The New York herald., 1922-10-20
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20. 1922.
Let the Railroad Grouping
Go On.

futtlng all the worth while rail-
ways of the Northwest-the Great
Northern, the Northern Pacific, the
Burlington, the st. Paul. with their
many branches and feeders-into one
great regional transportation system
OF almost $4,000 miles of roadbed will
be good beginning Of the national
plan advocated for a long time by
THE New YORK HERALD and more re-
Gently favored by the United States
Government. 1t is only in this way,
with the strong parts carrying the
weak parts, that all sections of the
country can get the transportation
service they are entitled to, that they
can get the cost down to a figure they
are entitled to and that the American
railroad system as whole can be
kept on sound business basis.
For the entire country to develop
at the rate and to the extent for
which American enterprise and ira
dition have set the pace since the
earliest railroad days, transportation
facilities must spread throughout all
our territory where crops can be
raised, natural resources be utilized
and manufacturing plants be oper-
ated. Because it is destitute of mod
ern transportation China. inherently
one of the richest countries on the
globe, is in the main economically
and industrially dead. Any expanse
OF territory in the United States des-
titute of transportation and transpor-
tation good enough to permit eco
romic competition with other terri
tory can be as industrially dead as
China
But the weak, impoverished, starved
railroad, starved because there is not
enough business in it's territory to
keep it well and strong. cannot give
service capable of meeting Ameri-
can competitive demands. 1t is al
ways in danger of financial and phys
ical. breakdown after the exhaustion
of the original capital put into it,.
IN tiihto Poob CfChtaoty "oc
pushed to the wall and swallowed up
by an expanding competitor grown
great and successful in it's own pros
porous field. In more recent years,
however, the Government has pro-
hibited such absorptions, and the
runy, half starved roads have been
left to drag out miserable existence
to the advantage of nobody, least of
all the public dependent upon them
for passenger and freight haulage.
But the rich, powerful road serv-
ing the more populous sections and
enjoying the cream of the country's
profitable traffic can be made to do
more than give its own proper ter
ritory the highest class of service
It can, with very modest portion OF
the great revenues it gathers in its
rich territory, maintain satisfactory
service in poorer territory which as
vet cannot of itself support good
railway.
The whole country needs this re-
gionaf system, with its hundreds OF
railroads massed as operating enti-
ties in very few groups, not more
than half dozen in ALL In this way
all the natural advantages of private
ownership and private operation
initiative, incentive, ambition and
pride in personal achievement-car
be retained butt with Government
supervision and regulation to prevent
the abuses Of monopoly greed and
colossal financial power.
Y This is the solution Of the great
national railway problem as II is the
solution of the great national Goa
rroblem, of which THE NEw YORK
HERALD. likening them to the postal
situation. said on April z and car
now repeat
"Thc profit to the mail service
from the fat sections takes care OF
the enormous losses accrung from
the lean sections. Precisely in the
same way the fat coal mines would
take care OF the lean mines And this
would mean cheaper coal to the con-
sumer and sane preservation of the
great coal resources of the country
for the coming generations.
"Tbis same scheme OF grouping the
railroads, so grouping them that the
fat sections would carry the lean sec
tions, would solve the railroad prob