OCR Text |
Show i k;i;kst lisiness in history j j Omaha. Decemborl "The railroad.-, of lhe I'nited States this year i carried the greatest volume of bust-' n.': s in history without car shortage," short-age," declared Carl R Cray, president presi-dent of the Union Pacific system, if. his monthly statement for December entitled, "And the Cars Came " reprinted re-printed elsewhere in the B'eavor County News. "Heretofore," said Mr. Grav "there has been a widespread car shortage during each fall harvest. Last year it was 140,000 aars, bu-this bu-this year there is genera'.ty a surplus throughout the lountry and espelial-!y espelial-!y of box cars in the west and northwest." north-west." Mr. Gray calls attention to the na1 ion-wide program adopted last spring by all the railway executives to reduce the number of cars and locomotives lo-comotives awaiting repairs, speed up the average movement of cars and build up coal shortage ahead of time so that cars would be available for the peak period. All these objectives have been substantially attained, says Mr. Gray, who calls the showing show-ing remarkable. Specifically, the statement points out that the roads increased the average daily movement move-ment of freight cars from 22 miles ier car per day in 1921 to 29.2 mileb hey reduced the number of locomo-:ves locomo-:ves and cars requiriny repairs to 13.7 and 6.7 per cent respectively: and stored more coal than in any pre vious year. "In fulfilling th:s program pro-gram " Mr Gray says, "134,636 new freight cars and 2,963 new locomotives locomo-tives were put in service during the first ten months this year, a larger number than in a similar period within the last derd"." The roads are spending more than a billion dollars this year, says the statement, for new equipment and other improvements, thus fulfilling for the first time in twelve years the prophecy of James J. Hill, the great railroad builder of the Northwest, t hr t the roads must spend a billion dollars every year to keep abrease of the country's growing traffic. "Such expenditures," says Mr. Grey, "nave a vital bearing on national prosper-itv prosper-itv contributing to the expansion of i ndustry and employment or labor. ; "creasing the demand tor me products pro-ducts of mine, forest and farm.'" As though anticipating the inference infer-ence that these extraordinary expenditures expen-ditures are being met out of current earnings, the statement says that this $1,100,000,000 being spent ror additions and betterments is almost entirely new or borrowed money and that the expenditure is predicated on the inherent faith in tne Amen-cr1" Amen-cr1" people and their desire for fair play. "Even this year," says IIr. Gray, "it is unlikely, notwithstanding notwithstand-ing lhe record volume of business that the roads will earn the 5.75 per cent on their valuation which the law and the interstate commerce-commission commerce-commission permit -out whlc'i ts no: euaranteed because if they do not "Tn it they do not get it." The statement ends with tne reminder thnt "anti-railroad laws produce no freight cars." and the usual request for constructive suggestions from readers. |