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Misused Product Costing in the American Railroad Industry: Southern Pacific Passenger Service between the Wars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Gregory L. Thompson
Gregory L. Thompson
Affiliation:
Gregory L. Thompson is assistant professor of urban and regional planning atFlorida State University, Tallahassee.
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Abstract

Reflecting recent studies that have highlighted the importance of product cost accounting, this article traces the resistance of American railroad managers to the tool, despite growing pressure from academic and engineering economists. This study reveals widespread misunderstanding among managers about the nature of railroad costs, particularly misconceptions about the proportion of fixed and variable costs and the definition of direct costs. It illustrates the impact of these misapprehensions through a detailed examination of Southern Pacific's interwar passenger strategy.

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Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1989 , pp. 510 - 554
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1989

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References

1 This article is a revision of a section of Thompson, Gregory L., “The American Passenger Train in the Motor Age: Archival and Econometric Analyses of Explanation for the Decline in California, 1910–1941” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Irvine, 1987).Google Scholar

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5 Cooper and Kaplan, “How Cost Accounting Distorts,” 20–27; Johnson, “Activity-Based Information,” 23–30.

6 Salsbury, Stephen, The State, the Investor and the Railroad (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 64–68 and chap. 10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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8 Chandler, The Visible Hand, 115–17.

9 Salsbury, Stephen, No Way to Run a Railroad: The Untold Story of the Penn Central Crisis (New York, 1982), 10–11, 13, 35, 50–54, 189.Google Scholar

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17 Chandler, The Visible Hand, 134; see also Chandler, Henry Varnum Poor, 112, 152; Martin, Enterprise Denied, 25–26, 43; Hoogenboom, Ari and Hoogenboom, Olive, A History of the ICC: From Panacea to Palliative (New York, 1976), 2Google Scholar; Skowronek, Stephen, Building A New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (New York, 1982), 142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Chandler, The Visible Hand, 134.

19 Salsbury shows that this general schema of railroad rate-making sprang up as soon as the nation's first interregional railroad, the Western, opened in 1842. See The State, the Investor and the Railroad, 64–68 and chap. 10. For a more general documentation of these practices, see Cochran, Thomas C., Railroad Leaders, 1845–1890: The Business Mind in Action (New York, 1965), 152–61.Google Scholar See also Daggett, Stuart, Chapters on the History of the Southern Pacific (1922; New York, 1966), 222, 236–50.Google Scholar Chap. 15 offers a detailed analysis of the workings of such a system in California. A respected contemporary source on the workings of the rate system circa 1900 is provided by Henry Carter Adams, the economist and statistician of the Interstate Commerce Commission, whose analysis is summarized by Martin, Enterprise Denied, 38–45.

20 Daggett, Chapters on the Southern Pacific, 286; Cochran, Railroad Leaders, 135, 153–55; Overton, Richard C., Burlington Route (New York, 1965), 113, 182, 242–43Google Scholar; Martin, Enterprise Denied, 42–44.

21 For the relationship between long-haul/short-haul discrimination and pooling, see Skowronek, Building a New American State, 142; for a history of pooling under the direction of Albert Fink, see Chandler, The Visible Hand, 123, 137–43; Cochran, Railroad Leaders, 170.

22 Hoogenboom and Hoogenboom, A History of the ICC, 1–38; Skowronek, Building a New American State, 121–49.

23 Skowronek, Building a New American State, 121–61, 248–84. See also Hoogenboom and Hoogenboom, A History of the ICC, 1–83; Martin, Albro, “The Troubled Subject of Railroad Regulation in the Gilded Age-A Reappraisal,” Journal of American History 61 (1974): 339–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Martin concludes that regulation was the product of a vindictive spirit on the part of average Americans to pull down the powerful, but Skowronek's more detailed analysis of political interests traces the basis of unrest to concern over rate discrimination and pooling. See also Martin, Enterprise Denied for the strengthening of regulation in the Progressive Era.

24 Hoogenboom and Hoogenboom, A History of the ICC, and Martin, Enterprise Denied. The definitive work on the establishment of railroad rate practices is Salsbury, The State, the Investor, and the railroad, 66–68 and chap. 10. See also Chandler, The Visible Hand, 125–26. Chandler states that in the 1850s railroad leaders collectively decided on the principle of setting rates according to the value of the commodity shipped. See also Martin, Enterprise Denied, 140–44.

