Omaha daily bee., 1911-04-16
CglNPION MONEY MAKERS
Express Companies Beat All Corners
to the Public Purse.
RIPE "MELONs" FOR A SONG
Immensely Profitable business Butt
IN on Little alphabetically
share of the swaE Handed
Railroads.

share of the swag Handed
Railroads.
Recent cutting of melons" by express
companies and the division Of iulcy slices
among stockholders served TO fortifv a
public impression that patrons Of the bust
ness were paying excessive prices for the
service. just how the express melons
grew and fattened. what they cost. as
well as the profits Of the cuitivators. have
not been treated heretofore with sufficient
detail to satisfy the demand fer lnforma-
tion. Albert w. Atwood promises to supply
this long felt want and his first article
on The Great Express Monopoly; Where
the Money Came From" appears in the
February number Of the American Maya,
zine. Mr.. Atwood writes. in part
Several years ago congress appointed a
committee known as the Industrial commits
sion which gathered an exhaustive mass
OF testimony relative to trusts. One volume
dealt with the subject of transportation
and contains more than 500 pages Less
than half Of one page deals with express
although the Big six companies earn S@,-
100000 year. and the service which they
perform has become an indispensable part
kirtman, a vice president Of the Chicago
q Northwestern railway, wrote a twelve
volume book entitled the Science Of Rail-
ways" and while he devoted six chapters
to the trivial subject Of excess baggage
he gave but two to the express service
in 1881 a history of the express business
appeared. but there has been none since
A German government commission which
investigated our 4. a..
ability to get information Of express com,
pany affairs, owing to their peculiar pri-
vate character" In 1850 the express com
panies refused to give any information to
the United States census bureau, and in
1890 they grudgingly gave but little In
deed, the companies themselves, by the
admission of their own officers. did moi,
until three or four yerrs ago, keep any
general statistics regarding their own BUSH
ness.
The American Company.
The American Express company has
never in its half century of existence held
an annual meeting of stockholders, and the
United States company has not held a
stockholders meeting since the civil war.
Consequently, many of the very people who
reap golden harvests from their ownership
in express shares do not know how the
business is run But now at last the peo-
pies representatives are showing symptoms
OF restiveness at the immunity which the
express interests have long enjoyed The
petition of 124 commercial bodies and the
American Bankers association asking for
an investigation was presented to the In
terstate Commerce commission in August.
As result there will probably be a real
regulation OF the business as contemplated
by the Hepburn act of 1905 Thus far the
commission has merely reduced individual
rates In a few scattered cases and has
never made thorough study of the ques-
tion OF express profits. But most promising
Of all has been the courage shown by the
present secretary of the treasury. Mr.. Wac
Veagh He has broken all records by re-
pudiating several clauses OF the ubiquitous
contract between the government and the
express company. a contract which every
secretary OF the treasury for a generation
has timidly asked to have altered, without
making the slightest impression on con-
gress
The Adams Company.
Six companies control more than 30 per
cent OF the country's express business. and
OF these the Adams is one of the oldest
and most powerful. Organized more than
fifty-six years ago its capital stock had
grown 20 fl0,OOO,OOO by 1866. in which year
the members Of the association, as the
shareholders are called received a stock
dividend OF s2.OOOOOO. The 100000 Of
stock itself did not represent shares issued
for cash. According to the eompany's own
reports no shares were ever Issued for
cash. The 10000 shares were given to
members OF the association to represent
each members pro rata ownership in the
assets which had accumulated from earn
ings. As late as 1890 according to the
census figures, the company had an actual
investment in property employed in it's
business OF but Sl12S,195. Yet It had been
paying per cent dividends for many years.
or 80 per cent on the actual value of the
property In use. In 1898 II distributed
N2,0OOoo0 OF its own bonds to stockholders,
these bonds TO be secured by the deposit
in trust OF the surplus funds not used in
the express business. At this time the
company reduced its dividend rate to per
cent. but as 4 per cent was also paid on
the bonds the stockholders did not suffer
any loss OF income. BY 1904 the dividend
rate had mounted to 10 per cent, the bond
interest remaining at 4 per cent. In 1907