New Britain herald., 1919-04-21
Railroad Losses.
(NeW York Tribune.)

The cheerful hope that railway in come has reached an irreducible min lmum and railway expenditure has at 1 taincd a nOn- -eXtendable maximum receives a rude blow from the inter- state commerce comm issions figures for February. Below neither depths other deeps yaWn. Beneath the
 ground floor is a basement, with a
 sub cellar further. down.
 The mild February this year was as favorable to railroading as cold and
 Coalless last February was unfayor-
 able. Yet railway net income this
 year decreased IA per cent. com
 pared with the same month last year. Rates are up 25 per cent. and the
 service is slower and poorer, yet the net operating income for the month
 was but s1o, ,O1 1000, as against an av- craze of s47 100000 for the three
 year test period, under private man.
 agement, on which the government rental is based.
 The deficit is to be met out of taxa
 ton swcls. It is $74,OOO,000 for the first two months of the calendar year,
 while during the twelve months of
 1918 it was s202, 100000, or approxi-
 mate1y $17,000,000 a month. Now the ways to AVernus are more thoroughly
 greased. and We slide down at speed of s37,000.000 d month. "Ain't it a
 grand and glorious feclin,'' as Briggs
 says. The estimated deficit for the
 present year is thus s40O,0O0,O00- will probably be more if a disease,
 thus far progressive. is not checked. The railroad problem thus far has not been taken seriously by the pub
 lic~has been regarded tolerantly as a
 inl mi bo
 comes grim. So far as transportation
 charges enter into the cost of things,
 the public has had squeezed out of it 5 per cent. mOre-On the old volume
 of traffic about a billion a year, with
 nearly a half billion more to be taken
 from it in taxes. Never was there such a rathole.
 Men Of ragmatic minds have held
 that government operation was eco- inomically unsOund and predicted that the fact would quickly appear if the experiment vcrc tried on a large scale. But no side -whiskered cham Der of commerce man of the cartoon ist's fancy in his widest prophecies of woe ever ventUred to foretell what has happened. The results are stun ming to theorists who have dismissed ) gloomy progn ostications as indicative = of a bad heart and of fear for profits, l and who have persuaded no small ) part of the people that the govern } ment could do the business of trans portati0n more cheaply.
 [ The income tax hits the rich more than the poor. But the new transpor- | tatiOn tax falls nearly on d per capita basis. Assuming meaSureable equal
 ity in incidence, the billion and a half additional railroad cost Ca billion on account of higher rates and a half bil- lion to meet the deficiD and the aver age family is paying $74 u year for the luxury Of government operation. , In these days, when many old as t sumN ions are in the crusible and a great heat is turned on to burn away ' the dross, the experience with the rail- = reads is highly instructive, The doC- Urine has found some acceptance that - wicked capitalism is an exploiter---is not socially useful, IS I4enine puts it. and as 8 parasite should have no part r in government. And, 10, it is indicat-
 ed, almost proved, that capitalistie |. leadership is socially useful in a high
 degree-pays it's own profits and then $ distributes a large surplus to the pub - lie.
 f The earnings of it's effsieRey more
 than meet it's charges large as they are and the 90 or 95 per cent, of the D industrial product that it gives to la S bor exceeds in bulk any 100 per cent. ], theoretically going to labor when
 there is cooperation,