Weekly Arizona journal-miner., 1905-05-10
TRANSPORTATION PROBLEMS.

Although Paul Morton is now Sec
 retary of the Navy, he is by training, ' experience, and vested interests rail
 road man. There is nothing improper. or even undesirable, in that. No one be- comes nationally prominent in business
 without acquiring large interests which
 will affect his point of view, and to say that no successful transportation man or successful merchant shall attain high official station is, to say that the Gov
 ernment shall be deprived of the ser vices of our ablest business men, re- marks the San Francisco Chronicle. It is, however. expected that when a Government official talks publicly about business in which he has been prominent, he will express his real views, and there is no reason to doubt that Secretary Morton. in his address at the opening of the Railroad Appliance Exposition at Washington. expressed his real opinion when he said that the American railroad service was the best and the cheapest in the world: that ev- cry dollar of capital invested in rail roads added ten dollars to the value of farm and town property; that there are very few transportation rates in this country which are not fair to ship pers, and that his observation has been that complaints of unreasonable rates have usually received prompt and sa- tisfactory attention from railroad off eials. All these things may be. and probably are, true, but none of them touch the points in controversy between the railroads and the public. On the same day James J. Hill testified be- fore the Senate Committee on Inter- state Commerce, and in addition to covering some of the ground travers- ed by Secretary Morton, he boldly at tackled one of the principal eonten- tiOns of those fav"ring government control, by stOutly maintaining that discrimination in rates between lOeali- ties or industries is sometimes neees- sary and right. And he added two instances which. standing alone, would go far to sustain him in that position.
 Neither of these gentlemen would de- ny that, while as rule transportation rates are fair. there have been, and still continue to be very serious abuses. Mir. Hill, however, and possibly Secretary Morton. believes th9t these abuses will be regulated by tE1 force of conditions operating upon the railroads them selves more certain and more effee- lively than by any @ -crnment con trol. He believes that hc competition of markets which is a.ways in oper- ton is the most eff ;.e of regulators Railroads, in his op' 'iun. will have to eliminate abuses in order to get busi- ness. Unquestionably that contention can be supported by many facts, and vet the public will insist, with the President, that in the cases where na tural forces do not operate, or operate very slowly, the law shall intervene and give a speedier remedy. There is one aspect of the subject which is seldom discussed. The Popu- lar hostility to railroads rests mainly on three bases-the unearned incre- ment gained to an amount enormously in excess of reasonable compensation for risk; the manipulation. of these by the officials in control in such ways as to create for themselves enormous private fortunes, and the corrupt methods which they employ to .reate for themselves enormous private fortunes. The public would like to hear from Messrs. Hill and Morton on those particular points.