Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See https://archive.org/details/countrysneedofgr00hillrich THE COUNTRY’S NEED OF GREATER RAILWAY FACILITIES AND TERMINALS Address Delivered by Mr. JAMES J. HILL At the Annual Dinner of the Railway Business Association, New York City December 19, 1912 The subject of national transportation is many-sided. One aspect of it takes precedence in one community or in the opinion of one interest, while for others some different phase ranks all the rest. But every interest and every community should understand that the main need today of transportation and of the many activities connected with and dependent upon it is an increase of terminal facilities. It is no exaggeration to say that the commerce of the country, its manufacturing and agricultural industry, its prosperity as a whole and the welfare of every man in it who engages in any gainful occupation can escape threatened disaster only by such additions to and enlargements of existing terminals at our great central markets and our principal points of export as will relieve the congestion which now paralyzes traffic when any unusual demand is made upon them. Our natural material growth will make this their chronic condition in the near future unless quick action is taken. If you increase the size of a bottle without enlarging the neck, more time and work are required to fill and empty it. That is what has happened to the transportation business. In 1907 traffic was blocked on nearly all the principal Eastern railway lines. It took months to convey an ordinary shipment of goods from one domestic market to another. The dead-lock was broken partly by a panic that lessened the volume of business and partly by the efforts of railway managements to add, by increased efficiency, to the moving power of facilities at command. We neither anticipate nor desire perpetual business depression. While the limits of efficiency have not been reached, we know that it cannot be made to cover the demands of our growth in population and production. The records of any large city will prove this. The tonnage of the Pittsburgh District, for example, by railroad alone, grew from 64,125,000 to 152,000,000 in the ten years between 1901 and 1911. It is both practical and patriotic to ask what is to be done. First, let us examine the following table, compiled from the reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission, showing the recent growth of the transportation business in the United States: