Part 12

The _bete noir_ of all railroad men is the shifty, unprincipled person who deceives you with a misleading yarn and means to do something else. A sample of this method of operating is outlined in the case following, and concerns a carload of pianos going from an Ontario town to Vancouver, B.C. Knowing his man, the consignee had telegraphed and also written the shippers “Route our car now loading ‘N.C.O. & B.R.R.’: under no circumstances deviate, pay no attention to other instructions, this is final.” To dull the watchfulness of the interested railways, Ananias declared the shipment would be held pending the arrival from elsewhere of an enclosure of four pianos, meanwhile laboring secretly to dispatch the complete shipment in the _interim_ contrary to instructions. Temporarily balked in his fell purpose, to disarm suspicion when interrogated, he actually ordered placed on his siding a suitable car as a screen or camouflage, but pursued his original plan. Not until repeatedly disciplined by the head office did this factory manager desist and finally unload the forbidden car and obey orders. Such an employee is a stumbling block to progressive business.

Disappointments and neck and neck finishes are frequent, but variety is the spice and fascinating magnet in railroading life and when shrewd manufacturers repudiate narrowness by distributing the plums among a number, “We fell on their necks with loud cries”, as handsome Jack McGuire of the “C.P.R.” would say. These incidents are reminiscent of a whiskey traveler who alleges he interviewed at Chicago the superintendent of dining cars for a well known railroad. To quote his own words “I paid proper attention to my personal appearance, wore my Persian lamb-skin coat and anticipated an order”. Contrary to expectations, however, the interview fell flat, no contract was made and for years after, this crestfallen liquor man went out of his way to divert his company’s shipments away from that line via other channels, to the discomfiture of railway men in no way responsible and notwithstanding the fact that the offending Dining Car Superintendent stoutly contended it was not his road but another that was unappreciative or stocked with rye. Speaking of the commissariat department, George Tootle, the widely known dining car waiter on the G.T.R.’s famous International Limited train, who thinks lunch counters breed nervousness and indigestion, relates observing at Chicago the following:--

A “hayseedy” looking man with field mice jumping out of his whiskers, walked up to the lunch counter, seated himself on a stool, placed his bright-colored carpet bag on the next stool and partook of a hearty lunch. He passed the young man a $1 bill to take out the price of his lunch, 50 cents, and was surprised when the youth said: “Not any change, sir; your carpet bag occupied a seat, and we must collect for that.”

The old man looked dazed for a second only, and then replied:

“All right, my boy”, and opening the bag, exclaimed, “Old carpet bag, I have paid for your lunch and you shall have it.”

Quicker than a flash he threw in a mince pie, a plate of doughnuts and several sandwiches, and departed amid the shouts of everyone in the station.

One does not mind unintentionally stumbling on a hasty eruption in temper of a decent chap who has just found five of his letters opened by intent or on the part of a careless firm with a similar name, but we would rather not be granted an audience with an apple exporter who fathers four hundred barrels of fruit lying on the dock at Halifax ready for a ship’s hold at the psychological moment when an inspector condemns the lot because the centres are filled with undersized apples.

Tenacity of purpose and “Never say die”--which compel results--are well exemplified by a happening that came to my notice some years ago, involving two cars of shoes which were routed and definitely promised to one trans-continental line. A rival corporation sent a city solicitor after them without securing the footwear. The city freight agent then essayed the task with like success. Undaunted the “D.F.A.” was the next to try, but the shipper remaining firm stuck to his guns when the fourth application was made in the person of the freight traffic manager. The news spread and on Wednesday evening of that week, when the gentleman who shewed such valor in defending his citadel of shoe leather, to the accompaniment of the silent prayers of the party of the first part, called at the president’s residence to visit his daughter, the _denouement_ hung fire no longer. A word, under such circumstances from the high official proved sufficient and the loser then understood the quotation, “An idol but with feet of clay.”

An active traveling agent and irresistible business getter told me once of a prominent London firm promising him a carload if he would remain absent for six months, of another who suggested “Sell some goods for us and we will favor your route,” while the third--an old ‘Q’ employee who claimed the ‘Q’ was a large family--looking at his watch, said “Wait twenty minutes.” Waiting twenty minutes is a nerve-racking ordeal that also affects a gentleman’s prestige and a better method of procedure would be to pre-arrange a meeting out of deference to the demands on busy people’s time. It is awkward, after traveling some distance for the purpose, to find on meeting the member of Messrs. Frett & Growl Limited, that he will not meet your eye, will not shew signs of animation, but with head down apparently saving his breath for a long distance race, terminates the interview in melancholy with “No!”

There was a traffic official in an eastern metropolis some years ago, representing a fine railroad but kept in the chair by other people’s financial power, who was notorious for that stealthy, furtive habit of fumbling with his papers without looking up, as though fearful his eyes would convict him of his sins against men.

