[Volume XXVII
THE CHICAGO BANKER
20
MECHANICS-AMERICAN NATIONAL BANK
OF ST. LOUIS
CAPITAL $2,000,000	SURPLUS $2,500,000
Superior Facilities Offered to Correspondents
G. L. ALLEN, Assistant Cashier P. H. MILLER. Assistant Cashier
J. S. CALFEE, Cashier
G. M. TRUMBO. Assistant Cashier
L. A. BATTAILE, Vice-President EPHRON CATLIN, Vice-President
WALKER HILL, President JACKSON JOHNSON. Vice-Pres.
KNAUTH, NACHOD & KÜHNE, Bankers
LEIPZIG, GERMANY
Letters of Credit
in Pounds Sterling, Dollars, Marks and Francs
NEW YORK
Travelers’ Checks
in denominations of $10, $20, $50 and $100
Furnished to Banks and Bankers for direct sale to Travelers
STMENT SECURITIES
I N У E
or an)' other sum to railway employees—greatly as the distribution of that sum into all the channels of trade regularly conduces to that result. What I mean is that profitable railways are indispensable to efficient transportation—and every line of production, commerce and industry in this land of magnificent distances depends on the certainty, efficiency and cheapness of its transportation facilities.
Before Railroad Era
‘,To this generation it is hard to imagine the United States without the railways, which literally bind it in an indissoluble union. But we have only to read what it was before the railways came to gridiron the country with their thousands of miles of track to appreciate how essential they are to the social and economic well-being of the republic. The rivers, lakes and waterways were here before the railways, but the development of the vast־ agricultural resources of this continent waited on the coming of the locomotive. Let me quote from Ford’s history of Illinois the experience of the newcomer to this magnificent valley of the Mississippi in ante-rail-way days. The only market open to him was New Orleans. ‘To reach this market he would produce or get together a quantity of corn, flour, bacon and such articles. He would build a flat-bottomed boat on the shore of some river or large creek, load his wares into it, and, awaiting the rise, with a few of his negroes to assist him would float down to New Orleans. The voyage was long, tedious and expensive. When he arrived there he found himself in a strange city, filled with sharpers ready to take advantage of his necessities. Everybody combined against him to profit by his ignorance of business, want of friends or commercial connections; and nine times out of ten he returned a broken merchant. His journey home was performed on foot, through three or four nations of Indians inhabiting the western parts of Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky. He returned to a desolate farm, which had been neglected whilst he had been gone. One crop had been lost by absence, and another by taking it to market. This kind of business was persevered in astonishingly for several years to the great injury and utter ruin of a great many people.”
From 1826 to 1909
“Meeting as we do in this city, no statistics, no figures of speech of mine can add to the force of the contrast between this picture of what was and what is; and that we are here to appreciate
way employees is $2.20 a day. The Interstate Commerce Commission tells us that in 1907 there were 1,672,074 men in the service of the railways of the republic. We are all far enough along in arithmetic to multiply this number by that average daily wage, by which we know that it takes over three and a half million dollars to pay railway labor for one day’s work. Multiply this by 300, the average days worked by all classes of railway employees, and you arrive at something over the one billion dollars required to meet the payrolls of the railways of the United States in the year 1907.
“This is the one billion which we can understand and in which we are all vitally interested, so vitally that it becomes our duty to ourselves, to our families and to our country to see to it, so far as our influence extends, that the fund from which this billion is paid shall not be impaired or depleted by the imposition of unreasonable restrictions and unremunerative conditions upon the management of the railways. It is through this particular billion that we become directly interested in every proposition that tends to reduce the revenues of the railways.
“We know, as perhaps no other class of workingmen in the United States knows, that profitable railways are the first essentials of prosperity, progress and contentment in this country. In saying this I do not wish to convey the impression that the prosperity of the American people depends on the payment of one billion dollars
Foreman Bros. Banking Co.
iio LaSalle Street CHICAGO
CAPITAL. AND SURPLUS
$1,500,000
ESTABLISHED 1862
INCORPORATED AS A STATE BANK 1S97
Officers
EDWIN G. FOREMAN, Pres. GEORGE N. NEISE, Cashier OSCAR G. FOREMAN, V. P. JOHN TERBORGH, A. Cash.
P. H. Morrissey on Railroad Conditions in the Past
(Continued from page 6) human factor? With the statistics of miles of track, tens of thousands of locomotives, and millions of cars we are all more or less familiar. In a general way we know that there are 230,000 miles of railways in the United States. And by this we mean straight-away main line and branch railways. To this must be added 100,000 miles of second, third and fourth tracks, yard tracks and sidings—as necessary to the efficient working of the main line as are a man’s arms, legs and organs to the usefulness of his body. Thus we have a total trackage of 330,000 miles, which is largely in excess of all the trackage of Continental Europe and the British Isles.
300,000 Trainmen
“The statistics further tell us that there are some 57,000 locomotives and two and a quarter million passenger and freight cars moving the travel and traffic of 90,000,000 souls upon this matchless highway of the American people. And it takes an army of well over 300,000 men to man these engines and cars. Day and night, month in and month out, through winter storms and under summer skies this army, with your brothers at the post of danger and responsibility, move hundreds of millions of passengers and tons of freight. To fully express the multitudes and distances covered by the industry of which you are such a vital factor requires that we speak in billions. In the great year of 1907, before the blight of panic and public hostility struck the railways of the United States, they transported 28,000,000,000 passengers and 236,000,000,000 tons of freight one mile.
Average Pay $2.50 Per Day
“But how utterly futile the attempt to convey a definite conception of the magnitude of the railway situation in America by statistics. I may roll billions from my tongue but they are as impalpable to my comprehension as the breath that utters them is to sight. You remember the newly promoted conductor who only arrived at a full impression of his own official importance when he stuck his head into an empty cask and shouted. ‘Conductor Smith! Lord, that sounds great!’ Well, billions sounds great! but who of us has an adequate notion of a billion? There is, however, one way we railway men can size up eae״ particular billion that concerns us where we live. We know that there are one hundred cents in a dollar. We know that the average pay of rail-