The evening leader., 1918-07-12
(St. Petersburg Times.)


of governors of the board of trade
last night on the work he has done
to secure the short routes from the
West coast to Atlanta and Montgom-
cry and points north and west.
Mr.. Whitney has complete steno-
graphic record of the meeting held be-
tween prominent business men of st.
Petersburg, Tampa, and other west
coast towns and Regional Director
Winchell at Atlanta last month. Mr..
Whitney tod the board in detail the
work that had been done and then
stated that the work was only be-
ginning. He showed how it would be
necessary to prepare certain data for
Mr.. Winchcll when he and his assist
ants visit St. Petersburg to inspect
the proposed route. d
Following a full discussion the
board unanimously endorsed the work
the secretary of the board had done
and instructed him to continue.
Mr.. Whitney bases his hope that
the short route will be granted on
the speech of Mr.. Winchell made after
the matter had been presented in de-
tail to him. Following presentation
of the matter by Mr.. Whitney and
others Governor Cats made a bril-
liant speech endorsing the PROPOSE
ton. At the conclusion of the COVER
nor's remarks, Mr.. Winchell addressed
the delegation as follows:
"We have got to approach this
thing from the railroad adminlstra-
tons point of view, entirely from the
question of whether it is sound bus
mess, not whether it is a gratifica-
ton of your pride, or of your desire;
I don't intimate that it is not, but |
mean that that has got to be the de-
termining factor, is it a sound busi-
ness proposition for the government? ?
The very things that the governor has
spoken of, our need for preparedness,
that he has stated SO beautifully and
SO elcouently, and the need for money,
make it necessary for as to view this
proposition from that standpoint. Gus
needs for money are stupendous;; we
need money today for the most inn
portant things that any government
ever needed it for; we have got to,
start at the very beginning, and pre-
pare all the way along the line, we.
have got to go back of what most na-y
tions had to start with, because we
have had to start at the very begin-
ming in our preparedness programa
1t isn't true, of course, that the govz
ernment has all the money that it
needs; we see that in all these liberty
loan calls, and the various demands
for money that are being made all the
time, and we have got to conserve ev-
cry dollar; every dollar ought to be
spent twice, whether it is in train ser
vice, or in the airplane shops, or in
the gun factories. | haven't any idea
of saying that don't mean to do this,
because / don't know; if it is good bus
mess to do it, / certainly will; if it is
something that doesn't accomplish a
real purpose in the time of war, if it
isn't something that we absolutely, as
nation, as well as Florida and Geor
gia, need, then you ought not to ask
for it. This IS time for doing things
that are most essential; if this is one
of the great essentials, and Mr.. Smith
and | will study it carefully, and if
we can bring ourselves to see that it
is a great essential, because it will
cost US some money, in addition to
what we are spending now for passen-
ger train service. I don't conceive it
to be possible to run any additional
train without its costing US some
money, and don't know where we can
take off a train; this train will
draw so many people from one train,
and so many people from another
train, and so many from another train,
and of those trains that, center at
Jacksonville today, but it won't draw
enough. people from any one train, as
I view it, from any one of those trains
to enable us to take that train off.
Now, if we ran an additional train
every day between here and Tampa
/ don't know how many miles it is"
Mr.. Whitney: "Five hundred and
eleven"
Mr.. Winchell: swell that is a
thousand and twenty miles day,
round trip, that will cost the govern
ment about twelve hundred dollars a
day to do it; that is somewhere around
thirty five thousand dollars month,
or in round figures four hundred thou
sand dollars a year, and mnoey
is a thing that we can't spend today