Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 267, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1916 — Healthy Railroad Growth Basis of All Preparedness, Military or Commercial [ARTICLE]

Healthy Railroad Growth Basis of All Preparedness, Military or Commercial

By FRANCIS A. BONNER

Associate Dt recto* Bureau ot Railway News and Statistics

No program of preparedness, military or commercial, whatever it® extent or elaboration, that the United States, after the usual amount of talking, may at some day happily carry out, can stand against the relentless test of war or competition much longer than an Eskimos ice igloo against the tropical sun, ignores as the rock-riveted foundation stone a healthy, vigorous system of transportation by railways. All the armies of the warring nations would avail the United States little were railways inadequate to rush them and their supplies speedily to a threatened territory; all the ammunition plants in vain, were bridges and cars incapable of bearing the giant weight of modern guns; all the fleets impotent, were there a stoppage in the steady flow of fuel.to the seaboard. All the best-laid plans for peaceful leadership in trade must gang agley” if failure of the railways to build in advance of the increased foreign trade we hope to win should follow on continued neglect of the railway problem. - « JL, Analysis of recent railway history in the United States shows incontrovertibly that expenditures on expansion and improvement of railway facilities have been inadequate to keep pace with even the normal growth of the United States. Construction, be it of freight cars, locomotives or new trackage, has been insufficient merely to meet the average gain of 8 per cent per year which in normal times has been our growth in railway traffic. Railways must be in the field in advance of commerce or commerce must wait on the railways, as we should have learned in the freight embargoes of the present year. The nation, it is vital to remember, in its past has been engrossed almost wholly with the domestic trade of a new and vast country. It has reached an epochal turning point. It is engrossed today with the idea of a larger futurg share in world commerce. At the very outset, then, all speculation as to such_a future is the most futile, silliest prattle if we are not to abandon at once and completely the ruinous policy of niggardliness which has well-nigh ’stopped recent railway development in the United States.