25 The contemptuous stance of railroaders to shippers and others having opinions on how railroads should conduct their business is conveyed in Martin, Enterprise Denied, as well as in “The Troubled Subject of Railroad Regulation.” For the irrationality of the Inter state Commerce Act of 1887 see Skowronek, Building a New American State, 121–49. The attitude of shipper groups toward railroads is amply demonstrated in statements and examination of railroad witnesses in such ICC cases as the Western Passenger Fares Case, 37 ICC 1, the Five Percent Case, 31 ICC 351, and the Pullman and Parlor Car Surcharge Case, 95 ICC 469.

26 Five Percent Case, brief of Louis Brandeis, 27 April 1914, 103–5.

27 Ibid., transcript, 22585–88.

28 Edwards, Ford K., Study of Rail Cost Finding for Rate Making Purposes, Case No. 4402 (San Francisco, Calif., 1 Dec. 1938)Google Scholar, covering letter of J. G. Hunter, Assistant Director of Transportation and Chief Engineer. This letter refers to Chapters 223 and 312 of the Statutes of 1935, as amended.

29 Kimball, interview with Thompson, St. Helena, 19 May 1985. Kimball had been Edwards's student at USC. After graduation in 1935 he went to work for California's rapidly growing trucking industry, but when Edwards joined the commission, Kimball did as well. In this way he became familiar with the actors and politics of railroad cost-finding and rate-making, even though his primary interests were in truck and intercity bus transportation.

30 Edwards, Study of Rail Cost Finding, 35–39, 141–43, 171; ibid., cover letter of Ford K. Edwards, Transportation Economist. Edwards called White's earlier cost-analysis work with the Federal Coordinator's office pathbreaking.

31 Kimball, interview with author.

32 Ibid.

33 Ladd, Cost Data for Management, 40–41.

34 Chandler, The Visible Hand, 116–19.

35 Talcott, T. M. R., Transportation by Rail: An Analysis of the Maintenance and Operation of Railroads (Richmond, Va., 1904), 17.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., 22–23, 51–52.

37 Using interest on debt and leasing expenses, fixed charges as a percentage of fixed charges plus operating expenses on a sample of lines were as follows: 1869–70 1891 Pennsylvania Railroad (and western lines) 9.0% 25.5% New York Central & Hudson River 6.0 25.7 Baltimore & Ohio 12.9 28.3 Chicago, Burlington & Quincy 13.0 23.9 Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific 19.5 27.5

See Poor, Henry Varnum, Poor's Manual of Railroads, 1871–1872 (New York, 1871), 410, 327, 257, 370, 183, 176, 233Google Scholar, and Poor's Manual of Railroads, 1892. See also ICC, Statistics of Railways in the United States, FY 1916, 52. In 1891, the fixed cost percentage for Southern Pacific was 34.6%; it was 21.0% in 1929, and 17.0% in 1937. See Poor's Manual of Railroads, 1892 and Southern Pacific Company, Form A Annual Reports to the ICC.

38 Lorenz joined the commission in 1911, becoming chief statistician in 1917 and holding this post until 1944. See National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York, 1965), 47: 490.

39 Lorenz, Max O., “Constant and Variable Railroad Expenditures and the Distance Tariff,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 21 (1907): 283–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Lorenz, Max O., “Cost and Value of Service in Railroad Rate-Making,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 30 (1916): 205–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 In the Five Percent Case (1914), O. E. Butterfield, representing the eastern carriers, quoted from ICC Docket No. 4606, the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company Case: “In our [the Commission's] opinion each branch of the service should contribute its proper share of the cost of operation and of return upon the property devoted to the use of the public.” See Five Percent Case, transcript, 22395. See also Pullman and Parlor Car Surcharges Case, transcript, 1574–76, referring to the North Dakota Coal Case, decided in 1910, in which the commission decided that the carriers were entitled to a compensatory rate on coal, and that the coal should not be a burden on other commodities. Also beginning in 1910 the ICC decided a series of cases allowing railroads to collect more than a single fare for certain types of Pullman accommodations on the grounds that they were more expensive to the railroad. See, for example, 18 ICC 135 (1910), 25 ICC 207 (1912), the Nevada Drawing Room Case, 36 ICC 351 (1915), 33 ICC 521 (1915), and 43 ICC 51 (1917).

42 Pullman and Parlor Car Surcharges Case, transcript, 776, testimony of E. L. Bevington, chairman of the Transcontinental Passenger Association, appearing for the western carriers.

43 30 ICC 676; 37 ICC 1, 13.

44 37 ICC 1, 13–19 (1915) states that there was no serious difference of opinion among industry leaders on cost separation except in maintenance of way and structures. See R. S. Lovett to H. W. Clark, Esq., Counsel, Union Pacific System, 10 May 1915, Union Pacific correspondence in Maury Klein collection, Newport, R.I. In this letter Lovett states that many joint costs should not be assigned, and he objects to the ICC's promulgating uniform rules for cost separation.

