People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 December 1895 — GOVERNMENT RAILROADS. [ARTICLE]

GOVERNMENT RAILROADS.

Australia, Victoria, Hungary, and Germany Enjoy Them. In these days of trusts and strikes it may be interesting to note what has been done to remedy these evils. We never hear of strikes or labor troubles on the railroads in Australia, and why? Because the government owns and operates them in the interest of the people. In Australia you can ride a distance of 1,000 miles across the country for $5.50, first class, too, while workingmen can ride six miles for 2 cents, twelve miles for 4 cents, thirty miles for 10 cents, etc., and railroad men receive 25 to 30 per cent, more wages for eight hours than they are paid in this country for ten hours of toil. In Victoria, where the above rates prevail, the net income from the roads last year was sufficient to pay the federal taxes.

In Hungary, where the roads are state owned, you can ride six miles for 1 cent, and since the government bought the roads wages have doubled. Belgium tells the same story—fares and freight rates cut down one-half and wages doubled. Yet the roads pay a yearly revenue to the government of $4,000,000. In Germany you can ride four miles for a cent on the government owned lines. Yet wages are over 120 per cent, higher than they were when the corporations owned them, and during the last ten years the net profits have increased 44 per cent. Last year the roads paid the German government a net profit of $25,000,000. If our government owned the railroads we could go from San Francisco to Boston for $lO. Look at the proof: Uncle Sam pays the railroads not quite $275 to transport a loaded postal car from Boston to San Francisco. A j passenger car will carry fifty passengers, which, $lO each, would be SSOO, or a clean profit of $225 a car, and this, too, after paying 5y 2 per cent, on watered stock, which is fully 20 per cent, on the cost of the roads. To show how our railroads have watered their stock, look at the New York Central and Hudson River railroad, which, when the Vanderbilts obtained control in 1869, was capitalized at $40,000,000. They at once watered it up to $90,000,000. More water has been added until the present capital stock is $145,000,000 (in addition $10,000,000 of water was poured in a short time ago)— all but $45,000,000 being water. uovernmeni owner-snip wotiS the people the gigantic sum of $1,000,000,000 a year and bring shorter hours and better pay to the 700,000 railroad employes.—Chicago News,

Christmas shoppers! Don’t miss Fendig’s Drug Store in, your rounds. Biggest assortment in in town.