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ADDRESS
DELIVERED BY
MR. JAMES J. HILL
AT
The Annual Dinner of the Railway Business Association,
New York City
DECEMBER 19, 1912
ADDRESS DELIVERED BY
MR. JAMES J. HILL
AT
The Annual Dinner of the Railway Business Association,
New York City
DECEMBER 19, 1912
The subject of national transportation is many-sided.One aspect of it takes precedence in one communityor in the opinion of one interest, while forothers some different phase ranks all the rest. Butevery interest and every community should understandthat the main need today of transportation andof the many activities connected with and dependentupon it is an increase of terminal facilities. It is noexaggeration to say that the commerce of the country,its manufacturing and agricultural industry, its prosperityas a whole and the welfare of every man in itwho engages in any gainful occupation can escapethreatened disaster only by such additions to and enlargements[2]of existing terminals at our great centralmarkets and our principal points of export as will relievethe congestion which now paralyzes traffic whenany unusual demand is made upon them. Our naturalmaterial growth will make this their chronic conditionin the near future unless quick action is taken.
If you increase the size of a bottle without enlargingthe neck, more time and work are required to filland empty it. That is what has happened to the transportationbusiness. In 1907 traffic was blocked onnearly all the principal Eastern railway lines. It tookmonths to convey an ordinary shipment of goods fromone domestic market to another. The dead-lock wasbroken partly by a panic that lessened the volume ofbusiness and partly by the efforts of railway managementsto add, by increased efficiency, to the movingpower of facilities at command. We neither anticipatenor desire perpetual business depression. While thelimits of efficiency have not been reached, we knowthat it cannot be made to cover the demands of ourgrowth in population and production. The records ofany large city will prove this. The tonnage of thePittsburgh District