On The Track

Heat. [Music] Heat. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Heat. Heat. My heart. This is the American scene. A vast panorama of changing patterns fashioned by the skill and toil of planting and harvesting. The strength and power that dug riches out of the earth. The faith and courage that built huge mills and factories. The vision and initiative that built our railroads, setting the tempo, the strong, throbbing rhythm that is the pulse of a mighty nation. Today, forged out of a heritage of work and struggle, America is the living symbol of the miracle of modern production. Behind that miracle is a story, a distinguished and continuing chapter in the annals of American progress and prosperity. The story of the American [Music] railroads. Here was our country only a little more than 150 years ago. Vast in territory, rich in natural resources. A land where opportunity waited only for men to come and grasp it. But in all its myriad forms, opportunity layow. Lacking was the one basic vitalizing factor, adequate transportation. [Music] Economic progress has always been geared to the development of efficient transportation. What good vast territories if people could not reach them? What value fertile farmlands if crops could not be delivered to important markets? How could industry take root and expand without dependable lowcost means of transporting raw materials to factories and finished products to consumer markets? In his first 50 years as an independent nation, America had no adequate answers to these problems. And its vast potential in agriculture, commerce, and industry was still in the future. And then a little more than a century ago came the impetus. The railroads providing the spark to light the torch of development and progress. Here at last was the dynamic force needed to transform a young and sprawling country into a great and powerful nation. The history of America and the history of transportation by rail became integral parts one of the other. Each drawing strength and stature from the other. Railroads meant people, people meant farms, settlements, and then great cities and industries. Time and distance once the barriers to economic progress were conquered by the flanged wheel on the steel rail, binding the country into one strong, rich, unshatterable unit. [Music] The vital function of railroads is to move anything, anywhere, anytime to mills, markets, and ports swiftly and safely at low cost, giving the nation's products meaning and value for both producer and consumer. [Music] Railroads are the common denominator of American industry. Agriculture, mining, manufacturer, each in its own right, a great and vital industry, but each dependent of another basic industry, transportation by rail. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the fuel we burn, the cars we drive, all depend at some stage of their production upon railroad service. Golden grains from the plains of the north and west, on every grocery shelf, on every table. Fruits and vegetables from the Pacific coast and the far south, delivered by railroad to arrive at destinations fresh as the day they were picked. Coal from Pennsylvania, from Kentucky, from the Virginiaas, Illinois, and a score of other states, transported to thousands of factories and millions of homes all over the land. Copper from the mines of Montana, Arizona, and Utah. Iron from the mines of Alabama and the great ranges at the head of Lake Superior. Lumber from the Northwest and the Deep South. Meat from the plains of the West. Cotton from Dixie. Oil from the Midcontinent and the West Coast. The product of thousands of mills and factories moving in the mainstream of American life and industry. Moving at low cost. Moving by railroad. keystone in the design of American business and [Music] prosperity. America is more than wheat and coal and iron and steel. America is people, a dynamic people, always on the move, forever reaching out for new things to do, new places to go, new things to see. [Music] Every day of the year, every night of every day, millions of people planning, packing, arriving, departing on modern streamline trains to the familiar all aboard to the clicking of wheels. Music set to the rhythmic tempo of America on the moon. To accommodate the nation's travelers, the American railroads are constantly at work building finer, faster, more modern trains. The last word in streamline comfort and spaciousness. Today's passengers travel in cars which have been designed, built, and decorated to provide the ultimate in travel comfort. Combining the ultimate in service and dependability with safety, speed, and economy. Today's trains are faster trains, smoother riding trains, more comfortable trains. These the nation's railroads offer to the traveling public for visits to families, for business trips, for holiday trips to the nation's great and widespread vacation lands. [Music] Transporting people and products at an average charge far lower than any other form of transport is the chief job of the railroads of America. But the rail industry's importance to the national economy extends far beyond this primary function as a buyer of goods and services from other industries. With a shopping list that touches practically every conceivable phase of American commercial activity, the railroad industry is one of the country's greatest buyers and consumers. Railroads spend $2 billion a year for the products of American industry. Railroad needs range from toothpicks to cross ties, from paper clips to steel rails, from sheets and pillowcases to powerful locomotives. Railroads buy a