ANNUAL MEETING AT LEXINGTON. 187 



gave your seat to another and charged him the same. If the Pullman 

 got rich doing the service in a style so much more costly, why did not 

 the railway company make money? Here is a question I never have 

 heard asked yet ; it puzzles me exceeedingly. 



Again, the express companies do a very good business, entirely at 

 the expense of the roads. This matter has been often referred to.. 

 These and other ways of tapping the profits tend to make the roads 

 poor. Moreover, they have built one hundred thousand miles and 

 relaid some fifty thousand more, at the unnecessary cost of some $28 

 per ton, tariff, at their own instance and request. 



Railway gentlemen when replying to expostuliitions against the 

 restrictive charges on travel, often sneer at the profits from that source 

 and make light of them. I believe the reports make the profits from 

 freight to the roads about three times more than profits from travel. 

 One great element of cost in railroad operation is time. Necessarily 

 freight trains are much slower and they are much more wearing on 

 the roads. I am satisfied that the road magnates are as slow to learn 

 'the great truth of political experience — the lower the tariff the higher 

 the revenue, as were senates and parlismients in the past. They seem 

 to detest serving the public on such cheap terms as will invite the 

 masses. Four-fifths of the people ( i.e. women and minors ) never travel, 

 and none but the rich ever journey by rail for pleasure. "But the 

 people don't travel when we give rates," is said. Your rates are heavy 

 exactions. Imagine a poor man with his family, say seven in all, taking 

 a trip of one hundred miles on ''rates" — $21 at least — and how the 

 poor people do love to travel; how they enjoy it ! 



Why will a railway carry a hog a thousand miles or more for a 

 dollar, load it, take care of it, unload it — all for $1, and charge a man 

 w'ho waits on himself $30. I say to the roads that if they will charge 

 the people as freight they will be compelled to double their tracks and 

 increase their cars one hundred for one. Any difference in the extra 

 cost for finer cars is equalized by the profits from greater speed. Were 

 the roads to attempt this, such a revolution in the travel of this coun- 

 try would take place as they had a foretaste of during the great cut 

 rate war. Roads then, by carrying only a few more freight cars with 

 windows and seats in them, took in from $15,000 to $50,000 per day 

 each, for passengers; and yet the companies restricted all local and 

 prevented much through travel by exacting a large sum of the passen- 

 ger to be returned to him at the end of the route. Enormous as was 

 the travel at these restricting rates, a mighty deluge of people breaking 

 upon the repose of the roads, scarce a drop of it came from the vast 



