"Just think of it! You can go to Ocracoke. And it is so convenient, too. Buy your ticket, get on the boat here, and some time not in the distant future, you are at Ocracoke, historical Ocracoke.
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| Steamer at Ocracoke, 1899 |
"Let's see how easily it is done:
"You buy your ticket. Two dollars, please ! Then you go aboard the steamer, Mevers. Off you go for Washington. At that delightful town yon spend considerable time and perhaps cash. At 10 p. m . you leave for Ocracoke, and of course get there o. k. When ready, you return by the same route and nearly the same convenience. Now, let's see again.
"You pay $2 for a round trip ticket. You get to Washington and stay there or on the boat, long enough for two meals, costing doubtless another $1. You are only twenty-five miles from home, and though it is yet eighty miles to Ocracoke the round trip fare from there is just $1. For a round trip of 210 miles you pay $2. The people of Washington for a round trip pay $l for 160 miles. Greenville pays one cent a mile, Washington pays [.6 cents a mile] . And the business of Greenville is about what keeps up the O. D. S. S. [Old Dominion Steam Ship] line on Tar river. Did you ever hear of such discrimination and do you wonder that the railroad drove the two lines into consolidation?
"Another thing. People here have to lose a day on that trip while the boats for Ocracoke leave Washington at 10 o'clock at night. Why shouldn't the boat wait here till six or seven p. m. for the benefit of our people, and then make close connections at Washington?"
This month's Ocracoke Newsletter is a transcription of a letter describing the September, 1944, hurricane, its aftermath and cleanup. You can read the letter, with vintage photographs added, here: www.villagecraftsmen.com/news102117.htm.
There must some economies of scale factoring into the pricing of the ticket. The distance traveled and the availability of seating. If there are fewer seats available the closer to OI would not a reasonable prudent person expect to pay more for something when there is more demand.(Scarcity ) I am sure, in this day and age, a smart High school student of algebra with one of those fancy graphing calculators could read this word puzzle and write an algorithm for this "problem." The law of supply and demand, a basic tenet of economics is lost on so many people. In a country where capalitism drives the economic engine and business news and the stock market and commodities topics glaze the eyes of the average person because ---Finance, economics is a numbers game and Math when taught in the Typical class room is made soooo hard to understand. When it should be do so otherwise.DD
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