The distinguished Boston jurist who not so many years ago astounded and startled the entire nation by saying that he could save a million dollars a day in the operation of its railroads was quite right, even though not exactly along the lines that he then suggested. Mr. Justice Brandeis at that time proposed to accomplish his great savings--then roughly estimated at 2 per cent. a year upon the property valuation of the railroads of the United States--by radical operating economies. That these might be accomplished and in a large measure, I do not now doubt. In fact for several chapters past I have been trying to show some of the larger opportunities to be accomplished along these lines; economies that to-day might be effected upon our carriers were they possessed at this moment with the proper imagination and vision, aided by an Interstate Commerce Commission possessed of the same qualities. We have seen how, in a test long enough to be definite, the motorized terminals in the city of Cincinnati have saved the railroads there something more than a thousand dollars a day. This was just one typical congested American city. I have tried also to show how that plan, in the main at least, could be extended to other congested American cities. It would not take very many such terminal savings to make a fair fraction of the national economy once proposed by our distinguished jurist of the Supreme Court bench.
Similarly I have tried to show the economies to be accomplished in the most neglected field of our rail transport system, the branch line and local service: the electrification of lines, the introduction of the gasolene-motor unit, both upon the rails and off, the steady refinement of the locomotive, the development of the all-important container. Yet even these by no means represent the limits of operating economies yet to be attained upon the American railroad. There are many other operating savings that might be made and that are not being made to-day. For instance the field of a more scientific train movement through better signaling is of itself a most fascinating one. The second important function of a railroad signal--second only to its all-important one of safety to human life and to property--is to keep trains moving. It is a poor business man indeed who does not recognize the high value of keeping all of his moving equipment as nearly as possible in constant motion and in this way holding down the cost of his overhead.