil and cuts forty
acres of wheat with Minnesota binder
using Saltwater twine. When bed time
comes he reads chapter from Bible
printed in Boston, says prayer written
ir Jerusalem, crawls under blanket
made in New Jersey only to be kept awake
by severe pains in his gastric regions
Juice; the chief product of his home state.
The regular schedule for perishable
freight from New Orleans to Chicago is
sixty-seven hours and half, to Kansas
City hfty-seven hours and half, to the
Twin Cities ninety-two hours and to San
Francisco one hundred and sixty-fve
hours. Freight is delivered in Buffalo
after leaving New York on the second
afternoon, in Chicago on the fourth day,
and in Kansas City and the Twin Cities
on the sixth day. During the months of
October and November of last year, pack
ing house products which were scheduled
to reach New York on the third morning
after leaving Chicago were only one day
late due to the extreme congestion of traf-
fc caused by the coal miners and rail
shopmen's strike.
The shopmens and miners strike of
last year caused some conditions which
almost proved fatal to the railroads. These
strikes threw the coal movement right in
to the midst of the fall crop movement,
yet the character ,of service rendered and
the enormous amount of traffic handled
under these conditions is amazing. Re-
turning to a report of the Car Service
Division of the American Railway Asso-
citation one finds that during the first seven
months of 1922 the railroads handled
3S,S2S, 100000 more net ton miles of freight
with 41,27O,OOOs less freight train miles
than during the corresponding period of
l914.
Getting down to single railroad, some
extraordinary performances of the New
York Central lines are worthy of note. :
One of its little jobs was to help move
the largest peach and apple crop in the
history of Western New York. This road
alone last fall moved $4,000 refrigerator