FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30
1909

PREPARED BY

SLASON THOMPSON
Manager of the Bureau of Railway News and Statistics

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INTRODUCTION

Nothing in the nature of statistics under official authority more confusing and misleading has ever been issued from the government printing office than those portions of the Twenty-third Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission for the year ending June 30, 1909, purporting to deal with the financial results of the railways of the United States for the fiscal years 1908 and 1909.

On the first page of the Report the financial results of the last two fiscal years are set down thus:

The mileage operated in 1908 is stated as 228,164.80 and in 1909 as 233,002.67 miles.

On page 54 of the report the summary compiled from the monthly reports gives the following comparative figures for the same years:

The mileage is the same as above, with the added information that the mileage operated at the end of the fiscal year 1908 was 229,952.36; and at the end of 1909, 234,182.70.

It will be observed that the taxes in both summaries are identical, but in one they are subtracted from net revenues and in the other they are not.

An insert facing page 54, giving the details of the monthly reports from which the table on that page is compiled, reveals the common source of both sets of returns and gives the key to the discrepancy between them. This is no less than the inclusion in the former of the revenues and expenses from "outside operations," which are excluded from the summary on page 54, in which the "net revenue" only from such outside source is mentioned and added to the net revenue from rail operations.

The impropriety and inaccuracy of such accounting becomes manifest when its effect is seen to vary the ratio of operating expenses to earnings from 69.67% to 69.93% in 1908, and from 66.12% to 66.64% in 1909.

On pages 64 and 65 appears another set of income figures for the year ending June 30, 1908. This is compiled from the annual reports of the carriers operating 230,494 miles of line, from which the mileage of switching and terminal companies is excluded. It supplies the following summary:

As these figures are compiled from the only returns which furnish data respecting all the various phases of railway operation in the United States, they will be accepted in subsequent pages as the official returns for 1908.

The above figures are exclusive of returns from switching and terminal companies, whose earnings, according to the monthly reports in 1908, were $23,028,773; expenses, $16,383,481, and taxes, $1,245,261.

Grossly Exaggerated Dividends.

But these are venial variations compared to the deliberate misrepresentation as to dividends on page 62 of the report, where it is stated:

"The amount of dividends declared during the year was $386,879,362, being equivalent to 7.99 per cent on dividend-paying stock. For the year ending June 30, 1907, the amount of dividends declared was $308,088,627."

This statement is the more reprehensible because the inaccuracy of the reference to dividends in 1907 was exposed a year ago, and $115,550,909 of the 1908 total is proved to be fictitious by the line in the condensed income statement of the report (page 65) reading: "Dividends declared from current income, $271,388,453." It takes dividends from surplus, dividends by leased companies, and dividends from surplus of leased companies to make up that gross deception as to the dividends declared in 1908. And all these "several dividends" are only made statistically possible by including in current income $274,450,192 "other income" NOT derived from transportation.

It is impossible to overestimate the harmful popular effect of exaggerating the dividends paid by the railways by $80,693,665 in 1907 and $115,550,909 in 1908. The public mind does not stop to distinguish between dividends "declared," dividends paid out of "income" and net dividends actually paid out of net earnings of railway traffic.

This whole statistical structure of fictitious dividends has been built up in successive reports upon the false premise of including intercorporate payments on both sides of the income account. What the public is entitled to know is the disposition of the gross sum paid by it for transportation services—those services which the Act to Regulate Commerce was passed to regulate.

Bewildering Changes in Nomenclature.

Scattered through the official reports for 1908 the student is confronted with numerous changes in terminology, many of which are for the better, but nearly all impair that continuity of names and phrases which is so desirable in comparative statistics. For instance, the public has been taught, by official practice, to speak of the revenues of the railways derived from the transportation of passengers, freight, mail and express, as "Gross earnings from operation." The phrase is descriptive, definite and clear. For this the Commission has substituted "Rail operations, operating revenues." Former reports spoke of "Income from operation," which now gives place to "Net operating revenue." To this is added the "net revenue from outside operations," making a "Total net revenue," from which "Taxes accrued" are deducted, the remainder being "Operating income."

It will be perceived that this last phrase, which covers revenues from which operating expenses and taxes have been deducted and to which the net revenues from outside operations (sometimes they involve a deficit) have been added, comes perilously near the "Income from operation" of preceding reports.

The exclusion of the reports from switching and terminal companies in some instances, while they are included in others, introduces an element of perplexing uncertainty at every turn and really vitiates all comparisons with former reports.

The Commission itself seems to realize the bog into which the official statistician has plunged its accounts, when it says:

"The changes in the income account submitted in the report under consideration are so far reaching in their results, in a number of instances, as to impair direct or close comparison with figures for similar items in previous statistical reports."

And now it is proposed to throw all the accumulated statistics of twenty-two years out of consecutive gear by substituting the calendar for the fiscal year.

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The writer has deemed the foregoing comments necessary to clear the atmosphere before proceeding to the introductory summary showing the salient features of the railway industry in 1909 compared with similar items in 1899 and 1889. The data for 1909 is compiled from the annual reports to this Bureau covering 221,132 miles of operated line, together with the monthly reports to the Commission of earnings and expenses of all classes of roads for that year, covering an average operated mileage of 233,002.

There is not a line or figure of this table, with its percentages of increase, that does not testify at once to the amazing growth of American railways and to the equally amazing economical basis upon which they render incalculable services to the American people on terms that challenge the admiration of less favored peoples.

Review of the Last Three Calendar Years.

Where the Twenty-second Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission minimized the loss inflicted on the railways by the business depression of 1908, the Twenty-third Annual Report naturally, and by reason of the same cause, minimizes the substantial recovery of 1909. Where the former showed a loss in gross earnings of only $164,464,941 below the preceding year, when the actual result of the depression was nearly $300,000,000 ($298,457,576), the latter shows a recovery of only $21,770,228, when it was approximately $282,000,000 ($281,934,932).

The explanation of this discrepancy is, of course, the Commission's adherence to its own fiscal periods of statistics, which do not happen, in this instance, to coincide with the ebb and flow of adversity and prosperity. The true movement of railway traffic before, during and after the recent business depression is more nearly reflected in the following figures for the calendar years 1907, 1908 and 1909, compiled from the monthly returns to the Interstate Commerce Commission, divided into periods of six months:

Through these tables the reader is able to trace the upward course of railway receipts in 1907 to their culmination in October of that year; their rapid drop to February, 1908; through the hard summer following to the gradual recovery of 1909, until in October last they reached the highest monthly total on record.

Concurrently with this story of the depression of 1908, the tale of railway distress and of the drastic measures adopted to meet the emergency can be read in the half-yearly ratios. The ratio for the fiscal year 1906-'07 was 67.53%, and the shadow of approaching trouble was shown in an increase of this ratio to 67.7% for the first six months in the table. By December this ratio had risen to 73.40%. The enormous receipts of the autumn months held the ratio for the six months down to 68%. In February, 1908, it marked the high and ruinous figure of 76.84, and from that point the trend, due to severe retrenchments, was steadily downward until it touched 60.10% in October, 1909.

The ratio of 64.1% for the second half of 1908 is the true measure of the ability of the railways to cut their expenditures to fit the times. But they were on bed rock, as the succeeding months of small receipts proved, when the ratio went up to 72.43% in January, and averaged the high figure of 68.3% for the first six months of 1909. The heavy receipts of October and November without a corresponding expansion of expenditures resulted in the phenomenally low ratios of these months. But the severity and necessities of operating conditions in December, 1909, ran the ratio of expenses up to 69.23%.

The net earnings for the three years under consideration are apt to lead to erroneous conclusions as to the effect of the depression. Neither the loss in 1908 nor the recovery in 1909 reflects the true swing of the pendulum. The one minimizes the loss, because it conceals the cessation of all constructive work, the curtailment of betterments and improvements, and the postponement of all purchases for replacements except of the most immediate and imperative nature; the other exaggerates the recovery because of heavy receipts without the resumption of the concurrent expenditures that should attend them. The railways in the fall of 1909 were simply doing business on the margin of facilities provided during the fat months of 1907 in anticipation of a continuation of prosperous times. Some idea of the extent of this margin may be gained from the parking of 400,000 freight cars in the yards with 200,000 in the shops in April, 1908. At no time since has this margin been wholly exhausted.

But a continuation of traffic on the scale of the past six months will necessitate an immediate expenditure of $100,000,000 to $150,000,000 for the replacement of freight cars alone.

Income Account for the Calendar Year 1909.

The monthly summaries issued by the Interstate Commerce Commission from time to time afford the details for the construction of the following statement of the transportation revenues and expenses of the railways for the calendar year 1909, from which the averages per mile and the ratios have been computed on the basis of 234,950 miles of operated line.

Unfortunately there are no similar figures for the calendar year 1907 with which comparisons may be made, but the official returns for the year ending June 30, 1907, when railway earnings reached their maximum before the panic of that year, afford the following instructive comparisons:

It will be perceived that while the earnings in 1909 exceeded those of 1907 by over 15½ millions they were almost $300 less per mile, while the operating expenses were actually $442 less per mile. The decreased operating ratio in 1909 bears unmistakable testimony as to where the increase in net revenues came from.

With an increase of nearly 9,000 miles of line only $339,167,665 was spent on maintenance of way and structures in 1909 against $343,544,907 in 1907, and the urgent demands of returning activity made the expenditures on this account liberal in comparison with those for the year ending June 30, 1909, i. e. $311,368,083, or $1,336 per mile. It will be years before the railways recover from the economies forced on them by the loss of $300,000,000 in revenues in 1908.

Unregulated Regulation of American Railways.

Today the railways of the United States are "cribb'd, cabin'd and confined" in their services to the American people, not so much by the laws for their regulation as by the spirit in which those laws are administered. To the general tenor and purposes of statutory regulation the railways have become largely reconciled; but from the spirit in which the laws are sought to be enforced, there has to be continuous appeal to the courts and to the public sense of justice.

Regulation of railways has been persistently interpreted by political Commissions to spell reduction of rates and exacting conditions that would drain the purse of Fortunatus. Between 1889, when the Interstate Commerce Commission's statistics first became a valuable index of railway operation, and 1909, the average rate per ton mile has fallen from 9.22 to 7.55 mills. On the freight tonnage of 1909 this meant a reduction of over $372,000,000 in the yearly revenues of the railways. The railways suffered that loss from their income when they needed every cent of it to maintain the people's highway in a condition to transport the people's ever-growing traffic.

The railways lost it, but who got it? The people? Search the market reports of the land, from Eastport to San Diego, and you will find incontestable proof that not one cent of these millions reached the pockets of the people, in whose name all regulation of railways is demanded and for whose benefit all reductions are claimed. The average rate on all commodities has gone down, the price of every commodity transported by the railways has gone up. Who has pocketed the difference?

There can be only one answer—the producers, the shippers and the traders. Today nine-tenths of the increased cost of living in the United States is chargeable to this ever vigilant and aggressive coalition. For everything the railways must buy—labor, supplies, money—they have to pay the advanced prices of the day. But the protests of the shippers and the rulings of the Commission forbid their raising a rate or adopting a money-saving economy. They attempted to readjust freight rates in 1900 one-fiftieth of a cent per ton mile above a ruinously low average and the outraged shippers secured the passage of the Hepburn Act!

How the federal Commission and shippers work together for the so-called regulation of the railways is evidenced in the unbroken tenor of the decisions handed down by the Commission. Out of 357 decisions printed during the year 1908-09, no less than 219, or 61.3%, were orders granting reductions of rates or reparation for charges found comparatively excessive or unreasonable. In not one case in a score was the rate found excessive or unreasonable per se. In only one case out of the 357 was an increased rate ordered, and this was done reluctantly and as unavoidable.

Although the decisions are for the most part the unanimous finding of the Commission, the following table distributes the opinions of the year among its members into dismissals and reductions or reparations among the Commissioners writing them:

Some of the cases upon which the Commission is called on to pass are so trivial as to be beneath the notice of a justice's court, while others involve issues so momentous as to threaten the whole structure of railway rates by which the unparalleled prosperity of the country has been made possible.

