OCR Text |
Show FREIGHT AND WAGES ILLUMINATING EXAMPLE "A railroad today," said Dr. David Friday, a well known student stud-ent of economics, "must haul a ton of freight seventy-five miles to buy a cross tie; to buy a monkey wrench 1 15 miles; to pay a days work of one machinist 534 miles." These are vivid figures. They will change nobody's views about the rate of freight charges or the necessity of regulating those rates; but they show why railroad operation today is not a primrose path. They show, what co-operation does. Suppose the machinist had personally instead of doing a day's job for a day's wages, to transport a ton of houshold furnishings and provisions across the state of Nebraska, as so many men did in the great treks westward in the fifties? Whether the machinist is better off now than he was then can be argued; but that the world has room for hundreds of lives now to one it could support then is'made interestingly obvious. Los Angeles Angel-es Examiner. |