RECOMMENDATIONS
Six years ago the Interstate Commerce Commission, after investigating the Union Pacific transaction above referred to, recommended legislation to remedy the evils there disclosed. Upon concluding recently its investigation of the New Haven, the Commission repeated and amplified those recommendations, saying:
“No student of the railroad problem can doubt that a most prolific source of financial disaster and complication to railroads in the past has been the desire and ability of railroad managers to engage in enterprises outside the legitimate operation of their railroads, especially by the acquisition of other railroads and their securities. The evil which results, first, to the investing public, and, finally, to the general public, cannot be corrected after the transaction has taken place; it can be easily and effectively prohibited. In our opinion the following propositions lie at the foundation of all adequate regulation of interstate railroads:
1. Every interstate railroad should be prohibited from spending money or incurring liability or acquiring property not in the operation of its railroad or in the legitimate improvement, extension, or development of that railroad.
2. No interstate railroad should be permitted to lease or purchase any other railroad, nor to acquire the stocks or securities of any other railroad, nor to guarantee the same, directly or indirectly, without the approval of the federal government.
3. No stocks or bonds should be issued by an interstate railroad except for the purposes sanctioned in the two preceding paragraphs, and none should be issued without the approval of the federal government.
It may be unwise to attempt to specify the price at which and the manner in which railroad stocks and securities shall be disposed of; but it is easy and safe to define the purpose for which they may be issued and to confine the expenditure of the money realized to that purpose.”
These recommendations are in substantial accord with those adopted by the National Association of Railway Commissioners. They should be enacted into law. And they should be supplemented by amendments of the Commodity Clause of the Hepburn Act, so that:
1. Railroads will be effectually prohibited from owning stock in corporations whose products they transport;
2. Such corporations will be prohibited from owning important stockholdings in railroads; and
3. Holding companies will be prohibited from controlling, as does the Reading, both a railroad and corporations whose commodities it transports.
If laws such as these are enacted and duly enforced, we shall be protected from a recurrence of tragedies like the New Haven, of domestic scandals like the Chicago and Alton, and of international ones like the Frisco. We shall also escape from that inefficiency which is attendant upon excessive size. But what is far more important, we shall, by such legislation, remove a potent factor in financial concentration. Decentralization will begin. The liberated smaller units will find no difficulty in financing their needs without bowing the knee to money lords. And a long step will have been taken toward attainment of the New Freedom.
CHAPTER IX
THE FAILURE OF BANKER-MANAGEMENT
There is not one moral, but many, to be drawn from the Decline of the New Haven and the Fall of Mellen. That history offers texts for many sermons. It illustrates the Evils of Monopoly, the Curse of Bigness, the Futility of Lying, and the Pitfalls of Law-Breaking. But perhaps the most impressive lesson that it should teach to investors is the failure of banker-management.