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Flagstaff s for Railroad Men 



One of the humblest uses to which wood is put, and yet highly 

 important as to safeguarding human life, though perhaps never 

 thought of by the ordinary man, is the little stick fashioned to fit 

 the hand and upon which is attached a piece of bunting of one of 

 the cardinal colors — the railroad signal flagstaff. One of these flag- 

 staffs is rather a small article when considered as an individual 

 product of wood, but when one stops to consider that every loco- 

 motive, every train crew, every caboose, every section foreman and 

 every crossing guard has one or more sets, each set containing from 

 three to five different flags, it can readily be understood that a vast 

 number are used. 



Like everything else, railroad flagstaffs are bought by the thou- 

 sands each year by the larger railroad companies. Where they go 

 no one can say with any degree of accuracy, any more than they 

 •can explain the disappearance of the billions of stick pins which 

 are manufactured yearly. It is a safe conjecture that few of them 

 are ever actually worn out. Perhaps most of them are unavoidably 

 broken — maybe they are dropped from the hand of a freight brake- 

 man Tinder the wheels of a moving car, or it may be that the same 

 trakeman has found his flagstafif an effective weapon in opening 

 up the scalp of some tramp. 



Most any piece of wood can be made into a flagstafif, but the 

 really desirable article must be made of clear, sound, straight, tough 

 and enduring material. Hickory would fully answer this purpose, 

 but this species is by no means abundant and consequently is high 

 in price, so that ash has been found by experience to be an' 

 equally desirable wood. Good ash is practically proof against wear 

 as well as against the rain and snow and sun to which these staffs 

 are exposed. There is a standard size for these articles, as there is 

 for everything else that the big railroad corporations use in large 

 quantities. The standard of the flagstaff is 24" long by 1%" in 

 thickness. The length is sufficient to permit of a piece of bunting 

 12" or more in width to be attached, while the thickness is about 

 right to fit into the grip of a strong hand. In some instances the 

 staffs are ironed or a key screwed on to them to permit their being 

 fastened in a socket on the rear end of a_ car. One or two of the 

 railroads demand that a slit be sawed on one end of the staff, ex- 

 tending half its entire length, so that the bunting may be inserted 

 in the slit and held tightly in place by screws extending from one 

 lialf into the other. The addition of irons or brackets or slitting 

 slightly increases the cost. The slit staffs are said to be more 

 •economical in the end, however, because the frayed bunting may 

 be removed and a new flag inserted in its place. Thousands of 

 staffs are thrown away by railroad men simply because the flag 

 has become useless itself, and it is as easy to secure a new flag and 

 staff from division headquarters as it is to return the staff itself 

 and order a new flag to be attached. 



By no means do all of the railroad companies buy their flagstaft's. 

 Some of them attempt to manufacture a sufficient supply in their 

 ■own shops at a cost that is very hard to approximate, yet without 

 question is exceedingly high. For instance, one shop superintendent 

 stated he had an old man — a man of all work around the shop — 

 who in his spare time shaved these staffs from odd pieces of wood! 

 Asked as to what wood was used and where the supply was ob- 

 tained, he replied that most of it was parts of damaged cars that 

 came into the shops for repair. He never had figured out what 

 these staffs cost him, based on the time of the man of all work or 

 on the value of the material used, or whether it was suitable or 

 otherwise. Unquestionably, the superintendent would be saving 

 money for the railroad company if he were to buy staffs from an 

 outside source. 



One of the trans-continental lines — it would be telling tales out 

 of school to reveal the corporate title— uses for its flagstaffs broom 

 handles! And "these broom handles are not of the first quality at 

 that. In fact, they are rejects and the railroad company pays $22 

 a thousand for them. Even these features are not the worst that 



can be said, since the broom handles are 36" long and the company 

 does not even saw them off to the proper length before issuing 

 them to the train crews. One can imagine with what respect a 

 flagman observes one of these staffs. It is a safe bet that the 

 president of that railroad company would not relish a lead pencil 

 18 inches long if it were handed to him to write with. 



A special machine has been designed and is in use in several 

 factories in the Middle West for manufacturing flagstaffs at a con- 

 siderable saving over what it would cost a railroad company to turn 

 them out by hand or a few pieces at a time. The machine in ques- 

 tion is a modification of a spoke-turning lathe and has been devel- 

 oped into a highly efiScient piece of machinery. In one of the fac- 

 tories the flagstaffs are a minor product in the sense that they are 

 made of material from which larger articles are turned and serve 

 to assist materially in eliminating the waste problem of that par- 

 ticular factory and at the same time bear the full return on the 

 cost of manufacture as well as the proportionate share of overhead 

 expense and. return a profit to the manufacturer. 



Frieght Rates and Hardwood Prices 



In discussing the rise in the price of hardwoods in the Central 

 West, the sales manager of a large eastern hardwood manufacturing 

 company recently advanced a unique theory in explanation. He 

 said he had been of the opinion for a long time that the millmen of 

 the Mississippi valley section were selling their lumber too cheaply 

 and that they could get at least $3 and perhaps $.5 per 1,000 feet 

 more without in the slightest degree risking a competitive invasion 

 of their markets at Chicago, Michigan and adjacent territor}'. He 

 pointed out that there were two main gateways to Chicago, one of 

 them being Cincinnati, for the lumber from the Appalachian chain, 

 and Cairo, for the stocks produced in the Mississippi valley, in- 

 eluding Arkansas and other states. The freight rate from Cincin- 

 nati to Chicago was the same as that from Cairo to Chicago, both 

 being 10 cents. A wide difference prevails between the rate to 

 Cincinnati and that to Cairo from points of production, the rate to 

 Cincinnati being 17 cents as against 7 to 9 cents to Cairo. This 

 difference constituted an arbitrary in favor of the Mississippi valley 

 producers, who had by so much the advantage over, the eastern 

 producers. The difference amounted to about $5, but the Missis- 

 sippi valley millmen had for years been getting no more for their 

 lumber than the eastern producers, although they could have ad- 

 vanced their prices to within 50 cents per 1,000 feet of the eastern 

 arbitrary without at all endangering their markets. At last they 

 seemed to have realized that they were actually giving away from 

 $3 to $5 on every 1,000 feet of lumber and to have resolved to get 

 this margin for themselves. Certain large jobbers, foreseeing the 

 possibility or probability of such an advance, had placed orders 

 taking up virtually the entire cut of the Mississippi valley mills 

 for months to come at higher prices, and then advanced their fig- 

 ures. When the furniture manufacturers at Grand Rapids and 

 other consumers were asked to pay the increase they naturally 

 turned to other sources of supply, only to find that the figures they 

 were called upon to give were still slightly below the quotations at 

 which the eastern mills could lay down stocks, and the terms of the 

 jobbers had to be met. Thus it was that lumber advanced in spite 

 of the embargo placed upon exports by way of New Orleans and 

 other southern ports by the burdensome regulations imposed by the 

 railroads upon export stocks. The western advance, of course, has 

 not helped the eastern mills, except perhaps that the Mississippi 

 valley development has tended to make the export movement 

 through eastern ports more active and thus relieved in a way what 

 pressure might have otherwise been exerted upon the hardwood 

 trade here. There is a limited area of hardwood producing terri- 

 tory, notably in the Virginias, that holds a distinct freight ad- 

 vantage to eastern points. 



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