Hon. JOHN J. ESCH, RAILWAY BUSINESS ASSOCIATION, Chairman House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Washington, D. C. MY DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: Manufacturers of railway equipment upon concluding voluntary statements before your committee were asked by you their opinion regarding standardization. They replied that they favored interchangeability of car or locomotive parts through standardization of dimensions, but regarded it as essential to progress that there be variety of design and competition among inventors and developers of appliances. It is due to you and to ourselves that a fuller explanation of our view and of the reasons underlying it should be made. By conference and correspondence we have obtained the knowledge and judgment of members of our association and others. In the subjoined statement we endeavor to demonstrate that competition is essential to progress in service and in economy, that voluntary standardization by the railways, acting collectively, has long afforded and can continue to afford all desirable interchangeability, and that diversity of design is the indispensable condition for exertions by inventors and by developers of appliances. As bearing upon diversity of design, a description is given of a typical competitive appliance, the brake-beam rigging. Authorities quoted in the statement are connected with the several concerns which make such rigging and speak in response to our request. As a factor in progress, what is at stake is competition. If Congress adopts the principle set forth in section 9 of the Cummins bill (S. 2906), which deals with consolidations, the 20 to 35 ultimate systems will be so formed that "competition shall be preserved as fully as possible." The Government determines rates, in which competition has therefore largely ceased. What remains is competition in service and in economy. Such competition in the past has been maintained between railways and between makers of devices. The makers' occupational motive for maintaining competition in both directions is self-preservation; but the public has a vital interest in the preservation of these manufacturing enterprises and in the continuance of competing railway systems, since upon such enterprises and such railway competition depends quality and cheapness of transportation performance. From economical operation the public benefits through larger railway income, stronger railway credit, more vigorous improvements of and additions to facilities, and through a tendency to keep down rates. Standardization means the elimination of competition. In so far as standardization is desirable for the sake of practical stability and convenience of repairs, the railroads themselves, with the cooperation of the manufacturers, have in the natural course of business adopted and employed it. A standard specification in vogue on American railways is not the edict of a potentate or board of potentates. It comes up from below. It must make its way into general approval before it can have the force of a regulation which the minority will observe. So far as the manufacturer goes, the matter of applicability, of usability, which is the same thing as interchangeability, is out of his hands without action of Government. For several decades the Master Car Builders' Association and the Railway Master Mechanics' Association (locomotive), scientific institutes of railway officers, have annually added to the appliances whose dimensions and requirements for performance are "specified." These the American Railway Association, as it existed prior to Government control, recommended to all the roads. Generally, they were put into effect as soon as announced. The need for standardization of locomotives is almost wholly imaginary. A locomotive rarely leaves the road owning it, or even the division for which it was built; hence in time of peace, and almost entirely in time of war, all locomotive repairs are made at home. As to cars, interchangeability has been made universal in the United States. Accompanying this statement we present to your committee copies of two dictionaries issued annually by the Simmons Boardman Co., publishers of the Railway Age, one dealing with locomotive appliances, the other with car appliances. The latter part of each book contains the standards referred to, with pictures and drawings. From these books your committee can derive a conception of the extent to which the railroads, when occasion required, have standardized voluntarily. To grasp the significance of the burden which a developing mechanical practice sustains in transportation progress, it is necessary to bear in the mind the fundamental of railroad economy. In freight, the problem is the number of tons that can be hauled by one locomotive with one crew-in a word, the trainload. Possibly the largest single factor in the notable prosperity of such a road as the Union Pacific has been the success of the management in attaining heavy train loading. It was in pursuit of this economy that the late Mr. Harriman gave his days to experiment and devoted hundreds of millions to capital improvements. For augmentation of trainload, railroads in all parts of the country which had been permitted to accumulate the investment basis have poured out expenditure. They have built larger and stronger cars. They have constructed more powerful engines to haul the larger cars and more of these cars to the train. They have provided heavier roadway, rails, and bridges to sustain the enormously more ponderous train