The Brownsville daily herald. [volume] (Brownsville, Tex.) 1897-1910, 1909-05-13
ON HIGH ROAD
TO PROSPERITY
VIEW OF b. f. YOAKUM ON PRES
ENT CONDITIONS.
Says Effects of Last Years Depressing
Conditions Are Fast Disappearing
and Thinks Taft's Policies Will
Soon Restore Confidence.

New York. May 12.-''We are rap
idly living down the effects of last
years depressing conditions and we
are making good progress in the work
of recovering the ground then lost.
In word, we again are on the high
road to prosperity and unless some
great calamity which nobody can
foresee or account for should occur
within the next few months the coun-
try's industrial activities should be
as busily and profftably employed as
they were before the panic of 1907.
This was said to a representative
of the American by B. F. Yoakum,
chairman of the executive committee
of the Rock Island-Frisco Railroad
system.
AS to the effect of certain of the
Roosevelt policies, Mr.. Yoakum said:
''All informed men must admit that
underlying principles of the policies
championed by President Roosevelt
and the majority of laws enacted at
his instigation affecting corporations
have not of themselves been hurtful,
but they were unfortunate in their
method of application and unfortun-
ate in the fact that politicians, legisla-
tors and railroad commissions mis-
construed the Presidents corrective
intentions as attacks upon corporate
interests.
In President Taft we have fair,
liberal and broad-gauged man, who
has said in a most earnest manner
that investors may feel justified in in
vesting for railroad construction, that
all men who conduct a legitimate
business may understand that the
government at Washington is back of
them and will support them. 1t is
/ to the interest of the railroads, the
railroad managers, the railroad en-
ployes. the railroad investors and the
public at large to work in harmony
with the government. When a law is
passed and fairly established the best
way to enforce it is TO obey it."
Of Wall street, Mr.. Yoakum said
this: Ninety per cent of the 1867
600 miles of railroads serving that
vast producing section of the country
west of the Mississippi river has been
constructed and equipped by funds
provided by New York bankers. Some
of their investments have been profit
able, while others have not. They
took their chances and have ex-
perienced receiverships and fore
closures.
HOn the whole, however they have
made profit They were entitled to
profit for supplying the necessary
funds to enable the country to grow
and its resources to be developed, but
hundred times more profit has been
received by the owners of lands, of
mines, by merchants and manufac-
turers there than the bankers reaped
upon their investments.
The hundreds of millions of dol
lars of deposits of farmers, manufac-
turers. merchants and the general
savings of the people at large are not
available for railroad construction.
Such money has its uses in the devel-
opment of agricultural, industrial
and mining enterprises. We must,
therefore, look to New York for the
millions still needed to develop the
rail transportation system of the
country to meet the rapidly growing
demands upon it.
IF the territory south and west of
st. Louis, which is so rapidly convert
ing its grazing lands of the past into
farming lands is to have the same
mileage of railroad to an equal area
as the country east the present mile
age will have to be increased by a
hundred thousand miles of new rail-
road. The great bulk of the money
to do this must come through New
York banks"