ENC

NORMITIES of any character attract attention and for large figures there is no better place to look than in the records of the railroads for a year in the United States.

In the first place there are 240,129 miles of track or 480,258 miles of rail. At 60 pounds to the yard this rail weighs about 105,600 pounds or about 53 tons to the mile. Then the total track in the country weighs over 25,000,000 tons or 25,453,674 pounds.

The freight movement mileage in the United States last year was 93,885,853,634 or equivalent to carrying one ton 3,755,434 times around the globe.

The passenger movement mileage was 13,044,840, 243 or equivalent to carrying a man 521,793 times around the globe or around 1402 times a day for a year or 35,050,000 miles in 24 hours, which is 1,460,000 miles an hour at the rate of 405 miles a second. In other words our passenger trains carried nearly thirteen times as many passengers one mile as there are human beings on this earth.

The weight of freight handled was 773,868,716 tons or 1,547,737,432,000 pounds. This was carried by 36,080 locomotives which is equivalent to the power that would be exerted by 36,080,ooo horses. This is over twice the number of horses in use on farms in the United States, estimated by the department of agriculture in 1896 to be 15,124,057.

Each horse's share of the tonnage moved in the United States would be about twenty-one tons or 42,000 pounds. If the horses were 8 feet in length they would make a tandem team twice around the globe with about 3,079,560 horses left.

If the railroad capital invested in the United States, according to construction accounts $9,953,767,710, were to be invested in a sufficient number of horses and wagons to do the work done by the locomotives and cars of the country each rig would have cost $275 or thereabouts. However if the amount of capital invested in locomotives at an average of about $10,000 or $360,800,000 were to be put into a sufficient number of horses to do the work of our

locomotives horses would cost about $10 apiece, or thereabouts.

The number of miles of railroad in the United States is about 182,000, or over seven times around the globe. The average length of a freight car is about 35 feet, so the 1,250,000 in service in this country would make a train about 8,333 miles long. A freight train of 75 cars is about half a mile long. Adding to the length of freight cars that of 24,788 passenger cars and 7,839 baggage cars we have about 8,700 miles of cars, or with the locomotives, a train of about

10,000 miles in length. The freight cars alone would blockade every foot of mileage of the New England States with enough to spare to connect New York and Chicago and encircle the two cities.

The number of passengers carried last year was 535,000,000 or over seven times the population of the country. These people traveled over 13,000,000,ooo miles. It is about 93,000,000 miles to the sun. Then if one man had used the mileage traveled by his fellow citizens he could have taken seventy trips to old Sol. By that time if he was tired of the trip he could go to the moon sixteen times and leave a 40,000 mileage book to his heirs if he happened to land too hard on his return to terra firma. As for baggage, our planet trotter could have taken two tons of it every where he went during the year to use up the power of the force that was directing his course.

If the total traffic revenue of the railroads of the country had been divided equally among our 72,000,000 people, each man, woman and child would have received about $16.07 apiece. Then if the people were to pay the operating expenses of the railroads they would have left $6.23 apiece. Then if they paid fixed charges, interest and money borrowed to complete the roads and on outstanding obligations, and rents and taxes, they would have left $1.32 apiece. This without paying any return of the $5,373,187,819 capital stock of the railroads. If they paid the dividends, about 1.14 per cent, they would have left 16 cents apiece; if they paid 1.24 per cent, pretty poor return on capital,

they wouldn't have a penny left, or if the population of the country is made up of families of about 5 on an average, each family would have 80 cents surplus or about $11,000, oco reported for 181,000 miles of railroad. As it was, 826,620 employes received $468,824,531 for their services to the railroads directly, or $567 a year apiece on an average, and indirectly it is estimated that 10,000,000 persons were supported by the railroads and the industries that depend for their existence upon the railroads.

The average distance that a ton of freight was moved last year by the railroads was about 121 miles and the amount received for this service was about $1.00 or about .8 of a cent a mile. There were 454 men employed in railway service to every 100 miles of line, or a man for every 70 rods.

If the sum paid the general officers of the railroads of this country in salaries last year had been added to the amount paid all classes of employes exclusive of the officers and the latter had been paid the average for the number employed, the wages of the great army of railway workers exclusive of the general officers of the road, would have been increased $12 a year apiece. The average received, taking officers and men, was $567 a year June 30, 1896, by the last report of the Inter-State Commerce Commission. The 5,372 general officers received $12,497.957. Then the total employes actually received $555 a year on the average, and with all paid alike all would have received $567 apiece, officers and

men.

Again, put the salaries of the general officers and all other officers into the total paid and pay all the same yearly compensation, and the pay of all classes of railway employes over the amount they actually received annually, $551, would have been $16 a year, all officers and men paid alike. For the 365 days of the year that the men must live while they work about 300 days, this would give each employe a little over four cents a day more than he now receives and little over five cents a day more than he actually receives, on an average for his working days. Abolish all officers and divide between the 818,184 other employes of the railroads their salaries, and each employe would receive $573 annually on the average in

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stead of $551 that he already receives now, or $22 a year better pay-about seven cents a day better than is now paid.

