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Show SMALL RAILROADS IN DISTRESS WITH I BELIEF IN SIGHT According, to an Associated PrcsA report received this morning from Baker, Ba-ker, Ore., one thousand employes of the Sunipter Valley railroad, a narrow gauge railroad, serving a large lumber lum-ber district contiguous to Baker, decided de-cided to quit work December 31, following fol-lowing failure of the road's management manage-ment and employes to agree on a new wage scale. The walk out will come on the sixtieth and final day of a temporary tem-porary arrangement between the road and the men, drawn up at the suggestion sugges-tion of the federal railroad administration, adminis-tration, says the dispatch. Interviewed with regard to this matter mat-ter this morning, D. C. Eccles. manager-of ihc Eccles .Estate and vice-president vice-president and general manager of the Sumpter Valley railroad, said that the suggestion of a sixty days' working arrangement was made not by the federal railroad administration but by iho board of mediation and that he had received word from Baker asking him to continue the working arrange ment for another thirty days and that he replied definitely in the negative ''I am through with this proposi tion," said Mr. Eccles. "The short roads have worked under terrible disadvantages dis-advantages ever since the federal government gov-ernment took over the great trunk lines. Our best workmen have left us for the bigger pay on the larger roads and, despite riaes in freight rates, we have not been able lo pay our way. We cannot work on the same lines as the federal government which can make the taxpayers of the country make up whatever loss there may be in the operating of a railroad. We can onlj gel a certain amount of transportation and when we get it our scale of expenses must be very finely adjusted to make a proTIt at all, and now that the men want us to pay the same wages a? the rederal -managed roads are paying, we simply stare bankruptcy in the face. I venture to 'say that if the present state of affairs ! lasts very much longer, there will not J be a short line in the country that is ;not in the hands of a receiver within I the next six months." |