But the number of cases reaching the Commission for adjudication is insignificant compared with the grist of informal reparation orders that runs an endless stream through its regulating rollers. In the twelve months from December 1, 1908, to November 30, 1909, these aggregated no less than 2,223 separate orders involving amounts all the way from 47 cents to $14,717.64, as seen in the following orders:

Multiplying these awards by the number of orders enables the reader to imagine the range of their respective pettiness or portentous possibilities.

It is doubtful if the American people, or even the Interstate Commerce Commissioners themselves, realize how the formal decisions and informal orders of the Commission are slowly but surely whittling away the safe margin of American railway profits. At the rate of two decisions every three days and forty informal orders per week, the work of incipient confiscation proceeds with remorseless enthusiasm.

With the best intentions in the world the present Interstate Commerce Commission is so enmeshed in its own anti-railway traditions, so enamored of the administrative control theories of its statistician, so covetous of unbridled, irresponsible authority to tear down where it has no constructive capacity, that anything like co-operation between the Commission and the railway management for the public good seems out of the question.

To the writer it appears that only blind rejection of facts can find any conserving element in the regulation of railways as at present administered. Signs of a helpful disposition in official acts are entirely lacking. The Senate and House calendars groan under bills for the further regulation and restriction of the railways, but not one contains a promise of relief. For not one is there a genuine public demand.

And what is the situation as this is written? It can be stated in a few lines. As a consequence of the drop of $300,000,000 in gross earnings in 1908, the railways in 1908 and 1909 cut $277,000,000 out of their expenditures. This was done mainly at the expense of maintenance of way and structures and in a cessation in the purchase of equipment, but the so-called economies of postponed expenditures permeated every line of railway extension, operation and replacement. In 1908, with 6,000 more miles of track to maintain, $18,788,217 less was spent for maintenance than in 1907, and in 1909 with 12,000 more miles of track $32,176,824 less was expended.

Between 1897 and 1907 the expenditures for maintenance of way increased from $159,434,403 to $343,544,907, or over 115%. This means an increase of approximately 8% a year, or at least $25,000,000 on present plant. Therefore at least $43,000,000 was withheld from this essential line of railway maintenance in 1908 and fully $82,000,000 in 1909, a total of $125,000,000. The saving on equipment was nearly as great and is dealt with in the body of the report.

A comparison of the income accounts for the month of October, 1907 and 1908, corroborates the foregoing statement as to the economies forced on the railways by the adverse winds of regulation and business depression.

The canker worm in this, the most promising flower of returning prosperity, is revealed in the abnormal ratio of 60.10 for October, 1909, or nearly 7% below the American average. Now this 7% on the revenues of last October means that in some way over $16,000,000 less than normal was expended on American railways in that month alone. And October, 1909, was only a sample of how railways had cut expenses for 24 consecutive months.

That this should be so, with no reduction in the scale of wages or the price of supplies, is, in the view of the writer, a situation of serious national concern. Happily he is not charged with any commission to suggest how or where the deferred debt of nearly $300,000,000 to efficient railway road and equipment is to be met. But that it must be met, to place the railways in as good condition as they were before the panic of 1907, when the cry was for more, not less facilities, does not admit of question. If it, together with the advance in wages now being adjusted, is to be met out of income, only an advance in freight rates can take care of it. If out of fresh capital, it can only be coaxed from the pockets of shrewd investors by rates of interest that discount the risk attendant on the unregulated and irresponsible regulation of railway revenues, resources and responsibilities. And it is proposed to make an irresponsible Commission, unfamiliar with the necessities of the situation and unversed in the ways and means of raising capital arbiters of these necessities, ways and means.

All attempts to meet such a situation by legislation, unless it be directed to a reform of the instrumentalities of regulation, must prove ineffectual. In a broader, saner, more helpful administration of the laws already on the federal and state statute books lies the hope for the future of the great American transportation industry. "Whate'er is best administered is best."

The Bureau's Statistics for 1909.

Thus far what has been written has related almost wholly to the financial aspect of the transportation industry as presented through the monthly reports of the railways. While these in their way serve as an admirable barometer in keeping the public informed as to general business conditions throughout the Union, they throw little light upon the railway operations behind the financial results. They are absolutely dumb on the main question upon which all railway legislation and regulation should hinge—adequate and efficient public service.

In the following pages the Bureau attempts to remedy this omission, in the essential particulars for the year ending June 30, 1909. The reports from which its summaries have been compiled were received almost a month earlier this year than last, but the publication of the Bureau's statistics has been delayed in order to make the usual comparisons with the Official Statistics for 1908. The writer is advised from Washington that the fault for this unusual delay rests with the Government printer—whose office is overwhelmed with Congressional and departmental work—and not with the Interstate Commerce Commission or its Bureau of Statistics and Accounts.

For the first time, the reports to this Bureau cover the division of freight movement into the seven chief commodities; the separation of revenues from Mail and Express; the distribution of expenses for injuries and damages, and the summaries of expenses for maintenance of way and equipment, traffic expenses, transportation expenses and general expenses. It is believed that with the addition of these accounts the annual report of the Bureau has become so comprehensive as to warrant its publication hereafter at an earlier date, without waiting on the publication of the official statistics for the preceding year.

This year the Bureau has received reports from 368 roads operating 221,132 miles of line or approximately 94.4% of the mileage and carrying over 97% of the traffic of the country. Last year reports were received covering 216,460 miles. The increase of 4,672 miles fairly represents the actual increase of railway mileage in the United States for the twelve months.

In presenting these statistics, the writer has endeavored to make them as colorless summaries of facts as an earnest desire to arrive at the truth permits. Such comment as accompanies them will be confined to comparisons and elucidation and not to the furtherance of any personal theories.

For the sake of brevity, the Interstate Commerce Commission will be referred to herein as the "Commission"; the Commission's "Statistics of Railways in the United States" as "Official Statistics" and "the year ending June 30th" will be implied before the year named unless otherwise specified.

The statements as to foreign railways are compiled from the latest official sources available.

Here the writer wishes to record his personal appreciation of the assistance rendered by the executives and accounting officials of the railways, whose co-operation has made this report possible. In the midst of increasing burdens imposed on them in reporting to federal and state commissions and legislatures, the requests for information from this Bureau might have seemed excusably negligible. The completeness of the report itself testifies to the cordiality with which the Bureau's work is viewed.

Acknowledgments are also due to Federal and State officials for their uniform courtesy in responding to the many requests from this Bureau, and the writer has been much gratified to receive from the chief government railway official of one foreign country the assurance that he considers its Annual Report "one of the most comprehensive and useful compilations of statistical matter relating to railways that has come into his hands."

Slason Thompson.

Chicago, April 30, 1910.

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I
MILEAGE IN 1909

According to the preliminary income report of the Interstate Commerce Commission for the year ending June 30, 1909, compiled from the monthly returns, the average railway mileage operated in the United States during the year was 233,002.67 miles; and the total mileage operated at the end of the year was 234,182.70.

The returns to this Bureau, compiled from the annual reports for the same year, cover 221,132 miles, against 216,460 in 1908, an increase of 4,672 miles. Reports to the Commission for December, 1909, showed a total operated mileage of 236,166 miles.

In its report dated December 21, 1909, the Commission stated that for the year ending June 30, 1908, substantially complete returns had been received for 230,494 miles of line operated, including 8,661.34 miles used under trackage rights. These are the official figures of mileage for 1908, which will be used in all subsequent comparisons with the Bureau's figures for 1909—the latter, however, may include some switching and terminal mileage excluded from the former.

Of the mileage reporting to this Bureau, 8,927 miles were operated under trackage rights, leaving a net of 212,205 miles of line covered by capitalization and rental.

Assuming that the total operated mileage in the United States at the close of the fiscal year 1909 was 234,182, the complete returns to this Bureau cover approximately 94.4% of the mileage and 97% of the traffic of all the railways in the United States. No attempt has been made, or will be made, to segregate the returns of switching and terminal companies from the Bureau's figures, of which they are an integral part.

The first summary under this table presents the operated mileage reported to this Bureau in 1909 and 1908, classified by states and territories in comparison with the official figures of mileage owned in 1908, with relation to area and population of the respective territorial divisions:

The column of operated mileage in 1909 testifies to the comprehensive character of the reports to this Bureau, while the last two columns demonstrate how railway extension has kept pace with the growth of the country. Territorially the United States now has 43% more railway mileage than it had in 1890, and the last column proves that the mileage is greater proportionately to the population than it was twenty years ago. The contrast in the density of population per mile of line between Rhode Island and Nevada is illustrative of the startling diversity of conditions under which railways are operated in the United States.

Railways Built in 1909.

The new mileage reported as constructed in 1909 tallies more nearly than usual with the increase in mileage for which operating reports are received. As reported in the Railway and Engineering Review, February 19, 1910, the new mileage by states was as follows:

Railway Mileage of Foreign Countries.

The ratios of railway mileage to area and population in the table on page 19 may be compared with those of foreign countries for 1907 in the following statement:

Of the above total railway mileage for the whole world, no less than 332,360 miles, or nearly 56%, is operated in English speaking countries, the mileage of the United States alone being over 35% of the whole.

To the most casual student the disparity between the density of population to railway mileage in the United States and Europe of one to five, is as apparent as it is significant of our necessity for so much greater provision of transportation facilities per capita. If our per capita mileage were relatively the same as that of Europe, the United States would be set back to the transportation facilities of 1869, when the completion of the Union Pacific raised its total mileage to 47,254 miles. But even then it had a ratio of one mile of railway to 810 inhabitants, which was higher than Europe's ratio today.

Clearly there is nothing in the statistics of the railway mileage of the world to account for the epidemic of railway phobia that periodically convulses the people and legislatures of the United States of America.

Mileage of All Tracks in 1909.

Of almost equal importance to the mileage of American railways are the auxiliary tracks upon which the extent and efficiency of their public service so largely depends. As the next statement shows, these continue to increase more rapidly than the miles of line.

By adding the auxiliary trackage reported to this Bureau for 1909 to the 234,182 miles of operated line reported to the Interstate Commerce Commission for June 30 of that year, it appears that the total of all tracks on that date was upwards of 340,000 miles.

It will be observed that in every instance the mileage of second, third and fourth track and yard track and sidings reported to this Bureau in 1909, the year of comparative stagnation in railway construction, exceeded the complete mileage of these tracks in 1908 reported to the Commission.

The above table (with the Commission's figures for single track) shows that where there has been an increase of only 50,798 miles of single track, or 27.7%, in twelve years, all trackage has increased over 98,000, or 42%, during the same period. It also shows that during the same twelve years second track has increased 87%; third track 120%; fourth track 91%, and yard track and sidings 76%.

Mileage and Track of British Railways.

As English railways are so often brought into comparison with American railways, it is well to know the total of all tracks in the United Kingdom as well as the mileage. Both are given in the following statement, compiled from returns to the British Board of Trade for the years ending December 31, 1904 to 1908:

Here it will be perceived the mileage of British roads increased only 608 miles and the trackage only 2,035 miles in four years. During the same period, as shown in the preceding table, the mileage of American railways increased 18,251 miles and their total trackage 36,543. It is this continuous demand for increased mileage and trackage in the United States, to say nothing of equipment, that differentiates the problem confronting American railway management from British. In the United States we need more railways and still more railways, and the problem is to get the capital on reasonable terms to provide the facilities.

In railroad mileage alone we have over ten times that of the United Kingdom and we have more than six times as many miles of track. We have enough trackage in our yards and sidings to double track all the British railways, with enough over to put four tracks where they have only two tracks now.

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II
EQUIPMENT

An Object Lesson in Equipment.

No car shortage occurred to interrupt the orderly movement of railway traffic during the fiscal year 1908-09. On the contrary, there was an unprofitable surplus of cars throughout the year, ranging from 110,912 in September, 1908, to 333,019 in January, 1909. From this high figure the surplus was slowly reduced by the demands of traffic until subsequent to the close of the fiscal year, in September last, it reached a practical level of shortages and surpluses. During the year there was an average of 150,000 freight cars in the shops, where in times of ordinary activity the mean would be in the neighborhood of 100,000.

