Page:The truth about the railroads (IA truthaboutrailro00elli).pdf/188

supplied 4991 school-children five pen-points per month during a school term of ten months. 1125 gallons of ink are furnished in one year. That amount would have supplied 5800 schoolchildren with ten two-and-one-half-ounce bottles of ink for a school term of ten months. The total charge for “stationery and printing” for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1911, amounted to $259.968.76, and the officers are all the time trying to save on small items as well as on large ones. Ten per cent saving of this class of expense would be nearly $26,000,—enough to build a mile of branch-line railroad in certain parts of North Dakota. If the 30,000 employees of the Northern Pacific, by energetic work and careful use of material, saved only one cent a day, it would amount in a year to $109,500,—enough to buy five good locomotives. If the great army of railroad employees in the United States, more than 1,500,000, should save, by careful, thorough work, one cent a day, the total would be the large sum of $5,475,000. A freight locomotive, suitable for handling the grain-crop, costs,