We have seen in this book, and we shall continue to see, how traffic has been created upon the railroads overseas. In the past we have built railroad traffic here in the United States. In our railroads of to-morrow it will be done again. Something of the past can be repeated to-morrow. Witness Atlantic City; originally a lightly-built summer resort which did all of its business in about two months of the year and hibernated for the other ten. It was the railroad--railroad coöperation, if you please--with its advertising that made Easter upon the Boardwalk one of the great stated functions of the American social calendar. Railroad advertising made Glacier National Park; to an appreciable extent the other great National Parks across the land. Railroad advertising made the Northwest, the Southwest, California, Florida, the New Orleans Mardi Gras.
The most thoroughly advertised railroad upon the North American continent is probably the Canadian Pacific. The next is the Santa Fé. And it is estimated that of the round-trip tickets sold in an average year from Chicago and points east to the Pacific coast more than 70 per cent. of them read Santa Fé one way and Canadian Pacific the other. The best advertised single train in the land is the Twentieth Century Limited. And it is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the best patronized one. Does transportation salesmanship pay?
Let us return to our muttons. We were talking of competition. It has been said that it is competition--and competition alone--that has forced transport salesmanship. Undoubtedly this is partly true. It is one of the best arguments that can be made for the retention of our extravagant competitive system of rail transport. But upon analysis it will be seen that the advertising examples that I have just shown have been directed almost exclusively to the promotion of through long-distance trains. I have not seen the Santa Fé or the New York Central or the Canadian Pacific often stressing the advantages of travel in their short-haul, non-competitive territories. Last spring, and again this, the hoardings of London Town were setting forth the glories of the immediate vicinage in such color and beauty and appeal that one wished to close down one's desk and hie himself off into the open country--a ride on the train, and a ride on the train in again.