These conditions, which prevailed since November, 1907, account for the greatly reduced purchases of rolling stock during the years 1908 and 1909 shown in the following record of locomotives and cars built in the United States during the past eleven years:

Between 1898 and 1908 the Interstate Commerce Commission reported an increase of 21,464 locomotives, 11,697 passenger cars, and 856,999 freight and company cars. Allowing for the Canadian output in the above table, this would show 22,742 more locomotives, 13,821 more passenger cars, and 674,023 more freight cars built in ten years than are accounted for in the official returns. Roughly speaking, these last figures represent the number of locomotives and cars worn out beyond repair or destroyed that have to be replaced annually. It means that provision has to be made every year for the purchase of new equipment amounting to approximately 5% of locomotives and passenger cars and 4% of freight cars in order to maintain the equipment numerically, irrespective of the sums spent on maintaining the remainder in serviceable condition.

On the equipment reported by the Commission for 1908 this would necessitate the following outlay for replacement alone:

It is probable that the computed percentage for the replacement of locomotives and passenger cars is too high and that for freight cars too low. This is the opinion of operating officials. If so, it would amount to a set off and the aggregate would still be approximately $142,000,000 to be expended annually for new equipment to take the place of old, worn out and discarded rolling stock. Conditions forbade the expenditure of any such sum in 1908 and 1909.

Number and Capacity of Locomotives for Eight Years, 1909 to 1902.

Next follows a summary giving the number and capacity of locomotives for the seven years since the Commission has included capacity in the published returns:

Complete returns will raise the totals for 1909 approximately to 57,704 locomotives of 1,465,070,000 pounds tractive power and 4,158,000 tons weight, exclusive of tenders. These figures bear out the conclusion expressed above that the purchase of new locomotives in 1909 was barely sufficient to replace those abandoned or destroyed during the year. The loss, however, was in a measure made good by the greater weight of the new engines. As the average weight of locomotives in 1899 was approximately 53 tons, the figures just given indicate an increase of nearly 114% in the weight of all locomotives during the decade.

In connection with the estimate of $15,000 put on locomotives in this report, it is of interest to reproduce the return to the legislature of New South Wales of the cost of engines built in the railway shops at Sydney recently. The figures refer to 6-wheel-coupled heavy mail and express engines weighing, with tender, 163,128 pounds, as published in the Railway Age-Gazette, December 3, 1909:

Applied to a Mallet articulated compound locomotive, such as that built for the Erie weighing 410,000 pounds on the drivers, the rate per ton paid by the government of New South Wales would make it cost over $60,000. It did not cost any such sum, but the Australian experience is a straw which shows how the cost of locomotives is soaring. American railways find it necessary economy to build engines whose average weight is well above that built in the government shops at Sydney.

Passenger and Freight Cars.

During the same period, 1902 to 1909, covered in the table relating to locomotives, for which alone full data is available, the increase in the number of passenger cars and freight cars, and in the capacity of the latter, is shown in the following statement:

It is in the increased capacity of locomotives and cars rather than in their numbers that the seeker after truth will find the explanation of how American railways have been able to handle freight traffic that has increased in volume over 80% in ten years where numerically the increase of equipment has been less than 60%. During that period the average capacity of the freight car has increased from 27 to nearly 35 tons, accounting for an aggregate increase of 109.6%.

Between 1899 and 1909 the population of the United States increased from 74,318,000 to 88,806,000, or 19.5%. (On April 1, 1910, the treasury estimate was an even 90,000,000.) In the same ten years the number of passenger cars increased over 36%, accompanied by a steady advance in their size, strength and conveniences.

Between 1902 and 1907 the Official Statistics furnish the following information showing the gradual transformation taking place in the number and capacity of freight cars:

The line of cleavage between former and modern railway methods of handling freight is clearly shown in the above table to lie between cars of 25 and 30 ton capacity. The former and all of less capacity are on the decline, whereas the latter and all of greater capacity are on the increase. Numerically the 30-ton cars still exceed those of 40 and 50 tons, but already they are exceeded by the combined capacity of the latter.

The Surplus of Freight Cars.

For two years (28 months as this is written) the reports of the Committee on Car Efficiency of the American Railway Association show that the supply of freight cars has been in excess of the demand. In other words, the railways during that period were paying interest on a considerable percentage of unremunerative equipment, besides the cost of its maintenance. The rise and fall of this surplus of freight cars is set forth below:

At the date of one report in October, 1909, a surplus of cars in one territory was practically offset by a shortage in another territory.

Freight Car Performance.

According to Statistical Bulletin No. 58 of the Committee on Relations between Railroads of the American Railway Association, the average performance of the freight cars of American and Canadian railways during the year ending June 30, 1909, including and excluding surplus cars, was as follows:

These figures of the average miles per day of freight cars are the delight of demagogues and other detractors of American railways who ignore, or have never been able to comprehend, that the average performance of a car per day depends from six to nine times more on the time allowed for shippers to load and unload cars than on its speed in transit. This speed runs all the way from ten to forty miles and over an hour. But if freight trains averaged 40 miles an hour it would make little impression on the per day average of cars so long as 48 hours has to be allowed as a minimum at either end for loading and unloading and almost as much more for placing notices and disposing of cars, to say nothing of time consumed in making up trains.

The salient and significant feature of this table is the proof it affords that each car of those in commission averages the movement of one ton 367 miles per day. This means an average load of 14 tons per car. It would take at least three English or European freight cars to average such a load.

Safety Appliances.

Of all the locomotives and cars in railway service in 1908, aggregating 2,302,055, less than 4% were not fitted with train brakes, and less than three quarters of 1% were unprovided with automatic couplers.

Block Signals.

While the gain in mileage protected by some form of block signals in 1909 is only slightly more than half the increase in 1907, it shows a healthy revival of this most important constructive work. At the close of the last calendar year, according to the Railroad Age-Gazette, the mileage on which some system of block signals had been installed was as follows:

The second annual report of the government Block Signal and Train Control Board shows that little advance has been made in the search after the perfect system of automatic mechanical operation. Since the organization of the board in 1907 no less than 835 plans and descriptions of inventions designed to enhance the safety of railway operation have been submitted for its consideration. Of these 184 were examined and reported upon in 1908 and 12 were found worthy of further investigation. During the past year 327 others have been reviewed with a net result that again 12 have been found to possess enough merit to warrant the Board in conducting further tests. It finds that the vast majority of the proposed devices are unsound either in principle or design.

With regard to some form of automatic stop, the Board says that it is not yet prepared to make a definite and positive recommendation, but it thinks it reasonable to expect that several forms of automatic train controlling devices will be found available for use. In this connection it very sensibly concludes:

"It is not to be expected that trials or tests conducted by the government will, independently of extended use by railways, result in the production of devices or systems fully developed to meet all the exacting conditions of railway operation."

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III
EMPLOYES AND THEIR COMPENSATION

The 368 railway companies reporting to this Bureau had 1,463,429 persons in their employ June 30, 1909, and their pay roll for the twelve months to that date amounted to $973,172,497. Experience has shown that these roads employ over 96% of the labor and pay 97% of the compensation earned by railway employes. From which it appears that the employes of all the railways in 1909 numbered 1,524,400, whose compensation for that year was approximately $1,003,270,000. This would show an increase of 66,756 men employed and a decrease of $48,362,225 in compensation—a discrepancy accounted for by the fact that the pay roll in June, 1908, was numerically at low tide while the aggregate compensation was swelled by the large pay rolls of the first six months of the fiscal year. The conditions were nearly reversed in 1909, for the pay roll was at the ebb during the first half of the year whereas the number on it did not begin to show the demands of increasing traffic until the very close of the fiscal year.

These statistics would be more enlightening if the number of employes was determined by the average from the monthly pay rolls throughout the year and not as at present "from the pay rolls on June 30." The discrepancies noted are liable to increase if the Commission succeeds in getting the permission of Congress to substitute December 31st for June 30th as the end of its statistical year. Under the present practice, the summary which follows reflects the improvement of business in the increase of employes, while their aggregate compensation continues to show the effect of the depression that prevailed throughout the greater part of the year. When, however, that compensation comes to be divided by the "Aggregate number of days worked by all employes" during the year, the daily average which results is found to be within a fraction of a cent the same as for the preceding year.

The aggregate number of days worked by the employes of the roads reporting to this Bureau was 434,328,026 days in 1909 against 453,002,228 for the preceding year.

The first summary under this title gives the number, compensation and average pay of the several classes of employes of the roads reporting for the year 1909, together with the aggregates as reported to the Interstate Commerce Commission for the preceding years:

This table brings out clearly the effect of the depression of 1908 on railway labor. While there was a decrease in numbers employed in 1908 of 213,830 or nearly 13%, coincident with a proportionate decrease in gross revenues, the reduction in compensation amounted to less than 2%. This anomaly was due to the fact that the increased scale of pay adopted in the winter of 1906-07 was only effective during six months of the fiscal year 1907, whereas it was in full operation throughout 1908, as it still is, with demands, negotiations and arbitrations regarding wages all tending upward.

Unremunerative Expenditures.

Last year attention was called to the unremunerative burdens imposed on the railways by the multiplying demands of legislatures and commissions for reports on every conceivable feature of their multifarious affairs. This year with the compensation of every other class showing the effects of the enforced retrenchments of the period, that of the several classes especially affected by these requirements and the enactments relating to the hours and conditions of employment continue to be the only ones marked by advances over the record figures of 1907, as appears from the following comparison:

Moreover, had the aggregate compensation of these five classes followed the general trend of all other railway compensation, the expenditure on this account would have been at least $22,000,000 less than it was. This sum represents only a part of what the railways have to pay for a system of accounting and reporting out of all proportion to its published results. The public has no idea of the onerous and unprofitable burdens imposed on the railways by the impractical theory of administering railways through the medium of arbitrary and theoretical accounts.

Average Daily Compensation 1909-1892.

Where the data in regard to total compensation of railway employes has been kept since 1895, that of their daily average pay runs back to 1892, thus covering the period of the last preceding severe panic. Under instructions of the Official Statistician, these averages are computed by dividing the compensation paid by the actual days worked throughout the year in the several classes as nearly as it has been practicable to do so. Although the formula is more or less arbitrary, the system has been continuous and so the results are reliable for comparative purposes.

In the statement following, figures for 1895, 1896 and 1905 have been omitted to economize space, and because they present no significant variations from the years preceding them.

The average pay of general officers for 1909 and 1908 in this summary is out of proportion, for the reason that the returns to the Bureau cover only 60% of the class numerically and include all the larger systems. Before 1894, this class included "Other officers," so the returns for 1893 and 1892 are not comparable with those for this class in subsequent years.

Comparing the average daily compensation of the four great classes most intimately associated in the public mind with railway operations in 1899 and 1909, it appears that during the decade the average wages of enginemen increased approximately 20%; of firemen 27%; of conductors 20%; and of other trainmen, including switchmen, brakemen and baggagemen—the most numerous body—34%.

An estimate based on the number employed and their aggregate compensation in 1899, allowing 310 working days to the year, would place the increase for all employes during the decade at 23%.

The relation of the compensation of railway employes to the gross earnings of the railways, which furnish the fund from which they are paid, and also to the sum of the expenses incurred in producing those earnings for the past ten years, is shown in the next summary, in conjunction with the operating ratio:

The significance of this statement is that in spite of all the labor saving devices and economies of operation—reduced grades, modified curves and more efficient equipment—adopted by the railways during the past decade, the proportionate cost of labor to earnings and to expenses has increased. It reached an abnormally high ratio in 1908 because of the unprecedented recession in revenues during the second half of the year. The fact that it has been above 40% persistently since 1902 proves that labor continues to receive its full proportion of the receipts of American railways.

Pay of Employes on British Railways.

Although the statistics of British railways are singularly barren of details respecting the compensation of British railway "servants," as they are termed, the reports of Boards of Conciliation afford data as to the rates of pay of several classes as follows:

In his award in the case of the North Eastern Railway, Sir James Woodhouse fixed the following scales:

Firemen.—First year, 84 cents per day; 2d year, 90 cents; 3d year, 96 cents; 4th and 5th years, $1.02; 6th year, $1.08; 7th year, $1.14; 8th year, and subsequent years, $1.20. Firemen to pass for drivers during the 8th year.

