The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-06-11
NEW RAIL PLANS l i. ON SOUND BASIS
Congress Determined to Make Certain Future Growth of Transportation Facilities.
PLANS AGREE ON PRINCIPLES.
Return of Roads to Owners With
 +ssurance of Adequate ! Revenues.

lens before the new Congress Is get ting the railroads back cn a peace basis. These 100000 mics of steel highways were taken over by the Gov ernment as an indispensable arm of the national defense; but now that their war service is over, there Is countrywide demand that the Gov ernment restore them to their owners to be operated on normal American business standards of efficiency.
 But, as has been pointed out by President Wilson as well as by many men in public life who have given this subject years of careful study, 1t is not enough simply to say to the railroad companies, Take these rail- roads and give the country the best transportation service that money and brains can provide"
 Old Lave obstruct Growth.
 The President recently said that '' would be . serious mistake to retU. L to the old conditions of railroad regu- lation without reforming the anti, quated laws that were obstructing the free development of transportation fa- cilities The Director General of Rail- roads has recently made an inspection trip from coast to coast, and he has been telling the people that the time has now come to put the railroads on a sound founda1 ton.
 The plans for a better system of national control of railroads are as varied as were the plans for banking and currency reform when Congress received a mandate from the people to provide insurance against financial panics. The public now demands in- surance against a breakdown of rafl- road transportation, and the new Con- gross Is undertaking this work as sec-! ondary only to insurance against fn- ternational warfare Congress solved the banking problem seven years ago as a non-partisan issue, in which all the people had a common interest, and! Congress evidently is tackling the. railroad problem with the same spirit.
 While the many plans that have been proposed differ in the methods to be adopted in reaching the desired goal, it has been pointed out by Sena-. tor Cummins of Iowa, that all these plans have really very much in com mon-so much so that he Is confident that. Congress wiu have little difficulty in framing a bill that will meet with popular approval, and that will take the railroad question out of politics3 for many years to come. S
 Many Plans with One Aim.
 The Iowa Senator has a command ing position in this Congress because he Is th1 ranking member of the Interstate; Commerce Committes of the United States Senate, and 1t is in this com. mittee that the new railroad bill will take final form. In an address before a national meeting of business men at St. Louis Senator Cummins stated that since the close of the war, fully thirty complete plans for new railroad legislation had been submitted to him by business men, economists, bankers, railroad officials and owners, Govern ment officials, railroad workers and just plain citizens.
 The basic principles upon which all of these plans, with one exception, agree are as follows:
 i. Private operation Is moro effi-
 cient and moro economical than
 Government operation, and the
 public interest will therefore be
 served by return of the roads to
 private management.
 2 To make certain that new
 capital will be attracted to the
 expansion of railroad facilities,
 there ought to be greater certain
 ty that faIr return will be earn
 ed on the investment.
 8. The merging of weak and
 strong roads into large competing systems should be encouraged.
 The making of formula to pro- vide a fair return on railroad capital seems likely to be the phase of the problem most thoroughly debated in Congress. The Director General has been urging that the Government ought to guarantee a certain return and share in any excess earnings. Leading bankers, especially some of the international bankers in Wall street, who have in the past marketed many hundreds of millions of railroad securities, also look favorably on the suggestion of q Government guaran- tee, which will make it easier to sell new securities, and will also stabilize the market for the old bonds and stocks.
 Government Guarantee Opposed. But the proposal that the Govern ment shall guarantee the interest and dividends on private capital invested in railroads will undoubtedly meet with very vigorous opposition in many quarters. Even railroad executives, who might be supposed to take kindly to the idea of a Goyespment guarantee against failure, have frankly stated that they do not want 1t, because they believe it Is un-Amertcan in principle, would tend to lessen efficiency, and would involve the roads in a Govern ment partnership that would inevita- ply lead to Government ownership. mark, Norway and Sweden, and a