The amount paid in dividends by the English companies on about one-third the capital of the American lines was, $24,000,000 less than the amount paid in dividends here. The amount paid in labor, however, was $371,000,000 less. The payments for labor in England. were 155 per cent of the dividends. In America they were 535 per cent. Or to put it in another form, for every dollar paid to the stockholders in England, labor received $1.55; for every dollar paid to the stockholders in America, labor received $5.35.

For every dollar paid to the bondholders (or what is the equivalent thereof), in England labor received 98 cents. For every dollar paid to the bond-holders in America, labor received $1.33.

For every dollar paid in England as dividend and fixed charge on capital combined labor received 51 cents. America it received $1.08.

In

Labor in England received only 51 per cent of what goes to capital. In America capital received less than labor.

In England labor constituted 46.89 per cent of the operating expenses. In America 60.65 per cent of the operating expenses went to labor.

If a man can carry 1,000 pounds one mile every day for 313 days a year, resting Sundays, which is more than most men would undertake to do, he can carry 156.5 tons one mile in a year. It would take over 80,000,000 men to do the work the railroads last year at this

rate.

If each man were moving his burden in one direction he would have to walk 20 miles a day if he carried a 50-pound burden. Then each of the 80,000,000 men would have to walk 6,260 miles a year besides carrying 95,328, 360, 278 tons burden between them. Few men would undertake to walk from New York to San Francisco and back again in a year, even without a burden of 50 pounds to carry.

If these 80,000,000 men were told that they would be paid for their labor $786,615,837, the total freight revenue last year paid the railroads, they would count $9.83 a year, pretty poor pay.

SEVEN miles out of Memphis, on the

old pike leading from Nashville, stands a quaint old fashioned southern home, with its broad veranda and colonial pillars now partly crumbled away with age.

The fence which surrounds it, a modern picket structure, barely gives breathing room for the old house, which in its early days stood out and alone from other houses, the manor house of a great plantation. In spite of its age, there is a grand old dignity about it which naturally excites the interest of the visitor to the pretty little suburban village wherein it stands. Connected with it, as with many other houses in the South, is a romance sad but strangely beautiful.

The story is the old one of love and war. The time was 1862, when the Union Army had taken possession of Memphis, and many troops were stationed in the vicinity of this important river town.

Lieutenant West, of the th Indiana Cavalry, had barely passed his nineteenth birthday. He was only one of the many chivalrous young fellows who

cast their lots with the fortunes of war. He ran away from his home in Ohio and joined a regiment of volunteer cavalry from Indiana, which had been made up of many of his relatives and friends; and it may be truly said that it might have been more for the love of excitement than patriotism which prompted him to swear falsely to his age when he joined the ranks; but nevertheless he served four years and endured all the hardships of war without the slightest desire to return home. He did not seem to realize the dangers of war personally, but day by day looked forward to some new honor.

So far fortune had favored him; he had been advanced from a private to the rank of second lieutenant and he keenly enjoyed his favoritism amongst his comrades and the honors bestowed upon him.

Fate then took a hand. His regiment had encamped several times within the vicinity of Memphis and he began to feel at home in that section of the coun

try. The quaint old house was then the magnificent home of an officer in the Confederate Army who was away with his regiment near Richmond. The family at home consisted of the mother and two young lady daughters and the usual contingent of negro servants. This home had been continually under the protection of the Union Army, and its inhabitants had learned to feel no fear of injury of any sort, except the devastation of their granaries and fields.

It fell to the duty of Lieutenant West in the latter part of '61 to make the acquaintance of the family, and his manly character had completely captured the hearts of mother and daughters. The elder daughter was a famous southern beauty and in spite of their political differences, these two people plighted their love. Shortly after the engagement had been announced, the Union forces were withdrawn far to the East

and young Lieutenant West was wounded in the second Battle of Bull Run. It was supposed he was killed and the report to army headquarters was to that effect, but instead he had been taken to the hospital camp in delirium, his uniform removed on the field by the surgeon and he had been entered on the hospital register as hospital register as "unknown."

At this time his father, who was then at Baltimore, received a telegram that while young West was reported dead, there was no conclusive proof that such was the case and that many of the soldiers in that campaign were in hospital at Manassas Junction. The father obtained a furlough and went immediately in search of his son and by visiting tent after tent, found him the very day the delirium had left him. The father immediately applied for his son's discharge but the latter refused to accept it, declaring that he would join his company as soon as he was well enough.

This he did a few weeks later at Memphis, where in the meantime, his company or what was left of them, had been ordered.

This was in October of '62.

One morning shortly after his arrival,