Cleaners.—Age 16 to 17 years, $2.40 per week; 17 to 18 years, $2.64; 18 to 19 years, $3.12; 19 to 20 years, $3.60; 20 to 21 years, $4.08; and an advance of 24 cents per week for each subsequent year up to a maximum of $4.80 per week.

"That the wages of all goods and mineral guards be increased as follows:

"(a) The wages of those who have been in receipt of $7.20 (the maximum of the existing scale) for not less than two years shall be increased to $7.44 per week.

"(b) The wages of those who have been in receipt of the said maximum for not less than five years shall be increased to $7.68 per week.

"The bonus for working with large engines on freight trains discontinued when any guard becomes entitled to the maximum wages of $7.68 per week."

Men working in the London district get from 6 to 12 cents more per day than those in outside districts.

The award in the case of the Great Northern made an addition of 24 cents to the weekly scale of the following grades: Signalmen $4.32, $4.56, $4.80 and $5.04; passenger guards and brakemen $5.28 up to $6.00; goods guards and brakemen $5.04 up to $6.24; ticket collectors $5.04 up to $5.52; horse shunters $4.56 up to $5.04; parcels porters $4.32 to $5.04; carriage cleaners $4.08 to $4.32; plate layers, second men and under men $4.32 and less up to $5.04; ballast train guards, flagmen and greasers rates less than $5.04 per week.

An additional allowance of 24 cents per week is made to men stationed in the London district.

From these figures a fair idea is gained of the average pay of British railway labor. They support the statement that there are over 100,000 railway men in the United Kingdom working for less than one pound ($4.87) a week. The total compensation paid British railway employes in 1908 was $150,248,000 against $162,440,000 for the preceding year. But whether the decrease was due to a reduction in pay or in numbers employed cannot be told, as there has been no census of railway "servants" since 1907. The average pay may be safely approximated at $260 per year per man, boy and porter, who two years ago numbered 621,341.

In 1907, Special Agent Ames, of the Interstate Commerce Commission, reported wages on the railways of the United Kingdom as follows:

Pay of Railway Employes in Other Countries.

The contrast between the wages of American and European railway employes is emphasized by those paid on the continent. The official statistics of the empire show an increase of 5% in the average yearly compensation of German railway employes in 1908. Their number and pay for that year to December 31st in the four main classes into which they are divided were as follows:

Combined with a falling off in revenues and an increase in the cost of materials this increase in the compensation of employes had the effect of raising the operating ratio of German railways from 69.01 in 1907 to 73.56 in 1908. It also increased the proportion of wages to gross earnings from 37.25 to 40.1% and had the effect of reducing the net revenues from 5.60% to 4.51% on the cost of construction.

How railway labor fares under government ownership in a republic as compared with its pay in an empire may be judged from a comparison of the following statement as to the number and pay of the railways of Switzerland with the like classes in the preceding table for Germany.

The wages paid the employes of Swiss railways in 1907 amounted to only 31.9 per cent. of the gross earnings, and yet they added enough to the cost of operation to help increase the telltale ratio of expenses to revenues from 64.99 in 1906 to 67.29 in 1907. The result was increased operating expenses per mile and a decrease in the amount available for interest in dividends from 3.26% in 1906 to 3.23% in 1907.

As the Swiss republic has to pay 3½% on government loans its investment in railways does not appear to be a very profitable one.

Employes of French Railways.

The employes of the railways of France are divided into the following classes:

The official statistics only give the compensation of employes in the division of traction and material, where the 80,732 men employed get an average of $187 per year.

On the state railways of Belgium, firemen receive from $15.20 to $22.80 per month, the higher wage only after 15 years' service; enginemen begin at $22.50 per month and at the end of 24 years' service work up to $38.00 per month; conductors earn from $15.97 per month up to a maximum of $34.70; brakemen, beginning as shunters (switchmen) at 45 cents a day, when promoted get a minimum of $17.10 per month, from which they are slowly advanced to a maximum of $22.00. The average railway worker in Belgium gets 2.22 francs (43 cents) a day.

Whole classes of American railway employes get more in a month than Belgian railway employes average in a year.

The Cost of Living.

Not because it has any legitimate place in fixing the standard of railway wages, which should be relative to the part capacity, intelligence, industry, loyalty and experience play in railway service, but because in recent years the steady increase in the cost of living has been made the fulcrum on which every lever to advance wages works, is it proper to refer to the subject in this report.

Now there is nothing in the whole wilderness of economics so utterly illusive and misleading as this same cost of living. It is as incapable of statistical expression as the airy imaginings of a dream and yet it broods over the domestic happiness of nations with all the disquieting effects of a nightmare—and like every nightmare it comes from eating too much and wanting to eat more.

In economics, beyond the barest subsistence, the cost of living is not ruled by necessity but by individual choice. Each person and family settles it along the lines of abstinence or indulgence. It ranges from the "dinner of herbs where love is" and the virtues of self-denial are nourished, to the feasts of Lucullus and Pompeian profligacy in whose indulgence whole peoples have perished.

In every discussion of the subject first consideration is given to the price of food. This amounts to measuring the cost of living with an elastic string. The proportion of the cost of food to the cost of living varies in every land, in every occupation and in every household. It amounts to less than 40% in an average American family, but each family fixes it for itself. Following certain well recognized economic laws the percentage for subsistence increases as the income decreases. For instance, in France families with an income of under $4.80 per week spend 63% of it for food alone, whereas those with $9.60 a week spend 53%. In England, families averaging $5.12 a week spend 67% on food, while those of $9.60 spend 57% or less. In Germany, a similar inquiry showed that families with an average income of $4.23 per week spent 68.7% on food (excluding beer), or 69.5% (with beer); whereas families with an income of $9.60 per week spent less than 57% on food "excluding beer."

The exhaustive investigation made by Commissioner Carroll D. Wright when head of the Bureau of Labor in 1903 anticipated for the United States these results of more recent European inquiries, as appears from the following table showing the per cent of total expenditure made for various purposes in normal families according to classified incomes:

While it is scarcely believable that many American families with incomes under $200 spent less than $100 a year on food—the European percentage in such cases being more credible—there is no reason to question the general economic law reflected in this table, that "the proportion of income spent on food diminishes as the income increases." But it is governed more by individual tendencies, character and taste than by any rule or principle. Each family works out the problem on its own account.

According to the evidence presented at recent arbitration hearings in this city, American switchmen, as a body, belong in the classes whose family expenditures are $1,000 or over. Irrespective of the incomes of other members of their families, the arbitrators found "that the actual monthly earnings of switchmen in the Chicago district, for those who worked full time runs from about $80 to $100 per month." This means over $1,000 yearly compensation. Therefore they are in the class which spends less than 39% of its income on food.

The average income for all railway employes engaged in train service, that is, enginemen, firemen, conductors and other trainmen, is probably above the highest figure in the foregoing table and therefore the proportion of their income spent for food would be approximately 36%.

But accepting 40% as approximately the proportion of the pay of all railway employes spent on food, it follows that it takes only two-fifths of one per cent increase in wages to take care of an increase of one per cent in the price of food.

With this in mind it becomes instructive to follow the retail prices of the various articles of food as selected by Mr. Wright in his inquiry into the cost of living in 1901 and adopted by the Bureau of Labor in subsequent Bulletins. These for thirty articles of food for the eighteen years 1890 to 1907, as given in Bulletin No. 77 of the Bureau of Labor, and for the two years 1908-1909 as computed from Bradstreet's index and other sources of commodity prices, are given in the following statement relatively to the average price for 1890 to 1899 == 100:

No authority is claimed for the prices in these tables for the years 1908 and 1909. They merely represent the tendencies in those years, as found in official and unofficial wholesale prices of the several commodities, and there are often striking divergences between wholesale and retail prices over short periods. Eventually they follow the same course, although not always in the same proportion.

Now let us see how the average retail price of these 30 articles of food compares with the average daily pay of the four representative classes of railway employes in train service for the ten years 1899 to 1909.

Here it will be observed the percentage of increase in the average daily compensation of "Other trainmen" exceeds the relative increase in the price of food, that of firemen almost equals it, while that of enginemen and conductors is below it by approximately 8 points. But, as demonstrated in the table from the Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor (1903), a smaller percentage of the income of enginemen and conductors is spent on food than of those employes receiving lower pay.

Moreover as only two-fifths of all expenditures is spent on food an increase of 20% in wages would take care of a 50% advance in the average price of food—provided the increase in wages was not attended by a corresponding increase in every other item entering into the cost of living.

And right here's the rub with any attempt to measure wages by the cost of living. Which is the egg and which is the hen, in the matter of precedence. Does the cost of living lay the income or does the income hatch the cost of living?

Economically and theoretically it is not up to the railways to solve this world old conundrum. Practically they are called on to meet every advance in the cost of living of their employes to which in twenty years they have not added a nickel, and they are denied the privilege, enjoyed by every other employer of labor, to add its increased cost to the price of their only commodity or service—transportation.

Today the advances in the scale of railway wages awarded, proposed and demanded mean an increase of from $60,000,000 to $75,000,000 in the annual "cost of living" of the railways. The advance made in 1906-07 added $120,000,000 to the pay roll of 1908. Combined, these two advances within three years mean an increase of approximately $200,000,000 a year to the operating expenses of the railways without adding a single unit to efficiency of the labor factor in railway operation.

This is equal to an annual first charge of 5% on $4,000,000,000! Imagine the hue and cry from the press, the immediate injunctions from Washington, the despondent wail from Wall Street, if the railways proposed to pour that much "water" into their own cost of living without getting a mile of track, a single engine, car, or coach, a cubic yard of ballast, one untreated tie or any semblance of improvement or new facility to show for the vast expenditure!

And yet the railways have their increased cost of living to meet just as the rest of us. Nothing they need and must have can be purchased at the prices of a few years back. When you mention steel rails you have named about the only railway necessity that has not advanced its cost of living in recent years, and the railways have to buy 100-pound rails where five years ago 80-pound rails sufficed, and ten years ago 70 pounds was heavy enough for the lighter cars and engines of the time.

But at the first suggestion of advancing rates to meet advancing prices of commodities the Commissions were overwhelmed with protests from shippers and the paring of freight rates down went on as the prices of the goods they carried went up.

In ten years the price of lumber advanced nearly 50%. As a cheap bulky commodity it had enjoyed a low rate in order to move it and it was moved at the expense of other commodities. When it was able to pay a little more toward the cost of getting it to market the proposal of an advance was met with indignant protests from lumber shippers and dealers and reversed thumbs by the sympathetic commissions.

The railways pay more for their lumber and other material today than they did ten years ago but they will have to fight for any advance in rates to meet this part of their cost of living. It is said to be a poor rule that will not work both ways—but the cost of living seems to have only one way of working so far as railway economics are concerned.

Just as a straw to indicate that high prices of food are the result and not the basis of high wages the following table of comparative prices in London and New York from the New York Times of March 27, 1910, is instructive:

The amazing feature of this statement is that the United States produces and exports to the United Kingdom enormous quantities of breadstuffs, meat and provisions, which constitute the chief articles of food in London and which are sold there at prices from 20% to 25% lower than in New York. Clearly it is the high scale of wages that fosters the high cost of living in the United States and there can be little question but it breeds the high wages it feeds on.

It is humanly certain, though economically unsound, that wages will continue to advance with the cost of living and will not recede proportionately as prices of food fall. But both will decline together when for any considerable period there is a surplus of efficient labor for the requirements of American industry. Even railway labor in the most stable of all employments yielded to this influence in 1893 and 1894; and the prices of food receded to the low mark in the following years 1895, 1896 and 1897. Not until wages took their upward turn in 1898 did the cost of food begin to show above the index average of 1890-1899.

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IV
CAPITALIZATION

According to the Twenty-third Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission the amount of railway capital, including stocks and bonds "outstanding in the hands of the public on June 30, 1908, was $12,840,091,462, which, if assigned on a mileage basis, shows a capitalization of $57,230 per mile of line."

In the face of all the fustian about over-capitalization of American railways, this is a most remarkable admission, not only of their moderate, but of their decreasing capitalization per mile.

In its report on the Intercorporate Relationships of Railways, dated March 10, 1908, the Commission found that as the result of its investigation the figure for railway capital outstanding in the hands of the public, "Measuring the claim of railway securities on railway revenues," reduced the amount "from $67,936 per mile of line (1906) to $58,050 per mile of line."

