TWENTIETH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 663 



Mr. Harris: Yes, sir; we ought to have between 700,000 and 800,000 

 more cars than we now have available. Most of you gentlemen riding 

 stock trains on single track railroads know what it is to get in on a 

 sidetrack and wait for either a freight or a passenger train to pass you, 

 and with the increased traffic in this country, due to the demands, the re- 

 quirements have grown rapidly. Corporations have been organized within 

 the last year to increase production so much that we are doing almost 

 double the manufacturing we used to. It is not an uncommon thing for 

 a corporation of $100,000,000 or $200,000,000 capital to be floated and 

 put into operation. These people in different lines of work have got to 

 have raw materials to manufacture; they must sell that manufactured 

 product to keep their plant healthy, and if you don't have service to 

 move these commodities you are going to go broke. You gentlemen know 

 what it is to wait for stock cars. I am sure you will agree with me that 

 the roads haven't purposely delayed you a day in furnishing a stock 

 car, but it is because of a condition — the business has outgrown the facil- 

 ities. If .we had double track on all of these main lines running through 

 Iowa and other states of the central west, how easy it would be to ship 

 into Chicago and make the market without many hours loss, and shorten 

 the service to market, and your delays in transit. The market terminals 

 are not big enough, generally speaking, to handle the live stock when It 

 arrives promptly. The Union Stock Yards in Chicago have about 300 

 unloading chutes, and it was stated during a recent conference a year 

 ago this month, that from 200 to 300 cars per hour was their capicity, 

 and I assume that about 225 would be the very top average. If more than 

 fifty cars are taken in by one engine, the tracks only accommodating 

 and spotting fifty cars with clearance, means that either one end or the 

 other is hanging over and blocking other tracks, preventing trains back 

 of it from getting into the chutes next for unloading. 



Again, I want to say that the railroad crews delivering in the stock 

 yards aren't very much interested in delivering cars in three minutes or 

 three hours, or six or eight or ten hours, because they are running into 

 overtime, which brings them time and one-half pay. 



The facilities at most of our markets are limited and it would be a 

 hard matter to increase those facilities without tearing down chutes, 

 buildings, or something that has been put there in the way of a perma- 

 nent fixture, so that the only solution I can see to divide the time and 

 commence getting the stock in earlier in the evening so that it will all 

 be unloaded by 6 or 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning. That was very 

 thoroughly and clearly demonstrated during the meeting in Chicago. 



Getting back to the railroad needs again, they need between 5,000 and 

 6,000 new engines, and the cost of all those new items of equipment, ma- 

 terials and new supplies, would mean between $3,000,000,000 and 

 $3,500,000,000. 



There is another thing that I had done before leaving "Washington 

 by the railroad administration which I know you gentlemen will appre- 

 ciate — I know what it means to you, and that is the cleaning of stock 

 cars. The cleaning of stock cars at this season of the year, in advance 

 of the approach of hot weather, means the saving of much of your hog 



