Word: railroads
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...great problem arose once the United States reached the Pacific, and the territory that it had been her "manifest destiny" to occupy had been taken. Half of the 25-year period between the end of reconstruction and the Spanish-American War were years of depression. Workers employed in railroad construction were being laid off. With the completion of the national railroad system and the industrialization of agriculture, both heavy industrialists and large commercial farmers were looking anxiously for markets. The traditional outlet of westward expansion appeared closed...
Streaking at 125 miles an hour along the 420-mile scenic route between Tokyo and the central city of Okayama, Japan's gleaming, automated bullet trains have long been a keen source of pride to the country and the envy of railroad men the world over. Yet, beneath the bright image of the Shinkansen, or bullet express, most of the country's rail service, operated by the government-owned Japanese National Railways, is a tangled, money-losing mess of aged equipment, angry employees and boiling riders. So bad is the trouble that a few weeks ago, JNR President...
...Fujii, faces a daunting challenge in trying to restore the line's prosperity and revive the harmony that was once the hallmark of the "national railway family," or kokutetsu ikka. With trucking taking away most of its freight business and airlines slowly chewing into its passenger traffic, the railroad has been losing money since 1964. Last year its accumulated deficit stood at $2.5 billion; interest on its debt alone totals $2 million a day. Thus the line, which daily carries up to 18 million people, has been severely pinched for funds to improve its services and battle its competitors...
Part of the plan will extend the automated bullet lines, the only profitable segment of the railroad, by 1,000 miles by 1979. In all, Tanaka is calling for enlarging the tracks for bullet trains to 4,500 miles within the next dozen years. Though Tanaka's political opponents agree that JNR must be improved, they argue that the $40 billion plan is too lavish and will give a big push to inflation, already at 13%. The unions are not overly impressed either. They plan yet another paralyzing rail slowdown next month...
...often in the evening hours after he returns from work: coated with dirt and broken with exhaustion. This man, 56 years old, now in his sixteenth year of uninterrupted labor for one corporation, takes home seventy-four dollars every week. He lives beside, and almost underneath the elevated railroad in the poorest block of the South End. He eats left-over cold-cuts, bread and pastries brought home from the corporation cafeteria, drinks (when he has cash to drink at all) the cheapest red wine. He receives no health insurance and no benefits for overtime. He gets two weeks...