In the category of queer ones could be listed the eccentric who accosted a friend of mine, now doing trustworthy executive work for the government railways, with “What, you here again?”

“Just for three minutes, Sir, to place a routing order!” “You won’t be here a minute, I’m too busy. I can’t be bothered by you and your routing order; it isn’t worth the paper it is written on.” With people like this unmuzzled and at large, can you wonder at the increase in crime.

Another good acquaintance who was invited to an inner office to unburden his mind and concisely recited the nature of his business without molestation, was dumbfounded when finished to observe the creature before him, without parley, touch a buzzer, summon a servitor and request him to “Shew this gentleman out.” What would you rather do than live with him? Some men’s physical boundaries and narrow-minded outlook are so small and contemptible that if a mosquito laid out a nine hole golf course on their torso he would be crowded for room.

A decade or so ago there dwelt in a town an hour’s ride east of Toronto, an individual like a ruffled grouse who thought to slay his interviewer summarily with “What you tell me goes in one ear and out the other,” as he made a personally conducted tour to the door. Quickly came the retort courteous: “I am not surprised Mr. ---- there is nothing there to stop it.”

Now comes that robust type that would probably not wince when getting it back in kind if his antagonist could fittingly measure up to his standard in words and deeds. Picture the horned and forbidding monster, swollen with pride of place, who greets the caller as though he were going to swallow him whole and allow his gastric juice to do the rest: “Well, your company has one H-- of a nerve to send you out here asking me for business: you built a station, some big contracts were let, but you were all looking out of the window when I wanted a slice,” finishing with a _coup de grace_, “What have you got to say about that?” His caller replied, “I guess our management took a leaf out of your book; how much of your business have we handled in the past ten years, tell me that? We learn to know who our friends are and when we have some favors to place we don’t hurry with them on a platter to the people who forget our route, but try to remember those who realize that if we are lucky we run a train or two about once a week out west.” The lengths to which some folks will go to make personal a neutral issue is astonishing. A man who had been employed in Chicago by a firm that could not prevail on the “C. & A.” to give them an order, came to Canada to work for an Ontario industry and expressed his intention to gratify that grudge by witholding shipments of the new employer from the railway he had placed under the ban.

The book of boors will admit of one more entry, being a letter I have permission to reproduce, which was addressed to one snob by a conscientious and sensitive young agent who has since transferred his energies to another channel.

Dear Sir--

The three sentences below--

“Who are you and what do you want?” “I would be ashamed to be so unpatriotic as to work for Yankee employers.”

“I’ll give you fellows business only when I’m in a hole and cannot do otherwise!”

form the subject of this communication and are exactly the text and sense of part of two conversations which occurred between you and myself--involuntarily on my part--and only because I was acting on orders while in the capacity of an employee of a “U.S.A.” railway seeking a share of the routing of the freight traffic you purchased in the United States or shipped westward, and which, unfortunately, you controlled.

No longer situated where behavior and language like yours has opportunity to grievously test the patience of myself, (and several others), permit me to allude to the impression you create.

When people of your calibre, quite devoid of consideration and _finesse_, receive a business proposition with a verbal attack couched in the tone and vernacular of your moulding shop, they are, no doubt, running true to form, but they take refuge behind the assumption that there is no one to question their attitude.

In doing so they indulge in a cowardly advantage over gentlemen who, by the nature of their employment, from president down, always have to remember the officials higher up; remember also, that in giving free rein to their human resentment, they may be rewarded with a letter of complaint, half true and half garbled, sent in by some cad to an officer disloyal enough to first believe the outsider.

Reflect on how disconcerted your son might feel were he to experience the misfortune of meeting a sour tempered individual like yourself when first coming in contact with the commercial public. He could not do himself justice nor serve you well.

The proverb says “One cannot make a silken purse out of a sow’s ear,” and although it is difficult to rebuild what the man in the street characterizes as a “rough neck,” it is never too late to mend.

The isolated class referred to are known by representatives of all businesses and are tacitly ostracized when the army of decent fellows is being discussed.

“_Please heed the handwriting on the wall_”

That man was “misfit” who should have been polishing apples for a Greek--to quote Jack Rose, an original wit.

After bidding adieu to the friendly personage who has accepted a mild cigar, but uncontented, megaphones to a couple of others at the rear in this wise, “Here Jake and Eddie, get in on the cigars,” our conversation in the “smoker” again reverted to pianos and things harmonious and cheerful. Genial M. T. Case recounted how fire, while in transit, ruined a carload of pianos when en route the west and the firm’s western manager, a believer in long odds, filed a claim for reimbursement, itemizing the instruments at $500 each. When the railway company received the _billet doux_ they blinked and may have said “For the love of Mike” or something less classical and affectionate. However, as soon as the firms attention was drawn to the amount of the claim the manager, with good judgment, clipped $200 off each piano and a prompt settlement was arranged.

