Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1915-01-07
WHY THE COST OF OP-
GRATING RAILROADS
HAS BEEN INCREASED
STRUGGLING AGAINST INCREASED COST OF
LABOR, SUPPLIES, ETC., ON ONE HAND
REDUCED RATES ON THE OTHER.

ON THE OTHER.
a matter of fact, unless he is an ex-
ceedingly good manager and utilities
the best of modern agricultural
thought he is by no means getting
rich at present prices-high as they
may seem to people in the cities who
do not understand the cost attached
to present-day farming. To go back
to the old prices he used to receive
would bankrupt, in little while,
every farmer in the country-and the
tendency of the future will be for
the prices of farm products to go
still higher than lower Agriculture
is the nations greatest fundamental
industry and society must make the
farm game sufficiently profitable to
justify the man who is on the farm
today and the farmer boys of the
future to stay by the pillow. Much
has been said recently about the fact
that the farmer does not receive
enough for what he produces-that
there is too big waste in the chan
nels through which his products
pass before they reach the consumer,
and that he has some cause for COM
plant in this respect is undoubtedly
true. However, the railroads can face
such an inquiry with a clear con-
science-for an exhaustive investi-
cation conducted by the Lehigh VAL
ley Railroad some time ago shows
that the farmer gets sou cents out
of the average dollars worth of pro-
ducts he sells; the packers, local
shippers, distributors and retailers
get 441a cents between them; while
the railroads receive only cents, or
one-twentieth of the dollar, for the
transportation services they render.
So, too, there has been a steady
advance in practically the entire
realm of merchandise and manufac-
tured products, whatever their ma
ture, and the ever increasing toll in
the cost of labor, steel products,
lumber, cars, locomotives, and other
supplies has levied a tribute of I'M
told millions upon the railroads,
which have not only been forbidden
to increase their rates, but, on the
contrary, in many instances, COM
PEELED to lower them.
BIG INCREASED COST OF LABOR
To give the reader an exact idea of
how the cost of labor has advanced
in the operation of railroads we quote
the following increases in the daily
wage from 1900 to 1914-a period
of only fourteen years: In the case
of engineers it increased from $3.68
per day to $5.76, or an increase of
Sc percent; firemen from $2.21 to
1852, or "a per cent; conductors
from 1891 to $4.S3, or As per cent; ;
station agents from $1.98 to $2.16 or
8 per cent; other station men from
$1.62 to $40, or II per cent; or
binary traimen from $1.97 to 1896,
or 70 per cent; machinists, from
$2.72 to $3.50, or 20 per cent; car
penters from 1921 to $3.50, or IL
per cent; other shopmen from $193
to $2.2O, or IA per cent; section fore
men from $1.51 to $1.S3, or 81 per
cent; trackmen from $1.15 to $1.52
or 80 per cent; telegraph operators
and dispatchers from 1925 to $2.65
or IL per cent. This means a gen.
eral average increase in wages of
81 29-100 per cent--and all other
classes of railroad operatives and en-
ployees in more or less similar de-
gree. While these advances have
proven a great boon to the nearly two
million men employed in the rail-
way service and increased their ca
pacity to buy from merchant and far
mer, they have exacted many mil
lions annually from the railroads
themselves-all of which made the
general public richer, but the roads
poorer. In 1900 the railroads paid
$1.44 per ton for coal Now they
pay $1.S1. Then they paid 3Sc for
ties, Now they pay SIC.
OTHER INCREASED COSTS
Rut there are many other items
which have enormously increased the
cost of railroad operation which we
cannot go into because of lack of
space. The public is constantly de-
manding more efficient and safer
service, and hence the railroads have
had to spend vast sums in installing
block signals, steel passenger cars,
doing away with grade crossings,
Strengthening lines, heavier locomo-
tives, better roadbeds, and supply
ing many other precautions protect
ing both their operatives and the pub
lie all things very necessary, yet
very costly. So, too, numerous states
have passed full crew" laws which
without benefitting the public, have
compelled the railroads to pay a
toll of millions to useless employees.
Now, while labor, farm products,
merchandise and manufactures and
supplies of all kinds have steadily
increased in price, the railroads, as
stated before, have been compelled to
reduce their rates in the face of this
avalanche of ever-advancing cost of
operation-and that all but the most
powerful lines find themselves in an
exceedingly critical condition is not
to be wondered at. The farmer, the
merchant, the manufacturer and the
laborer justly insist that they would
not be able to get along on the prices
they received ten years ago. How
then, can the railroads which are the
largest employers of labor and buy
ers of material in the United States,
be expected to exist on less than they
received ten or fifteen vars ago? In
view of these facts, ii is no wonder
that President Wilson and other pa
triotic and careful students of the
situation are speaking words of kind
ly admonition to the American pub
lie, to the end that the railroads,
through whose giant arteries flows
the very life blood of the nation, may
not >be wrecked and destroyed.
THE PUBLIC AND THE MANAGER
On one hand, for the last twenty
five years the public has demanded