Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 15 August 1947 — Page 16

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PAGE 16

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THE INDIANAPOLIS TIM®S

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Millions of bushels of food may rot in our fields this harvest time, instead of

being available to the world’s markets—because we are short of freight cars. Here is a way that thousands of cars can be freed for service in a hurry.

Ax you interested in the price of food? Does it give you a twinge to see those pictures of mountains of wheat piled on the ground and potatoes going to rot—when there's a desperate world food crisis? : ;

The bottle-neck is our freight-car shortage. But thousands

of cars could be freed by a single decision—4f old-line railroad managements would act.

Don’t Blame the War!

- This is hard to believe, but it's true: 'we have today only three

fourths as many freight cars in oar country as we had twenty years ago. This shrunken fleet is now called on to handle the greatest peacetime traffic in history. And the war itself is not to blame for the shortage—for in no single year from 1925 to the start of hostilities did the railroad industry buy as many “cars as it junked.“Twenty years is a long time for even Rip Van Winkle to sleep!

What Can Be Done?

There is at least one remedy that can be applied at once— despite the steel shortage and other difficulties in car-building.

. This remedy requires no new equipment, no period of time’

to work out—nothing but an act of management:

Lift what appear to be agreements between railroads that deliberately slow down: many freight trains! a

« Here 1s an example. There are eight important routes by which”

you. can ship “fast” freight from California to Chicago. These roules vary in length as muek as 50 miles. Bul, curiously, the time schedule for each of the eight is exactly 118 hours — and 30 minutes!

Stmllarly, scheduled frelght tratns moving west over the important routes from Chicago to the Coast areas, despite great differences in terrain and mileage, take exactly 130 hours——on the nosel

Is This Free Competition?

Could it be that these schedules are fixed by agreement? That the trains which could be fastest are held back for the slowest —s0 that no road can have even the slightest competitive advantage?

Railroad men know that, in many instances, a whole day could be cut off these schedules between California and Chicago —if managements would simply order it. If that

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Are old-line managements asleep in the dell while many freight trains creep at a snall's pace—by agreement?

were done, on these roads and on others, it would ease

_the national car shortage at once!

There is good reason to believe that by lifting deliberate freight slowdowns, on the roads that still practice them, we could provide more cars this summer and fall than our shops can possibly build. And every car is desperately needed!

A Call For Action!

The next few weeks will be the critical ones in our food problem. Our wheat crop is estimatéd to exceed any previous

» Tarmisul Tower, Cleveland 1, Oblg)

record by 300 million bushels. It {s even now being piled in the, fields—for want of cars.

’

If you feel as strongly about this as the C&O does, write to your newspaper and your congressman. Do-it today while it is on your mind.

Ask them to stir up Rip Van Winkle—and tell him thas time is short. Demand that our trains be scheduled not merely, to suit the private deals of the railroads, but so that we can make the best use, for the whole public, of our shamefully, depleted stock of freight cars!

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