The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1912-05-06
RAILROAD news
What New Law Would Mean to
Roads in Country.
Extra Brakemen Would Cost
Lines Many Millions.
Big COST TO SANTA FE
Money Must Be Raised to Meet
All Expenses.
Other Items Of General Interest
in Traffic World.

A bill has been introduced in the
| house of representatives by Con-
gresham SABBATH of Illinois, requiring
all railroads engaged in interstate
traffic to equip freight trains of more
than rs cars with three brakemen
menting about the bill, the Baltimore
Sun says:
I'VE have heretofore called atten-
ton to the inconsistency involved in
the governments first requiring the
railroads to equip their trains with
automatic brakes, thereby doing away
with the major part of the brakeman's
work, and then compelling the ROADS
to increase the number of their
brakemen. Such a law as this pro-
posed by Mr.. SABBATH is on its face in
equitable and absurd.
1T would cost road of the size OF
the Baltimore e. Ohio in the east, say,
or the Santa Fe in the west, probably
from three quarters of million to
million dollars annually. Now, II
this money would come out of the
pockets of plutocrats and bloated
bondholders, it might not matter so
much. We members of the proletar-
lat could rejoice at their discontinue
and count it a proper punishment to
them for being better off than we are.
But the money doesn't come out OF
their pockets. First or last, in one
form or another, the people have to
pay for such wastefulness. Even If
the interstate commerce commission
refuses to permit the railroads to in
crease their passenger or freight
rates, the people must still pay the
bill in the end. If a railroad has to
pay an additional $750,O00 or mil
lion a year for brakeman's wages,
without getting any additional ser
vice or profit therefrom, then it must
retrench to the extent of that amount.
II still has to pay the interest on its
bonds. 1t still has to pay dividends
on it's stock, for if it doesn't it will not
be able to raise the money necessary
to maintain and increase its equipment
to meet the demands of its patrons
If it isn't able to meet those demands,
then general business suffers ana the
people suffer with it. If the com
pany retrenches by cutting down the
numbers of its trains, or looping off
some of it's facilities, or failing to keep
its tracks in order or its rolling stock
in first class repair, the railroad is
hurt, certainly; but the people are
hurt more.
You can't beat the game. You
can't make something out of nothing.
You can't pension any one class of
people, directly or indirectly, whether
old soldiers or old policemen or young
brakemen, without paying
for it, In the old days when the rail
roads justly deserved the name OF
predatory corporations, when they
were discriminating and granting re- |
bates and buying legislatures, such |
measures as this one might perhaps !
have been defended as punitive or re-
taIiatory necessities. In these days, |
when government regulation is so |
strict that the railroads cannot be |
very bad even if they chose to be and |
when there is every indication on the
part of enlightened railroad managers
Of their intention to be fair and just, |
there is no defense for such laws.
And when the people come to realize |
that they must pay the bill there will |
be fewer of them proposed.