Only a few months ago an organized band of box car and freight shed thieves stole nine pianos and four phonographs from one railway company in a large city, and to date six had been recovered. Claims arising from damage, delay, theft, loss and wrecks are traffic men’s enemies that play the mischief and filter through all departments to the chief legal authorities. Of late years the railway companies have been stimulated to eternal vigilance in order to combat daring robbers with confederate organization quite far reaching and involving from twenty to forty people within the ranks of employees and outside. Such a gang is said to have stolen from one company in four months goods valued at $35,000, comprising candy, cameras, sugar, liquors, musical instruments and clothing. The investigation departments have recovered from beneath hay stacks not far from Toronto, Canada, for instance, forty suits of underwear and a dozen pairs of ladies high suede boots. Imagine the temerity of the men making off with twenty head of sheep from under the eyes of yardmen and special officers. The public press not long ago chronicled details of the loss of fifteen sacks of flour from one car en route Buffalo to Belleville. Whiskey is an outstanding temptation and many a headache that starts rolling fails to join the soda waiting at the other end. Out of a thirty case consignment from further west, making the one night journey from St. Thomas to Black Rock, there checked fifteen cases missing, lock, stock and barrel--the wood only of four cases remained and eleven cases were intact. Unmerited onus for losses is now and then thought to rest with the railroads which enquiry does not substantiate. A well known firm in the congested wholesale zone of a neighboring city engaged a detective who pussy-footed about the premises for a year without locating a leak. This human bloodhound may have had a cold in his head and was a poor scenter as it was developed later that the shortages were manipulated as a side line by a vinegar mill shipper who got away with also $6,000 of the hardened cider--mostly recovered--and had been supplying a small pickle factory through the medium of a carter who drove up daily for kegs.

Railway companies very seldom pilfer, but the action of more than one railroad on this continent in appropriating urgently needed steam coal billed to others during the winters of 1917–18, will prepare the reader’s viewpoint for a claim for reimbursement placed in the hands of the Silverplate Road, covering fifty cars of slack coal, lost and being vigorously traced, which that line had seized and hastily dumped into a big washout cavity.

Whitewashing coal would seem to be a labor as unheard of as washing the spots off the leopard, yet, says the Saturday Evening Post, that apparently crazy scheme is carried out by some western railroads. The coal is whitewashed, not for aesthetic reasons, but simply to prevent theft in transit. Before a car of coal starts on its journey the top layers are sprayed with limewater, which leaves a white coating on each lump of black coal after the water evaporates. The removal of even a small quantity from that whitewashed layer is immediately detected, so that the exact junction or station at which the theft occurred can be noticed.

Once upon a time when many boys were investigating the fallacy of the supposed transformation of a black horse hair into a snake after nine days sojourn in the rain barrel, a loaded oil tank car was glued to the rails in Detroit yards, but urgently needed on the other side of the international boundary. Giving a clear receipt, a connecting line hooked on to it, but almost immediately finding the tank in a leaking condition because the discharge pipe had been snapped in a rough shunt, they shot it back to the original carriers. The latter were on guard and refused it, the tank in the meantime losing 200 gallons of oil. To aggravate matters, a third railway whose office was to deliver the shipment, looked askance at the “cripple” and thus both exits were closed. Despite the pleadings of the consignees for the oil, the middle line holding the “white elephant” turned to them a deaf ear until a settlement would be made. After much fencing and correspondence an adjustment on a mileage basis was arrived at. The road accepting the “bad order” tank was held liable for a proportion gauged by a thirty mile haul, and the comparatively innocent delivering company, being ten miles longer, drew a debit of $4,000.

The interpretation of a maze of tariff rates and a thousand lights and shadows affecting their application, as well as classification, deadlocks regarding analogous goods perplex and keep bright the wits of railway people, that the responsibility may be placed where it should rest. To elucidate this remark let me refer in passing, to a partly demented and very undependable dealer in a commodity that was barrelled--long since gone to his reward--who requested and obtained a quotation on a specific shipment of twenty cars, each to contain a stated number of barrels, which were to be of agreed size and weight. He then had made a larger barrel, forwarded the product in them and, of course, when weighed a heavy undercharge claim developed, the carriers holding the short end.

Different from this was the experience of a car of eastbound California oranges traveling via the gorges and canyons of a Rocky Mountain railway. A broken axle precipitated trouble in the middle of the train which threw the “cripple” out of alignment and in shorter time than is consumed in relating it, the down-grade impetus and pressure wrenched it free throwing the disabled car clear. It fell to the bottom of the gorge, the automatic couplers linked the drawheads of the separated halves of the train and no one was wiser until the following springtime freshets uncovered the debris at the base of a cliff, clearing up a mystery for the checkers and claim department.

