Mainline, USA (1946)

Heat. Heat. [Music] What? Heat. Heat. [Music] This is the American scene. A vast panorama of shifting patterns fashioned by the toil and sweep of planting and harvesting. The strength and the power that dug riches out of the earth. The courage and faith 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. [Music] 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 saga of the American railroads. Here [Music] 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 lay. Lacking was the one basic vitalizing factor, adequate transportation. Economic progress has always been geared to the development of abundant and 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 the first 50 years of its existence as an independent nation, America had no adequate answer to these problems. And its vast potential in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry was still in the future. And then, barely more than a century ago came the impetus. The railroad 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 became the history of transportation by rail. Each an integral part of the other. Each drawing strength and stature from the other. Railroads meant people. People meant farms, settlements, and then great cities and industries along the nation's railroads. 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] Railroads are the common denominator of American industry. Agriculture, mining, manufacture, each in its own right a great and basic industry, but each dependent on the proper functioning 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 services. 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 the railroads to arrive at destinations fresh as the day they were picked. Coal from Pennsylvania, from Kentucky, from the Virginia's, 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 Rangers of Wisconsin and Minnesota. 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 products of thousands of mills and factories. All moving in the mainstream of American life and industry. Moving at low cost. Moving by railroad. Keystone in the design of American business and prosperity. [Music] Next train for Birmingham and old boy on track. >> Vacation trip. >> Drawing room. >> Round trip. Upper. Lower. Come in. >> Pick it please. All aboard. >> Those are the words. The clicking of wheels. The music set to the rhythmic tempo of America on the move to accommodate Mr. and Mrs. traveling public. The nation's railroads are constantly at work planning and building finer, faster, more modern equipment. Lightweight cars, the last word in streamlined comfort and spaciousness. Luxury day coaches with every convenience. New, more spacious dining cars. Comfortable lounge and club cars. All room sleeping cars. Modern hotels on wheels. Smoother riding trains, faster train. Lower fair trains. Combining the ultimate in service and dependability with safety, speed, and economy. These the nation's railroads offer to the American public for visits to families, for business trips, for holiday trips to the nation's great and widespread vacation lands. Yeah. [Music] With a fabulous shopping list that touches practically every conceivable phase of American commercial activities. ity. The railroad industry is one of the country's greatest customer consumers. The railroad spend in excess of a billion dollars every year for the products of American industry. Railroad needs go from toothpicks to cross ties, from paper clips to steel rails, from sheets and pillow cases to powerful locomotives. Railroads buy about 1/5if of all the coal that is mined in the United States and almost 1/5if of all the fuel oil sold in the country. Railroads buy about 1/5if of all the lumber that is cut. 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 in terms of dollars and cents help to enrich every facet of the nation's economy. Railroaders are substantial citizens, too. More than a million strong, they and their families are a vital force in the daily lives of their communities, contributing to the maintenance of the body politic to a degree hardly surpassed by any other employee group. The railroads of America were created by the investment of more than 27 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 investments have been utilized to acquire cars and engines to build shops and stations to provide the roadways, the tracks, bridges and signals, the yards and terminals and all the other essentials of railroad operation. Among all the many 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 build these ways and maintain them at their own expense. And yet on these tracks as well as on all their other facilities, the railroads pay real taxes. Railroad taxes are not spent to provide and maintain railroad service and equipment. Railroad taxes go to help support the armed forces, the public health and safety, to help build and maintain public streets and highways, waterways and airports, every manner of public service. School taxes alone, which the railroads pay, are sufficient to keep more than 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 pulled and invested savings of the American people with justifiable pride and accomplishments of the past. Accomplishments in peace no less than in war. The American railroads 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 this testing and trying and practical working experience come better things, better tracks, better cars and locomotives, better service, freight and passenger. provided only the opportunity exists for the railroads to earn the means that must be invested 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. Given the opportunity, the American railroads will continue to serve the nation and her people along the proven pathway to continued progress and ever greater prosperity. Hallelujah. [Applause]