OCR Text |
Show ALLEGED WATERED SIOCKJSCUSSEO Western Wage Arbitration Board Hears Testimony Upon the Matter. CHICAGO, March 3 AHeRed watered wa-tered stock in railroad companies occupied occu-pied the atfntion of the board of arbitration arbi-tration in the western railroad wage case today. W. J. Lauck, a statistician, stated that $11,276,495 in dividends on watered stock were paid by ten representative repre-sentative western railroad systems in 1913, or about two millions more than enough to have advanced the pay of the engineers and firemen, who are seeking higher wages, by 25 per cent. James II. Sheean, attorney for the ninety-eight western railroads involved in the arbitration, took exception to the methods bv which Mr. Lauck calculated cal-culated the amount of so-called overcapitalization. over-capitalization. He asked questions to bring out. that Lauck had il(en no account ac-count of immense early investments on which no returns were received for many years. Money sunk in the Chicago Chi-cago Great Western before the reorganization re-organization in 1909, and in the Atchison, Atchi-son, Topeka & Santa Fe served as illustrations. il-lustrations. More than' two hundred millions of Santa Fe stock Mr. Lauck characterized as fictitious, but replying to Mr. Sheean he said he did not mean that the company might not now be ivorth everv cent of its capitalization. He considered that the $6,000,000 profit said to have been made by the Morgan ;yndicate in the reorganization of the Sreat Western was excessive. He considered con-sidered that more than half of the se-;urities se-;urities of this road were "water." Mr. Lauck said that the purpose of his testimony was to show that the practice of railroads of capitalizing the debts, their actual value and their future fu-ture hopes formed a lien on the revenues which would compel labor to wait forever for-ever for wage advances if these were to come only when dividends become too large. |