The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-09-30
RAILROAD NEWS.
Roads Forced to Disregard Pub
lie Safety, Says Official.
Topeka Santa Fe Man Believes
Legislation Will Hurt.
OPEN THEIR ROCKS
OPEN THEIR BOOKS.
Railways Will Force Shippers to
Make Showing.
Other Items Of General Inter.
est in Traffic World.

The railroad companies have given
a new turn to the matter of rate max
ing which, in the opinion of an Ell
Paso paper may yet result in some
thing tangible and of real benefit to
the consumers-the people who in the
last analysis foot the bills said a
Santa Fe man today.
Public attention and official investi-
cation have heretofore been directed
to but one side of the railroad question
and all have proceeded upon the theory
that the only offenders have been the
railroads, and the victims the people.
1.-The Ell Paso paper does not believe
the railroads are blameless. Many
arrangements have proven themselves
commercial buccaneers and have been
as unjust to the public as the public
has been unjust to them, losing sight
entirely of the fact that upon the up
building and development OF the ter
ritory their roads traVersed and the
prosperity of the people of the con-
tributory region depended the size of
the dividends, and with their one
sided mistaken policy of bleeding the
public, have created a prejudice against
all railroads that has resulted in I'M
just legislation inspired by demagogues
that has worked serious injury to the
mutual and largely interdependent in
tereSts of the railroads and the pub
lie.
1.-THE net result has been that all in
vestigations, all corrective and punitive
legislation has been directed against
the railroads and in many instances
they have been handicapped and injur-
ed to an extent that impaired their
usefulness and their ability to serve
the people and safeguard the public.
Many of them have been forced by
the hostility of the public and the I'M
just legislation, to cut down their ap-
preparations for maintenance of way
and equipment upon which depend the
safety of travellers, to meet deficiencies
in other departments; have been forced
to impair their facilities for public ser
vice to meet the expenses and the just
demands for dividends of those who
invested their means in the railroads.
so that, as before remarked, in the last
ANALYSIS it is the people themselves
that suffer and bear the burden.
Now the railroads demand that the
shippers who have been. if not leaders,
at least prominent in the fight for low
er rates, that the shippers like the rail-
roads. be made to open their books and
reveal their profits under court or COM
mission fixed rates, which is precisely
what the railroads have been required
to do.
" The shippers are no more the
friend of the people than are the rail-
roads and are not any more given to
share their profits with the people than
the railroads and it, in the name of
the people, the railroads are forced to
cut profits at the expense OF transpof-
tation facilities and the public safety,
then, in the name of the people, the
demand should be made that the ship
pers give a part of the profits to the
people under regulations intended pri-
marily for the public benefit and to re-
duce the cost of living the FL Paso
paper says in conclusion