OCR Text |
Show its own way without government aid or subsidy. All the others are heavily tax subsidized in one way or another through excessive ex-cessive mail payments, the use of publicly-built highways, waterways, wa-terways, airports, and so on. Yet, despite this competitive disadvantage, disad-vantage, the railroads still handle the vast bulk of the nation's traffic traf-fic and the other commercial carriers, valuable as they are in specialized fields, are but adjuncts ad-juncts of tho rails. The railroads are the one form of commercial transportation the nation could not do without. Yet, in the face of this fact, the industry in-dustry is burdened by a mass of regulations which do not apply to the other carriers, although the railroads are in direct, active ac-tive competition, not only among themselves, but with buses, trucks, planes and the private passenger automobile. A new national transportation policy, based upon the realities of the present rather than the obsolete theories of the past, is vitally needed. O TRUE COMMON CARRIER The traveling and shipping public can avail itself of a number num-ber of forms of transportation, operating on tracks, on highways, on the water, and in the air. But, of all of these, the railroads are the only true "common carriers" in the full sense of the term. They and they alone can and do handle anything moveable, in any quantity, for anyone, anywhere, any-where, and in any season of the year. They are, moreover, the only carrier which stands entirely on its own financial feet and pays |