National Affairs: Other Side of the Shield

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However powerful the movement for consolidation of the roads may be growing, it is not yet powerful enough to appear as a direct and popular mandate to be acted on by Congress. On the one hand, we have Senator Cummins, chairman of the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee and author of the Esch-Cummins Law, protesting that the merger remedy may even now be too late and that Government operation of many roads is already an inescapable necessity. On the other hand, rail earnings for January show an increase in profits from 2.75 per cent in 1922 to 5.54 per cent for January of this year, which argues that the roads are on the way to recovery and should be let alone. The conflict of interests involving the big roads, the weak roads, the Government, the public, and railroad labor is still so stubborn and at the same time so obscured by propaganda and counter-propaganda that only the future can decide the outcome of the issue. Security holders, who have the most to lose by Government operation, are anxiously watching the earning rate. If it continues to improve the Government bogy will disappear; if dividends begin to be passed and the railroad workers continue their stalemate warfare with the executives, the stock holders must resign themselves to the inevitable.