I should be inclined to agree with the gentleman writing in the "Railway Age" as to the complete neglect of the executive officers of our railroads of a proper supervision of their train service had there not come to my eyes recently a confidential report made to the president of a large road from one of his secret agents. This secret agent was much different from the average one--hired usually to assist in the detection of some employee or employees suspected of pilfering or other malfeasance. She was a woman of good station in life, a fairly experienced traveler, and by temperament inclined to be both generous as well as honest. For weeks she rode up and down the lines of that railroad and its competitors--not upon a pass, oh, no--but with nothing whatsoever to distinguish her from other travelers. Her comments upon the service, shrewdly feminine, went to her employer in the form of the confidential report which was brought to my attention. The mashed potatoes in Dining-Car 4809 were weak and watery. "... The chef should have known enough to have prepared them in milk or cream, not in water," her woman's judgment added. The head porter in the big new hyphenated hotel in P. advised her to go to a competing point by the X. line and not by the road that was employing her. There was a discourteous ticket-agent in the office at G. And so it went.
Here was a railroad taking a primary but a genuine step toward selling its transportation to its patrons. It is not enough that the railroads are making better "on time" records with their trains--their press-agents are putting out reams of propaganda these days to that effect: there is something more to real service than this. Return once again to our friend of the "Railway Age." He says:
Do railroad managers expect their ticket-sellers to be salesmen in the generally accepted meaning of the term or do they reserve this function for passenger agents? A man who found that he must make a hurried trip to a destination several thousand miles distant called at a consolidated ticket-office to purchase his ticket. The purpose of his trip required that he visit certain cities en route but he found that the ticket seller was unable to tell him how to arrange his trip so as to include these cities. He consulted other ticket-sellers with no better success and then informed the writer of his predicament. The writer telephoned to the passenger agent of a road over which a portion of the trip must be made and a traveling agent was immediately despatched to the prospective passenger's office who furnished him with all the information he required.