OCR Text |
Show SERIOUS FREIGHT CONGESTION II EAST v By Internationa News Service. CHICAGO, Feb. 14. With every available bit of dockage at seaports in New York, Buffalo and other eastern points choked with munitions, automobiles, automo-biles, foodstuffs and supplies of all kinds, the nation is facing the most: se-. rious freight tieup in American railroad history because of the German unrestricted unre-stricted submarine warfare, according to freight officials in Chicago tonight. Freight embargoes are effective on i nearly every railroad entering Chicago 1 on shipments eastbonml or from the east, and the Lackawanna lines announced an-nounced today an embargo on all westbound west-bound shipments, operative' tonight. Railroads are not accepting a single carload for shipment to the Atlantic seaboard and eastern points are maintaining main-taining an equally strict embargo on Chicago-bound commodities. Until the number of ships departing for Europe is increased, the congested situation will prevail, according to traffic traf-fic managers. Unless immediate- remedy reme-dy is found, it is feared. by many that a serious industrial condition will result. re-sult. YTore than 1,000,000 tons of steei are piled on New York docks, it is estimated. es-timated. v Grain shippers particularly are suffering, suf-fering, and it is believed that they will request President Wilson to take' some action to solve the congestion. J. P. Griffin, president of the Chicago board of trade, telegraphed to the presidents of all the railroads today urging that cars be furnished by eastern railroads to move 30.000,000" bushels of grain now awaiting shipment from Chicago. He estimated that 10,000,000 bushels are either on their way to Chicago or are loaded in cars here." l |