great part of all the coal that is mined in the United States, as well as a large share of all the fuel oil produced. Railroads buy lumber by the billions of board feet. Iron and steel. Railroads buy millions of tons every year to be converted into tracks and bridges, cars, and locomotives. Railroads buy the myriad products of the nation's farms for the millions of meals served in their dining cars. They use everything in such quantities as to stagger the imagination. And their purchases, translated into terms of dollars and cents, help to enrich every facet of the nation's economy. But essential as railroads are to the economy of the nation, they are even more vital to its defense. The first line of American defense is the country's combat forces, the men who fight on land and sea and in the air. Back of these fighting men are the organized military services which put in their hands the arms, the munitions and supplies which they must have. Behind these military services stands the productive power of the most richly productive economy the world has ever seen. And basic in that American economy are the American railroads. Truly Uncle Sam's arteries through which there flows most of the great life stream of goods and food and fuel that keep our country sound and strong. When the rumble of international tension swells to ominous proportion, then more than ever, it is to its railroads that the nation turns. During the Second World War, these railroads carried more than 90% of all military freight and more than 97% of all organized military travel. The railroad's job was to move men by the millions to training camps and stations, to advanced bases, to ports of embarcation, and when their mission was accomplished and the victory won, to move them back to their homes. Their job was to move equipment, guns, tanks, planes, every sort of weapon, ammunition, supplies, food, fuel. Their job was to move to the ports of embarcation no less than six tons of such equipment and supplies for every soldier, sailor, and airman who went overseas and to lay down at the ports no less than another ton of supplies every month to keep him going. And back of that, the railroads had the job of moving the mountains of raw materials, the iron and coal, the metals and the stone, the lumber and the fibers, the thousand and one things from which the American economy fashions the equipment and supplies which American defense requires. That's what the railroads were called on to do during the Second World War. And that's what the railroads did. That's what railroads will ever be called on to do in time of national emergency. And that's what the railroads are doing and will ever do. Meeting the needs of the armed forces first, fully without delay. The railroads of America were created by the investment of almost 30 billions of dollars. Almost all of it the invested savings of the American people. the money of millions of individuals put into the stocks and bonds of the nation's railroads either directly or through the investments of savings banks, insurance companies, and other institutions which are the trustees of American savings. These savings have been utilized to acquire the cars and engines, to build shops and stations, to provide the roadways, the tracks, bridges and signals, the yards, terminals, docks, and all the other essentials of railroad operations. Among the agencies performing general transportation services, the railroads are unique in that they provide all of their own facilities. Not only the vehicles in which they move the nation's business, but also the roadways over which this business moves. Railroads not only build and maintain these ways at their own expense. They also pay taxes on them as well as on their cars, locomotives, and other facilities. Unlike most of the so-called taxes paid by other forms of commercial transportation, railroad taxes are not used to furnish tracks and stations for railroad use. Railroad taxes go to help support the armed forces, the public health and safety, the general services of government, even to help build and maintain the highways, the waterways, the airways, and the airports used by competitive forms of commercial transportation. In school taxes alone, the railroads pay enough to keep a million children in school every year. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] So there you have the American railroads created by the individual efforts, the poolled and invested savings of the American people with justifiable pride in accomplishments of the past accomplishments in peace no less than in war. The American railroad face forward to the future. They are ever at work on the job of self-improvement in research laboratories on tracks, in shops, in yards and terminals. From all living and trying and practical working experience come better things, better tracks, better cars and locomotives, better service, freight and passenger, provided only that the railroads have the the money necessary to make these better things come true. The American people, their industry, their prosperity, their very existence as a nation depend in large measure on the effective services made possible by the flanged wheel on the steel rail. There is nothing in existence or in sight which can replace the railroad in performing the essential transportation services upon which the very life of the nation depends. With abiding faith in the fundamentals of democracy, under threat of war or at peace, the railroads will continue to serve the nation and her people along the proven pathway to continued progress and ever greater prosperity. [Music]