Show MUST aar 09 I 1 JAR ON SAYS the railroads are facing a crisis in a rush of hostile legis lation tells their side of it one horse shipping methods and how they affect freight traffic responding to a request for a corn com statement of the railroad side of the present agit agitation atlon over corporation po ration rights and their alleged en cro ashment upon the rights of the public edward H harriman who through the union pacific southern system dominates miles of the railways of the united states has explained to the times the reasons underlying der lying the recent change of attitude toward the public and toward the government eminent 0 of the interests he represents in 11 BO 0 doing mr harriman discussed in 11 an interview the elements of the situation developed develop ej by the railroads and the business bugl ness interests of the country their customers in such detail aa as to round out the discussion from the railroad point of view more completely perhaps than it has been presented by any ny one up to this time it happened curiously enough that when mr harriman received th the times reporter at his home for the interview he was engaged in explaining to an expostulating friend wb why he had broken his policy of silence of many years standing and was now undertaking to tell the public bow how the railroads looked at the case it was a more intimate statement of bis his theory of tho the franker understanding of which he spoke in recent interi interviews lews in washington and in this city and it was significant of his d determination to produce it possible some kind ot of reciprocal feeling between the public the railroads and the government authority of state and nation as the medium through which the public will finds expression and the means of shaping the nations views mr harriman was laying down his point with all the persistency which led counsel for the interstate commerce commission at one of tho the recent sessions here to remark you always have your way mr harriman th this is the time to explain walking up and down tho the floor of his hia library and occasionally pausing to emphasize a statement by bringing down his fist on a table or the back of a chair the president of the pacifies was speaking after alter this fashion 1 I tell you unless wo we can educate educato people up to this proposition we might just as well stop trying to do our share in the development of the country I 1 said in washington and I 1 say now that there has got to be cooper co oo oper aaion on the part of the railroads on the one hand and the public and the government on the other it is the only way a which the matter can be worked out aut we have tried the other method he be went on we have left it to our aur lawyers to take care of legislation by whatever means might be the most effective and to our subordinates to explain things to the general public it wont jo do we have produced a flood of legislation throughout tho the country some of it of doubtful purpose and some the result of misdirected yeal real inspired by the national administration and it if wo we are ever going to extricate the railroads we have got to come out in the open and tell the tile people ot of the ahe railroads side of tho the matter the objecting friend suggested that this might be done by the preparation ot of a pamphlet but mr harriman would have hive none of that before a pamphlet was oft off the press he said there would be a change in the situation and we would be put in the position of trying to ex plain what he had said before tho the only thing to do Is to reach abe public through the whether or not our attitude may bo be misunderstood der stood by some L people wo we will wi gain i by every particle of more acell accurate rate knowledge that we may be able to give somebody then he turned to the reporter take the situation when this interstate ter state commerce commission inquiry started th there ere were pending arrangements between several large corporations and foreign capitalists i running into the tens of millions these arrangements range ments were on very favorable favor ablo terms As soon as the foreign foreigners pra bard beard that the interstate commerce commission commiss lia was going after the union pacific they came to the conclusion that american corporations in gen oral were in a pretty bad way and tho negotiations were broken off now if it those arrangements had been completed it woula have fished a standard of credit for all good american enterprises that wanted to raise funds abroad moreover the importation of gold would have added four times its amount to the baril banking cing credits of tho the country all that was stopped tor for the time being by the timidity of foreign capital produced by the institution of the inquiry A new era in railroading mr harriman went on to discuss whether the railroads are now facing a new era in their development as distinct from that which hag has gone before as was the period of reorganization from that of rapid expansion which preceded it or that of tremendous traffic development which has followed in the last even or eight years unquestionably that Is tho the case he said and that is the very reason why I 1 believe it essen that the railroads an and the public should reach a common basis of understanding if the railroads ire are unable to meet the further development of the country they become fetters for the count coun rys business interests we wo can see the causes of this situation it if we go back fifon or twenty years in railroad development back of 1893 for a decade there had been a period of rapid construction of railroads the great period of railroad expansion aa as the country began to recover from the effects of the civil war the railroads in that era tra I 1 I 1 unquestionably questionably uti huilt beyond the ability of the country to support thorn them when a reversion of business came in the early nineties an auch such things do dg come from time to time here was all thia this railroad construction which there w no corresponding demand tha the I 1 receivership period was the logical result on then we had the period of receive herships and reorganizations which was practically contemporaneous ous with the recovery of tho the country from the depression of 1893 but in that period practically nothing was done by the railroads to anticipate the future development of the country they had bad all they could do holding their own and making two ends meet after what had gone before now suddenly the country emerges from tho the years 0 of business depression into six or eight years of the greatest development it has ever known the railroads have been obliged to crowd into this period ajl il the new work of providing new facilities cili ties that should have been distributed tri buted through aa many years more preceding and at the same time they have had to anticipate so far aa as possible future development of the country it matters little for this broader view of the case whether we are oa on top of or have passed parsed by the crest of this present wave of prosperity every such tide has had bad its rise and ebb and one would be to living in a tools paradise who take that into consideration in figuring out his hia future requirements the important fact for the railroads Is that the country Is going to keep right on developing through the next twenty years and the next fifty years and the next hundred bearo and ag as tar far ahead as we may want to look and we are unprepared for it now how do we find tho the railroads prepared to meet this national development I 1 said a few minutes ago that they had been obliged to crowd into 1 the last six or eight years a task of providing facilities that should have been spread over ten ton yeara years preceding the result Is that they have fairly overlapped the facilities of tho the country to bring to them with economy either to shipper or railroad the goods which are to