People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1896 — The Railway Question. [ARTICLE]

The Railway Question.

It is not often that the papers give space editorially to articles in favorof government ownership of railroads, and this very able article from the New York Recorder is significant: The addition of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad to the long list of roads that have gone into the hands of receivers within the past three years is the latest reminder of the fact that the financial condition of Amercian railroads is nofat all satisfactory. President O. B Ashley of the Wabash railroad company has lately pointed out in a much discussed article, the main causes of the recent existing lack of railway prosperity, as railroad presidents view them. First, he says, there has been excessive competion; second, there has been a vast construction of unnecessary lines; third, there has been arbitary legislation in several Western states fixing transportation rates below the paying point; fourth, the interstate commerce law has crippled the earning power of many roads. This is a railroad president’s view, and due discount must be made for that fact. The lack of railroad prosperity, however, is undenied and undeniable. As one railroad after another passes into the receivers’ hands and thus comes, in a sense, to be operated by the government, acting through the courts, it is inevitable that the often-sug-gested desirability of establishing national ownership of all railroads, or, at least, of putting them under full government control and supervision, should press itself upon public attention. Prof. Frank Parsons, in the current To-day, gives figures to show that the national ownership of railways would result in a saving on the total cost of running them of $661,000,000 a year which is more than half of the whole annual earnings of the United States railroads to-day. He gives high railroad authorities for every item in the account which he makes up as follows; In Millions By abolishing all but one of the presidents with their staffs 25 By abolishing high-priced managers and their staffs 4 By abolishing attorneys and legal expenses 42 By abolishing competitive advertising .5 By abolishing traffic associations employed to adjust matters between.. competing roads 4 By exclusive use of the shortest routes2s By consolidation of working depots, offices and staffs • 20 By uniformity of rails, cars, machinery etc., cheapening their manufacture; by avoiding freight blockades, return of empties belonging to other roads, clerkage to keep account of foreign cars and adjust division of earnings; by simple tariffs, savin,g time of public and clerks; by all tbe numberless little economies of a vast.... business under a single management with no competitive warfare to waste its energies 15 By avoiding strikes and developing a better spirit among employes 10 By abolishing railway corruption funds3o By having no rent and interest to pay3o9 By having no dividends to pay 90 By putting the surplus in the people treasury 20

Total 661 The matter of railroad strikes is important in more than an economic way. National ownership would abolish them. To say nothing of the cost, it would be worth much more to get rid of the possibility of such dangers to the peace of the country as were felt during the Chicago strike, which cost the roads and the strikers together, as officially reported, overs7,ooo,ooo, and inflicted on the general public, by the stoppage of traffic and mails, a sum much larger, no doubt, though it could not be exactly computed. Prof. Parsons asserts that with national ownership the fare from New York to Chicago could soon be reduced to 50 cents. Being run simply to pay expenses and not to earn dividends on watered stock and to pay for superfluous construction and other wastes of the present era of competitive corporations, passenger and freight rates would inevitably come down. The experiment of the postal system shows that with the reduction of rates the increase of traffic would be enormous, and! that would make further redup-j tions possible, until railroad l

fares and freight charges woulll be relatively as low as letter aha parcel postage. f Mayor Pingree of Detroit, in the Arena last month, says: “In Australia you can ride 1,000 miles for $6.50 first-class, and work-men three miles for 1 cent, while wages are 25 or 30 per cent higher than ours, and the working day one eight hours long. In Russia working men ride 2,000 miles for $6. In Hungary you ride 6 miles for 1 cent and wages have doubled since the government bought the roads In Germany you ride 4 miles for 1 cent (ten miles for 1 cent on the Berlin road) and wages are 135. per* cent, higher than they were under private ownership. Such are the results of national ownership of railways—wages greatly increased, hours shortened aud rates dropped so that they are six to twenty times lower than ours.” With such a large fraction of the total railroad stock of the country yielding no dividends worth talking about, the great mass of railroad stock holders themselves may soon begin to take kindly to the national ownership idea. Gs course they would receive the value of their stock of government bonds of the same amount. And if the government guaranteed them 3 per cent, they would be most of them much better off than they are now. With railroads converted into national property on some such plan of purchase, it is quite certain that within thirty years at the outside, the bonds would be canceled out of the earnings of the aoads and the cost of railway service be reduced to at least the Australian standard.