Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1884-02-21
REPLY TO MIR. ToUzAL1N.
another Letter From the Railroad Com.
missiOnerG.

0llBS1OmoE8s
TOPEKA, KAN, February 6, 1884.
&c A; E Toszulfn, Esq, Vice President L. T. & s. r
As6ZrOad Company:
D3AR Save are in receipt of your
extraordinary letters of January 81,
which were evidently intended for the
public eye, rather than for the considera-
$ioa of the Board of Railroad Commits
siOners. Were it not for the fact that
you apparently seek further information
from this quarter, the propriety of our
giving them anv notice would not be en-
tEFely clear. We shall pass over certain
imputations upon the integrity of the
proceedings of the Board with the sim
pie remark that they possess the sole
merit of being false, and were intended
to be insOlent. We can we'll afford to re-
ceive aspersiOns from you without being
iRcited to unkind feelings.
You possess the ability to be vague
when it would be dangerous to be ex-
plicit, and the members of this Board
have seldom had the good fortune to
meet you in this latter mood. In these
letters, however, you have not altogether
succeeded IN surrounding yourself with
an atmosphere of absolute mystery, and
we may be able to catch your general
drift. 1t is due to you, and especially to
those who have entrusted their interests
to your keeping, that we address you
without guile or concealment. We hope,
therefore, that you will not blame us for
plainness of speech.
1t will perhaps please you best if we
take up those portions of your letters
which seem to call for comment or elu-
cidatiOn, in the order in which they ap-
pear to have been written.
In your first letter, referring to our an
fn OK of IN
which we expressed the opinion that the
rates prescribed by us should apply with
out distinction to the whole of that part
of your system operated in Kansas, in
Guiding the auxiliary lines, as you term
them, that having been your custom and
policy heretofore and no reason being
known to us for a different course, you
state: 'In the past, our policy and GUS
tom has been to operate these auxiliary
lines year after year at an absolute loss,
waiting for the time to come when by
reason Of continued system of reason
able rates in connection with the reason
able rates on the main line, large bust
ness would be established, from which
we should in the future receive a fair re-
turn for the investment made"
In your returns to us you have made
no report of the expenses and earn
ings of these auxiliary lines, but
they are all merged in the report of the
AtchisOn company, 30 that we have no
means of testing the value of thls state
ment that these parts Of your system, or
any of them have been operated at a
loss. We do not wish to be understood
as intimating that your statement is I'M
true, but that we do not accept conclu-
sions for facts.
But if at loss, at whose loss? and
what kind of loss? At these points
you fail to be explicit. The stockholders
of your company have never had to
reach their hands into their pockets to
pay one dollar of any loss sustained in
operating any auxiliary line belonging to
your system. But, instead of that, over
and above every loss you have from year
to year divided among the stockholders
millions of dollars, out of the surplus
earnings, and still had a surplus with
which you have bought hotels, extern
sive coal fields in Kansas and Colorado,
built new railroads and bought great
quantities of additional rolling stock,
thus adding immensely to the wealth of
your company without the expenditure
of single dollar by its stockholders.
You report to us over two millions OF
dollars spent in additional construction
and rolling stock the last year, and every
dollar of this, together with the accumu-
lated millions which you have been able
to place to income account on your books,
has been gathered from the industries of
the people by what you are pleased to
call reasonable rates."
Let US call your attention to another
thing. These auxiliary lines have not
been built by money furnished by the
stockholders of your company. They
have been built by local aid, by money
gathered from the people through "rea-
sonable rates" and from the money de-
rived from the sale of bonds, for the pay
meut of which these lines have been
pledged, not one dime of which the
stockholders of your company are liable
for, or will ever pay. But the last farth-
ing of this debt, with every dollar of in
terest will have to be paid by the people
who can never derive a cent from the in
vestment. These roads are in fact an alb
solute gift to the stockholders from the
toiling masses, from which you are CLEAN
ing vast revenues, and still you are clam
oriHg for millions more.
If there is any loss in operating any
auxiliary line, the loss falls not on your
company, but on those who pay the trans
portation tax, and keep up the revenues
of your system.
This part of your letter is so very sug-
gestive that we are more than tempted
to follow it, and present to you some adj
ditional facts, which we gather from your
reports. They ought to be correct, you
have sworn to them. You say that the
property of your company is of the value
of $93, 633, 639.37. Whether it is worth
that or not. it is true that the people Iv-
ing along the lines of your road pay in
terest and dividends to the fortunate per-
sons who hold the stock and bonds upon
that basis of value. Did it ever oc ur to
you thG6 thisvast property was not bought
with money of the stockholders of the
A., T. & S. F. Company? The foundation
and suPerstructpre of this vast system Is
chiefly built on bonds. and the one mn
lion eight hundred and sevehty-six thou
sand one hundred dollars, freely con
trfbuted bY the people living along the