Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/372

FOR THE SCORE OF RAILROAD-MEN SEEN BY THE TRAVELLER

ing the earth at the equator every fifteen minutes.

But each of the passenger trains on the average carries forty passengers, making the aggregate distance traveled by individuals fourteen thousand million miles. This represents 4,000,000 trips from ocean to ocean, and nearly 600,000 journeys around the world; or one every minute of the day and night during the year. At the average rapidity of travel the total time spent on trains during a single year by the American people aggregates 80,000 years.

AGGREGATE YEARLY DISTANCE MADE BY TRAINS, MEANS, A TRAIN GIRDING THE EARTH AT THE EQUATOR EVERY 15 MINUTES.

Equally striking are the facts as to the movement of freight. Not less than 800,000,000 tons are transported an average of 125 miles, making a total, during the year, of one hundred thousand million ton miles. Load this freight into one solid train, and it would fill 40,000,000 cars, which would cover every mile of track in the country. Store the goods in dwelling houses, and those transported during one Presidential term would crowd from cellar to garret every dwelling in the United States.

To move this enormous freightage there is needed an army of some 850,000 employees. One in twenty-eight of the working population of the nation is employed in railroad service. Their earnings aggregate nearly a half billion dollars. With their families and those of workers in the allied industries furnishing needed supplies of all kinds, probably 5,000,000 people draw their support from the railroads.

In making a trip of 1,000 miles across the country on main trunk lines, two or three station agents may sell a passenger tickets, half a dozen gatemen and porters aid him in getting aboard his trains. Four or five conductors and as many more trainmen may minister to his comforts on the journey. He may catch sight of the engineer and firemen, oil-stained and grimy, in their cab. But for the score of railroad men he sees on the way, there are 10,000 whom he may never see. To operate a thousand miles of road in the Eastern States requires over 900 engineers and firemen, 1,400 conductors and trainmen, 1,300 station men, 600 switchmen and flagmen, 1,900 trackmen, 2,200 in the repair shops, and 400 officials and clerks in the central offices. Of the hundreds of thousands employed on the railroads in this country, not one in four is actually in train service.

ONE IN EVERY TWENTY-EIGHT WORKING MEN IS EMPLOYED IN THE RAILROAD SERVICE.

Consider the financial side of the nation's roads. In building and equipping the 185,000 miles, there have been issued five and a half billions of stock, and an equal amount of bonds. Add another billion for floating debt, and the total securities aggregate twelve thousand millions, or about one-sixth of the entire wealth of the nation. Distribute these securities equally among the people, and to each family would fall about $900. Turn this wealth into gold, and 20,000 teams would be needed to carry away the precious metal. But the entire gold stock of the world is not large enough to purchase more than a third of the roads of this one nation.

From the operations of these thoroughfares the gross annual revenues reach $1,200,000,000, about one-fourth of which comes from passenger traffic. This is more than ten times the entire annual product of the gold and