The Railway Library, 1909: A Collection of Noteworthy Chapters, Addresses, and Papers Relating to Railways, Mostly Published During the Year
History
The Railway Library, 1909: A Collection of Noteworthy Chapters, Addresses, and Papers Relating to Railways, Mostly Published During the Year
Railroads -- United States -- Periodicals
"We had in one thriving city on the Great Northern, I recall, a suit
for $20,000. A young brakeman stumbled against a pile of cinders that
it was represented the trackmen threw out from between the rails and
poured water upon it, and it froze in the winter and was solid, and
as he was running alongside of his train he stumbled and fell and
was injured--some great injury to the spine that wrecked his entire
nervous system, and we inquired and found out how the coal got there,
and our experience and education have made us suspicious; we took
the cinders to the laboratory and had them analyzed and absolutely
they were anthracite, and there never was a ton of anthracite coal
burned in a locomotive in the State of Minnesota; we followed it up
and we found that the man who brought the suit--a professional suit
bringer--had, with a brakeman and his own son, taken the cinders from
his own office and piled them there and poured water on them. Now, I
speak of that just as an illustration of some applications of that
Golden Rule.
COMPARES RAILWAY COST.
"Your future growth will depend on yourselves hereafter, as it has
largely depended upon your own efforts in the past. The commerce
going to and from the Pacific Coast cities by the sea is being
largely carried in foreign bottoms. There was a time when the
American nation was a nation of seafaring men, but that does not
apply any longer, and I am sorry that that is so. I believe that the
people of the United States, I believe that the genius of the country
is just as able to carry upon the sea as upon the land. As matters
stand today, any bay or inlet where a foreign flag can force its way
inland into our country they can call to us to drop the bundle and
they take it from us and we can't help ourselves. Now, we ought to be
able to help ourselves, for on the land we have so far surpassed the
others that there is no comparison.
"In Great Britain their average railway cost is $234,000 per mile.
In the United States it is a little less than $60,000 per mile. In
Germany it is about $110,000, in France about $140,000, in Austria
about the same. Now let us see what they do with their two hundred
and thirty-four thousand dollar machine and their one hundred and
ten and one hundred and forty. In Great Britain they move an average
of five hundred thousand ton miles to the mile of road at a cost
of $2.16 for every hundred miles. In Germany they move about seven
hundred thousand ton miles at a cost of a trifle under $1.36 for
every hundred miles. In France 450,000 ton miles at a cost of $1.40
for every hundred miles. In Austria the cost is $1.50 for moving a
ton of freight a hundred miles, and in the United States the cost is
74 cents and a fraction.
AGAINST SHIP SUBSIDY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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