Judsonia weekly advance., 1918-12-04

carry through under a single direction the necessary priorities of shipments. It would have been impossible other wise to complete maximum production of the factories, mines and farms with the maximum car supply to take the products to the ports and markets; impossible to route troop shipments and freight shipments without regard to the advantage or disadvantage of the roads employed; impossible to subordinate, when necessary, all ques- tions of convenience to the public ne- cessity impossible to give the neces- sary financial support to the roads from the public
 But all these necessities have now been served, and the question is, what is best for the railroads and for the public in the future?
 Exceptional circumstances and ex- cveptional methods of administration were not needed to convince us that the railroads were not equal to the immense tasks of transportation i'm. posed upon them by the rapid and continuous evelopment of the indus tries of the country. We knew that already. And we knew that they were unable to be, partly because their full development was rendered impossi ble by law and their competition made obligatory, so that it has been impos. l sible to assign to them severally the traffic which best could be carried by their respective lines in the inter- est of expedition and national econ omy.
 Conclusion of War
 We may hope, I believe, for the l formal conclusion of the war by treaty by the time spring has come The 21 months to which the present control Of the railways is limited after for nal proclamation of peace shall have been made will run at the farthest, I take it for granted. only to January of 1921. The full equipment of the rail ways which the federal administration had planned could not be accepted within any such period
 The present law does not permit the use of the revenues of the several roads for the execution of such plans except by formal contract with their directors, some of whom will consent while some will not, and therefore, does not afford sufficient authority to under take improvements upon the scale upon which it would be neces- sary to undertake them. livery ap- proach to this difficult subject mat ter of decision brings us face to face, therefore, with this unanswered Ques- tion:
 with the railroads. in the interest of the public and in fairness to their own
 Let me say tsonce that have no answer reauy. The only sthing that is perfectly clear to me is that it is not fair either to the public or to the own CTS of the railroads to leave the ques- tion unanswered, and that it will pres entity become my duty to relinquish control of the roads. even before the expiration of the statutory period, un- less there should appear some clear prospect in the meantime of legis- lative solution. Their release would at least produce any element of a so- lution, namely; certainty and quick stimulation of private initiative
 T believe that it will be service able for me to set forth as explicitly as possible the alternative courses that lie open to our choice. We can simply release the roads. and go back to the old conditions of private man. agement, unrestricted competition and multiform regulation by both State and Federal authorities, or we can go to the other extreme and establish complete government control, accom- panied, if necessary, by actual govern ment ownership; or we can adopt an intermediate course of modified pri- vate control, under a more unified and affirmative public regulation and un- der such alterations of the law as will permit wasteful competition to be avoided and a considerable degree of unifcation of administration to be ef- fected, as, for example, by regional corporations under which the rail- ways of definable areas would be in effect combined in single systems.