The Cordova daily times., 1919-05-17
SATURDAY, MAY IF, 1919.
PRACTICAL RAILWAY REFORM

Apparently the most practical plan for reinstating the railways of the union on firm basis is that proposed by the National Association of Owners of Railway Securities. This organization, which represents the owners of five or six billions of rail way capitalization, has had bill in troduced embodying it's ideas. These inclue among their main provisions
 1. Instruction to Interstate Com merce Commission to fix rates that would produce given, not reason able,' return on property investment.
 2 Formation of a corporation com posed of Interstate Commerce Com mission members and railway execu- tives to control an equipment pool to be used to help out congestion wher- ever occurring, and to perpetuate and manage the joint operating features that were the only useful part of gov ernment operation.
 8. Combining rate making and wage making responsibility in the same body, this body to consist of the Interstate Commerce Commission as court of appeal and of regional commissions to handle the question locally as a court of first instance.
 4. Government supervision of se curity issues. The plan would allow the return of the roads to their owners and would preserve the best points of both private and joint op eration.
 The most important of the provi sions is that which relates to earn. irgs. On this question the latest re- port of the association reads:
 Under the plan congress would, by act, instruct the Interstate Commerce Commission not that the rates shall produce a reasonable" return, but that they shall produce given per centage return of not less than 6 per cent on the combined property in- vestment accounts of the railroads taken in the three classification terri torres of the country into which the Interstate Commerce Commission has subdivided the country. This is all we ask that congress shall do in this respect. When the rates were made during the three-year test period named in the federal control act, June 30, 1914-1917, it was found that they yielded on the combined property in- vestment accounts of all the railroads 520 per cent. This was not enough and ample proof has been given the fact. We do not ask that the rates shall yield 6 per cent in the invest ment in each railroad in each classi- fled territory; we ask only that the Interstate Commerce Commission ap' ply rates in these territories exactly as they have always applied them, by taking the aggregate property invest ment accounts of all the railroads in each particular territory, and when that has been ascertained adjust the rates so that they will yield, as nearly as may be, 6 per cent on that aggre- gate amount Each individual railroad must depend upon it's own exertion in competing for business as it has always competed to earn as much of the per cent as though it's opera tions and efficiency it can earn. Some railroads will earn 2 per cent on their property investment, some perhaps 3 per cent, others perhaps per cent, but all the railroads under this plan would start with more earnings.
 Our plan further provides that a road that earns over per cent on its individual property account, after re- taining one-third of the amount earned in excess of the per cent. as an incentive, shall pay the other two thirds into a fund thus created, in the public interest. We suggest one of these two-thirds shall be used for the benefit of the employees of all the rail- roads, probably as an insurance fund ,; the other one-third to be applied to the purchase of railroad equipment or to such other uses as congress may