Omaha daily bee., 1907-02-17
RAlLRoAD msM1N1eENENT.

Much attention and no little discus
sion has been aroused by a scathing
review of railroad mismanagement
contributed by Albert Shaw to the Feb
ruary number of his Review of Re
views" magazine. without mincing
words, DR.. Shaw declares that II the
mismanagement Of the railroads Of the
country were laid bare by investigation
as searching as that which the great
insurance companies underwent a year
ago the insurance scandals would pale
by comparison into insignificance. His
indictment of the railroad managers Is
severe yet dignihed and all the more
cutting because II comes not from a
yellow journalist nor from a profess
sional muck-raker, but from an intelli-
gent and careful observer, standing on
conservative ground, judging merely
by surface indications, which reveal
only a small part of the rottenness con-
cealed beneath.
1t has been a favorite retort for rail-
road spokesman to ask how any one
but an experienced railroad man could
dare to adjust rates, revise train sched-
ules. or regulate the hours of trainmen
or the use of safety appliances. 1t
is strongly intimated now, taking the
results as a whole, that the railroads
could not have been much worse mis-
managed by absolutely inexperienced
men than they have been under the di-
rection of Wall street jobbers and side
line graftsrs who have been running
the railroads for the benefit of neither
the public nor the stockholders who
really own them, but for their own per-
sonal and illegitimate profit.
There are, doubtless, plenty of hard
working, conscientious, faithful rail-
road officers and employees who do the
routine work efficiently and for pos
sibly inadequate wages, but it is rail-
road mismanagement higher up that
is chargeable with the succession of in
excusable wrecks, with countless cost Of
life and property, for the inadequaCy
of equipment clogging business and
disturbing industry, for the diversion
of legitimate earnings to parasitic COM
panies by means of rebates, special
privileges, favoritlsm con-
tracts and the use of railroad funds
for speculative enterprises.
1t is notorious that free passes have
been used not only for bribery of pub
lie officers, for tampering with juries,
for manipulating political conventions,
for influencing commercial shipments,
but also exchanged by railroad officials
for all sorts of personal favors and &C
entirely foreign to the
railroad corporation. The most fla
grant case Of this sort of graft yet dis
closed was found in a transaction I'M
covered not long ago in Nebraska by
which an annual pass was made part
consideration to bank officer for dis
counting the notes of a Burlington Of
fetal. The free passes so generously
given to bank officers in former years
quite probably represent similar gifts
at the expense Of the railroads to boil
ster up the personal credit of the man
so generous with his employers prop
erty.
What is needed, and what is coming,
is as complete reorganization of bust
ness methods in railway management
as has occurred in the big insurance
ompanies-voluntary II possible, in
II must be. DR.. Shaw sug-
gests that the growing agitation for
government ownership is due largely
to distrust of the system of loot and
graft so long entrenched in the rail-
road management. If so, nothing
but thorough reform will head of this
agitation and convince the people that
they can be best served by privately