Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1905 — MOVING THE CROPS. [ARTICLE]

MOVING THE CROPS.

A Problem of Astounding Magnitada to the Railroads. This is the season of the ysar when American railroads are taxed to their ntmost, for the autumn days are tha time When the crops are moved. Few realize the extent of the railroad man’s problem, yet some idea of lta magnitude may be gained from a statement of the value of the country’s agricultural products. This year the grain crops will approximate $4,000,000,000 in value, a sum four times that of the national debt, and sufficient to give every man, woman and child in the country SSO. Two-thirds of this crop will be fed to live stock or moved to mills by wagons in the districts in which it is grown, but the remaining third will travel to every part of the world, and it is in the moving of this part that the railroad man finds his great task. This year will see crops of such size that that part which comes to the railroad will aggregate 1,500,000 carloads of freight, for the moving of which at one time nearly 38,000 locomotives would be required. These cars and locomotives, if placed in a single train, would reach half way around the world, and since the supply of freight cars in the country is only a trifle in excess of 1,500,000, with something like 43,00 locomotives, one may imagine the worries’of the railroad man in moving a single item of freight amounting in volume to nearly the total capacity of the rolling stock of all the country’s railroads. To the railroad man it is a game of chess played on a board 8,000 miles square, with freight trains for pieces to be moved hither and thither in hundred-mile jumps. The movement of grain each year is to the railroad what the conduct of the campaign is to the general. Each depends during the early stages upon the reports of his scouts. Those of the railroad company form a large corpk of experts, who travel throughout the country, estimating as closely as possible the probable grain tonnage of each district and the number of. cars necessary for its transportation. Basing its plans upon these figures, the railroad makes ready to concentrate cars at points of need just as the general concentrates his men. The idea of the railroad man’s mind is to get the cars to the region of the central west at any cost. Expense is almost a forgotten item. Every one, from the general traffic manager down to even the station agent, receives general orders as -to the disposition of all cars. They are begged, borrowed and bought—in fact, procured in every possible way. Agents in their efforts to serve the farmers have been known to steal trains of “empties” in order that the grain movement of their particular districts might be facilitated.