New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-08-30
Wednesday, August %, 1917.

| earnings lew per CtilI idi SCi Ihoh
they ever were before in their his
tory-takes the form of a sugges-
ton from N. L. Amster, of Boston
and the Rock Island, that Con
gress should authorize a loan to the
railroads of S300,000,000 or $780,
100000 out of the next issue of
Liberty bonds, the loans to be made
on good security at a per cent inter
est, or such other rate as Congress
may fix" Such action, he says, "is
imperative because the railroads con-
stitute so vital a public utility that
their proper operation is an essen
tial government war need" That
adequate transportation is essential
must be obvious, even to the most
superficial observer. That any such
scheme as the one advanced by Mr..
Amster is at all necessary is most
decidedly open to question. Certainly
there is little present indication that
the country is likely to be embar-
raised by transportation shortage;
on the contrary, there are many
things which go to show that the CO
ordinated effort of the railroad lead
ers who are now supervising opera
tons from Washington has made the
chance of such a contingency appear
remote.
Instead of decentralization and con-
gestion, such as was witnessed last
winter, we now see transportation
being conducted in an orderly and
efficient manner and with striking
results. The Railroads War Board
reports, for example, that twenty
nine roads, with approximately half
the total mileage in the country, gave
freight service equivalent to carry
ing 1885, 63,34S tons one mile,
against 5,650,194,737 ton-miles car
ried in June, 1916, an increase of PSI
per cent. And this was accom-
plished not through extensions and
improvements to existing facilities,
which Mr.. Amster says are required
in the circumstances, but through
extension and improvement" in the
utilization of existing facilities.
Intensive car loading, plus an in
crease of 1876 per cent in the num-
Der of miles a day which the rail-
roads have been able to make their
freight car travel, is largely re-
sponsible for this excellent showing"
says the board. And it is still eff
fecting improvements and will con-
tinue to do so, to the permanent
benefit of the public and the rail-
roads themselves. In other words,
war made it necessary that the rail-
roads should do certain things, and
railroad leaders stopped talking pes
simistically long enough to do them.
1t was merely matter of applied
intelligence, and not of a govern
ment loan of some hundreds of mill
ions.
AS to the outlook, the opinion of
an experienced railroad man, c. H..
Markham, president of the Illinois
Central Railroad, is well worth read
ing. He has this to say: by SIM
ply making our loads heavier and
our trains longer, a good share of
the necessary freight for canton
ments will be carried without add
ing to the number of trains. Enor-
nous quantities of munitions or
dered cannot all be made at once,
and they are being made in factories
scattered all over the United States.
Railroads will be quite able, think,
tc move raw materials as they are
required and also to transport fin
ished articles as fast as they can
be manufactured. The mass of gov
eminent orders, enormous when con-
sidered in bulk, is widely distributed
both as to place of manufacture and
time of delivery. Therefore, antici-
pate there will be no chance Of
swapping a single railroad or group
of roads. All say is based on my as
surance that railroads will continue
to operate as one great continental
railroad system, that shippers will
continue to increase their coopera-
ton with US, and that railroad man.
ayers and trainmen will increase
their efficiency in coming months as
they have done. If we should have an
extremely cold winter, with billiards.
and severe storms, there will be a
certain amount of delay and conges-
ton, but these are factors beyond
our control"
The course of German exchange
on adjacent neutral centres clearly
indicates the extent to which the