Upon these foundations the pay envelopes of the railroad worker in the future must be figured. If the railroads themselves are incapable of so establishing it—and in full fairness to them it must be stated that the time may have passed when they were capable of accomplishing this, unaided at least—then the national government must step in and do it. The Interstate Commerce Commission may be asked to establish, with compulsory arbitration, not only a minimum but a maximum rate which the railroad may pay its various classes of employees—and so still another great step will be taken in the nationalization of our system of transportation. Call it socialism, if you like; I do not, but I do feel that it is another large step toward nationalization.
Moreover, the very consideration of the topic brings us at once to the greatest immediate necessity of the railroad—unified regulation.
Unified regulation is the crux of the railroad situation today, from the railroad executive’s, the investor’s, and the patron’s point of view. Your wiser executive is holding the question of increased rates in abeyance for the moment. He is devoting his best thought and his best energy toward simplifying and bettering railroad control. He has a frank, honest motive in so doing. Not only will he build toward permanence of the great national institution with which he is connected but he will begin also to induce Capital—the wherewithal with which to build up properties and pay-rolls and possibilities—to come once again toward the bedside of the sick man.
Capital is a sensitive creature. Conservative is far too mild a word to apply to it. Capital takes few chances. And the steady and continued talk of the plight of the railroad has driven Capital away from the bedside of the sick man. Yet Capital, if unwilling to take chances, rarely overlooks Opportunity. And if Capital be convinced that Opportunity is really beckoning to the Railroad, that fair treatment is to be accorded to the patient at last, he will return there himself and place his golden purse in the sick man’s hand. Only the wary Capital will demand assurances—he will demand that the Railroad’s two nurses, Labor and Regulation, be asked to mend their manners and that that fine old physician, Public Sentiment, be called to the bedside.
Let us cease speaking in parables, and come to the point:
Railroad regulation today is, of course, an established factor in the economic existence of this nation. Already it is all but fundamental. It came as a necessity at the end of the constructive and destructive period of American railroading. I connote these two adjectives advisedly, for while the railroad in a physically constructive sense was being built it also was doing its very best to destroy its competitors. It had hardly attained to any considerable size before the natural processes of economic evolution began to assert themselves. Certain roads, stronger than others, still stronger grew. And as they stronger grew, the sense of power, the economic value of power, came home the more clearly to them. To gain power meant, first of all, the crushing of their opponents, if not by one means then by another.
This is not the time or place to discuss the great evils that arose from the unbridled savagery of cut-throat competition in the seventies, the eighties, and the early nineties. The whole rotten record of rebates, of sinister political advantages gained through bribery of one form or another, has long since been bared. The illegitimate use of the railroad pass in itself makes a very picturesque chapter of this record.
Such a condition of affairs could not go forward indefinitely. In this day and age it is a wonder that it existed as long as it did exist. Out of this turmoil and seething chaos was born Railroad Regulation. She was a timid creature at first, gradually feeling her increasing strength, however, and not hesitating to use it. For a long time she had a dangerous enemy, a fellow who up to that time had allied himself almost invariably with railroads and railroaders—the practical politician. Eventually this fellow took upon himself the rôle of best friend to Railroad Regulation.
