Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1922-08-18
RECORD SPOKE At MT. HOLLY

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Mt. Holly. N. j., August 16th.-Geo.
L. Record, talking before a large au-
dience here last evening, declared that
the progress of events has proved his
argument anent government owner
ship to be well founded and he pre-
dieted the adoption of his plan in the
near future.
Record said that Senator Joseph S.
Frelinghuysen, whom he opposed for
the Republican nomination for u. S.
Senator, has manifested not only a
total ignorance OF conditions, but a
deliberate unwillingness to Hearn the
lessons the country is now being
taught"
Record went on to say.
Some of the newspapers are COM
mencing to comment upon the enor-
nous losses involved in the railroad
strike. On the one hand it is figured
that the railroads could have paid the
wages which they are attempting to
save for a long period of time out of
the losses which the railroads are
sustaining by reason of the strike. On
the other hand, comment is heard that
1t Will take a very long time for the
men, if successful in the strike, to
make up for the losses in wages dur
ing the strike. There are other enor-
nous losses entailed upon business
by reason of the failure of the roads
to function properly during the strike"
The point which l make is that all
OF these losses are the direct and in
eyitable result of the private mage
ment OF the roads and are certain to
occur every few years as long as such
ownership continues. In addition to
these losses the public loses annually
an immense sum due to freight rates
based upon the outstanding capitalize
ton of the railroad companies, which
is 40 per cent more than it ever cost
to construct the roads.
THE moral of these facts is that
they are due directly to the private
ownership of the railroads and must
be borne, some of them annually and
others of them periodically. as long as
the railroads are privately owned and
~ 20 liz OuSIIGSS VI lHG
men who run the railroads to operate
them continuously without strikes,
Their failure to do so, either is be-
cause of the bad anagemen of the
private owners, or is an incident in
separable from private ownership. If
it is necessarily incidental to private
ownership, then that system is clearly
~chargeable with this item of loss in
estimating its usefulness. The only
way to get rid of these losses tenn
porarily and permanently is for the
government to take over and operate
the railroads. Slowly this truth is be-
ginning to be understood by the people.
The railroads are essentially a
public service which cannot be en-
trusted to private hands to be run for
profit. They must be administered for
service of the whole people exactly
as is the post office. Whatever the
cost of public operation, it can never
by any possibility equal the cost of
private management, with the losses
due to strikes, to excessive rates due
to over-capitalization, and the use of
the railroads by the insiders to destroy
competition in certain staple indus
tries like beet, oil, coal and steel, with
the consequent exorbitant prices for
the products of such Industries which
the people have to pay.
This is the great lesson of the rail-
road strike, and slowly the people are
beginning to learn it,