TRANSPORTATION: Rate Raise v. Wage Whack

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Having taken testimony on and deliberated for four months over Ex Parte 103, the petition of all Class 1 railroads for a blanket freight rate increase of 15%, Chairman Ezra Brainerd Jr. of the Interstate Commerce Commission and his ten colleagues last week handed down a dilemma. Even before they were made public the commission's long-awaited findings caused confusion. Someone got a look at the first page of the report, was led to believe the commission had granted, at least in part, what the roads had asked for. A telephone call from Washington sent rail shares bounding up on the New York Stock Exchange. When the whole story was revealed next morning, railroad securities responded with a dispirited slump.

Frankly mystified, railroaders pored over the Ex Parte 103 decision. Denied outright was the 15% increase. Offered instead were:

1. An increase of $3 a car, regardless of distance of shipment, on coal, certain ores, stone, gravel, posts, lumber, box wood, furnace slag.

2. A similar $6 per car increase on crude phosphate rock, sulphur, pig & scrap iron, stone, crude oil, asphalt.

3. An upping of 1¢ per 100 Ib. was suggested for: cottonseed meal & cake, certain agricultural products, dried fruits, oranges, lemons, melons, resin, turpentine, refined fuel and road oils, cement, brick, lime, ice, fertilizers.

4. An increase of 2¢ per 100 Ib. would be permitted on shipments of all other commodities, except noted exemptions, including freight of less than carload lots.

Notably exempt from increases were: all kinds of grains, rice, flour, meal, hay, alfalfa, straw, cotton, fresh fruits not mentioned above, potatoes, peas, beans, flaxseed, sugar beets, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, logs, fuel wood, railroad ties, excelsior, sawdust. No increases would be permitted on any carload to exceed by 10% the present maximum rates.