Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 January 1915 — NEW IDEA OF ECONOMY [ARTICLE]

NEW IDEA OF ECONOMY

RAILROADS AIM TO MAKE EMPLOYEES CAREFUL. Move Has Resulted in Cutting Down the Heavy Requisitions for Small Supplies—Better Than Old System Employed. The railroads, the greatest spenders of the age, have recently been propounding to their employees the conundrum: "How long will a broom last?’’ writes George Ethelbert Walsh, in the Sunday Magazine of the Chicago Herald. If the once-a-month broom can be converted into the two months’ broom, the economical station agent saves for his railroad the cost of hauling one ton of freight 35 miles every two months; which, six times a year, means the cost of hauling a ton of freight 210 miles. But the broom is merely taken as a symbol in the new railroad economy. Take lamp chimneys, several of which have to be used in each station. Every time one breaks a charge must be made against the railroad equal to the cost of hauling a ton of freight 10% miles. Twenty lamp chimneys broken a year in a single station means that some poor locomotive must stagger under an extra ton of freight over 210 miles just to pay for them. Even the lead pencil must not be despised. A requisition for a new lot of pencils can be made out in a few minutes; but a ton of freight must be hauled two miles to pay for each new one. The' same is true of each track ppike that works loose and is thrown aside. A track bolt is similarly treated as waste; but it is worth three and a half miles of haulage of a ton of freight.

The man who was responsible for working out these details of cost of ordinary trifles in railroad language was something of an economist. He had the idea that waste in trifles had something to do with the high cost of railroad operation. The monthly requisition for supplies of a trifling nature reached the huge sum of 126,000, or $300,000 a year, and he forthwith decided to cut down the cost.

After figuring out the freight haulage of the different items, he offered rewards ranging from SIOO to $lO to every station agent who showed the greatest annual saving of general station supplies. He paid out S6OO in prizes, and cut the requisitions down $25,000 the first year. The second year the requisitions for lead pencils, brooms, lamp chimneys, lanterns, coal shovels, waste and pails decreased so generally that the suspicion was aroused that many of the agents were buying their own supplies in order to get in on some of the prize awards.

At one time railroad economy generally meant laying off a few men, cutting wages of others, and' postponing the purchase of much needed new equipment, and rolling stock. In the end this sort of economy resulted in more inefficient service, grumbling and strikes, and deterioration of tracks, roadbed and general equipment. Sooner or later the railroad had t«| pay for a policy that was about as economical as killing the'old goose that laid the golden eggs.