Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1901 — RAILROAD SIDE LINES. [ARTICLE]

RAILROAD SIDE LINES.

Some Hare as Manx Kinds of Fnsiness os a Villnj-e Store. “The thrifty railroad man of the day thinks up and puts into practice as many Ingenious varieties of economy as can be crowded into the company’s messages of instruction. The economic laws governing the increase in the trainload have become axiomatic. There is no scope for a free imagination here. The details of the business, however, fairly teem with possibilities. When the railroad man considers the question of sending those six carloads of potatoes out to Berryville he knows full well that all his cars may need to be hauled back empty. If this sort of thing happened often enough, it would pay the company to hire an agent to scour Berryville and the surrounding country for return freights. If this canvasser were appointed and labored a while, and found his labor unproductive, it might then be thought worth while to subsidize some local industry, which would in good time yield a fair return in freight. These are but one or two of the ideas which would gyrate through the heated brain of the railroad man considering the cost of carrying freight out Berryville way. The past ten years have seen some American railroads loaded up with as many kinds of business an a village store. "And no matter how great a hodgepodge the details of a railroad’s business may seem to be, it is certain that the railroad managers will treat the thing as If all its knotty parts were so much ineffable dovetailing. Whether it is running an iron mine at Hylo or furnishing geranium beds for brownstone stations out on the line to Ingleside, they will affect to treat each of the multitudinous features of the enterprise as a simple affair, readily submlssible to the rules governing the maintenance of railway systems. That the men sometimes think differently everyone knows. Nothing of human invention and supply ever becomes absolutely scientific. An old hand in an Eastern freight yard innocently summed up the situation when, with a descriptive gesture, he said: “ trains is run on a mathematical certainty, and they takes their chances.’ Ainslee’s Magazine.