This augmented service has been performed at rates that, measured in purchasing power over railway labor and railway supplies, have rapidly decreased and that did not fail to de crease steadily, even when measured in money, until the recent rapid decrease in the value of the circulating medium rendered some adjust ment unavoidable. The following table shows the facts: Analysis of the foregoing shows that the average American paid about three and one third times (333.55 per cent) as much for rail way service in 1917 as in 1880 but obtained, in 1917, about six times (590.23 per cent) as much freight service and about three and one-third times per cent) as much passenger service. Since 1900 the total payment, in money, has about kept pace with the tncrease in travel and traffic movement, but the value of the monetary unit has so decreased that railway service is almost the only commodity which has not increased in price. The wages of a day's labor in any industry and the product of a day's labor or of a dollar of capital or of an acre of land in almost any industry would buy vastly more railway service in 1917 than in 1900. For example, the following values of American wheat, stated by the Secretary of Agriculture, are compared with railway rates: The foregoing are not exceptional, they are typical; there is no commodity of commercial importance which will not show substantially similar results.
The results illustrated above have been ren dered possible only by the ,enormous improve ments in the science and art of railway trans portation which the managers of American rail ways have achieved. Nowhere else in the world have comparable results been accom phshed. American railway men have been pioneers in fields exclusively their own and have so far succeeded that the American rail way system was able, at the end of 1917, to handle far greater tonnage with relatively lower expenditure of power, including labor and fuel, at a lower capital cost per unit of traffic, and to carry both passengers and freight at the lowest rates in the world while paying the highest rates of wages anywhere received by men similarly qualified. The summary of this evolution is in the average train load of freight carried during successive years for there are few exceptions to the rule that every im provement possessing genuine economic value ultimately resolves itself into higher train capacity. The data of the following table are,
therefore, of the utmost significance.
The last increase, from 1915 to 1917, must astonish anyone not fully conversant with the railway conditions of 1917. The last contri bution of private railway management to American efficiency in war was an increase in transportation of commodities per average train-mile of 145.55 tons in two years, or more than 50 per cent greater increase than that of any previous period of five years, with a per centage increase for the two years greater than the percentage increase of any five years' period since the year 1900. Of this increase of 145.55 tons, no less than 85.05 tons increase, or 58.43 per cent of the total, was obtained during 1917.
The more salient features of the evolution by which such results have been attained are the addition of multiple tracks, including yard and terminal tracks, in order to secure more rapid handling of trains and cars and cargoes; strengthening of road-beds, bridges and other structures to enable the use of heavier locomo fives having increased tractive power; increas ing the power of locomotives and •the capacity of cars in order to concentrate greater tonnage in fewer trains, requiring less power and smaller track and terminal space; reducing grades and lengthening the radii of curves in order to augment the efficiency of locomotives of given tractive power.
Some of these improvements are susceptible of statistical admeasurement. The propor tionate mileage of additional tracks is shown below: Increase in the power of locomotives be gan with the increase in the boiler pressure from 185 pounds to 220 pounds. With this ac complished, progress theretofore considered im practicable became a matter of developments in design and augmented size. The following shows what has been accomplished since 1902: Derived from the foregoing, the following percentages establish rates of development which show no slackening during the period of private management.
During the same period the number and capacity of freight cars have increased as fol lows : Capacity. in tons