Thomas Curtis Clarke

“ What the infant electricity has in store for us it would be rash to predict, but for locomotives its steps have been thus far weak and uncertain, and when we want a giant of steel or a race-horse of iron our only sure reliance is steam. This is the breath of life to the locomotive, which is inhaled and exhaled to and from the cylinders, which act as lungs, while the boiler fulfils functions analogous to the digestive organs of an animal. A locomotive is as dependent on the action of its boiler for its capacity for doing work as a human being on that of his stomach. ”

“ Anyone who will stand close to a line of railroad when a train is rushing by at a speed of forty, fifty, or sixty miles an hour must wonder how the engine and cars are kept on the track; and even those familiar with the construction of railroad machinery often express astonishment that the flanges of the wheels, which are merely projecting ribs about 11/8 inches deep and 11⁄4 inches thick, are sufficient to resist the impetus and swaying of a locomotive or car at full speed. ”

“ He instantly put on more steam, but with unerring judgment opened the valve just far enough and no more.
But the terrible cloud constantly hanging over the engineer and fireman of a fast train is the chance of encountering an obstacle which cannot possibly be avoided, and which leaves them no alternative but to jump for their lives, if, indeed, it does not take away even that. To the fact that this cloud is no larger than it is, and that these men have sturdy and courageous natures, must be attributed the lightness with which it rests upon them. ”

“ With the best will in the world he cannot make his annual reports give a thoroughly clear idea of what has been done. Is he to be forbidden to buy stock when it seems too low, or sell it when it is high? Shall we refuse him the right to invest in other property which he sees will advance in value? Apparently not; and yet, if we allow this, we open the door for some of the worst abuses of power which have occurred in railroad history. The line between good faith and bad faith in these matters is a narrow one, and the average conscience cannot be trusted to locate it with accuracy. ”

“ With it a thousand men, contributing a thousand dollars each, compete on equal terms with the millionaire. Its doors are always open to any who may wish to share its privileges or its prosperity, and no man is denied equal participation according to his means and inclinations. It is the greatest "anti-poverty" invention which has ever been produced, and the most democratic. But, for all that, instead of possessing the unbounded power usually ascribed to it, no creature of God or man is so helpless as a corporation before the so-called great tribunal of justice, the American jury. ”

“ An engineer who makes a specially quick trip feels proud of his engine, and of the honor of having been chosen for an important run, and he shares with the passengers the exhilaration produced by such a triumph of science and skill in annihilating space; but in the matter of credit to himself for experience and judgment, patience and forethought, he feels and knows that many a trip in his every-day service is worthy of greater recognition. Many a runner has to urge his engine, day after day, with a load twenty-five per cent. ”

“ The quantity and variety of articles used and consumed in the operation of a railroad are so great that it is a measure of much economy to concentrate all purchases into the hands of a single purchasing agent, rather than to allow each department to purchase for itself. This agent has nothing to do but to study prices and markets. His pride is enlisted in getting the lowest figures for his road, and the large amount of his purchases enables him to secure the best rates. ”

“ The passenger-train brakeman differs from the freight trainman chiefly in the fact that he must deal with the public, and so must have a care for his personal appearance and behavior, and in the fact that he is not a brakeman, the universal air-brake relieving him of all work in this line. His chief duties are those of a porter, though the wide-awake American brakeman, with an eye to future promotion to a conductorship, maintains his dignity and is not by any means the servile call-boy that the English railway porter is. ”

“ Many a mile of railway over which we travel now at the highest speed has been a weary problem to the engineer of location, and he has often accomplished a really greater success by securing a line which seems to closely fit the country over which it runs without marking itself sharply upon nature's moulding, than if he had with apparent boldness cut deep into the hills and raised embankments and viaducts high over lowlands and valleys. ”

“ There are no public offices which are so emphatically "public trusts" as those whose duties comprise that of handling the correspondence of the people, because upon the proper and skilful performance of that duty depend—to a far greater degree than in the care of any other function accomplished through government agency—the business and social welfare of the entire community. The effects of ignorance, carelessness, and dishonesty in any other branch of the public service, although to be deplored, are not to be compared to those which follow the existence of such evils in the Post-Office. ”

“ The passenger-train conductor has in many respects the most difficult position in the railroad ranks. He should be a first-class freight conductor and a polished gentleman to boot. But in his long apprenticeship on a freight train he has very likely been learning how not to fulfil the additional requirements of a passenger conductorship. In that service he could be uncouth and even boorish, and still fill his position tolerably well; now he feels the need of a life-time of tuition in dealing with the diverse phases of human nature met with on a passenger train. ”

“ The progress in the construction of cars has been fully as great as in that of locomotives. If the old stage-coach bodies on wheels are compared with a vestibule train of to-day the difference will be very striking. Most of us who are no longer young can recall the days when sleeping-cars were unknown, when a journey from an Eastern city to Chicago meant forty-eight hours or more of sitting erect in a car with thirty or more passengers, and an atmosphere which was fetid. ”

“ In nothing is the want of unity so distinctly and mischievously obvious as in the power of each corporation to make rates independently. It may not only make its own local rates at discretion, but it may join or refuse to join with others in making through rates; so that an inconsiderable and otherwise insignificant road may be capable of being so used as to throw rates for a large section of the country into confusion, and to render the making of profit by other roads impossible. ”

