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Show the success of any business. Don't take our word'for this just talk it over with any of the conductors, brakemen .engineers or switchmen any of the men, and note the tone and feeling, and you will say with us that it is wrong and cannot continue con-tinue if we are to have the service the country needs. "We in the Wrest need our country coun-try developed. Vast stretches need opening up. We want to move our products from the farm and forest over long distances and we must have service, good transportation. Our own markets are the best in the world and we want to trade there. "If you were on your way to the market with a basket on your arm and some hard-boiled came along and kicked a hole in your basket you would naturally be peeved about it. "The railroads and the American Ameri-can ships are our market baskets, and you can excuse a bit of feeling when view both our rail and water wa-ter communications tied to the apron strings of Granny Congress, who only muddles whatever she undertakes under-takes to improve. - : "Our merchant marine is dead, assassinated as-sassinated by its would-be friends. Don't let them kill the railroads, fake an interest in the question, think it over. If you are in business, the country's prosperity means your prosperity. "If you are a laboring man you cannot have prosperity and steady work nor good wages unless your ?,mployer is prosperous. "Do not hammer and knock the railroads. They are our salvation. They have had and still have their troubles, and until they are cured and on a firm foundation, real prosperity pros-perity for the country will not be forthcoming." THE HARD COLD FACTS "Transportation promises to be a serious factor in business' during the coming year. The railroads are yet the football of politics. ''If the railroads were a small business, we could smile as they were forced to the wall and say it was too bad; but they are the mainspring main-spring of all business and your success suc-cess and ours depends upon their functioning properly. "No apparent effort is being made to synchronize the two commissions and secure safe and sane action that will assure the improvement of this necessary delivery system. Transportation Trans-portation and politics are a poor mixture we see it in the shipping by water as well as by rail, as the La Follette act has made the successful suc-cessful operation of our merchant j marine impossible. Everybody j knows it vessels tied up, rusting ; out under heavy expense, for storage I dockage and watchmen. Our papers 'are full of brilliant plans that are j not worth a whoop as long as the j present law stands. Congressmen know it, but. for fear of the labor vote, no one has the nerve to pro- i i pose a remedy. , j "Coastwise business must be moved in American vessels, and a i few live in that trade where there ! is no competition; but it isa fierce ! proposition that we should blush at. 1 and the day is coniiu;; when we will apologize to a laughing world for our I asinine behavior of today toward our j merchant marine and to our rail- roads. j "It is an old saying that you can-; can-; not stand still in business you j either go ahead or slip back, and we think you will agree with us that the railroads of the country have slipped and are slipping. "There are fewer miles of operated oper-ated railroads now than there were j a year ago. development has ceased, j cars are less in number, roads in I poorer physical condition, terminals have not kept pace with growing ' needs, it is just a little harder to j do business, it costs more to move j trains than it should because improvements im-provements have not been made and because the employes of the roads are not loyal, owing their dependence depend-ence more to the walking delegate j than to the management of the roads, and this is leading to less and ' less of team-work so necessary lor t |