45 37 ICC 1, 13–19. Forty-six roads proposed six methods, whose results ranged from allocating a high of 33.38 percent of total operating expenses to passenger service to a low of 31.74 percent. Most of the fuss surrounded maintenance of way and structures (MWS) expenses. Here the range was from 45.11 percent of MWS expenses on the high side, to 36.88 percent on the low side.

46 Office of Federal Coordinator of Transportation, Passenger Traffic Report (Washington, D. C., 1935), 67–68.Google Scholar

47 Santa Fe Case, transcript, 11651–52, 41 RCC 239.

48 165 ICC 373–79; Santa Fe Case, transcript, 11651–52. Kimball, interview with author. Two decades later, Dwight Ladd surveyed the status of American railroad passenger cost finding on behalf of the Harvard Business School and pronounced that Southern Pacific's Bureau of Transportation Research possessed by far the most accurate method in the industry. He thought it curious that these methods were not more widely used. Ladd, Cost Data for Management, 142. See also 39–40, 74, 93–97, 113–15, 120, 131.

49 129 ICC 17; 165 ICC 373–79; Edwards, Study of Rail Cost Finding, 138–46.

50 Santa Fe Case, transcript, 1687, 11703, 11718–20.

51 Kaplan, “Union Pacific (A).” The procedure for finding the cost of a train by Rail Form A is identical to the procedure that the Edwards California study recommended in 1938, which, as Edwards acknowledged, was established a decade earlier by Day.

52 Meyer's original work on this subject was conducted for the Aeronautical Research Foundation, which the Association of American Railroads retained to study the railroad passenger deficit in 1956 and 1957. This work was later incorporated into a more general study on transportation competition. See Meyer, John R., et al. , The Economics of Competition in the Transportation Industries (Cambridge, Mass., 1960).Google Scholar

53 Howard Hosmer, Report Proposed by Howard Hosmer, ICC Docket 31954 (1958), 7 and 8–10. This report is summarized by Hilton, George, Amtrak: The National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Washington, D.C., 1980), 7–10Google Scholar; Fuess, Claude Moore, Joseph B. Eastman: Servant of the People (New York, 1952), 122.Google Scholar

54 A summary of such work is given in Keeler, Theodore, Railroads, Freight, and Public Policy (Washington, D.C., 1983), 50–53, 153–61.Google Scholar Keeler states that the most sophisticated work is that by Friedlaender and Spady. See Friedlaender, Ann F. and Spady, Richard H., Freight Transport Regulation: Equity, Efficiency, and Competition in the Rail and Trucking Industries (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 23, 28–35, 217–34.Google Scholar

55 H. M. Carson and R. N. Durborow, “Confidential Report of a Trip Over the Union Pacific Railroad,” 6–21 Nov. 1908, Organization of Transportation Officers, Report No. 547, pp. 12–15, Pennsylvania Railroad records, Ace no. 1807/1810, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Del.

56 Southern Pacific Co., Student Course in Railroading (San Francisco, Calif., 1914)Google Scholar, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

57 Pullman and Parlor Car Surcharge Case, exhibit 28.

58 Cost figures are reported only for scattered abandonment cases. From the mid-1920s, these include: 1) 23 RCC 750 (1923)—$0.42 per car mile for gas-electric cars, not including track or roadway maintenance, station expenses, superintendence or general expenses, depreciation, taxes or interest; 2) 32 RCC 419 (1928)—$0.58 per train mile, defined as train and engine crews, fuel oil, locomotive repairs, locomotive and train supplies and expenses. To these were added taxes and passenger car repairs to yield what is called total out-of-pocket expenses of $0.64 a train mile. An allowance for maintenance of way and indirect expenses was added, for total expenses per train mile of $0.72; 3) 34 RCC 874 (1930)—$1.05 per train mile for a steam train and $0.60 per mile for a motor train.

In 1935 Southern Pacific's president Angus B. McDonald requested operating cost estimates of a new train he was contemplating. Marion J. Wise responded with a memo showing that the average out-of-pocket cost for a nine-car air-conditioned coach train of standard cars pulled by a 4–8–2 locomotive would be $1.00 per train mile. See Shasta Route file, memorandum from M. J. Wise to A. D. McDonald, 8 Aug. 1935, Southern Pacific Co., selected passenger files from the executive office, Richard Tower collection, San Francisco, Calif.