“ A purchasing agent's experience is varied in the extreme, dealing as he does with all classes of salesmen and business houses. There is no end to the operations which skilful salesmen go through in offering their stock; but after some experience a sharp buyer will be able to fortify himself against the best of them—even against the clever vender of varnishes who disposed of one hundred barrels of his wares in small lots to different buyers, on a sample of maple-sirup. ”

“ But the rail itself, the little section of steel, is an engineering feat. The change of its form from the curious and clumsy iron pear-head of thirty years ago to the present refined section of steel is a scientific development. It is now a beam whose every dimension and curve and angle are exactly suited to the tremendous work it has to do. The loads it carries are enormous, the blows it receives are heavy and constant, but it carries the loads and bears the blows and does its duty. The locomotive and the modern passenger and freight cars are great achievements ”

“ The train despatcher, with his constant burden of care, deserves a chapter. The locomotive fireman, who has not been directly alluded to, is practically an apprentice to the engineer, and, like apprentices in some other callings, has a good deal of hard work to do. He generally has longer hours than the engineer, as he has to clean a portion of the polished brass- and iron-work of the engine. He has to throw into the fire-box several tons of coal a day, and gets so black that his best friends would not know him when washed up. ”

“ Similarly, a railroad organized to respond efficiently to all the varied demands upon it as a common carrier, by the public, and as an investment by its owners, becomes almost a living organism. That the barrel of flour may be safely delivered and the fifty cents reach the company's treasury, and a part of it the stockholder's pocket, the whole organization outlined in the diagram must thrill with life, and every officer and employee, from president to car-greaser, must discharge his special functions. ”

“ In very many cases the motive to the building of a new road has been antagonism to one already in existence, and municipalities have voted subsidies to the one in the hope that, when constructed, it would draw business away from the other. The anomaly has thus been witnessed of distrust of corporate power being the motive for increasing it; and the multiplication of roads has gone on, without any general supervision or any previous determination by competent public authority that they were needed, until the increase has quite outrun in some sections any proper demand for their facilities. ”

“ Less was said or felt of similar evils in passenger traffic, because the passenger business of the country generally is of much less importance than its freight business, either to the railroad investors or to the producers themselves. But there was the same fluctuation in passenger rates; and there was an outrageous form of discrimination in the development of the free-pass system; a practice which would have fully deserved the name of systematic bribery, had it not become so universal that most men hardly recognized any personal obligation connected with the acceptance of a pass. ”

“ Strength and safety must be assured and economy not forgotten. Every contingency must, if possible, be anticipated, while the emergencies which arise during every great construction demand constant watchfulness and prompt and accurate decision.
The financial success of the largest enterprises rests upon such practical application of theory and experience. Even more weighty still is the fact that the safety of thousands of human lives depends daily upon the permanency and stability of railway structures. ”

“ But the development of engineering-works in America has been effected successfully by American engineers only because they have appreciated another side of the problem presented to them. A past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a man of rare judgment and remarkable executive ability, the late Ashbel Welch, said, in discussing a great undertaking proposed by an eminent Frenchman: "That is the best engineering, not which makes the most splendid, or even the most perfect, work, but that which makes a work that answers the purpose well, at the least cost." ”

“ In the first place, it is of no practical consequence to the community whether difficulties which prevent the work of the farm from going on arise or do not arise between an individual farmer and his laborers. The work of innumerable other farms goes on all the same, and it is a matter of indifference what occurs in the management of the particular farm. So it is even with large factories, machine-shops—in fact, with all industrial concerns which do not perform immediate public functions. A railroad company does perform immediate public functions. ”

“ On many roads very little attention is paid to the sale of scrap. As a general rule, the purchasing agent has charge of it, and if he shows any shrewdness in buying, he will exercise more or less ingenuity in selling. Most railroad scrap has a fixed value in the market. Quotations for old rails, car-wheels, and wrought iron are found in all the trade journals; but as in buying one can usually buy of someone at prices less than market price, so in selling he can often find a buyer who is willing to pay more than the regular quotation. ”

“ There may be more dangerous pursuits in life than that of the railway post-office clerk, but there are not many so, and there are few in which the risk to life and limb is so constant. The everyday citizen who is called upon occasionally to make a railroad journey of a few hundred miles feels it to be incumbent upon himself on such occasions to make special provision for those dependent on him in case injury or death should come while riding in the thoroughly appointed and luxurious coach placed in a portion of the train least likely to suffer from accident. ”

“ The difference between state and private railroads is not so much on matters of policy as on methods of administration. The success of government administration varies with different countries. In Prussia, where it is seen at its best, the results are in some respects remarkably good; yet even here the roads are not managed on anything like the American standard of efficiency, either in amount of train service, in speed, or in rapidity of development. ”

“ He is in many cases agent for the express company, and so must count, seal, superscribe, and way-bill money packages and handle oyster-kegs and barrels of beer at a moment's notice. Women with wagon-loads of loose household effects to go by freight, and shippers of car-loads of cattle, for which a car must be specially fitted up, will appear just as the distracted station-man is receiving a telegram with one side of his brain and selling a ticket with the other. The household goods must be weighed and tagged, the sewing-machine tied up, and tables repaired ”

“ The locomotive engineer is the popular "hero of the rail," and the popular estimate in this respect is substantially just. Others have to brave dangers and perform duties under trying circumstances; but the engine-runner has to ride in the most dangerous part of the train, take charge of a steam-boiler that may explode and blow him to atoms, and of machinery that may break and kill him, and try to keep up a vigilance which only a being more than human could successfully maintain. ”