Of course there was never any justification for using the larger sum as a true measure of railway capitalization, for it was known to contain at least 15% duplicated capital.

In its Statistics of Railways for the year ending June 30, 1907, the Commission gave the net amount of railway capital outstanding in the hands of the public at that date, "assigned on a mileage basis as $58,298 per mile of line," or $1,068 more than the figure reported for 1908.

As the computation for 1908 was made on a basis of 224,363 miles of line, this would indicate a shrinkage of no less than $239,616,480 in the par value of railway capital. It is needless to say there was no such shrinkage.

Net Capitalization in 1909.

Following the earlier judgment of the Official Statistician, this Bureau seeks to arrive at a fair approximation of the capitalization of the railways of the United States through the reports of operating roads and the capitalization of the rentals paid for leased roads. This, in the more recent language of the Statistician, furnishes the only capitalization that "measures the claim of railway securities on railway revenues."

Applied to the returns received by this Bureau from 221,132 miles of operated line, this formula yields the following result for the year ending June 30, 1909:

An estimate of $25,000 per mile for the 11,870 miles of line not reporting to this Bureau would add $296,750,000 to the above total. From this should be deducted $150,000,000 for the sum assigned by the Official Statistician "to other properties," and we arrive at the following close approximation of the true measure of the capital employed in the transportation industry of the United States:

In computing the average capital per mile last given, no allowance has been made for the 8,927 miles operated under trackage rights for the sufficient reason that the rental paid therefor is represented in the total capitalization just as fully as if so much capital had been expended in the construction of that many miles of line.

It is worthy of note that the net capitalization thus arrived at through a straightforward analysis of the returns of the operating companies is in substantial agreement with the Commission's report on the Intercorporate Relationship of Railways in 1908. The construction of 11,000 miles of line since 1906 would undoubtedly account for the difference between $58,050 and $57,962 per mile of line.

Owing to the intercorporate ownership of stocks and bonds and the consequent intercorporate payments of interest and dividends, it is no easy matter to make an entirely satisfactory estimate of the return paid to capital out of the purely transportation revenues of the railways. But the persistent reiteration by the Official Statistician of the fictitious aggregate of all the dividends paid by operating and non-operating companies, covering in 1908, by his own admission, $3,927,453,365 duplicated capital, justifies the attempt.

The operating income of the roads reporting to this Bureau for the year 1909 is arrived at thus:

This $724,483,163 is the balance in the hands of the 368 companies of the moneys received by them from transportation, or, as the Official Statistician now calls it, "rail operations," for the payment of interest, rent, other deductions, dividends, additions and betterments, reserves, surplus and deficits. But before proceeding to this distribution these companies received $200,725,696 income from other sources, principally interest and dividends on stocks and bonds owned and for rent of track, and a net balance of $5,410,338 from outside operations. The total of these two sums, $206,136,034, may be arbitrarily applied first to offset the item of rent, $120,784,982, paid for leased lines and track, and the balance in payment of interest and dividends in proportion to the value of bonds and stocks owned as above, viz.: 36% and 64%, respectively.

This enables us to make the following distribution of the net operating income of the railways reporting to this Bureau, as follows:

This table shows the actual disposition made of the net income from operation of the roads reporting to this Bureau, representing 97% of the railway business of the United States, except that $120,784,982 of the income from other sources has been eliminated from the account and applied to offset the rental paid by the reporting roads.

It will be observed that the gross dividends declared were only $226,791,289, which is 3.64% on the par value of the stock of the 368 reporting companies.

Misrepresentations as to Dividends.

The discrepancy between this condition and the official statement as to dividends declared in 1908 calls for an analysis of the latter. This reads, "The amount of dividends declared during the year (1908) was $386,879,362, being equivalent to 7.99% on dividend-paying stock. For the year ending June 30, 1907, the amount of dividends declared was $308,088,027."

Two income accounts—one of operating roads and the other of leased roads—for the year ending June 30, 1908, give a clew as to how the Official Statistician more than doubles the dividends actually paid out of transportation revenues. The gross total is made up of these four items:

As these income accounts show that the operating companies received $280,427,460 "other income" from outside operations and sources other than transportation, and the leased roads received $111,153,013 "income from lease of road," the source of the major part of this fictitious dividend is revealed. The $280,427,460 from other sources would pay the entire income of the leased roads and leave nearly $170,000,000 to extinguish so much of the dividends declared by the operating roads.

Modified as to details, this is what actually occurs every year. In the year 1908 the total amount paid out of transportation revenues on account of capital of the 97% of the railways of the United States reporting to this Bureau was represented in the sums:

This total was equivalent to 4.15% on the net capitalization of the roads represented. The rental paid the lessor roads constituted the fund from which those roads paid their interest and dividends. Further remark on the misleading and harmful statement of the Official Statistician as to dividends declared in 1908 is unnecessary.

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V
COST OF CONSTRUCTION

Incomplete as are the figures of the cost of the railways of the United States, and exclusive as they are of the millions put back into the properties out of income for additions, betterments and reconstruction in the process of operation, yet the statistics of the cost of construction and equipment afford a complete answer to all charges that American railways are over-capitalized.

Upon the question of the cost of road and equipment in 1909, the returns of the 368 roads reporting to this Bureau furnish the following data:

Adding to this $290,750,000 to represent the 11,870 miles of road not reporting to this Bureau at $25,000 per mile, we obtain

$13,417,438,876

as the cost of road and equipment of the 233,002 miles of line employed in the transportation industry of the United States in 1909, or

$58,031 per mile of line.

This is an underestimate by reason of the failure of a few lines to furnish even approximate figures on the accumulated cost of their properties. Averaging the cost of locomotives at $15,000, of passenger cars at $6,000, of freight cars at $800, and of company's cars at $500 apiece—their present cost rates much higher—the equipment of American railways represents an investment of over $3,000,000,000, and its bare maintenance alone involves an expenditure of nearly $400,000,000 annually.

Physical Valuation of the Railways.

It is worthy of passing note that just as the railway companies have shown their indifference to a physical valuation of their property, the clamor of regulators and agitators in its favor has subsided. The proposal lost its attractiveness to them the moment they became convinced that such an investigation would put a valuation on the roads so high as to take not only the wind out of their sails but the last drop of water out of their mouths. To-day the only insistent demand for this futile undertaking comes from quarters interested in the distribution of the appropriation of several millions it would cost.

Credit for the reversal in the popular and political attitude on this subject is largely due to the valuations attempted by the states of Minnesota, Washington and Wisconsin. The results in these states may be briefly summarized as follows:

Even Senator Albert B. Cummins of Iowa has seen such a bright light on this subject that in his speech before the Traffic Club of Chicago last February he said that he would not be willing to make a present valuation of railroad property a basis for determining rates, "for the reason that it was more than probable that the present capitalization of between fifteen and sixteen billions would be increased to twenty billions."

In the Bureau's Statistics for 1908 it was said:

"If the valuations in Minnesota and Washington, made by none too friendly commissions, are any criterions of what a national valuation made under presumably unbiased federal authority would be, the present cost to reproduce the railways of the United States would be nearer $20,000,000,000 than any sum within the anticipations of those agitating for such valuation."

Capitalization of Foreign Railways.

With both sides of the balance sheet testifying to a capital investment in American railways of under $60,000, and official valuation abandoned because it would demonstrate that they could not be reproduced for less than $80,000 per mile, the reader is asked to compare the American figures with those of the capitalization, or cost of construction, of the principal foreign countries set forth below. These have been compiled from the latest available official returns.

The most striking feature in this table is the steady advance it shows in the capital cost of German railways. In ten years this has increased from 251,597 marks per kilometer in 1898 to 283,608 in 1908, i. e. 31,731 marks per kilometer or $12,282 per mile. This means an increase of $991,687,440 in capital cost for an increase of only 5,525 miles of line.

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VI
OWNERSHIP OF AMERICAN RAILWAYS

Returns to this Bureau place the number of stockholders of record at the date of the last election of directors prior to June 30, 1909, of the 368 roads reporting at 320,696. As only 182,046 of the 221,132 miles operated by these roads was covered by the capital stock, this would show 1¾ stockholders for each mile of road and would indicate that there are at least 415,000 stockholders in all the railways of the United States. Owing to the incompleteness of the returns on this subject and the fact that large blocks of stock are held in the names of associations and trustees, it is safe to estimate that the actual ownership of railway stock is distributed among at least 440,000 persons.

In 1905 the Commission reported the number of stockholders of record prior to June 30, 1904, as 327,851, but has given no later figures. It may be of interest to compare these figures with the partial reports to this Bureau since then.

If the ownership of railway bonds, which is even more widely distributed than that of stocks, could be traced, it would be found that over a million investors are interested in the financial welfare of the railways. This would give to each an interest of $13,000, from which the average income is not over $520 a year.

The attempt of the Commission in 1908 to secure evidence that the control of the railways was concentrated in a few hands by calling for a statement of the "ten largest holders of voting securities" of the reporting companies having established that nowhere did they own a majority or an approach to a majority of the controlling stock, inquiry along that line was dropped in 1909.

In railways, as in any republic, the latent power is widely distributed among the many, while the administrative responsibility is necessarily entrusted to the few.

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VII
PUBLIC SERVICE OF THE RAILWAYS

It is the reproach of our system of government statistics of railways that their first concern is financial results, which the government takes no thought to improve, and the harrowing roll of accidents, and not the adequacy of the service and the steady development of the means of transportation. Every month, almost every week, the public is informed of the volume of traffic, and every quarter the record of casualties is told in sensational head lines. It is left for belated annual reports to record the public service of this great industry upon whose progressive efficiency every other industry in the United States depends.

It is not upon what the railways earn, but upon what they DO that the whole industrial fabric of the republic rests. It is not upon the dividends they pay but upon the traffic they carry, the net income withheld from dividends and put into improvements, that their success as carriers depends.

The Passenger Traffic.

In considering the public service of the railways it is customary to give first attention to the passenger traffic. This is not because it is the most important branch of the service but because passengers are numbered by millions, where thousands suffice in the enumeration of the shippers, who frequently mistake themselves for the entire American people.

In twenty years between June 1, 1889, and June 1, 1909, the population of the United States increased from 61,289,000 to 88,806,000, or nearly 45%. In the meantime the passenger cars provided by the railways increased from 24,586 to 46,026, or over 87%. But this does not measure the liberal provision made by the railway for the travelling public, which is more fully and accurately expressed by the amazing growth of the number of passengers carried one mile from 11,553,820,445 in 1889 to approximately 29,452,000,000 in 1909, or nearly 155%.

Here is shown an increase of cars not far short of double the increase in population and an increase in passengers carried proportionately greater than the numerical increase in cars.

In the meantime the average receipts of the traffic have declined from 2.165 cents per passenger mile in 1889 to 1.916 in 1909—a decline of over 11%, although every item involved in the service, locomotives, cars, track, stations, labor, etc., cost more. The passenger service, except as precursor to the freight service, and in certain densely populated sections, was unremunerative in 1889 and is more so now. It is maintained at the expense of the freight service by what the Railroad Commission of Wisconsin has characterized as "a species of piracy practiced upon the shippers of freight."

The salient features of the passenger service reported to this Bureau for the year 1909, as compared with the final official returns for the preceding year, are shown in the following statement:

According to the monthly reports to the Interstate Commerce Commission covering an average of 233,002 miles of line, the passenger revenues in 1909 were $564,302,580, or $1,943,077 less than the above revenues for only 228,164 miles of line in 1908.

The average receipts per passenger mile in 1909 are the lowest ever reported for American railways.

Taken in connection with the official returns covering the period since 1900, the above figures afford evidence of the confiscatory effect of the 2-cent passenger laws on railway revenues, as appears from the following statement:

Here it is shown that the passenger service rendered has increased 12% more than the passenger revenues. But more significant than this is the column of yearly increases in service by percentages. This utterly explodes the theory that passenger travel is greatly stimulated by low fares—aside from some positive incentive to increased travel, such as periodical expositions, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition for instance, the effect of which is clearly traceable in the increased service in 1905, which includes the heavy travel during the months of heavy attendance, July 1 to December 1, 1904.

