The Carlisle independent., 1919-06-12
NEW RAIL PLANS.
 ON SOUND BASIS
Congress Determined to Make Certain Future Growth of
 Transportation Facilities.
PLANS AGREE ON PRINCIPLES.
Return of Roads to Owners With Assurance of Adequate
 Revenues.

Washington.-One of the big prob lens before the new Congress is get ting the railroads back en b peace basis. These 260,000 mifes 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 Coy 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, it 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 Laws obstruet Growth.
 The President recently said that it would be a serious mistake to return to the old conditions of railroad regu- lation without reforming the anti quated laws that were obStructing the free development of transportation ia 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 sound foundation.
 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 q mandate from the people to provide insurance against financial panics. The public now demands in- surance against a breakdown of rail- road transportation, and the new Con- greSs is undertaking this work as sec ondary only to insurance against in- ternational warfare. Congress solved the banking problem seven years ago as non-partisan issue, in which all the people had 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 will have little difficulty in framing a bill that will meet with popular approval, and that will take the railroad question out of politics for many years to come.
 Many PIans with One Aim.
 The Iowa Senator has a command ing position in this Congress because he is the ranking member of the Interstate Commerce Committee 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 ali of these plans, with one exception, agree are as follows:
 i. Private operation is more eff
 cient and more economical than
 Government operation, and the
 public interest will therefore be
 served by a 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 a fair return will be earn
 ed on the investment.
 3. The merging of weak and