Sparks from passing locomotives do widespread damage to crops and fencing and a battalion of agents are continually engrossed with personal injury matters and destruction of stock. A car of expensive western steers was recently heading eastward to the seaboard when early in the morning prairie grass in the racks of troughs igniting from sparks started a blaze. Being under way, the crew did not detect the trouble at once but, on learning the danger, they raced to the water tank at Ingersoll. Before the water was reached a draw bar pulled out and broke setting the emergency brakes hard, jolting the train to a sudden stop. Fifteen head of the cattle were found roasted to death and three jumped from the car and ran amuck crazed with blisters and the intense heat. Railroading is not all profit. Some days you cannot lay up a cent. The following true story is apropos:--

“How many cows have you now?” inquired the visitor.

“Eight,” replied Farmer Corntossel, discontentedly; “all comin’ home reg’lar every night to make work for somebody.”

“I understand two of your neighbor’s cows got hit by railway trains last week.”

“Yep. An’ he got cash fur ’em, too. I don’t see how that feller trains his cattle not to shy at a locomotive.”--_Washington Star._

When the public magnifies the cash returns from ticket sales and freight traffic it has not an accurate conception of the immense sums paid out annually by the railway companies for the adjustment of even small claims. Traffic Manager Adam Scott of the F. W. Woolworth Company, with eighty-five stores in Canada, was instrumental in having authorized during the past fiscal year $16,000 in vouchers issued to write off small claims on less than carload shipments of glassware and crockery. This firm controls nine hundred and ninety-eight stores in America and the sums involved in this phase of profit and loss must be immense.

On one occasion the Great Northern Railway wrote the Heinz Pickle Company, Leamington, Ont., regarding the collection of an undercharge amounting to $40.09, which arose from an error in prepaying the freight charges on a carload shipped to Vancouver, B.C. The Pickle Company’s Traffic Manager, at Pittsburg, Pa., working in accordance with the Inter-state Commerce Act Rules, promptly acknowledged the liability in an elaborate statement, with cheque, assuring the railway company that the correct amount of the discrepancy was, on further investigation, found to be $80.45. In other days we all knew some people who would have gasped at such an evidence of gratuitous fair dealing, but to quote from William Shakespeare, the listener would be fit for “treason, stratagem and spoils” whose risibilities are not tickled with a recital of the claim of a cautious old sexton, made on the Canadian Northern Railway at Winnipeg for two funeral tollings at $2 each which he would have received had the railway delivered the expected church bell in time. And so the old world and the amusing people on it, with their pleasantries and foibles, roll across the stage of every-day existence.

LINES ADDRESSED TO FREDERICK P. NELSON

Traveling Agent, Grand Trunk Railway, on the occasion of his marriage, Hamilton, Canada, May 27th, 1912

“We must encourage the young,” said a former acquaintance of your father--a benevolent old benedict--who cheerfully swung into line with the friends wishing to mark your approaching marriage and who would honor you with more than the sentiments expressed herein.

The matrimonial contract of that railroading knight is nearing completion; yours is about to be undertaken with ideals, hope and resolve. Undoubtedly the trail will develop many joys and some kinks in the path, but we are convinced that you can measure up to the best traditions of the lords of creation. Those who have basked in the rays of your genial personality prophecy you will prove docile “In bond” and all of us will “Watch your smoke.”

You spring from sturdy stock, long identified with railway construction in Canada, and since those other days in the loft of Hamilton’s smoke smeared freight shed, down the avenue of occupations in your native city, abroad in Western Ontario and throughout the business zone of Toronto, few dare question your reputation for urbanity, commercial sense and thoroughness. Where master and man wrest for silver fortunes in Cobalt Camp, they say your methods and diplomatic behavior were “as smooth as a kitten’s wrist” and a decided asset to the Grand Trunk Railway.

As a reminder of your bachelor days and associations: as a token of regard when nearing the threshold of a momentous event in your life, accept from subscribing friends whose names are attached hereto, the accompanying gift of dining room furniture--a contribution towards your household gods.

To the estimable lady who is to become Mrs. Nelson, please convey our profound respect; we presume her journey from Brockville to Hamilton will be a personally conducted tour. You both have our earnest and best wishes for a happy future.

For the Committees--J. A. YORICK, C.B. & Q.R. J. M. COPELAND, C.M. & St. P.R. A. S. MUNRO, G.T.R. LYNN C. DOYLE, The Irish

HAMILTON, A HOTHOUSE FOR TRANSPORTATION MEN

Her numerous railway and navigation sons abroad

L. J. BURNS, D.F.A., Canada Steamship Lines, Toronto, Ont.

1. J. J. BYRNE, Ass’t. Pass. Traffic Mgr., Santa Fe Lines, Los Angeles.