and cargo. These expenditures, by reducing the cost of drawing freight per ton per mile, not only paid for themselves but so far offset the rising cost in wages and material as to postpone for years before 1910 the necessity for asking that freight rates be raised. The trainload as a foundation basis of railroading explains the despair of managers when employees proposed extra men in crews and a limit on length of trains. Passenger trains have been made heavier also. More persons are carried to the car. Steel has taken the place of wood for safety. Speed has been increased for convenience. To all this development there has been at every stage and in every phase a mechanical limit. For instance, the movement of the train must be controlled. The engineer must be able to slow down or stop in any emergency. That is to say, railways can progress in economy of operation no faster than the development of the brake. The air brake of the sixties, replacing for more exacting uses the hand brake, achieved a stupendous advance; but, stopping the toy trains of that era was to the stopping of the 100-car train of 125-ton loaded cars of to-day what the air brake of 1870 was to the air brake of 1919. Progress in he trainload and in the brake has gone hand in hand. Even in the years when because of patent protection there was only one maker of air brakes, competition was an ever-present influence. First, there was the competition between railways. The most progressive minded of the managers were perpetually engaged in rivalry for cheaper operation. If practice had been standardized for all lines no departure could have been undertaken on any of them until the whole national system, perhaps a central omnipotent board, could be persuaded. Cars of a certain capacity would have been obligatory until all new cars for all lines contracted for after a specified date might be built larger. Territorial and topographical contrasts in conditions confronting the several lines might imperfectly and tardily be met. The working of this tendency in practice can be observed in the Govern ment standard cars allocated to some roads which had long since adopted larger capacity as best suited to their special problems. Second, there was the potential competition of makers who might bring out competing brakes sufficiently original to convince the Patent Office. A rival actually established itself, though it now in part covers its patent situation by a license arrangement. What kept one concern so long alone in the field was that it diligently developed improvements-in short, it acted as it would have had to act if competition had been actual instead of merely potential. A vivid form of potential competition was that of makers ready to enter the field the moment patent rights expired. To maintain its commercial position the single maker long before each such expiration abandoned the air brakes of yesterday and substituted a new device, protected in turn by new patents, The public was benefited because the essential advantage which induced progressive railways to try and use the newer appliance was the net saving in cost of operation through enlargement of the trainload. A significant feature of the standard vehicles built by the United States Railroad Administration was the effort, in some cases successful, to use an ap pliance upon which patent rights had run out and thus to exclude from the bidding more recent inventions still protected. From the point of view of the public this is penny-wise and pound foolish. It attains a little immediate cheapness. In doing so it exterminates by starvation the breed of inventors whose work is to promote not alone little economies but great ones. An illustration more typical than the air brake is its adjunct, the brake beam. In what follows it has been thought convenient to employ for concrete illustration one appliance rather than several. For this purpose the device selected is the brake beam. This appliance is attached both to locomotives and to cars. Rigid standardization of its dimensions and of its strength is necessary and is enforced. From six to a dozen types are in use, while unsolved problems with regard to it are to-day the object of study and experiment. A somewhat full description of this rigging will facilitate an understanding of subsequent references. The air brake can develop no faster than the beam. For between the air cylinder, whose piston is operated by pressure initiated in the locomotive cab, and the metal shoe, which in action is forced against the wheel, there is a mechanism which directly applies the power to the shoe. A failure of that mechanism puts the brake out of commission. The cylinder piston operates a rod located under the vehicle midway laterally and by a system of levers moves the two, three, or four trussed brakebeam structures toward the pairs of wheels which they are to brake. The performance which is expected of the beam rigging is this: That it receive the cylinder power; that it move so that simultaneously the shoe, which is fastened to it, will be pressed against the wheel; and that it stand the strain. It is in standing the strain-that is, in the dependability and durability-that progress has been made and is still promised in the brake beam. If a manufacturer claims superiority for his type, it is to those qualities that he refers. The Master Car Builders' standards tell him how many inches the beam must measure from tip to tip and throughout its external outline in order to fit the various cars. They prescribe the height at which the beam