| Show CAR SHORTAGE sacramento union president booge vellis vell is credited with the intention of sending a new message to congress on the subject of the car shortage and the consequent fuel famine his motive Is of course a sympathy with those who are suffering and nothing can be more creditable than this but we hope that there will be no auch message the only object of a message Is to pro mote legislation and we are already led up in such 9 maze and tangle of legal enactments that we are in danger of vertigo in our efforts to understand them As SL nation we are still a long way from understanding the perils of leg isolation wo have yet to recognize that the effects of a law are always incalculable and that efforts to regu late large ind complicated concerns usually lave confusion worse confounded the remedy for ninety nine per cent of our troubles is not to be found in legislation but in public opan ion andi in the tacit combination of the aggrieved laws rarely do what they profess to do and they have the additional evil of acting as a narcotic upon public opinion this very trouble of the car shortage owes a great deal of its origin to recent work of the legislature senator hanabrough of north dakota where the fuel famine has been peculiarly seviere sev jere points out that there would ibave been no rascality at all ex capt for the provision of the interstate commerce law that railroads must give thirty days notice of any change in rates in this instance the notice required by law was duly given but inasmuch as the change was a decrease in rates instead of an increase its effect was diametrically opposed to public interest the fuel dealers naturally delayed their orders in order to take advantage of the low rates as otherwise they would have been un bersold at a later date an unusually large number of orders coming in ac tho same time in conjunction with a blizzard that interrupted traffic produced a car shortage with a conae quent fue famine and so we see once more that legislation intended to be beneficial may become the very re verse s |
