The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-03-30
nArLnoAps AND pnrrRru,,.

ashamed of 1t bye and bye. There IS much that Is not only groundless, but wrong in the off-hand attack made on the railroads by thoughtiess people.
 We should reflect that the railroads are xitally related to our prosperity and that to attack them needlessly is to attack ourselves. It Is not the stock of sonlless millionaires, but the prop erty of citizens, of widows and orphans whose savings are invested In railroads that is being damaged. We shall re- call what the railroads have been and still are to be in the development of our country and this craze will pass: governmental supervision. but 1t should be planned in a quiet hour, not Tn one of angry excitement. Popular emotions follow peculiar laws.
 We feel that we cannot better com ment on this opinion than by absorbing. as it were, the remarks of The Kansas City Journal. as follows:
 Reflective. dispassionate observers like the ex-president cannot fail to see that the hue and cry against the railroads is the most stupendous folly of the age. What could be more fool ish and suicidal from the standpoint or great nation busiiy engaged in crip- bling its transportation systems at time when the greatest need of the country is better development of its transportation systems? It is univer- sally conceded that the greatest draw year and the year before. and in fact for the past five years. has been the congestion of &raffic which has pre- vented strade and commerce from nov ing freely according to the natural law of supply and demand Hundreds of millions of dollars have been lost by the farmers. cattlemen and producers of every kind on account of the inabiii- ty of the railroads to furnish enough cars and extend their trackage and terminals sufficiently to meet the de- mands upon them to move the crops munieations between the producers and the consumers.
 From every part of the country, par ticularly in the West. there came last fall a great cry for more cars. The newspapers were filled with the urgent
 
 Northwest for fuel to keep them from freezing to death, and the people of the empire of the Southwest were equally insistent in their demands for cars to haul their crops and cattle to mar ket. The answer of the railroads was: We have spent $2Oo. 900, 900 in the past few years for increased equipment, cars and locomotives, trackage and termi- nals, and we are preparing to spend s500,000.000 more as fast as the or- ders can be filled. But the car shops are overcrowded withs work and theN unprecedented growth of the country has surpassed all human calculations"
 In such an extreme emergency as this it would naturally have been supposed that everybody in every line of busi- ness would have put his shoulder to the wheel to help the railroads--for 1t meant helping himself-and all the re- sources of statesmanshlp would have been invoked to assist them to catch up with the business of the country. Yet-incredible as it may appear-de7, magogues who aspire to be regarded as statesmen went up and down the country denouncing the railroads, yell low newspapers joined in the hue and cry, and as soon as the state legisla- lures met hundreds of bills were in- troduced-to help the railroads7 Not a bit of it. To cut down their reve- nues. to reduce their earning capacity kt. and to lessen their ability to borrow funds to make the needed improve ments
 And when this punitive legislation and hostile public opinion had borne it's bitter fruits and engendered wide spread distrust among investors re- garding railway stocks and bonds, and a great crash came in Wall street, in- volving loss of over s500,000, ,000 in values and bringing thousands of in- nocent people to the brink of ruin, these ghouls of demagogy and yellow journalism gleefully exclaimed; 'oh, they are just squeezing the water out of the railroads stocks" And final ly, worst folly of all, when the lead Ing railway men of the country ap- pealed to President Roosevelt to speak a word to stay this insensate folly and reassure the investors of this country and Europe as to the govern ments policy toward the railroads. MT. Roosevelt remained silent, and all the aid and comfort that the greatest in- dustry in the country-one upon which all others depend for their prosperity could get from the nations chief executive In it's hour of supreme dis tress was an unofficial statement, leak ing out as part of the gossip of the capital. that he was not responsible for the condition of the railroads.
 There is much in the nature of delir- iuna in all this. If the country does not realize it now 1t will be forced to do so in the near future. Not only shall we all be ashamed of 1t bye and bye, as Mir Cleveland says, but we shall be fortunate if we are not made to repent in sackcloth and ashes for our folly.
 IS NOT COMING.