Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-03-14
The Railroad Profile m:
H01U Not to S0[Ue 1t.
THE country keenly welcomes Director
General Hines hopeful comment on

General Hines hopeful comment on
the financial tangle in which the rail-
roads are involved as result of the puerile
Senate filibuster By one means or another,
the Director General confidently believes,
funds for continuing the administration of
the roads along the sound lines now pursued
will be provided, probably through the issu-
ance of Government warrants against future
appropriation. By whatever procedure the
emergency may be met, almost any recourse
will be preferable to cutting off plans and
contracts for improvements in the midst of
their execution, and certainly preferable to
turning the railroads abruptly back to their
unprepared private owners. The former
course not only would seriously handicap
the carriers service and thereby react to the
injury of commerce and business in general,
but it would also disrupt important fields OF
industry and throw thousands of men out OF
work at the very time when the nations I'M
employment problem presses for solution
AS for turning the roads incontinently back
to the unstable and altogether undesirable
order which prevailed before the Gov
eminent took charge-that would be extreme
ly dangerous to all the interests concerned,
if not, indeed, disastrous.
This is not to imply that Government oper-
alton necessarily should be permanent, or that
Government ownership would be advisable.
Between that extreme and the other extreme
of complete private control, there asSuredly
must be happy mean wherein the peoples
rights in this vital sphere of public service
may be fully protected and the carriers pros
must be a more comprehensive and more
effectual measure of Government control
than heretofore. What its methods and forms
even its limits should be, only broad and
scrupulous thinking, based on conditions
they really are, rather than on political or
even economic preconceptions, can rightly de-
term1ne. II we turn our study of this dis
tinctly practical subject into a mere debate
for and against Government ownership, we
shall hardly find the truth. Let us the rather
look without prejudice partisanship upon
the facts one and all, and, guided by common
sense plus competent counsel, follow the facts
to whatsoever conclusion they may lead.
This, we know, is not the method of the
propagandists who, for reasons known better
to themselves than to the public, are seeking
by every manner of means to discredit the
Federal Railroad Administration. Does it
never occur to these hammer-and-tongs critics
that the railroads since they were taken in
charge by the Government have been under
virtually the same executive direction that
they had before? In all matters of practical
administration Mr.. McAdoo and his successor,
Mr.. Hines, have relied implicitly on expert
enced railroad men. (Mr. Hines, in fact,
came directly to the Governments service
from the presidency of a great railway sys-
TEN, and Mr. McAdoo himself was broadly
versed in railway affairs) The prejudiced
and the uninformed talk as though the Gov
eminent had wrought some terrible trans
mogrifcation in the carriers But wherein
war exfgencies being considered-are they a
whit elss serviceable or, in their own affairs,
whit more perpleXed than in those shaky and
really ominous months before the Govern
ment took the throttle? 1t is a matter of
common remembrance that under private OPP
Grafton the railroads were utterly unable to
meet war demands. Whatever the reasons,
the fact stands that they were fast trending
to disastrous failure as an instrument of both
business and military service when the Gov
eminent interviewed. And no one, we mag
inc, welcomed that intervention more cordial
ly than informed railroad executives and
prudent owners of railroad securities No
one would pretend that the public has re-
ceived normal rail service during the war
period. But where is the privately operated
public utility which has given wholly normal
service during the war period? 1t is high
time to cease this unfair and fruitless crit
icism of the Federal Railroad Administration,
whose able personnel is to be congratulated
upon performing so we'll it's. incomparab1y
difficult task. 1t is high time to cease selfish
propaganda and to get down to the immense
ly important business of determining what
solution of the railroad problem will be best
for the nations common interests.
Those interests include the carriers along
with the public; they include a multitude of
employees together with a multitude of stock
and security owners; they include the rights
of thousands of communities and millions of
shippers; they include the future no less than
the present; and they involve the very vtals
of the nations material progress and pros
perity Who that has due regard for any OF
these interests will counsel hasty action when
SO much is at stake? If it be necessary for
the Government to retain it's present charge