The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-08-17

~eAt &o11~ AAs NESNceHt ksoAtes do not travel and neither ship nor re- ceive freight is of no value whatever to a railway. The only way in which railroad can properly earn money Is by transporting passengers and freight and in one important respect the oper- ation of q railway Is absolutely differ ent from the operation of any other business or even of household.
 In the operation of a commercial en- terprise the beginnings are usually small. and the expenses, to a very large extent. can be regulated by the income. A reduction in prices or in the volume of business can be followed or anticipated by a reduction in the forces employed. in the purchase of supplies and material. and in other ways which are not available to a transportation company.
 It is true that there are always fixed charges to be considered in the conduct of any business. but in con- structing and operating a railway. the fixed charges, such as interest on the money borrowed for and used In the construction of the road and the pur- chase of it's equipment, and. secondly, the salaries and wages paid for the | operation and maintenance of the rail- way are the most serious responsi- bilities.
 | In oth CT words. whereas in a large number of business houses and in general household operations of the country the expenditures are regulated to the income: in the case of railroad income must be obtained to pay the expenses.
 You can, therefore, realize how ab- surd it is for any one to say that any railroad management is trying to throttle an industry by excessive rates or ineficient service. Keeping in mind that the only means a railroad has for obtaining money to meet ex- penses and the payment of these inter- est charges is from the transportation Of freight and passengers, 1t must be evident. that the railroad officials must of necessity be constantly on the look out for new trafic and for additional means of increasing the volume of trafiic already handled.
 Most, if not all, of the laws which have been passed for the purpose of regulating railroad freight and pas- senger rates. have been drafted under the mistaken impression that there is at all times accessible to every railroad large volume of business awaiting to be transported. If this were true, 1t would not be necessary for the rail- roads to maintain a trafac department, and as every railroad does maintain a traffic deprtment and employs large number of representatives whose duty 1t Is to keep in touch with the business conditions, it may be safely concluded that they are doing so be- cause the management realizes that trafflc Is a thing to be fostered and built up and does not already exist in large volume for which it is only necessary to provide cars and service.
 The difference between rates estab- lishadz bysacts ef Legislature and those established by the railroad companies is simply this: The rates of the Leg islature do not take into account the commercial conditions, which vary from year to year and sometimes from month to month; whereas the rates made by the traffic officials of rail- road are primarily based on commer-i cial conditions and are changed as commercial conditions change
 Rates made by acts of Legislature are very much like clock that will not run. Such a clock can never be right moro than twice in twshty1four hours and all the rest of the time it Is wrong. Rates made by acts of Leg islature are sometimes right but are usually wrong.
 The only way in which trafflc officials can induce the miximum amount of traffic is by so adjusting the rates as to permit the shipper to meet at the
 
 other business centers.
 Not only must the rate be adjusted so as to be satisfactory to the consumer, but it must also be satisfactory to the producer. and must also he so fixed that the volume of business will be dis tributed between the several centers of production and the several carriers but:
 1t must be understood that the traf- flo interests of any large railroad are dependent upon the intelligence of only one or two men. Every railroad has Q large number of trafnc representatives These men are stationed at different parts of the country. The larger the railroad the more representatives 1t has and the more complete are its means of obtaining information as to business conditions. not only for the present but for the future as far as they can be predicted.
 Furthermore. through the medium of trafKic associations and regular meet ings of these traffic associations the of- hcials of the different railroads inter. change views and discuss conditions, so that the official of one roal really has the benefit not only of the information furnished by his own representatives. but the information furnished by rep- resentatlves of all other lines interest ed in the same trafflc. By this means errors of judgment of one man are cor rected by the information obtained by another With the possible exception of the business agencies such as Dun's