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Show Railroads As Taxpayers Without the privately owned railroads, stafle and loca. governments gov-ernments would face the most difficult sort of tax problem. Figures concerning the taxes paid by the railroads operating In New York State in 1938 illustrated this vividly. In that year, the New York lines paid a total tax bill of $40,484,557. NInty per cent of that J 36,4 10,01 3 was paid within the state That $36,000,000 helped pay for every kind" of governmen tal function salaries, roads and righways, police and fire protection, maintenance and construction of public buildings, etc. Amoung the largest beneficiaries were schools, which received about 18,500,000 enough to defray the annual cost to the public of educating 57,600 boys and girls. What Is true of New York Is true to a greater or lesser extent of all the otier states. In many states railroads as a group consltute the largest single source of tox revenue. Thousands Thous-ands of counties depend on the railroads for the bulk of the money which keeps them going as local governments even as thousands of businesses depend for their existence, and their workers depend for their Jobs, on railroad buying. This Immense public stake in the railroads should be kept ever lastingly in mind in any discussion of transport legislation and policy. By comparison, the railroads' competitors are, for the most part, minor taxpayers. Some of them, of which the waterways are the most glaring example, are colossal tax-eaters, depending for their existence on direct or indirect public subsidies. None of them come within shooting distance of the rails ln their economic j worth to the nation as a whole. It has been said often, and It should be said again, that the ) social and economic welfare of the people of this country is inextricably inex-tricably involved with the welfare of the railroads. And that's why business laaders, labor officials, agricultural representatives, public men and others have been importuning congress to get down to work in perfecting a transportation policy that will permit the railroads to make the greatest possible contribution to the progress prog-ress of this country. |