Ellis O. Jones

“ I could take a set of railroad books and show the railroad was losing money on every single variety of traffic, while at the same time paying dividends on stock that represented no investment. I knew why investors and Wall Street brokers were much more indispensable to railroads than engineers, firemen, brakemen and conductors. ”

“ They cannot laugh. They cannot laugh because they know too many details. I alone may laugh because of my discovery that the more of these details we have the farther we get from the solution of the railroad problem. ”

“ There was a time when I earnestly tried to find out something about railroads. And I succeeded. I accumulated facts of all kinds.
I figured out the average cost of construction both as to small quantities and in carload lots, the cost of maintenance of lobbies, municipal, State and national. I determined the birth rate and the death rate of locomotives and the average cost per ton passenger. I read all the statistics I could get hold of showing the disadvantages of safety devices, the relative effects of rough roadbeds on occupants of the upper berths as compared with the lower berths. ”