The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-02-17

some idea of the rolling stock. We have also terminals and railway accommodate tions of one kind or another worth hun dreds of millions of dollars; we have repair shops and car works which cost vast sums to keep going, and an army of railway employees, greater than all the | soldiers we shall be able to send to France this year and next The number | Is nearly 100000, and 1t is the most skilled army of that size upon earth. It
 has almost every class of mechanics. It has eco machinists and about 63,000 mechanics, apprentices and helpers. Its carpenters are four times as many as the Greek Xenophon led on his great march to the Black sea, and the section men are over 100000. The army has 10, 100 boilermakers, TOGO blacksmlths and about 25,000 men engaged in it's tele- graph service. Its engineers, brakemen and passenger conductors are numbered by the thousands and it has 150,000 of ELers and clerks, with thousands of
 workmen. Each of these has to be man. | aged Each has his own salary wages and his pay envelope must be filled every
 week, The total pay roll is over $1,-
 000 000, 000 per annum and this Uncle Sam
 must now pay.
 In addition to the operation of the rail-
 
 financial obligations. It has taken them over in trust, and has agreed to see that the property yields as fair return as it has done during the three years preced- ing This is another big part of Uncle Sams job and it reaches the pocketbooks of every city and town of the union. The capital of our railways in stocks and bonds is just about $20, 900. .000,000. It is almost one-tenth of the wealth of the ma tion, and it is held by more individuals than there are people in Boston. Accord l ing to the National Association of Rail- way Securities the number of men and women who hold railway stocks and ! bonds are more than 100000, and they own a little more than one-half of the 1 property The balance is held largely by 1 the life and fire insurance companies and | by savings banks, colleges. charities and | trust companies. All of these have mil 1 lions of policy holders, depositors and de- | pendents of one kind or another, so that 1 the total indirect ownership affects al
 most half of our whole population.
 ] Moreover the individual stockholders 1 are scattered all over the country and but l little of the stock is held in large blocks 1 The Atchison has 45,00o stockholders, the
 Baltimore and Ohio, 27,oOo, and the South l ern Pacific, 5000. Of all the people who i own railroad stocks only one in 10,00f ] has as much as 1000 shares, and in the New York, New Haven and Hartford l railway one-h half of the holdings are in blocks of from one to 10 shares. The Pennsylvania Railroad company has 94,00t stockholders, and of these 46.000, or al most one-half, are women. Howard FL 1 liott, president of the New Haven, esti-
 mates that at least 20,0OO,000 people, in | cluding the owners and the employees and
 their families are dependent upon the i railways of the United States for their daily bread and butter.
 l Can Uncle Sam pay the owners their 1 interest and at the same time make the railroads efficient? As long as the war lasts, efficiency is more important | than profit and loss, and some billions 1 of dollars will have to be added ir | tracks and railway equipment to bring 1 the roads up to the present demand | Not long ago the interstate commerce 1 commission gave estimates of the needs of the roads until 1920. Those were peace estimates and the war demands have far outstripped the needs of that | time The peace estimates were almost 1 S4 0O0, 00o,O00 which would have had to be | spent in railroad materials and tracks They included something like 92,000 miles ] of single tracks, main tracks. yard 1 tracks and sidings. The new rolling stock
 | was estimated at over z2,000 locomotives l ana l,UUU,pU IllOTe CdIS, dllu III ddultiOi were terminal facilities costing hun
 dreds of millions of dollars. Some years
 1 before the late James J. Hill, president 1 of the Great Northern railroad died
 he estimated that $1,O 600 new money should go into the railroads every veal l in order that they might keep abreast l with the growth of the country Other
 railroad authorities have given like esti
 mates, and in 1912 Samuel w Fairchild
 ithairman of the New York State Cham
 l Der of Commerce, estimated that 1t would