The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, June 3, 1918, Page 3

PR TEAN) T — Tlonp “saving 60 per cent on its rental In the interest of a square deal for the: farmers VOL. 6, NO. 22 ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, JUNE 3, 1918 arfigan Jeader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League A magazine that dares-to print the truth WHOLE NUMBER 141 First Steps to Government Railways Wasteful Duplication of City Ticket Offices Is Done Away With by Consolida- tion—Revenue No Longer Spent to Fight Public Ownership or to Bribe Newspapers e Washington Bureau, Nonpartisan Leader IVE me a ticket to Mandan, North Dakota,” said a weather- beaten citizen, stepping up to the counter of a brand new ticket office at Thirteenth and G streets, in the national cap- ital, early on the morning of May 6. \_ : The clerk sold him the ticket; he got for the customer also the necessary Pull- man tickets and the baggage check. It was all one transaction, handled promptly for the customer by one man. And this was the first ticket sold in the first of Uncle Sam’s consolidated railroad ticket offices in:the United States. That ‘clerk had been taken over, the night be- fore, from the old ticket office of the Southern Railway. He had never handled tickets to the Northwest. He had never touched baggage ar- rangements before. The former scheme of ticket offices was based on the good old theory that the public might be, if not “damned,” at least put to any extra trouble that the company in its self- importance should decree. When the doors of the Southern Railway ticket office and six other rail- way ticket offices in Washington were closed, the previous night, by order of Director General Mec- Adoo, the selling of a ticket to a passenger became a public service, wherein the public must be pleased, and the public’s time saved by the clerks in the ticket office. A SAVING OF $800,000 The photograph of this con- solidated ticket office repre- sents a symbol of what Uncle Sam is doing in every depart- ment of the railroad industry of the nation. "It shows that the business formerly done in seven separate offices is being done in one big office. It-shows that any one can buy a ticket to any place in America, over any route, by any train, from any clerk who faces him at the counter of this office. ; There were 33 men in the seven local offices; 29 of these have been taken into the con- solidated office, and places for the other four are waiting in other divisions of the govern- ment . service. There were pressing demands by other government bureaus for office space in the city that was oc- cupied by the seven premises;- the railroad administration is expense in’the 20’cities of the arrangements for consolidation have been worked out—a mat- - This piéture shows what is happening in all the big eastern cities. In this office the United 000, eastern traffic territory where States railroad administration has combined the ticket offices of seve: entering the national capital. what- government owners They’re painting “U. S. A.” on thousands of railroad locomotives and box cars now. that was built for the Russian government but taken over by Uncle Sam. Here is an engine If the European lands can own their transportation lines, we guess America can, too. ter of $800,000 saving in the first year for this territory. CUT OUT WASTEFUL COMPETITION Until now, one train leaving Washington at mid- night might have only half of its sleeping car accommodations sold out, while another would be sold several days in advance. It all depended on the preference of customers for one line as against another. The railroad service was not used ef- ficiently, and the public suffered. Now, the clerk will tell a ticket purchaser that while all lower berths on the Pennsylvania for New York are taken, there are lots of good ones on the Baltimore & Ohio, or vice versa. And he will give him sim- ilar information for all roads in all directions, be- cause THERE IS NOW ONLY ONE RAILROAD, AND THAT IS THE RAILROAD SERVICE. Baltimore & Ohio traffic to New York was less than that on the Pennsylvania because the pas- sengers on the B. & O. had to waste an hour get- ting to the hotel district by a downtown ferry and street cars. As soon as Director General McAdoo got well set in his job, he ordered that all B. & O. passenger trains be run through thg Pennsylvania n great railroad systems The saving in rent and clerk hire will be enormous. That’s hip will do-"eliminqte" the extravagance of competition. - ; tunnel under the Hudson river, and into the great Pennsylvania station at Thirty-third street and Seventh avenue. “The Pennsylvania terminal station was not a terminal, but a monument,” said a high official in the railroad administration to your correspondent. “It was built for possible needs of the road a hun- dred years from now. Go into it any time, up to the day that the government changed the scheme, and you saw a vast trackage and station space in which the actual business was scarcely noticeable at all. It was big enough to be used not merely by the Pennsylvania, but by the B. & 0., the New Jersey Central, the Lackawanna, and two or three more. Now it has become a real terminal—a pub- lic utility instead of a monument. And that means that an hour’s time is being saved, every day, to scores of thousands of people whose working time is of importance to the nation. That change would have been utterly impossible under the old com- petitive conditions.” UNCLE SAM BUILDS UP THE ROADS Do you know what McAdoo and his staff, and the railroad workers of all grades, freed from the old clashes of competitive interests, have achieved with the run-down railroads of the United States? THEY HAULED 20 PER CENT MORE TRAFFIC IN APRIL, 1918, THAN IN ANY PREVIOUS MONTH IN THE WHOLE HISTORY OF THE RAILROADS OF THIS COUNTRY. Tell that, on the word of the railroad administration, to the fellows who are trying to dis- credit’ Uncle Sam’s railroad management. And by the way, who are the men who are carrying on this underhand campaign against the government’s rail- road policy? their overpaid genéral man- agers and chairmen of boards and presidents of companies,” is the answer given by W. M. Clark, representing the Order of Railway Conductors in Washington. “There are still some of these big officials drawing down $125,000 a year, and there are more that are getting from $50,000 to $100,- They are in great fear that the wage award will cut them down to a reasonable rate of pay, and so they are “Wall street speculators and R ——