The 2-cent passenger laws were passed so as to become generally effective July 1, 1907, and their effect on passenger receipts during the following year was such that these receipts were actually less in 1909 than in 1907, although the service performed by the railways was over 6% greater. Had the railways received the same rate in 1909 that they did in 1907 their revenue from passengers would have been nearly $29,000,000 more than it was.

Passenger Traffic 1909-1888.

In the next statement the salient facts in regard to the passenger traffic since the Commission began collecting the data is passed under review.

The several increases shown in the first, second, third and sixth columns of the table reflect the general advancement in passenger traffic. That of 45% in the average passengers to a train marks the progress in density of that traffic which may eventually place it on a profitable basis. In Massachusetts, where this density yields an average of 79 passengers to a train there is no demand for a two-cent rate statute, for the conditions have made a rate of 1.64 cents profitable. In the group of states consisting of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota, where the density of traffic yields only 46 passengers by train, a statutory two-cent fare becomes confiscatory because it costs at least one dollar to operate a passenger train one mile and 46 times two cents is only 92 cents. Moreover the 46 passengers per train is only an average and there are as many trains that average less as more. The average has to be raised above 50 to yield any margin of profit on passenger traffic. If it were not for the density of traffic in the New England and North Atlantic group of states the average for the entire United States would be well below 46 passengers per train.

The steady increase in the distance traveled per passenger reflects the effect of trolley competition in diverting the short haul passenger traffic.

The most noteworthy feature of the seventh column is the decline of 98/1000ths of a cent in the average receipts per passenger mile between 1907 and 1909, making a new low record after hovering around the two cent mark for fourteen years. As noted above, this reduction in the average cost the railways nearly $29,000,000 on the passenger traffic of 1909.

In this connection it is interesting to recall that between 1888 and 1893 the Official Statistician, then as now Professor Adams, made the following computation of the average cost of carrying one passenger one mile for the whole United States:

It will be observed that the average receipts per passenger mile in 1909 are below the computed cost in every one of the years above named, except 1891. When the advance in the cost of everything necessary to the service—track, labor, equipment, conveniences, speed, terminal facilities—is considered, the practical coincidence of average cost and receipts leaves no margin for legitimate profits.

Receipts from Mail and Express.

Closely associated with the passenger traffic of the railways are the mail and express services. Although principally carried by passenger trains, each has a special service of its own by mail and express trains. But all are included under the passenger service. The receipts from these two branches of the service during the last decade are shown in the following statement:

Aside from the striking contrast in the percentages of increase of revenues from these two sources, the most significant feature of this table is the reversal it shows in their respective importance from the railway revenue point of view. Prior to 1905, carrying the mails brought larger, if not more profitable, returns to the railways. Since then the returns from express have increased so much more rapidly that they are now nearly 23% more than those from mails.

If proof were needed of the absolute falsity of the charge that the railways are receiving an exorbitant rate for carrying mail, the above table of their receipts from the service in connection with the following statement of mail handled and revenues in view of the finding of the Joint Commission of Congress in 1899 would furnish it. After a thorough investigation of the subject lasting from August, 1898, to July, 1900, the Commission came to the following conclusion:

"Upon a careful consideration of all the evidence and the statements and arguments submitted, and in view of all the services rendered by the railroads, we are of the opinion that the prices now paid to the railroad companies for the transportation of the mails are not excessive, and recommend that no reduction thereof be made at this time."

The increase in the railroad service since this report was made is shown in the following statement of miles of mail transportation by railroads, the postal revenues and the number of clerks in the railway mail service since 1899:

Compared with the increase of only 41.5% in the revenues from mail received by the railways during the same period, each one of the above percentages testifies to a positive reduction in the rate received by the railways for the service. And if the increase in weight of mail carried in 1909 were known, the contrast between the service and the pay would be more striking. In 1899 the total weight of all mail was reported as 635,180,362 pounds. In 1907 the estimates made from the special weighing placed the weight of mail carried that year at 1,290,358,284 pounds, or an increase of nearly 105% in eight years. By reference to the above table it will be seen that the railway revenues from mail between 1899 and 1907 increased only 40%. The contrast is illuminating. In its light the charge that the railways are in any way responsible for the postal deficit is grotesque.

Freight Traffic

According to the monthly returns to the Interstate Commerce Commission, the proportion of revenues from freight of the railways of the United States to total earnings from operation, for the years 1908 and 1909, receded to the unusually low figures of 68.51% and 68.88% respectively. The official summary for 1908, based on the annual returns, shows a proportion of 69.17% for that year, which probably is nearer the mark.

The annual reports to this Bureau for 1909 yield a proportion of 69.18% for last year.

Accepting this proportion taken from the annual returns as being based on the same character of reports as those from which former ratios were derived, the preponderance of freight traffic is shown in bold relief in the following statement of the ratio of its revenues to total earnings from operation, 1899 to 1909:

The average proportion for the nine years preceding 1908 is seen to be slightly above 70%, and the fact that it was almost one point below 70% in 1908 and 1909 indicates that it was the freight traffic that bore the brunt of the business depression which curtailed railway revenues during those years.

In no other of the leading countries of the world does the freight traffic assume the overwhelming relative proportion that it does in the United States. In the United Kingdom it amounts to 50.35%; in France to 53.64%; and in Germany, including express and mail, to 65%. If these were classed with freight in the United States, it would raise the proportion for that traffic here to over 74%.

Freight Traffic 1909 and 1908.

The next statement presents the significant items of the freight traffic in 1909 for the roads reporting to this Bureau compared with those of the final official returns for the preceding year.

Experience has shown that in comparing these statements of averages for passenger and freight traffic, allowance has to be made for the fact that the Bureau's figures include all the great systems and are exclusive of some 13,000 miles of minor lines. It is difficult to estimate the effect of these discrepancies with anything like exactness. But complete returns invariably show a shorter mean haul and journey for the entire country than the Bureau's figures indicate and also a less train load of passengers and freight, the result being a slightly higher average for passenger and freight ton receipts per mile.

Last year from its returns the Bureau computed the passenger mile receipts at 1.933 cents and the ton mile receipts at 7.53 mills. The Commission's final figures were 1.937 cents and 7.54 mills respectively.

Freight Traffic 1909 to 1888.

In the next summary is presented a condensed statement of the significant data relating to the freight traffic for the twenty-two years that the Commission has been compiling statistics.

Mark the one column which shows a decrease. This means a remission of almost exactly a quarter of a cent per ton mile in the average receipts from freight. On the tonnage carried in 1909 it meant a saving of over $540,000,000 to the shippers. In the presence of the present high price of everything carried by the railways, there is no ground for assuming that any portion of this half billion dollars withheld from the railways ever reached the ultimate consumer. On the contrary the presumption is unavoidable that it has been absorbed by the shippers and consignors, whose profits are greater than ever.

Proportion of Commodities Moved 1899-1909.

Referring to the movement of different classes of commodities in his report for 1904, the Official Statistician said: "A slight change in the ratio of freight carried for any one of the classes named may have decided results, not only upon the earnings of the roads, but upon the average rate per ton mile." But without knowing the length of the haul of the respective classes, any estimate of the effect of such variation must be largely speculative.

In 1909, for the first time the Bureau undertook to collect the information as to the tonnage of the main divisions of commodities carried. Its inquiries were limited to the tonnage originating on the several roads, and the next statement presents the results in comparison with the official figures for 1907, which are the last available:

The most significant feature of this statement is the marked decrease, absolutely and relatively, in the tonnage of manufactures carried. Great as was the decrease in the tonnage of animals carried there was an increase relatively.

The next statement shows the percentages of commodity tonnage moved since the Commission has compiled the information divided between low and high rate freight.

It will be observed that the percentage of low rate freight carried in 1909 was greater than for any other year covered by these statistics. This was due more to the falling off in manufactures and miscellaneous freight than to any increased movement of low class freight.

Car Service Operations.

What the Department of Commerce and Labor calls "a convenient index to the traffic activities of the country" is found in the following comparative statement of cars handled by the various car service associations and demurrage bureaus, 1905-1909.

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VIII
EARNINGS AND EXPENSES

Having in the preceding pages given the facts as to the provision made by the railways for fulfilling their obligations as common carriers, it is now in order to present a brief review of their receipts and expenditures in relation to their public service.

For the second successive year the Bureau has to warn the reader that innovations in the forms of keeping railway accounts prescribed by the Commission preclude the making of strictly accurate comparisons of the returns for 1909 with those of any preceding year. In submitting its report for 1908 the Commission made the following explanation:

"A number of important changes have been made in the annual report forms for 1908, particularly in the grouping of certain items in connection with the Income Account and the Profit and Loss Account. The figures which follow do not include returns applying to carriers classed as switching and terminal. The changes in the income account submitted in the report under consideration are so far reaching in their results, in a number of instances, as to impair direct or close comparison with figures for similar items contained in previous statistical reports."

In the comparative Income Account below, which aims to present the situation as it would result from the actual operations had such operations been conducted by a single corporation, the Bureau has sought to make the returns for 1908 and 1909 conform as nearly as possible to "previous statistical reports." It should be premised, however, that the official figures for 1908 exclude the returns from switching and terminal companies, whereas the Bureau's figures for 1909 include some portion of these returns, which are as much an integral part of the transportation service of American railways as any they perform. The official figures for 1908 do not correspond absolutely to the preliminary figures for the same year compiled from the monthly reports as reviewed in the Introduction to this report.

With this by way of explanation, the comparative Income Account for the years 1909 and 1908 is submitted:

In 1909 the "Income Account" of the railways was swelled and confused by including therein $200,725,696 of intercorporate payments, while that for 1908 includes $274,450,192 "Other Income" which, as has been formerly noted by the Official Statistician, swells the totals to a fictitious figure. It is out of this fictitious income that fictitious interest and dividends are paid, fictitious deductions made, and fictitious surpluses accumulated. If "Other deductions" in the above statement had been charged against "Other income" instead of being deducted from earnings from operation the balance to Profit and Loss for each year would have been so much larger.

What becomes of the rent paid by operating roads for leased roads is well shown in the statement included in the Commission's preliminary report of statistics for 1908 in which the amount received by the latter mentioned in the table just submitted is disposed of.

Included under the blind item of "Deductions from gross corporate income, $62,232,508" in this statement may be mentioned rents of other roads and facilities of which these leased roads are the lessees, interest on funded debt and other interest, sinking funds chargeable to income and other deductions not specifically provided for elsewhere. In case of operating roads this item also includes the balance of hire of equipment, to which, of course, there is a credit with other operating roads.

The significant feature in this statement is the decrease in the profit and loss credit balance of $16,662,887. But this does not alter the fact that what becomes of rent paid for lease of road is no more a concern of interstate commerce than what becomes of the rent paid for warehouses or office space in any terminal. The operating roads pay all the cost of maintenance of way and equipment. The leased roads are not common carriers in any sense. They are simply distributing mediums of the rents paid them—this rent being the equivalent of interest on so much capital. As appears from the foregoing table, the expense of maintaining the organization of these leased properties amounted in 1908 to 35/100ths of 1 per cent.

Distribution of Gross Earnings.

How the gross earnings of the railways reporting to this Bureau in 1909 ($2,375,141,766) were distributed is shown in the next statement in comparison with a similar division of earnings in 1908 and 1907.

Owing to the fact that interest on funded debt and dividends are paid out of the common fund derived from operation and investments, the amounts devoted to these items in the above statement are necessarily computations. That they are not underestimates is proved by the fact that the surplus would not permit of larger charges for interest and dividends paid out of net earnings. Any interest or dividends materially greater than the amounts stated above, not paid out of the rents accruing to leased roads as given, must necessarily be derived from other sources than transportation revenues, and has no place in railway accounts coming under the provisions of the Act to Regulate Commerce among the several states.

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IX
TAXES

So far as taxes are concerned, seasons of prosperity, depression and marking time are alike to American railways. The burden of their taxation knows no recession but mounts steadily, absolutely, per mile and in proportion to gross earnings.

