some more. Two more roads in the big system had just been pitchforked into the jurisdiction of Robert Mitchell, adding twelve hundred additional miles to his responsibility and pushing him several swift rounds up the ladder of promotion.
These additions made the California Consolidated competitive with the San Francisco and El Paso lines at hundreds of new stations. John's job was to consolidate the freight tariffs of the three lines and make sure that they equalized the rates of the competitor at competing stations. It was an enormous task, and the General Freight Agent had breezily commanded it to be done in ten weeks. That was why Burman snickered. It was also why Hampstead scowled.
Now a freight tariff starts youthfully out to be the most scientific thing in the world, but it ends by being the most utterly unscientific document that ever was put together. The longer a tariff lives, the more depraved it becomes. The S. F. & E. P. tariffs were very old, but not, therefore, honorable.
John turned to the shelf that contained them and scowled again, a double scowl, as black as his blond Viking brows could manage. These were to be his models. They were yellow—a disagreeable color to begin with,—each a half inch thick and larger than a letter page,—abortions, every one of them! They were pea-vine growths like the monster system which issued them, cumbered with the adjustments and easements of the years.
The flour tariff! The hay tariff! The grain tariff! John took these in his hands one by one and glowered at them. The mistakes, the inconsistencies, the clumsiness of thirty sprawling years were in them. And he was asked to duplicate these confusions on his own system.
