The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-09-15

We're.
gross ..''......'.......'.....,. .A1a
Net, including miscellaneous income. 1,242
FIXED charges and other deductions
from income Observation-Disclosures. 1,O25
Net surplus over all charges. ......... 217
While the fixed charges and other deduc-
lions from income were 80 per cent. great
er than those of the Seaboard Air Line
the total net income of the Southern for
the same period was more than 100 per
cent. greater than that of the Seaboard
Only l5S miles, or about 3 per cent, of
the southern system, out of total mile
age of 1854 miles, have failed to earn
operating expenses, or are dead roads,"
as described by Mr.. st. John, and these
are unimportant branch lines over which
no through traffic passes.
OF the Seaboard Air Line, 267 miles, out
OF total of 926, or 20 per cent, all en-
braced IN its main, through line, have
never earned operating expenses any year
in its history. Included in this dead
road" as Mr.. st. John is pleased to term
IT. Is the whole of that part of the Sea-
board system included in the states of
South Carolina and Georgia.
This is position of distinguished weak
ness which has no parallel among the
railway systems of the United States.
Mr.. st. John states that:
THE Seaboard Air Line has had per-
sistently to fight efforts to create physical
pools of traffic, and to resist boycotts
made against it,"
He neglects to state that the Seaboard's
objections to physical pools of traffic are
of quite recent date. So recently as the
beginning of the movement of the last
cotton crop, he was a party by agree
ment to the physical apportionment of
that traffic, He withdrew the Seaboard
Air Line from the Southern States
freight Association, and, consequently
from the agreement for such apportion-
ment, for the sole alleged reason that the
association had not elected a permanent
board of arbitration, and this occurred at
the same time as and in direct connection
with, the Seaboard's appeal to arbitra-
ton upon the percentage of such appor-
tionment, and when the Seaboard Air
Line had no other case awaiting arbitra-
tors decision.
He negects to state to you that the
chief and governing cause of the boycott,
so called, was the persistent, secret and,
therefore, unlawful manipulation by his
line of through rates from the west by
means of billing to fictitious destinations,
and the change of destination en- route
under which his company secretly dis
| eliminated in favor of one set of shippers
| against all others, and fraudulently de-
| prived its most friendly and important
connections of their just proportion of the
revenues accruing upon such traffic.
These frauds were proven and the Sea-
board Air Line made restitution in money
| to its defrauded connections.
Mr.. ST. Johns statement as to the
threatened danger to the states property,
the Western and Atlantic railroad, is
| scarcely worthy of a denial. The unex-
! pred term of the present lease is a suni-
! Gent safeguard for some time to come
| and with the continued ownership by the
| Louisville and Nashville Company in the
| lease of the Georgia railroad, no fear will
! be created with you or with the people
| of Georgia that the earning power and
| value of the Western and Atlantic will
! fall so low that the state authorities will
| be unable to amply protect the states
property at the expiration of the lease.
| beg to assure your honorable commits
| sion that the Southern Railway Company
| is not, and does not intend to be, viola
| tor Of the laws of Georgia. Amy state
ment to that effect is entirely gratuitous
| ana untrue. 1t has acquired no railroads
| IN the state of Georgia which 1t has not
a perfect right to control and operate
under the laws of your state.
1t holds itself amenable to those laws,
| and is ready and willing at all times 10
| have its acts submitted to and passed up
| on By the courts or other tribunals OF
| competent Jurisdiction, and It asks your
| honorable commission and the people of
| Georgia not to accept the sensational ana
untrustworthy statement of its traducers
on the grave question of whether laws
of the state have or have not been VIC.
lated.
1t has no desire to monopolize the bust
ness of Georgia, or, as Mr.. ST. John would
have you believe, to Cypress or injure
its competitors or any other vested in
tercst within or without the state Quite
the contrary, it recognizes, to the fullest
degree, that its own success is depend
ent upon the prosperity of all these in.
terests and of the communities which it
serves.
IT, as Mr.. st. John asks you to believe,
the purpose of the Southern Railway
Company was to crush out and in1ure the
Seaboard Air Line, it would not have
surrendered voluntarily as it did the lease
of the Northeastern Railroad of Georgia,
which tapped most effectively the next to
the largest business center in the state
of Georgia reached by the Seaboard Air
Line. There is no place where so much
INJURY could have been inflicted upon the
Seaboard at so little cost.
The Southern Railway Company has
made no objections to competition when
conducted fairly and openly upon bust
ness principles, and 1t has never sought
to suppress X.
Its relations to its competitors through
out the Southern territory to-day are
abundant testimony upon this point.
1t has done nothing in its history to OPP
press any interest, and 1 challenge Mr..
st. John or any one else to produce any
evidence of an attempt or a desire upon
its part to do so. 1t has not raised the
rates at any point, and 1t has not at
tempted to control them; and it is i'm
possible to conceive that any acquisition
or combination by it of lines in the south
could be sufficiently strong to enable 1t
to exercise an absolute control over rates
at any point No combination can be
large enough in the United States to con-
troll rates, and the railroad manager. who
attempts 1t or asserts 1t writes himself a
fool There can be no clearer proof Of
what would be the futility of such efforts
than the present rate situation in the
south, when one small line, coo miles in
length, from Portsmouth to Atlanta, de-
stroys as it is now doing, the rate fabric
from New England to New Orleans, and
from the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to
Florida.
The effort Of the Southern railway has
been, not to control rates, but to keep
them uniform and reasonable and public,
and the testimony of substantially every
member of the Southern States Freight
Association would be to this effect II such