The 368 roads reporting to this Bureau owning 182,046 miles of line and operating 221,132 miles, of which 39,086 miles were leased, paid $82,650,214 taxes in 1909. The Commission's report for 1908 shows that the leased roads paid $5,881,352 taxes out of their rents. Putting a conservative estimate of $200 a mile on the 11,870 miles of line not represented in this report would add $2,374,000 to the above figures and bring the aggregate taxes paid by the railways of the United States in 1909 up to the striking total of $90,905,566.

How railway taxation has increased absolutely and relatively to earnings and mileage during the past twenty-one years is shown in the following statement:

In this table the figures for 1909 are based on the monthly reports to the Commission and are subject to revision, but they are in substantial agreement with the estimate on the returns to the Bureau.

Observe that the highest ratio of taxes to gross earnings shown in this table was 3.84 per cent in 1897, when everything relating to railways, except taxes, was prostrated under the reign of receiverships that followed the panic of 1893. It was of 1897 that the Official Statistician recorded the fact that "70.10 per cent of outstanding stock paid no dividends, and 16.59 per cent of outstanding bonds, exclusive of equipment trust obligations, paid no interest."

There is instruction and warning behind the remarkable increase in the ratio of taxation shown in the figures for 1894 to 1897. There is the reflection of similar conditions in the rising ratios of 1908 and 1909.

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X
DAMAGES AND INJURIES TO PERSONS

There are two items in railway accounts connected with the expense of operation that give the management most serious concern, because no means has been devised to limit or control them. In a leaflet issued by this Bureau in September last, it was estimated that the payments of American railways on account of "Injuries to Persons" and "Loss and Damage" for the year 1908 would approximate $56,700,000, or more than 2.3 per cent of their gross earnings. The Commission has not yet made public the final figures for 1908, but the returns on these accounts of the 368 roads reporting to this Bureau for the year 1909, aggregate $56,379,024, or 2.37 per cent of their gross earnings.

Divided according to the new system of accounting adopted by the Commission, these returns show the following figures:

Unlike many of the other expenses of American railways, the burden of this "cost of operation" does not fall heaviest on the large systems. In the case of one road of moderate importance payments on these two accounts amounting to 4.8 per cent of gross earnings were enough to tip the balance into a deficit after paying interest on funded debt; one minor but prosperous road, after paying 14 per cent of gross receipts to meet these two accounts, had nothing left for dividends after paying interest, which amounted to less than 10 per cent of its earnings; and a small third road after being called on to pay 21.5 per cent of its earnings for injuries and damages had only 6 per cent of its operating revenue left to pay interest on funded debt, which called for 20 per cent of the earnings, and taxes reduced the net operating revenue to less than 4 per cent.

These are extreme cases but they illustrate how the "Injury and Damage" claims strike roads that can ill afford to pay them as well as the great systems which are the common prey of every claimant with enough of a grievance to interest an attorney who scents a contingent fee.

That the claims behind these expenses are largely meretricious is indicated, if not proved, by their disproportionate increase in the past ten years, during which the railways have expended millions in providing safeguards for their trains and employes. This increase absolutely and relatively to gross earnings is shown in the following statement:

Startling as are these increases absolutely, those relatively to earnings present a condition truly alarming, for which there is no apparent relief except through a revulsion in the popular tolerance of blackmail at the expense of the railways.

In no other country in the world are the railways held up on bogus claims for damages to the extent they are in the United States. Under the strict laws of the United Kingdom, as to compensation for damages and injuries, the British railways paid less than 7/10ths of 1 per cent of their earnings for all damages, losses and injuries, or less than one-third the proportion paid by American railways on the same account.

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XI
LOCOMOTIVE FUEL

Despite the continuous improvements in the steam-producing capacity of railway locomotives per ton of coal, the steady advance in the cost of coal during the past ten years has more than offset the economies of locomotive construction. This is shown in the next statement, which gives the cost of locomotive fuel and its relative proportion to gross earnings and operating expenses, and also the average price per short ton of coal in the United States since 1899:

The significance of this table is that it cost the railways almost one-third more for fuel per dollar earned in 1909 than it did in 1899, the increase in the proportion of fuel cost to gross earnings having been 32%, due to the advance of 31% in the price of coal at the mines during that period.

The effect of the anthracite coal strike and the Commission's award of date March 18, 1903, upon the cost of bituminous coal is seen in the sharp advances in 1902 and 1903.

The railways have not escaped the advance in their cost of living due to the increased price of fuel any more than the public at large, and so far they have not been able to shift any portion of that cost, as manufacturers and shippers have done.

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XII
THE SAFETY OF AMERICAN RAILWAYS

Never before in the history of railways has such a record for comparative safety been made as that recorded of American railways during the year ending June 30, 1909. Following its custom the Interstate Commerce Commission has published the report of accidents. It remains to set forth here the more remarkable record of safety.

Of the 368 companies reporting to this Bureau, no less than 347, operating 159,657 miles of line and carrying 570,617,563 passengers, went through the year without a single fatality to a passenger in a train accident.

Of the remaining 21 companies, no less than 10, operating 27,681 miles and carrying 185,447,507 passengers, only missed such perfect immunity by a single fatality each in accidents to trains. This leaves 11 roads whose misfortune it was to bear the burden of train accident fatalities to passengers during the year.

The invariable rule of the Bureau precludes the publication of the honor roll of safety. And it is well so, for it would lead to invidious comparisons, where, in such matters as accidents, all comparisons are as irrelevant as they are invidious.

But it may be stated that the roll of immunity includes roads in every section of the union, from Maine to California, several great systems operating over 7,000 miles of line each, as well as little branch lines of below ten miles of single track; lines operated with all the safety appliances known to twentieth century progress and lines operated under as primitive conditions as prevailed on this continent more than half a century ago.

This record of complete immunity, stretching over 159,657 miles of operated line, represents a mileage nearly seven times that of all British roads, and equals the aggregate of all Europe, excluding Russia but including the British Isles.

What immunity to fatalities to passengers over such a vast mileage means may be partly realized from the fact that only twice in half a century has it occurred on the 23,000 miles of British railways, and never, to the writer's knowledge, so far as statistics reveal, on the railways of any of the great divisions of Europe. Certainly it has never occurred on the aggregate railways of Europe.

It would take seven consecutive years of immunity from fatalities to passengers in train accidents on British railways to equal this phenomenal record of American roads.

In presenting similar returns for 1908, it was said that "considering the myriad units of risk involved, the record for immunity from fatal accidents to passengers is without parallel in the history of railway operation." How that record has been not only equalled but surpassed is shown in the following statement for the last two years:

This table proves that the area of perfect safety, so to speak, was extended over from 22% to 26% more units of risk in 1909 than in 1908, which already held the palm for immunity in train accident fatalities to passengers.

The figures given above as to passengers injured in train accidents are equally illuminating as to the safety of American railways, for they demonstrate that with the multiplication of risks in 1909 the number of injured was less by 4%. The fact that no passenger is killed in train accidents is more or less adventitious, but a reduction in the number injured testifies to a reduction in the opportunities for fatalities.

During the past ten years the average of passengers injured in train accidents on British railroads has been 580, which, considering the difference in the units of risk, is 100% higher than the above record for 159,657 miles of American railway in 1909.

The following table, which includes no less than six great systems of over 2,000 miles each, presents similar data in respect to the ten roads whose record for safety to passengers in train accidents is marred by a single fatality:

These figures show a mileage of 4,481 miles greater than all the railways of the United Kingdom, approximately one-half the passenger mileage, and over three times the ton mileage, with only 10 passengers killed in train accidents, to an average of 20 on British railways during the past ten years.

Further analysis of the returns to the Bureau, since data along this line has been compiled, affords the following statement of the number of roads and their mileage that have records of entire immunity from fatalities to passengers in train accidents of from one up to six years:

Gratifying and remarkable as was the immunity from fatalities of the class under consideration in 1909, the fact that for a period of five years 95 American roads with a mileage practically double that of all British railways have carried hundreds of millions of passengers without a fatality to one of them is so at variance with the popular impression regarding the dangers of American railway travel as to seem little short of marvelous.

The impressive character of this showing will be better appreciated when it is understood that the immunity from fatalities in train accidents represents consecutive years counting back from 1909. No road has been admitted to the list where the immunity has been interrupted by a single accident. With this fact in mind, the clean slate of the 17 roads for six years challenges admiration, especially as the Bureau's reports in 1904 covered less than two-fifths of the operated mileage of the United States.

Railway Accidents in 1909.

Having thus shown the gratifying immunity from fatalities to passengers in train accidents during the year 1909, and on 9,641 miles of line since 1904, it remains to present the reverse side of the picture, which is so invariably thrust forward in official documents. Accident Bulletin No. 32 of the Interstate Commerce Commission furnishes the following data as to the number killed and injured on the railroads of the United States during the last two fiscal years:

The same cause which accounted for the remarkable recession of railway casualties in 1908 was still operative in a more marked degree throughout 1909, as evidenced in the above table. Here is shown a reduction from 1907 of 68% in fatalities to passengers in train accidents and of nearly 50% in those to employes. Even in all classes of accidents the decrease is almost as striking. A drop from 647 to 335 in fatalities to passengers and from 4,353 to 2,456 in fatalities to employes, resulting from whatever cause, should be a matter for national congratulation and thanksgiving.

That the facts herein set forth should have no lesson for national authorities beyond moving them to appeal for additional control of safety appliances is nothing short of a national scandal. As for safety devices, the railways in 1907 were practically as well equipped as in 1909. The percentage operated under the protection of block signals was 27.1% in 1909 against 26.2% in 1907, a difference inappreciable as compared with the recorded difference in fatalities. The government inspectors reported the equipment in better condition in 1907 than for any previous year by fully 30%, and yet that was the worst year in the annals of railway accidents.

An English writer (H. Raynor Wilson), his vision unobscured by the propinquity of patent devices, has placed his finger on the true cause of the reduction in railway accidents in the United States in 1908 and 1909 when writing in "The Safety of British Railways" he says:

But we do not have to go to England for a convincing analysis of the causes of the remarkable decrease in accidents on American railways in 1908 and 1909. In the presence of similar conditions Statistician Adams in his official report for 1894 penned the following:

With a continuation of similar conditions as to traffic and labor throughout 1895, the Official Statistician, having not yet accepted the theory that violation of rules, carelessness and negligence are amenable to patent appliances, emphasized the concluding suggestion of his 1894 report in these terms:

From that year to this the fitting of equipment with automatic devices has proceeded with uninterrupted despatch. Where in 1895 only 27.7% of it was equipped with train brakes and 31.3% with automatic couplers, in 1907 the Commission reported 94.4% equipped with train brakes and 99% with automatic couplers. In every form of mechanical safety device the railway equipment of 1907 was incomparably better than in 1895, and yet the number of fatal accidents to employes in 1907 exceeded those in 1895 seven to three and to passengers three and four-fifths to one. In the matter of deaths in coupling accidents alone are "beneficial results" traceable to automatic safety devices. The character of the men in the service, their automatic observance of regulations, intelligence and alert devotion to duty are the best preventives of railway accidents, and the conditions prevalent after the panics of 1893 and 1907 are conducive to these conditions.

It is not likely, however, that the American people will welcome experiences, even in homeopathic doses, such as we knew in 1904, as the cure for railway accidents. But from the lessons of every depression, as read in the statistics of railway fatalities, the American people have a right to expect their representatives in federal and state legislatures to learn that the prevention of railway accidents rests on the intelligence, vigilance and experience of the man and not with the multiplication of devices. Automatic obedience to rules will prevent more accidents than all the safety devices that cumber the shelves of the Patent Office at Washington. Invention, however, is easier to the average American than plain everyday observance of rules. Besides the selling of devices to railways is a profitable business.

Accidents Increase in 1909-10.

Accident Bulletin No. 33 for the first quarter of the current fiscal year shows the unfavorable turn in casualties always attendant on reviving business. Given in brief the figures are as follows:

As this report goes to press, the Commission, through the Associated Press, has issued a summary of Accident Bulletin No. 34 which states that there were 1,073 persons (105 passengers and 969 employes) killed and 21,849 injured on the steam railways of the United States during the three months ending December 31, 1909.

This shows an increase over the corresponding quarter last year of 275 killed and 5,003 injured. For the same quarter in 1907 the killed were 1,092; in 1906, 1,430; and in 1905, 1,109. As the quarter ending December 31, 1909, saw railway traffic at its highest pressure, it shows an improvement over the records of 1907, '06 and '05.

