The Connecticut labor press., 1920-08-21
THE WORLD WAITS FOR RAILROADS
 TO MAKE GOOD
Industry Hampered and Thou sands Are Jobless Awaiting
 Transportation Betterment.
CONGRESS MAY ACT
Plumb Plan Promoters Insist That Government Ownership
 Is the Only Solution.
By C HARLE M. KELLEY.

Another Daniel has come to judg- ment, to tell railway managers that they are on trial, and that upon the wisdom and intelligence manifested by them during the next year will depend the future status of transportation-whet CT it shall continue under private con- trol or be taken over by the government and maintained for the people.
 Daniel Willard president of the Bal tinore & Ohio Railroad, is a typical railroad executive, but he, possesses a vision that is lacking in some of his colleagues He plainly can read the signs of the times. He knows that the public will not always quiescently ac- cept the conditions that ahve been es- tablisehd by a complaisant Congress, controlled by large business interests. There will be a sharp reaction aga1nst the misrepresentation of public funds to pay private dividends and to liquidate the aims of private management. AL ready it is in evidence. There IS wide spread approval of the unbusinesslike methods of railway managers, resulting in an almost complete prostration of in dustry and commerce, and the recent rate increase is certain to increase the disaffection that everywhere prevails.
 MT. Willard says that the public IS dubious of railroad securities, but he is hopeful that the future will materially soften this attitude of hostility and bring to the treasuries of the railroads the new funds that must be secured If the railroads are to be operated effic- iently. If the railway managers do not see and meet their responsibility, then private ownership is doomed, and the logical next step Is government own ership of railroads.
 What Mr. Willard does not see clear ly is that with rates already so high that the carriers will soon be operating on basis of diminishing returns, re- sutling from the curtailment of traffic, the addition of interest and amortiza- ton charges will increase instead of reduce railroad troubles. That d1v1- dends and interest may be paid on out standing railroad securities, the Inter- state Commerce Commission has recent ly imposed upon the public new direct tax of more than billion and half of dollars. When this increase runs the gamut of multiplying increases that must be borne by commodities, 1t will aggregate a tax of more than $50 per year for every man, woman and child in the country, of approximately $30O per year for the average American family.
 The railroads are offering their secur- ities at high interest rates, increasing operating charges, and it will be but short time until the executives are again back in Washington asking, and doubtless receiving, additional increases of traffic rates.
 Industry Is Prostrate.
 By what feat of 1egerdemain do the railroads expect to relieve the nations industry from the blight of inadequate transportation ?? With winter coming apace and coal bins empty, with man. ufacturing plants closing because they cannot secure raw materials or the transport of finished commodities, with last years crop still in warehouses and this years crops still in the fields, with stagnation and paralysis everywhere, what are the railway executives doing to redeem a very serious situation!
 The claim Is made that tranSporta ton has failed because the carriers can not secure cars and motive power from their insufficient revenues. That was the basis of the demand for the recent freight increase Cars cannot be built in day or a week, and if the railroad managers had an unlimited reserve they could not possibly add to their equip ment in time to avert disaster.
 Hundreds of thousands of workers are idle while the entire world is clamoring for the necessities of life. With ltnder-production everywhere, factories cannot produce because they lack transportation. The situation has become progressively worse, notwith- standing the government has been struggling energetically for several months to bring order out of the chaos that followed immediately upon the re- turn of the roads to private control.
 There are sufficient cars and motive power to transport the nations output if they were intelligently used. That much is admitted The government, under more trying conditions, gave sat isfactory service. It responded to the greatest demand ever made upon the transportation system of the country. The cause of the present breakdown, therefore, must be other than the alibi offered by private managers.
 The truth is that there would be sufficient cars were they efficiently util- ized The Federal Trade Commission has made a survey that justifles its statement that under a unified system and the proper routing of cars there would be enough for all demands and a NC AoI SSIASICo OG Z Is per cent.
 If the nations salvation rests in the acquisition of additional cars by the railroads, then we are doomed to some heart-breaking experiences during the next few months. Lack of income is not a good reason for the trouble. Dur ing the five months of private control the railroads were financed by the gov ernment They had unlimited revenue They had free access to the federal treasury, and took from 1t more than half a billion dollars
 Congress May Intervene.
 The American people are proverbia1- ly good-natured and long suffering. They have endured much at the hands of railway managers. They have not seriously protested when it was patent that we were rushing neadlong to de- struction. The railroad propagandists had done their work so well that there is a widely held view that the present difficulties are heritages from the period of federal control.
 But truth must eventually overtake the misrepresentation that has been disseminated concerning the results at tained by the government. The rail- roads managers have been given every thing they had the courage to deman l. and if they don't make good tehre will be protest from the public so strong that Congress, reactionary as it is, will