be carried this Is IF the all important point for operation cooperation co between tho the railroads and the public for the failure to handle the business economically on the part of tho the shipper has goner generally alky been charged up against the railroads while the railroads inability to handle it economically has meant lesa less effective service and a tendency to higher rates 11 now take an example the other week I 1 went up to groton mass where my boy Is going to Ti school chol II 11 I 1 lived in my my car while I 1 was there thore aadi and I 1 help noticing conditions in the station yard there were threet three coal cars and ona box car OH a siding and unloading cais cars were two single horse carta carts at ai one of cars care thoy they were actually the coal as they unloaded it I 1 now right on the other side of those cars there was a coal shed shod if that coal bad been unloaded into them the ehod rhod instead of into the carts the cars might have beon boon moved out on tho road again to carry somebody elies ela es coal but no they had to unload it a cart at a time and to tie up three cars cam for about three times as long as was necessary on that basis the service of two cars was lost for the entire time that the throe three cars were ali allowed i to remain at groton if you multiply that sort of thing by the number of sidings in all tho the towns and villages of the country you will see what I 1 mean by saying that the facilities provided by the railroads have overlapped the facilities provided by the shippers yet it is put up to the railroads to increase their facilities so as to ell eliminate minato the congestion i that is what we are trying to do but you will not get any correct conception of the magnitude of the task until you conal consider derr just for a iu tle tie while the problem lera of terminal fai that is where w we 0 have got to have tho the operation cooperation co of the public more than anywhere else for wei we have reached the limit of provi providing dingI terminal facilities as the present development goos goes why a wider gauge ab needed take the island of manhattan for an illustration the ability of the railroads to render service arvice Is absolutely dependent upon the matter of terminal ea and those are conditioned not upon the length of the yards but the number of tracks and the capacity capacity of the cars for instance it you have a hundred cars on a limited number of tracks and move out somewhere it Is necessary in practice to move virtually the entire hundred but it if you have bave the total amount of freight distributed among fewer cars of larger capacity or have the hundred cars distributed over a greater number of tracks there is a proportionate reduction of the number of cara cars that that will have to be moved in order to pick out tho the twenty you come now against the flat larol tat ioni in this matter of terminal facilities there is to only a given amount of space aval available lable on all tho the lland island ot of manhattan that you can ran cover with tracks and we have practically reached the limit of ot carloads on the existing gauge right here the question of motive power comes in the freight car Is like a bridge the trucks arc are the piers and the body is the roadway now in measure as you lengthen the body to take on more load you have got increase the dead weight of the car to be able to carry it and every such increase in dead weight means a decree ie in earning capacity tor for the car or ar tor for the train when hen a given motive power in to applied to move it it Is a matter of practical experience that it we could go on increasing the width of the earn caris up to a standard that would be permissible on a alx six foot gauge or even a five ave foot gauge we would be able to get a great doal deal more car capacity for a given givert increase in dead weight furthermore we would gain in the loading and unloading it if for instance by increased car capacity you put into twenty cars freight which bad had previously taken up thirty oars cars you require leas lens terminal tor for th handling of the freight you are able to set get iton it on and off with greater aped speed and you have tho the other ten lou cars ewis 0 out u t I 1 I 1 on the line earning lom something ething in tho the meantime but right here we coine come I 1 up against the matter of motive power and in that we have reached the im limit it of development under steam so long as the present gauge Is employed its tha the only way capacity can grow you will see why this is when you I 1 I 1 remember that there are three ways in which an engine can grow to get more power it must either bo be lengthened be broadened or be made higher and in all three directions we hv have made our engines grow aa far as they can on the present stand 0 ard guage of tour four feet eight did you ever ride in the cab of one of tho the modern freight locomotives i awell well you probably noticed the swaying back and forth that accompanied the drive of the pistons that meant that the center of gravity had crept up juat just about as high as it could go without having the engine topple bover over when it got into action it told you that we had gone aa as far ag as wo we ifould could in building engines up in tho the air now it if you will think a minute you you will see that there la Is obviously a limit in length of firebox beyond which I 1 it is impossible to fire an engine and we reached that limit aa as well so there you ore axe it if we increase our car capacity we increase the unproductive dead weight that Is to ha be drawn disproportionately to the increase of the load and in so doing we are making demands upon power that has already reached tho the limit of its development under present conditions the obvious relief then would be by widening the gauge to six feet and I 1 am not sure that the railroads will not come to that in the bend end if the country after the civil war had adopted the six toot foot gauge that some of the railroads in the south then employed or even a fava foot gauge we would be in much better shape today tor for we could increase the height and breadth of our locomotives to aget got greater power per engine and could increase the ca opacity of our cars without disproportionately tiona tely increasing the dead weight that has to be drawn in moving a given trainload train load electric power and its advantages but perhaps it is chimerical to lo think now of rebuilding the railroads of the entire country and of replacing the entire railroad equipment it if so what is the next best beat thing obviously electricity and I 1 believe that the rall railroads roads will have to come to that not only for the purpose of go getting eting to a larger unit of motive power and of distributing it over the trainload but on account of the fuel proposition that nat brings up another paaso of the existing conditions we have t to use up fuel to carry our fuel anil ana there are am certain limitations along this line just as much as there are in the mitter matter of car capacity or of motive power particularly when you consider the distribution of the coal pr pro region regions with respect to the ma jor avenues of traffic 1 the great saving resulting from tha the 1 use of electricity la Is apparent quite aside from tho the matter of increasing tho the power and the trainload adt that is this additional consideration a that when you are operating by electricity you are not losing money when you pm stop your train that must not be lost Is algat of 7 the train money when it is going somewhere q when it is carry something that chatom th atom mg body wants when it stops it ceases to make money and becomes a losing proposition because it goes right on burning coal without doing any work your electric train when it stops using up any power and the only fuel waste la Is that incidental to the amainte nance of the system it all means greater expense I 1 |