For the Santa Fe Case, Santa Fe estimated train-mile costs at about $0.79 in pre-First World War dollars for the all-Pullman Saint and Angel and between $1.04 and $1.18 in 1935 dollars for what it considered typical steam coach trains operating in California in 1935. See Santa Fe Case, exhibits 105 and 136. (The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway was typically referred to as the “Atchison” by those in the railroad industry, and as the “Santa Fe” by the public. I have used “Santa Fe.”)

59 Ibid. The Southern Pacific and Santa Fe costs were estimated similarly. In addition to crew wages and fuel expenses, they included allowances for maintenance of way and locomotive and car maintenance expenses. Neither allowed for depreciation or interest on rolling stock, though the Wise memo did include a special category for ice-activated air conditioning that contained operating costs, depreciation, and interest. The Santa Fe prepared its estimates from division accounts, using solely related passenger expenses from most accounts, divided by the number of passenger train miles in the division to obtain an average cost per mile. For locomotive repairs, it used allocated passenger costs. For maintenance of way and structures, it used one-third of fully allocated passenger expenses, following the then-accepted assumption that one-third of MWS expenses varied with the amount of traffic over the line. These calculations produced an out-of-pocket cost per train mile, which could yield the total out-of-pocket costs of running a particular train operating a known number of miles. Southern Pacific used similar methods, but allowed for lower cost of motor car fuel and maintenance, whereas Santa Fe did not. The Southern Pacific discontinuance applications also noted that the passenger trains imposed delay costs on freight traffic, but made no attempt to quantify those costs.

60 Santa Fe Case, transcript, 11584–86; 129 ICC 15. For a general discussion of Southern Pacific's involvement in Section 4 relief cases, see Pacific, Southern, Bulletin 13 (April 1924): 8–10.Google Scholar See also Daggett, Chapters on the History of the Southern Pacific, 284–86, 291–92.

61 165 ICC 379. See also Brown, Giles T., Ships that Sail No More: Maritime Transportation from San Diego to Puget Sound, 1910–1940 (Lexington, Ky., 1966), 226–27.Google Scholar Brown's sources are reports on Section 4 ICC cases, opinions and orders from the California Railroad Commission, and quoted railroad officer statements from West Coast newspapers.

62 129 ICC 15–16.

63 129 ICC 17; 165 ICC 373–79.

64 165 ICC 382, 391–92, 410. See also Edwards, Study of Rail Cost Finding, 138–46, 182–85. Edwards summarizes the pioneering work of Day and adopts most of his methods.

65 The bus subsidiary that filed applications for intrastate bus service in California was the Santa Fe Transportation Company. Santa Fe buses outside of California were operated by the Santa Fe Trail Transportation Company.

66 For Santa Fe probably not having cost analyses of the proposed train, see Santa Fe Case, transcript, 1700–1703. For Weidel's work, presented a month later, see ibid., exhibit 140, Report on High-Speed Trains, Chicago-Twin Cities (New York, June and July 1935); exhibits 142 and 143, in which Weidel estimated that the direct costs of a five-car streamliner similar to the Twin Cities Zephyr would be $0.71 per train mile, whereas those for a seven-car streamliner would be $0.97 per mile. For full discussion, see transcript, 2820–45.

67 Ibid., 11282–84.

68 Ibid., 11422–24, 11687–91, 11714–21, 11754–58.

69 Ibid., 11754–58; see also 11714–15, 11651–63, 11678–82.

70 The Tower collection contains monthly statements for the City of San Francisco, the Forty-Niner, the Daylight, and the Lark, all after the trains were equipped with streamlined equipment, or in the case of the Forty-Niner, up-graded equipment. The earliest of these statements is for 1937.

71 Coast Line file, Noon Daylight memo, Tower collection.

72 This conclusion derives from my examination of passenger correspondence from Southern Pacific's executive files, Tower collection. The Noon Daylight memo in the Coast Line file is a good example. In 1950 Claude Peterson, then the vice-president of passenger traffic for the Southern Pacific, wrote to Vail Andrus, director of the Bureau of Transportation Service, requesting an analysis of the revenue and cost consequences of the 1949 replacement of the Noon Daylight and Coaster with an overnight coach train composed of the Noon Daylight equipment. E. C. Poole conducted the analysis and wrote the reply. The detailed analysis examined not only the change in train mileage, but also the change in car mileage that ensued, for which it calculated changes in operating expenses.

73 In 1910 Southern Pacific passenger earnings per train mile were $1.89 according to the company's annual report to the stockholders. In 1916 western U.S. passenger expenses per train mile were $1.16 according to the first ICC separation of expenses, ICC, Statistics of Railways in the U.S., FY 1916. Expenses were likely much less in 1910 when general prices were less inflated. The service orientation statement is based on an analysis of the January-February 1915 system timetable, in which I calculated the number of annual train miles for each train operated and aggregated them into local and long-distance categories.

