resulted in more efficient systems. The years 1913 and 1914 were a period of sluggish business activity during which the earnings of the railroads had been low and their dividends small. They had had difficulty borrowing money for equipment and improvement of terminals, and some authorities estimated that the American railroads as a whole were 5,000 locomotives short of the number needed to handle traffic in normal times, especially during the fall harvest.
At the low point of the 1914 recession, the railroads had about 400,000 idle cars. In 1915 traffic began to pick up under the stimulation of war orders from the Allies, and by September 1916, cars were beginning to be scarce. When the United States entered the war, there was a nationwide shortage of about 148,000 cars.[1]
Foreseeing trouble ahead, the railway executives met in Washington on April 11, 1917, and “voluntarily agreed to merge their ‘individual and competitive activities to produce a maximum of national transportation efficiency.’ ”[2] They created the Railroads’ War Board, a committee of five top executives, to coordinate the operations of the mainline railroads and draw up rules for conservation of motive power, joint use of terminals, and the use of embargoes against shipments to areas already choked with loaded cars. The board eliminated unnecessary or competing passenger trains and luxury services. They organized an educational campaign among shippers to promote better utilization of cars[N 1] and quicker loading and unloading. By September 1917, these efforts had reduced the car shortage to about 34,000 cars, and the railroads had moved 16 percent more freight than in the corresponding period of 1916, which itself had been a record year.
The importance of streets and highways in shipping goods was demonstrated during the war as increasing numbers of trucks carried commercial or military supplies. Below, army trucks wait for a load of tires.
Despite the efforts of the Railroads’ War Board, the transportation picture became darker as the fall harvest of 1917 approached, and creeping paralysis began to spread over the railroad system. Coastal ships that normally carried coal from Chesapeake Bay ports to New England were diverted to trans-Atlantic service, throwing an extra load on the rails. Ancient locomotives that had been continued in service far beyond their normal lifespan began to break down. Traditionally underpaid track labor left the railroads for the warplants, and track maintenance declined to a dangerous level. However, the major bottlenecks appeared at the terminals, which for dense traffic lines, fixed the ultimate limit of the traffic that could be handled. In the words of one executive, “Its terminals are the heart of a transportation system. If the terminals are inadequate to handle the traffic currently, then congestion follows, traffic is set
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- ↑ C. Upham, Car Shortage and Its Relation to Highway Work, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 79, No. 24, Dec. 13, 1917, p. 1099.
- ↑ Making Existing Facilities Do The Work — The Railroads’ Problem, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 80, No. 1, Jan. 3, 1918, p. 4.
- ↑ Transportation Needs — Rail, Water, Highway, Engineering News-Record, Vol. 80, No. 16, Apr. 18, 1918, p. 779.