must hang above the rail. They require specified dimensions and locations for certain parts of tru: sed structures. Consequently when a car off the rails of the owning road is found with a damaged brake beam and the road on whose rails it is sojourning is addicted to a beam of another type, the defective beam can be replaced by one carried in stock by the road which does the repairing. The argument in favor of standardization is that while interchangeability of beams as a whole is maintained with variety of detail, each several part of the beam structure can not be replaced by a part from another type of beam, but the whole beam must be substituted. Another view prevails. This is that serviceable and safe break beam repairs are only made when the parts of the beam structure have been put together under the same tests and conditions as surround the manufacture, inspection, and acceptance of new beams; whereas such conditions are not and can not be present on yard repair tracks. The discarded beam is not wasted. It is subsequently carried to a place where under rigid conditions qualified mechanics restore it; and it takes its course of standard inspection like a new beam before it can again be placed on a vehicle. In their requirements the Master Car Builders' Association includes loads that beams shall successfully carry; but the means by which the maker shall impart the specified power of resistance to the beam and its parts is within his own province. That is the field in which progress lies. The original brake beam was wooden. As trainloads began to enlarge it was seen that a wooden beam strong enough for the new conditions would be a monstrosity in size. Mr. C. F. Huntoon writes that "the best design of truss metal beam 15 years ago weighing approximately 63 pounds carried a load of 6,500 pounds at one-sixteenth of an inch deflection, this deflection being the maximum allowed by the Master Car Builders' Association," while to-day a beam "of 77 pounds weight, or 20 per cent increase, will carry a load of 15,000 pounds at one-sixteenth of an inch deflection, an increase of over 125 per cent in strength and efficiency." Mr. Huntoon attributes such progress specialists who have directed their efforts to some one device or detail ** * * each vying with the other to produce an article of superior merit," and he says: "Without this competition and the protection afforded by letters patent, there would be no fast-schedule trains and boats, no telephones on the desk, or automobiles for convenience or pleasure; in fact, the industrial progress of this country has been stimulated by and is largely due to these very factors." 66 to The advance proceeded through various forms in metal. At first light metal beams met the situation, beginning with a trussed structure of pipe. Further increase in train weights led from year to year to development of more adequate trussed brake beam structures by various manufacturers, differing in the various parts, most notably in the "beam," or "compression" part proper; for example, the "U," the solid bar, the "channel," the angle, the T, and so on. Each of these types taken in cross section has a distinctive value within itself and within its relation to other parts of the brake-beam structure. Each of them represents the means by which inventive genius competes for superiority in meeting conditions as they evolve. Tests of these types and features are continually going on in the railway shops. There have been strong and eminent advocates of a standard beam. The railway men as a whole have preferred to leave the opportunity open for continued improvement. Since the proposal for a standard beam was made seriously in 1910 substantial improvement has been made. Mr. A. H. Peycke writes: "The brake beam manufacturers have conferred with the brake shoe and brake beam committee" (of the Master Car Builders' Association) "this last year with a view to straightening out a good many points in relation to interchange dimensions, clearance conditions, etc.," and cites a report delivered before the Master Car Builders' Convention in Atlantic City, in 1919, by Mr. B. B. Milner, of the New York Central, suggesting changes which are necessary; also giving a complete synopsis of the brake-beam situation since about 1915. Mr. Peycke's opinion is that "The standardization of brake beams would be decidedly disadvantageous to the railroads and people of the country, and any attempt to adopt a standard beam would, suppress initiative, invention, genius, and progress." Mr. Albert Waycott observes: "Seven or eight different types of brake beams, all interchangeable on equipment in service and all meeting the Master Car Builders' tests, will surely illustrate how both improvement and competition might easily have been greatly reduced had any one 'type' been insisted upon.” The manifest need to-day, according to Mr. C. Haines Williams, “is a more strict enforcement of existing master car builders' rules and more rigid application of test and manufacturing requirements * *. No single design * of beam has advantages sufficient to compensate for the penalty of having brake beams stand still for years * * *. The initiative and unhampered genius that produced the brake beams and brake transmission rigging that has always satisfactorily controlled our high-speed trains can not with safety be destroyed The success of past practice guarantees proper care of future problems if not interfered with by standardization, which would unquestionably develop indifference on the part of the interested