74 Derived from Santa Fe Case, exhibit 629, Intra-California passenger revenues for Southern Pacific and Santa Fe, and exhibit 76, Intra-California fare yields for the two roads, and California population statistics.

75 On the commission's wanting cost accounting for passenger service and no cross-subsidizing, see 30 ICC 676, 677–80 (1914) and 31 ICC 351, 392 (1915): “Each branch of the service should contribute its proper share of the cost of operation and of return upon the property devoted to the use of the public.” For the commission's granting rate increases on different types of Pullman service because of greater cost, see 18 ICC 135, 25 ICC 207, 33 ICC 521, 36 ICC 250, and 43 ICC 51. For a much stronger stand on cross-subsidizing in 1920 see 58 ICC 227, 240–41. See also Five Percent Case, transcript, 22389–96; Pullman and Parlor Car Surcharges Case, transcript, 776, 1573–76; ibid., Brief for Western Carriers, 4–8; Cunningham, William J., American Bailroads: Government Control and Reconstruction Policies (New York, 1922), 210–12, 239–41.Google Scholar

76 Santa Fe Case, transcript, 2344–46, 2652, 10881–82, 10975–76, 14839–59, exhibit 612, Southern Pacific Brief, 87–88.

77 These statements are summarized from Santa Fe Case, testimony of Pacific Greyhound Lines president Buck Travis, general manager Lee D. Jones, and Southern Pacific president Angus McDonald; ibid., transcript, 2344–46, 2652, 10881–82, 10975–76, 11125–26, 14839–59, exhibit 612, Southern Pacific Brief, 87–88.

78 Santa Fe Case, testimony of Felix S. McGinnis, exhibits 76, 568; ICC, Passenger Fares and Surcharges Case, 214 ICC 174 (1936), exhibit 29; ICC, Statistics of Railways in the U.S.

79 U.S. Office of Federal Coordinator, Passenger Traffic Report.

80 Santa Fe Case, Santa Fe Brief, 359.

81 For one of several exchanges between the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific over motives underlying Southern Pacific's 1936 California service improvements, see Matthew's examination of McGinnis, particularly Santa Fe Case, transcript, 2611–19.

82 Accounting Department report for Daylight, July 1938 in postwar Noon Daylight file, Tower collection.

83 Report on Streamline, Light Weight, High-Speed Passenger Trains (New York, 30 June 1939 and 1941).

84 The removal of statistics of the East Bay electric operation from company books in 1939 did result in productivity improvement, but the introduction of new streamliners appeared to have little impact in this regard (see Table 3).

85 Charles E. Smith to R. V. Fletcher, 1 Sept. 1943, 2–3, Vice-President Operations, file 521.31, Post-War Passenger Train Problems, 1943, Pennsylvania Railroad Co. Records; see also p. 6.

86 Smith to J. P. Newell, 9 Oct. 1952, ibid.

87 For an overview of the historiography of the rise of big business see Porter, Glenn, The Rue of Big Business, 1860–1910 (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1973), 102–11Google Scholar, and specifically on the new synthesis, 109–11. The primary work of this synthesis is Chandler, The Visible Hand.

88 Chandler, The Visible Hand, chap. 3.

89 Cochran, Railroad Leaders, chap. 6 and 126, 135, 147, 150. Such characterizations also applied to railroad management more than a century later. See Salsbury, No Way to Run a Railroad, 10–11, 13, 35, 50–54, 189. Salsbury does offer the possibility that there was more financial and managerial sophistication in the nineteenth-century than in the twentieth-century railroad industry. He argues that restrictive railroad regulation in the Progressive Era caused the flight from the industry of railroad managers with financial savvy; see 14–17.

90 Degler, Carl N., “In Pursuit of an American History,” American Historical Review 92 (1987): 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas C. Cochran, “The Presidential Synthesis in American History,” ibid. 53 (1948): 748–59. For examples of his later histories, see Cochran, , Business in American Life: A History (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; Cochran, , 200 Years of American Business (New York, 1977), esp. xiii-xvi.Google Scholar For an example of subsequent histories centered on this concept, see Flink, James J., The Automobile Age (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).Google Scholar For the central role of business history in understanding evolving American life, see also Chandler, Alfred D. Jr, “Business History as Institutional History,” Approaches to American Economic History, ed. Taylor, George Rogers and Ellsworth, Lucius F. (Charlottesville, Va., 1971), 18–20.Google Scholar