The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-07-10

The furry in the hiring of a few
hundred railroad men here and there
and the talk Of business gains leaves
the basic economic situation IN
changed. There still remain nearly
100000 unemployed railroad men
who have been dropped from the
roads in the past several years.
Freight moved by Glass I roads in
the first four months of this year, for
example, was 'l24 per cent thar for
the corresponding period of 1882 And
Eastman, Dillon & Company's Con
f1dential, for Customers Only" release
of June 20 remarked: After seasonal
adjustment" of railroad car loadings
they are scarcely better now than
in the first of April and not as good
as last fall. Carloadings comparisons
with last year have been steadily
improving only because last year was
steadily growing worse"
The Shippers Regional Advisory
Board estimates that in the third
quarter of 1888 freight traffic will
be only 10 per cent above the same
period last year,
Inc II. r. =. again
Announcement of a $4,000 900 loan
to the Great Northern Railway by
the Reconstruction Finance Corpo-
ration brings the total Of govern
ment funds pumped into railroads
to about $340 million. A good deal
of this money was supposed to have
gone as work loans" to provide
work for unemployed railroad work
ers. But actually most of this huge
sum went to repay or retire bank
ers loans,
Take the Pennsylvania Railroad
which has received nearly S29 mil
lion from the r. F. c., of which
amount $91a million has been repaid
during the last two weeks. At the
same time the 100000 remaining or
the roads So million work loan" APP
plication has been cancelled. The
Wall Street Journal commented that
THE proportion the refund bears te
the total loans to carrier from the
r. F. G. is small. :" But the r
F. c. directors say about these small
repayments that this action may be
railroads of the country to private
financing"-'a objective which We
(the R. F. C. directors) believe tt
be an essential step of recovery tt
the transportation systems of the
country"
Lifted out of the dumps insofar a.
profits are concerned by virtue o.
Roosevelt's continuation of thu
Hoover policy, the railroad owners
tie Morgans, Van Sweringens ant
Vanderbilts are to go on merrily
plundering the roads.
Just what there is to the repay
ment is told by the Wall Stree
Journal which admits that sit would
have been possible for the Pennsyl
vania to pay off the entire $4,000,
900 r. F. c. loan at one strok
without borrowing a Nickel TIL,
low interest rate of Us per cent Oh
time deposits given by New Yorl
banks, which made it no longer pro
fltable for the Pennsylvania to hole
on to part of the r. F. G. money
was the cause of the roads gen.
crosby"
And speaking of interest calls b,
mind the fact that the R. F. c. re.
duced interest rates to railroad!
from 6 per cent to 51a per cent ant
subsequently to per cent Now come
the announcement that under tn
public works section of the Nationa
Industrial Recovery Act, part of the
S,300,000000 may be available a.
laid to railroads in financing main.
tenanee and new equipment" Anc
the interest rate will be further
reduced tic four percent - to thu
benefit of the rail owners. Nor i.