The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-02-18

of 10 per cent on agricultural COM
modities.
Before this last reduction. there
were arbitrary reductions. coefficients,
and other factors all of which entered
into the making of the rates.
To have published new schedules,
with all of these problems worked out.
and the rates in effect published just
as the answers used to be published
in the back of the arithmetic, would
have been a colossal task.
So Real. and the rate clerks IN the
freight offices of the railroads, have
to figure all the problems out them
selves.
How 1t Is Done.
To determine the freight rate on a
shipment of butter or eggs which goes
from Topeka to a point east of the
western terminus of the road which is
to deliver it-Kansas City or st. Louis,
or Chicago. for example-five differ
ent calculations must be made.
The old rate, effective before Au-
gust %, 1920, is taken as a basis.
This is increased by IS per cent. Then
there is an arbitrary reduction. This
reduction must also be increased .35
per cent. There are two operations,
which must be performed separately.
But the 10 per cent reduction effec-
tive January l of this year, comes in
to account The increased old rate
must first be reduced by 10 per cent.
| Then the arbitrary reduction must be
decreased by 10 per cent.
Then the increased and reduced ar
bitrary reduction figure must be sub
tracted from the increased and re-
duced old rate. making the fifth, and
final operation.
In testifying before the interstate
commerce commission at Washington,
, D. c., on January 80, w. H. Chandler,
president of the National Industrial
Traffic League and representing the
New England Traffic League and the
Boston Chamber of Commerce, had
the following to say about the tariffs
as they are published at the present
time:
No Advance in 20 Years.
1.-THE carriers have made no pro-
gress in the last twenty years in tar
if publication. AS a matter of fact,
if they are advancing at all, they are
advancing backward. Twenty years
ago, a shipper could pick up a tariff
and determine the rate, without any
great difficulty. Today, many of the
tariffs are so complicated that the
carriers themselves have great diff
Guilty in finding the rate. Those tar
1 ifs are placed in the hands of men
who cannot interpret them. Shippers
are overcharged or undercharged, and
the carriers are spending millions OF
dollars in the revision of way bills
and the adjustment of overcharge and
under charge claims caused by the
inability of their own employees to
read their own publication. The saw
ing in printing alone. would be enor-
nous.
'I don't know of anything the COM
mission could do that would be more
satisfactory-ev to the rail-
! roads and Immediately to the public
than to require the publication OF
tariffs in a manner so that a person
of ordinary intelligence could pick
! them up and tell them what the rate
was.
You would have to change your
present plan of publication. You are
getting at it by establishing a per
centage relationship on class rates.
THE railroads have stuck to the
old plan of tariff publication, and it
! seems to me that those are based on
very largely on the artistic sense OF
the man who gets them up.