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Rh year the locomotives run about 80,000,000 miles, the passenger-train cars move 220,000,000 miles, and the freight-cars move 624,000,000 miles. The total mileage of these units of equipment is 2,500,000 miles per day, or more than 100,000 miles every hour.

These impressive figures are even more impressive when used as an index of service in carrying passengers and freight. Each year the New England lines and associated properties, including the steamboats and electric lines, carry 252,000,000 passengers, a number which is more than double the entire population of North America. Expressed in other terms, the New England lines hourly transport 30,000 people.

The figures for the volume of freight business indicate an immensity of transactions which few appreciate. Every year 78,000,000 tons of freight are carried, 9000 tons every hour. The complexity of the problem, however, is not indicated by the tonnage alone. In connection with its movement 13,600,000 waybills are issued. Each waybill, however, usu- Rh