brake-beam manufacturers of to-day. All the present master car builders' rules, specifications, requirements, and safeguards have come, without exception, from the recom mendations and practices of brake-beam manufacturers." Whatever may be the future of voluntary standardization, it is our conviction that the best interest of the public lies in leaving the railways free without any Government participation in the process. An important consideration cognate to this view in every line of railway requirements is that of centralized buying. Standardization would, we fear, do more than put a stop to the maintenance of vigorous departments of the manufacturing establishments for the testing and development of new devices and features. Not only would all the companies be reduced, so to speak, to automata filling orders to specifications, but there would be the further tendency to concentration of purchasing in some central bureau. Its responsible heads would probably not get and keep personal knowledge of the reliability and resources of individual makers. Bidding would tend to be controlled more and more by the element of price and less and less by the element of quality and durability. The bureau would tend to leave in the hands of subordinates the designation of those makers permitted to bid. Inevitably this would degenerate into a stereotyped process bereft of commercial enterprise and intelligence on both sides of the counter. What demands the future will make who can prophesy? Mr. Charles J. Graham remarks: "Had the thought of standardization of parts been put into effect some years ago, we would still be using wooden brake beams * The same is true to-day. There remains ample field for further improvements if they are not stifled by the fixing of standard details for parts." We are told that locomotives and cars have reached nearly if not quite their maximum capacity; that they already crowd the overhead clearances of bridges and tunnels; that to widen the traffic gauge would involve expenditures of appalling magnitude not only in acquirements of wider rights of way but in shifting and relaying existing tracks while traffic was carried on; that to lengthen the vehicles would involve us in costly track problems and complications involving station platforms and the like. Such pessimism is a counsel of sloth. For freight transportation at least higher actual speeds may be a possibility contained in the now rapid elimination of grade crossings. To what extent will this and other tendencies toward fuller use of cars affect the stresses placed upon every part of the rolling stock? Is it certain that electric propulsion will bring no new conditions in this respect, or that fuel or other source of motive energy in the future is even yet identified? Who can affirm that the controlling factor in future transportation development is yet dreamed of in our physics and chemistry or other branch of scientific pioneering? The manufacturer has always anticipated each new demand. When it came he was ready for it. He can exist and perform that function only if experimentation is free on the several railway systems and if achievements for the welfare of mankind promise reward to the inventor of appliances and profit to the developer. With high respect, yours, truly, ALBA B. JOHNSON, President. LETTER SUBMITTED BY THE PORT HURON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. Hon. JOHN J. ESCH, PORT HURON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, Chairman Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Washington, D. C. MY DEAR SIR: Referring to conditions in the present form of railroad bill of lading whereby shippers are required to bring suit in case of loss or damage within two years and one day from date of such loss or damage, our committee feels that a change should be made in these conditions, as very often railroad companies will withhold payment or will not render their final decision of a claim until the time has expired to bring suit. We believe that this railroad bill of lading should be amended so that shippers and receivers of freight should be permitted two years and one day in which to bring suit after the claim has been declined by the railroad company, and with this in view we would suggest that at the end of the bill, after the word "excluded," strike out the period, insert a comma, and add the following words: "And such time for the bringing of suits shall be computed from the date of notice in writing properly presented to the claimant, that his claim will not be allowed by the railroad company." Assuring you that we will greatly appreciate any assistance you can render us in bringing this about, I am, Yours, very truly, J. L. LUDLOW, Chairman Traffic Committee. PLAN PROPOSED BY THE PHILADELPHIA BOURSE. Hon. JOHN J. ESCH, PHILADELPHIA BOURSE, Philadelphia, October 8, 1919. Chairman Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Washington, D. C. MY DEAR MR. ESCH: I thank you for your letter of October 3, and beg to inclose herewith in duplicate the views and suggestions of our board of directors in reference to remedial railroad legislation adopted at a meeting held to-day. We sincerely trust that these may be found to be worthy of consideration and that the suggestions made will be acceptable in the formulation of the highly important legislation necessary for the solution of the railroad problem. We are pleased to note from your letter that these will be printed as a part of the hearings before your committee. Very truly, yours, PHILADELPHIA BOURSE. |