Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1918 — Time May Be Set For Return Of. Roads [ARTICLE]

Time May Be Set For Return Of. Roads

Washington, Jan. 14.—1 f the War Department has been as far-sighted as the railroads there wouldn’t have been anything for the investigating committees to work on.

The Ailroad owners and mamagers are looking beyond the end of the war and want to know when they are to get their properties back. The provision in .the administration bill restoring the roads to private control when Congress so orders doesn’t appeal to the railroaders. They fear that when the time comes some political party may take into its opportunist head to make government ownership of railroads a campaign issue; or some President may think that the government, having succeeded in running the roads in war time, could do it still better in ’ peace times* l —and these railroaders know enough of the vagaries of Congress to realize that either a campaign issue or an insistent President might stretch the period of government control far into the dim reaches of the future. The House committee cyn interstate commerce is getting quite worked up over the matter, and it seems probable tonight that certain Democrats who don’t like government ownership will join with the Republican committee members and report an amendment to the bill, drawn either for. or by McAdoo, so that the time for the return of the roads will be definitely set at a specified period after the close of the war.

The opposition has become so strong against the ’restoration clause’ that friends of the administration were quoted tonight as saying that the committee probably would amend thp bill fixing the time for the return of the railroad properties at six months after the end of the war. Senator Underwood, a member of the interstate commerce committee, at a committee hearing' today declared that the railroads, in the absence of any direct law to the contrary, must go back to their owners in two years.