The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1909-08-11
A Word for the Railroads.

IN
The railways of this country are
earning, roundly, about $7,OOO,OOO
day at this time, every day in the
year. But not every penny of this
is profit, as some lawmakers have
at times appeared to assume. 1t
costs something to run and main
tain a railway.
Out of each dollar of railway
receipts, II cents goes almost di-
rectly back into circulation for Ia
Dor and the direct products of
labor. Forty cents is paid to the
fuel, waste, oil and water; rails, ties,
employees; cents is required for
cars, engines and like equipment
take IS cents more. Five cents of
each dollar taken in is re-expended
in yards and tracks, shops, round
houses and the like. When the rail-
way has ceased paying out of its
dollar it has little left. Some rail-
ways have none left. 1t is a ques-
tion of location and management.
But the maintenance of a safe
margin between income and outgo
would be not the greatest of the
present problems for railway man
ayers, if they could be assured of
stable basis of purchasing power
for a dollar. In the decade pre-
ceding and including 1907, the
! price of fuel advanced 3S per cent.
the cost of rails rose AZ per cent,
the price of ties increased 76 per
cent, locomotives advanced one
half, cars three-quarters, labor
nearly one-third, over the average
prices in 1907.
In the meantime freight rates on
S97 articles were increased and on
SIG were decreased, the net result
being about IL per cent. less of
profit to the railroads.
How then do the railways live,
the skeptic sneers? Why don't they
go into bankruptcy?
They would, under these condi-
tions, but that vastly growing
bulk of traffic continues to support
them. Increases in passenger and
freight business continue to swell
the already enormous figures on es-
tablished trunk lines. To have 800
passengers in one train from St.
Louis to Chicago costs not greatly
more than it does to carry $50 in
the same number of coaches, but
the revenue is twice as much. A
car of way freight loaded to ca
pacity will earn three times as
much as one half full.
Our recent cereal crops have been
so enormous as to tax the Western
railways capacity. The same lines
when the country was less thickly
settled, were perforce content with
half of this vastly profitable bust
ness. They also are carrying west
ward thousands of tons of supplies
which have grown from hundred:
of tons within easy memory.
And yet none of them are able un
,, Ger generally advancing scales o
values and wages to make plutocrat
|, of it's stockholders.
Unbaked trainers of statutes, no
from the hustings where they have
scorched monopoly and hurled de
tiance to it's snarling lips, eithe
are ignorant of. or shut their eye
) to, or calmly ignore facts such a
; these.
The education of the people t,
recognition of the mutual and inter
commingled rights of communit
Z and the railroads which serve it i
I one of the necessities of the hour
e And The Times proposes to bea
! the part which becomes it in i'm
parting the essential truths of tn
= situation. There has been to
: much charlatanism and too littl
business sense in the dealings be
tween the railroads and their cor
stituents.-St. Louis Times.