The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-06-21
Adams Melon and Express Business.

It is evidently the purpose of the under the interstate commerce law duly prepared to save at least the fruits of excessive charge in the past. The company is an unincorporated as
 sociation, whose members are there fore personally liable for it's debts without limit and whose financial af fairs have therefore been free from all publicity. It's stock is anything you please, but the shares are commonly counted as of $100 par value, and at that rate make up stock capital of SIP, ,O00,G0 Prior to 1898 1t had paid eight per cent. on this capitalization for an indefinite or unknown period In
 that year the company placed in trust securities representing surplus accum- ulations to an amount sufficient to se- cure an issue of $12,O0O0o0 four per cent debenture bonds, which were dis tributed gratis to shareholders amounting to 100 per cent dividend. For year or two following dividends
 were reduced to four per cent, and
 then increased to the old rate of eight per cent, with two per cent. extra.
 Now, in addition to the ten per cent. dividends tho company sets aside an- other and much larger bunch of ac- cumulated surplus in securities, and issues gratis to stockholders, $24000,0 900 of four per cent debentures, amount
 ing to dividend of 200 per cent. Here 1 is richness indeed! It is such a mel on cutting as was hardly known even in the good old days when railroad stock dividends flourished. It will bring the average dividend rate to the com pany's shareholders up to nearly 40 per cent a year for the past ten years.
 Apparently the power of government regulation has not been extended to the express companies any too soon. They are essentially no less and no more than common carriers like the railroads, and the services they per | form are in Europe usually performed
 by the railroad companies themselves
 Through the state and national gov- Iernments for some years we have been keeping close watch upon railroad cap | litalization and profits, and there is such an uproar when a railroad begins to distribute profits in excess of seven or eight per cent. that no company ventures lightly upon a higher rate, even when able to earn 1t. But the secretly express company has been permitted to worm it's way into the railroad transportation busi- ness and to draw off as large profits as it is able to or as it pleases, and | 1t is generally able to do great things in this line, and it's pleasure in so do- 1 ing is unlimited. It has come to be really a parasite upon the railroad business, and railroad managers and directors, it is to be feared, have too often worked through the express com panles as through other subsidiary concerns to save the railroads from the calamity of excessive earnings and profits. It is largely by means of ex- cluding high express charges from their business that American railroads are able to make as favorable a com- parison as they do with European railroads in the matter of average freight rates.
 w ndl QOle lS uOHej dliu bSdlnSl excessive express charges in the past there is no remedy. These surplus earnings of the Adams company have, for example, been landed high and dry duly invested in the Income bearing securities of other companies and placed in trust for the benefit of the company's stockholders. These S96,- 100000 of debenture bonds are appar- ently not a charge upon the company's future service, but it is obvious that
 the rates are excessive, if a $12,O0O,0O0 company can pay 10 per cent. year af-
 ter year on stock representing possl-