\wsm L ^ \j i T\ , R liiv'i'iw o| rn\ \ 0 T\ d^T \| tC-OTtOTrUCS ■;>;■■ A REVIEW OF RAILWAY ECONOMICS A Collective Catalogue of Books In Fourteen American Libraries BY THE Bureau of Railway Economics Washington, D. C. By A von der Leyen Author, Editor of the Archie fur Eisenbahnwesen, Councillor of State in Prussia, formerly Director of Railways in the Prussian Ministry of Public Works. Translation from the Archie fur EisenbahnWcsert, November-December 1912, WASHINGTON, D. C. 1912 I °rA\e.\v e_ jjfj * jdtP 9 The Bureau of Railway Economics, Washington. Railway Economics. A collective catalogue of books in fourteen American libraries. Printed by the University of Chicago Press, May, 1912. x, 445 pp. 8°. During recent years in the United States of America there has been much investigation and discussion of railways on their economic side. The causes for this are to be found in the unsatisfactory conditions in f railway affairs, rates, financial management, relations with employees, etc., and also in the repeated attempts which have been made to im- prove recognized evils by means of Federal and State laws. In all » this discussion one thing was felt to be more and more needed. Al- though there are many thoroughly trained men in the United States who are engaged in railway matters, men educated in both practice and theory, a deep knowledge of the inner meaning of railway affairs is lacking among the people and in the legislative bodies. Even the great railway systems and their heads manage chiefly according to their own experience and according to custom, not according to general fundamental principles. Moreover, there has been lack of an exact knowledge of the railways of other countries, and therefore of the possibility of making comparisons and conclusions from foreign ex- perience to aid in handling the home railways. These needs were considered at a meeting of railway presidents in the spring of 1910. To meet them it was decided to create a new or- ganization, which should have for its object the investigation of the economic situation of the railroads of the United States and of other countries and should make the results of its investigations broadly accessible. For this purpose a bureau was established under the name “The Bureau of Railway Economics,” which was opened on the first of August, 1910, and can thus look back now on an activity of more than two years. The presidents of six of the largest railway systems are ‘members of the committee and the managing director is Logan G. > McPherson, a specialist in railway affairs, well known to readers of j this journal, and extremely well trained in both practical and theoreti- l cal lines. At the head of the statistical department is Frank Haigh >J3ixon, a specialist also well known to us through numerous works, r statistical and otherwise, and Richard H. Johnston, recently of the I y Library of Congress, is librarian. The Bureau is situated in Washing- ^ ton. Its duty has been to keep in close touch with the Interstate Com- merce Commission, and also to work over the publications of that * Commission and make the results clear to the widest circles. The Bureau began its work immediately after opening. It publishes monthly statistics of American railways based on the monthly reports 4 filed by the railways with the Interstate Commerce Commission, and has published a number of monographs, some of them most valuable. In some of these strictly American conditions are treated and in others comparisons between American and other railways are drawn up from a strictly scientific point of view. The newest and most comprehensive publication is the one named at the head of this article, a catalogue of the literature on the economic side of railway affairs. It contains a systematically arranged collection of titles of the contents of 14 Ameri- can libraries, among them 9 university libraries, the Library of Con- gress, the library of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and that of the Bureau itself. With each entry there is a notation showing in which libraries the book is to be found. The arrangement of the catalogue is as follows : In the first division (to page 140) are general works on the development and history of railways, biographies of individuals, and Jfien works on the various departments of railway science (railways and the state, administration, operation, and traffic). The second division has to do with the rail- ways of the respective countries, among which those of the United States and of the other American countries fill the largest space (pp. 141-348) ; then follow Europe (pp. 349-400), Africa, Asia and Aus- tralia. In a special division (pp. 412-424) are collected periodicals and official proceedings and at the end is an alphabetically arranged list of names, which makes the use of the catalogue most convenient. An inspection of the work shows how rich the collections of the United States, are in railway literature, and not only in that of the railways of the United States, which appears to be fully represented, but also in that of other countries. A large number of older works, rare even among us, on the history of the English, German, French, and other railways, are to be had in American libraries. On the other hand, I miss almost entirely the literature of the international railway freight law, and the commentaries of Gerstner, Rosenthal, Blume- and others are not mentioned. Only the bulletin of the central office at Bern is to be found. The name of Eger, a man of remarkable pro- duction in various fields, is missing. 1 It is just the railway freight law, and especially the international freight law of middle Europe, that should be of particular interest for railway specialists and' teachers of political economy in the United States. Further, the libraries do not have that very valuable history of the railroads of the Austro-Hun- garian monarchy, together with the two continuation volumes. 2 These 1 The preface to the catalogue specifically states that books on general railway law are not included. (B. R. E.) 2 This history is listed on page 352 of the catalogue, under the name of the association publishing it. (B. R. E.) 5 are omissions which struck me as I examined the book and which do not at all lessen its value. But perhaps the Bureau of Railway Eco- nomics will take occasion to examine the catalogue of the Library of the Prussian Ministry of Public Works and thereby enlarge the con- tents of its own collection so far as its means allow. The work is intended to serve as an aid in the study of railway mat- ters, and for this purpose, according to my opinion, it is excellently suited, not only in the United States, but also in other countries. For the European specialist the lists of American works are particularly useful. The make-up is excellent, the print clear and plain. In Ger- many the book is to be obtained through Th. Stauffer in Leipzig, Uni- versitatsstrasse 26, the representative of the University of Chicago Press. < . Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/reviewofrailwayeOOIeye