AMERICAN RAILROADS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13894, 4 May 1907, Page 9

AMERICAN RAILROADS.

The American railway problem does not diminish in interest. For'some time past popular feeling in the United States has been generally rising ngninst the great railroad corporations. The most recent- effects of this have been seen in the enactment, of legislation by various Slates reducing passenger fares. The railroad corporations have sought to retaliate. \They have endeavoured to impress 011 the public that, their properties were likely to he forced into bankruptcy by legislation that sought to reduce their incomes, and have taken various steps calculated to be to the annoyance of the travelling public in thfe States wlioro the low rates were enforced. To this state of popular feeling and the uiircst fomented, according to all accounts, by the railroad presidents themselves the recent remarkable financial panic in Wall street, with the resulting impaired railroad credit, was generally attributed, although the quarrel between President Roosevelt and Edwin H. Ilarriman, president of the great Southern Pacific mid allied systems—as to which some interesting particulars' aro given in tho letter of our New York correspondent, published elsewhere in this issue, — also gets credit as the real and underlying cause. At all events, itis evident thiit tho President's duel with law-bret'.king railroad corporations has done much to advance the cause of a Government control of railroads in the United States. The recent railway legislation in tho various States appears in .some lights t-o confirm the necessity for Inderal regulation, although there are many who contend strongly that the States themselves are able to cope with tile situation, and that the American people have learned to sonic purpose the lesson that the power to exercise effective railroad control isi ill their own hands. When President Roosevelt first proposed, over five years ago, a Federal supervision and regulation of railways it was objected that railway traffic should be left to be regulated by free competition, and that the enforcement of existing laws against combinations in restraint of trade was all that was necessary. It was also contended that if any further regulation was necessary it should be left to the States to effcct it. These objections were answered by the arguments that free competition might lower rates but could not equalise them, and that State action might correct specific wrongs but could never secure that, uniformity essential to justice and equal rights. Events, we are told, liavo justified these answers, for the action of the Federal Government in enforcing the law against combinations in restraint of trade has elicited from railway inen a stronger expression of their dormant conviction that unrestricted competition in railway traffic is injurious to railway and to shipper, while tliei independent action within oiie year of thirteen States attempting to deal with the railway problem and regulate passengei fares appears to be leading them to tho conviction that State regulation is far and away more disastrous to railway interests than Federal regulation would be. The contention is advanced that what the country - wants, and lias all along wanted, is not lower rates but equal rights, and neither free competition nor State regulation call secure these rights to either the railways or the public. To qiiote from a prominent American journal: " What the nation wants is a railway system which will conibino the energy and capital of private enterprise with the harmony and stability of national organisation. . . .

All that is necessary is, first, a Frank recognition of the truth that America needs not unregulated competition but regulated combination, and that the Federal Government is the organisation to secure it;' and, second, an intelligent and sincere co-operation between the representatives of the railways and the representatives of the Government. Such co-operation, if it comd be secured, would afford a welcome augury of a future railway system which would give security to the investor, safety to the travelling public, and equal rates to all shippers, largo and small." Whether or not such co-ope ration is attainable is, of course, the doubtful matter.