The number injured is the highest ever recorded for three months, surpassing the quarter ending September 30, 1907, however, by only 126. But as explained elsewhere, "injuries" is too elastic a term for comparative statistics.

Accidents to Other Persons.

Where the quarterly Bulletins of the Commission make no mention of the accidents to persons other than passengers and employes, the annual reports of the carriers supply the missing data as to "Other Persons." These include casualties at highway crossings, to trespassers, persons walking, standing or sleeping on the track, workmen in railway shops and all other accidents directly or indirectly connected with the transportation industry. Accidents to "Other Persons" cover over 60% of all fatalities charged to the railways and of these over 80% are to trespassers.

The returns to this Bureau show the following casualties to persons other than passengers and employes during the year ending June 30, 1909:

These figures warrant the estimate that the total number of trespassers and other persons killed and injured in the United States in 1909 through the operation of railways was approximately 5,978 and 9,132 respectively. This marks a decrease from 1908, but not nearly so great as in the case of passengers and employes.

Fatalities in Railway Accidents Since 1888.

We are now enabled to present a complete statement of the fatalities connected with the transportation industry since the Commission began compiling casualty statistics in 1888. The figures in this summary are confined to fatalities, for the reason given by the Commission that it "is well known the term 'injury,' as used in statistics of this character, is elastic." As a matter of fact the terms injury and casualty are so individually or locally indefinite and variable as to have little or no statistical value.

To the most casual student this table illustrates how railway accidents increase and decline with periods of business activity and recession. The effect of the panic of 1893-94 is seen in the decrease in accidents in 1895 and 1896. The temporary slowing up in 1904 is reflected in fewer fatalities in 1905, and a drop of 11% in the business of 1908 was followed by a decreased death roll of 12% for that year and 25% in 1909.

Relation of Accidents to Passenger Traffic.

The relation of railway accidents to passenger travel is most accurately measured in the following statement of the number of passengers carried one mile to one killed in train accidents during the years for which these statistics have been compiled:

The student has to go back to the years of continued business paralysis, 1895 and 1896, to find any record of immunity to passengers from fatalities in train accidents at all comparable with the conditions that prevailed in 1909.

Decreased Hazard to Train Crews.

Never in the history of American railways has the occupation of the men directly engaged in the operation of trains been as free from fatalities as during the year 1909. This is proved by the following statement showing the number of trainmen killed in all descriptions of accidents since the figures have been compiled, with the ratio to the number employed:

The figures of the Interstate Commerce Commission have only made the division of trainmen shown above since 1904. Here again the last column proves the relation of accidents to the ebb and flow of traffic.

Freight Traffic and Accidents.

The preponderating part played by the immense freight traffic of American railways as a cause of accidents is shown in the following analysis of the sixty "prominent collisions" described in the Commission's quarterly Accident Bulletins for the year 1909:

Here it will be observed freight trains were involved in 86.6% of the prominent collisions of the year and shared in responsibility for 79.3% of the fatalities. The proportion of injured in accidents to freight trains is not so great for the obvious reason that the number of persons exposed in collisions involving only freight trains is generally limited to train crews.

Causes of Train Accidents.

An examination of the causes given for the prominent collisions and derailments in the Accident Bulletins of the Commission since the passage of the Act of March 3, 1901, requiring the railway companies to make full monthly reports of all accidents affords the following general statement:

Among the prominent derailments charged against the railways in the Bulletin for April, May and June, 1909, is the following, resulting in one killed and three injured.

Through the inclusion in these Bulletins of accidents on trolley lines, their value as records of railway accidents is being greatly impaired. Without any information as to the number of passengers carried by the electric cars it is impossible to arrive at an accurate idea of the relation of accidents to traffic, and without this the mere record of accidents has little information value.

Accidents on British Railways.

For a second time in their history, in the year ending December 31, 1908, British railways went through a twelvemonth without killing a single passenger in a train accident, thus paralleling their record of 1901 in this respect. In the matter of passengers injured, the year 1908 showed a remarkable improvement, not only over 1901 but over any other year in the history of British railways. When it comes to the totals of casualties, however, 1908 shows little variation from the average record.

The following table shows the total number of persons killed and injured in the working of British railways, as reported to the Board of Trade for the calendar year 1908 as compared with 1901:

As one year of traffic on American railways approximates ten years on British railways, the above totals for ten years on the latter may be compared with 8769 killed and 73,052 injured on the former last year, or with 11,839 killed and 111,016 injured in 1907, the darkest year in the annals of American railway accidents.

Attention is asked to the apparently startling increase in injuries on British railways since 1905. The increase is absolutely fictitious, having resulted from "a change in the definition of a reportable accident," and not from any greater hazard in the working of British roads. This confirms the objection, expressed in the report of the British Board of Trade in 1903, to any changes in the form of tables extending over a long series of years that "admit of comparisons, which any change of form would invalidate if not destroy."

It will be perceived that the mere change in the definition of what constitutes a reportable accident increased the number of injuries reported against British railways fully 50%. This justifies the writer's view that comparisons of injuries in railway accidents are of little value. Even the same injury does not affect two persons in the same degree. One "hollers" and cries for a doctor where the other whistles and goes on with his work.

The inquiries of the Board of Trade into the causes of British railway accidents in 1908 confirm former findings that, exclusive of train accidents, in the case of passengers "they mostly arise from carelessness of the passengers themselves," and the same is true of the vast majority of accidents to employes.

Overwork and Railway Accidents.

At last the statistics of the British Board of Trade furnish what well nigh amounts to demonstration that long hours play very little part as an actual cause of railway accidents. Under the statute the Board requires reports of all instances of periods of duty in excess of twelve hours worked on British railways. For the month of October, 1908, the returns show 31,052 excess hours worked out of 2,773,891; and for October, 1909, 24,486 out of 2,695,036, or an excess of 1.12% in 1908 and .92%, in 1909.

Now, out of 861 accidents investigated in 1908, only 16, or 1.85%, occurred to men working in excess of 12 hours; and out of 804 investigated in 1909 only 9, or 1.12%. This bears out the opinion of a high English official, that experience "does not show any close connection between long hours and accidents."

The following statement shows the relation of accidents to the hours the persons involved have been on duty on British railways for a period of five years:

It will be observed that out of these 3,945 accidents investigated and reported on by British inspectors during the years 1905 to 1909, inclusive, a majority happened during the first half of the twelve hours for which the men were booked and 2.28% when they were working overtime. In no instance was the accident attributed to long hours.

Railway Accidents in Europe.

Excluding the returns of injured, for the reason that no two countries have a common definition of a reportable injury, the accidents on European railways, according to the latest reports, resulted in the following fatalities:

These figures, representing a European mileage of 182,459, may be compared with those of the United States in 1897 when it had 183,284 miles of line and an accident record of 222 fatalities to passengers, 1,693 to employes and 4,522 to other persons; or even with the American record for 1909, when with a mileage 27% greater the record stood 335 fatalities to passengers, 2,456 to employes and 5,978 to other persons. The excess of fatalities to other persons in this country is due to the notorious indifference to danger and law of all classes of citizens in using railway right of way as a common thoroughfare for adults and playground for children. Despite the elevation of the tracks in Chicago, the writer has seen scores of youngsters scarcely able to walk playing on those raised tracks and laughing at the locomotives as they went shrieking by.

In all comparisons of accidents on American railways with those on foreign roads, it should be remembered that our excess of mileage and freight traffic more than balance their density of passenger traffic and that nowhere else on earth is railway right of way common to foolhardy pedestrians and creeping children.

The Railroad Commission of Indiana is to be commended for its efforts to enlist public sentiment against trespassing on railway tracks.

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XIII
RAILWAY RECEIVERSHIPS IN 1909

Only five railway companies, operating 859 miles of line, went into the hands of receivers during the calendar year 1909, as compared with 24 companies, operating 8,009 miles, for the preceding year. The capitalization of these five roads was $78,095,000, against $596,359,000 for those financially involved in 1908. The following statement gives the names, mileage, funded debt and capital stock of the roads for which receivers were appointed in 1909:

The number, mileage and capitalization of the railways that have failed since 1875 are as follows, the figures being from the Railroad Age Gazette:

XIV
COST OF RAILWAY REGULATION

Nothing in the record of railway development in the United States has increased with the rapidity of the cost of their regulation under the act creating the Interstate Commerce Commission. Since the first Commission, composed of Judge Thomas M. Cooley, of Michigan, chairman, William R. Morrison, of Illinois, Augustus Schoonmaker, of New York, Aldace F. Walker of Vermont, and Walter L. Bragg, of Alabama, Commissioners, and Edward E. Moseley, Secretary, and Prof. Henry C. Adams, Statistician, to date the yearly expenditures on its account have been as follows:

From this it appears that the cost of regulating American railways has increased tenfold in twenty years. Of this only $34,000 is chargeable to the increase in number and compensation for the Commission under the Hepburn Act. Of the balance it was charged by Representative Adair of Indiana in a speech in Congress last January that $450,000 annually was for "Interstate Commerce Detectives."

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XV
STATISTICS OF FOREIGN RAILWAYS

In the following review of the mileage and traffic statistics of the principal divisions of Europe and other countries, the information has been derived from the latest official sources wherever available, and where estimates have been resorted to as noted they have been computed from ascertained facts.

From the data here furnished it is possible to arrive at a close approximation of the passenger and freight rates in the countries named. The average passenger journey and freight haul in the United States is nearly twice as long as the average for the rest of the world. In comparing net results it should be remembered that rentals and taxes should be deducted from the American figures.

For further details of the railways of Canada, the United Kingdom and the German Empire, for which complete statistics are available, the reader is referred to succeeding pages.

Here the writer would acknowledge the courtesy of the Railway Department of Canada for advance copies of the Dominion railway statistics for 1909.

Railways of Canada.

Railways of the United Kingdom.

Railways of Germany.

Mark the increased capital cost per mile and in proportion of wages to earnings, and the increased ratio of net earnings to cost of construction. Then figure how long it will take at this rate before the German people are taxed to support their railways or by increased rates because the railways have been run for politics and not for the people.

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XVI
GROWTH OF RAILWAYS

In three-quarters of a century American railways, from small beginnings in Pennsylvania in 1827, Maryland in 1828, South Carolina in 1830, and New York and Massachusetts in 1831, show the following remarkable growth by decades:

The most striking feature of this statement is the number of states devoid of railway mileage previous to 1870, which since then the railways have converted into mighty commonwealths whose resources have been multiplied "some thirty fold, some sixty and some an hundred". And those to which the railways have made the greatest prosperity possible are the states whose politicians today are trying the hardest to muzzle the ox that treads out the corn for their people.

Growth of Railways of the World.

In the following table is given the mileage of the principal countries in the world from the earliest date available to the latest:

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RECOMMENDATIONS

In conclusion I would reiterate the following recommendations:

Railway Statistics.

That the Bureau of Railway Statistics and Accounts, now a division of the Interstate Commerce Commission, be transferred to the Department of Commerce and Labor.

That its statistics be confined to the affairs of operating railway companies, the only carrier companies engaged in Interstate Commerce.

That its inquiries be confined to the data necessary to furnish the public with a comprehensive knowledge of railway conditions and operations in the United States from year to year.

That these statistics be devoted to publicity and not to the promotion of personal or official theories.

Accidents.

That Congress provide for an official investigation of all railway accidents in the United States along the lines so successfully adopted in the United Kingdom, and not in a spirit of hostility to the railways, as proposed in pending legislation.

This investigation should be through a Bureau of the Department of Commerce and Labor, composed as follows:

One Chief Inspector.

Ten District Inspectors, one for each Interstate Commerce group, appointed from Engineer service of the United States Army, with the rank of Major. This would insure fitness and impartiality for the work and valuable experience in regard to railway operations to the Army Engineers.

Three Deputy Inspectors for each group.

Three Assistant Inspectors for each group.

Several groups might require four inspectors of each class, and as many could get along with two.

Enough money could be deducted from the Interstate Commerce Commission appropriation to pay these officials liberally, so as to secure competent service, without crippling the legitimate work of the Commission.

Respectfully submitted,

SLASON THOMPSON.

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