Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 240, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1914 — MAKING BUSINESS FOR ROAD [ARTICLE]

MAKING BUSINESS FOR ROAD

New Creative Policy of Enlightened Traffic Men Replace* Old System. It has been said of Darius Miller, the late president of the Burlington, that his success as a traffic man was due mainly to hip clear-headed recognition of the fact that a railroad’s profits are derived chiefly not from the business which it wrests from its competitors, but from business which it develops on its own lines. It was as a creator of traffic that he first established himself with the greatest, of all traffic creators, James J. Hill. The characteristic of creating traffic rather than Outbidding a rival was marked in Mr. Miller because he was raised in a school where the methods used by traffic men to get business were quite different. As a result of legislation and concerted action on the part of railroad men themselves, however, there are now many traffic men of the Darius Miller type. In this day and generation a railroad tells the farmers along its line what crops to plant, when and how to plant them, when fruits and vegetables should be picked, how they should be packed, and where a market can be .found. Nowadays if the highways used by the farmers in getting crops to the station are in such bad shape that horse power is being wasted, the railroad '■ sends men with a specially equipped car to tear out and rebuild a section of the turnpike to show how the average wagon load- can be increased. Other men, graduates from agricultural colleges, are sent out to show how land should be fertilized and cultivated. Then there is the dairy car that travels about to illustrate the most approved butter and milk-making methods. Prize hogs, cattle and sheep from James J. Hill’s farm are scattered from St. Paul to the Pacific coast, and each gift or sale is expected to do its part in raising the general standard. These and many similar methods of securing freight have been substituted by the railroads for rate cutting and /ebating.—New York Evening Post.