The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-10-17
WHY IS RAILROAD
 CAPITAL INSUFFICIENT? How Railroad Construction Was Originally En-
 couraged. INEVITABLE RESULT President Roosevelt's An tics in the China
 Shop.
INEVITABLE RESULT

To Editor The Journal and Courier:
 My observation and experience in business affairs cover period of for ty years I have some show of rea- son, in trying to say something about industrial conditions.
 Railroad construction was originally aided by Federal, State and Municipal contributions, to an enormous amount. New Haven put up half million or so in what is now the New York & Boston Air Line and lost 1t. New Ha- ven also put up about the same amount in New Haven and Derby and didn't lose 1t. Hartford, aided the Conn. Western and other railroads. Mlddletown, Chester and Cromwell aided either the. Conn. Valley or what is now the New York & Boston Air Line. These are only illustrations of what was going on all over the United States. Railroad construction was also encouraged to the full limit of legislation and popular sentiment and investment. As @ natural result the capacity of the railroads to carry was relatively greater than the capacity of general industry to furnish freight. It followed inevitably, that railroads had to scramble for business. It was period of violent and virulent com petition of railroads with each other | So it became necessary in order to get business that railroads should make concessions, discriminationH and rebates make the same concessions, determinations and rebates, in the sale of transportation; that general business then did
 It Is idle and mischievous to talk oi the railroad men of those days, at lacking in honor or morality. Nc l good capable statesman would do so We are not more honorable or moral oi virtuous than our fathers. The bust ness men, I know to-day, do not seen to me, to be quite up to the mark O the business men knew thirty ant forty years ago.
 In the railroad business, what ha; 1 happened, looking at it, in a compre hensive way, Is very simple and eas, to understand.
 General industry, In other than tn railroad, passed out of its stage O fierce cut-throat competition, (which characterized 1t forty years ago) int its stage of combination, much quick CT than the railroads even attempted to do.
 The consequence was that combined industry could and sdid dictate to tn, railroads, tbe ratsrof its freight, anr if combined industry--trust we nov call it--could dictate to the railroad the rate of freight, will any bushes man or moralist assign any good an, valid reason, why 1t should not hay done so-there being no law or publi opinion then against 1t.
 The natural step of the railroad t resist this industrial combination, wa to make counter Combinations amonl i themselves. This they attempted t do, and had got on so far, as to forn the pool" by which, it made no diff ference what railroad carried tn freight. for it all went into tn pool" and each railroad had It's al lotted share.
 This would have broken up rebatln and dAscrlmination.-wa doing so--un til the interstate commerce act of 1SS put a stop to pooling"
 President Roosevelt blows his trump ct, loud, long and often, for fedora regulation of railroads. One woul, think from reading his speeches, tha tkere was no such federal regulation whereas in fact commencing with tn interstate commerce act of 1887 fol lowed by the Elkins act of 1903, an the Hepburn act of 1906, congress ha been enacting federal regulation c railroads, in each case, up to the yer limit, which public opinion at the tim was demanding.
 President Roosevelt talks as if tn