Business & Finance: Stalled Locomotives

When red freight-car corpuscles are flowing through the arteries of U.S. business, the plants of three great companies are filled with the crash of hydraulic forges, the pounding of hundreds of hammers, making those mighty creatures of the industrial age, railroad locomotives, Iron Horses. The gestation period of an Iron Horse is about four months, yet the three companies can easily turn out a total of 2,000 locomotives yearly. In the past year the three companies—Baldwin Locomotive Works, American Locomotive Co., Lima Locomotive Works—received among them precisely one order for a new locomotive....

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