No wonder, then, that the railroaders are praying that a way may be found and found soon for lifting the entire authority over them out of the hands of the forty-five present state boards of control—who never have agreed and who apparently can never be made to agree on any one form of procedure—and placing it in the hands of the very competent regulating board down at Washington, enlarged and strengthened for its new burdens. The Interstate Commerce Commission has never shown a tendency toward freak rulings. Its time has been taken with genuinely important matters. On these it has raised itself to its present high degree of efficiency. It has shown itself capable of studying the details of complicated transportation problems and rendering decisions of great practical sense.
But the scope, and therefore the efficiency, of the Interstate Commerce Commission are closely hemmed in by existing laws. The latest “crisis” between the railroads and the four great brotherhoods of their employees brought this limitation sharply to the fore. It is therefore equally essential that the power and scope of the Federal commission be broadened as well as being made superior to those of the state regulating boards.[21] And it is gratifying to note the progress that President Wilson already is making toward the first of these necessary immediate reliefs to the railroads of the land.
If President Wilson shall succeed in persuading Congress that the entire control of the railroads should be placed in the hands of an enlarged and strengthened Interstate Commerce Commission, he will have earned the thanks of every man who has made an honest study into the situation. Such a commission, clothed with the proper powers, could and would do much not only toward relieving the railroads’ immediate necessities in regard to both physical betterment and the enlargement of their pay-rolls, but in enabling them to grasp some of the opportunities which we have outlined in previous chapters—opportunities requiring a generous outpouring of money at the beginning. If I mistake not, public sentiment is going to demand that, if the railroads be granted the relief of unified regulation, they shall be prompt in their acceptance of at least some of these great avenues of development.
We have heard much in late years of the banker control of our railroads and of absentee landlordism in their management. The two things are not to be confused. Banker control is not, in itself, a bad thing. Absentee landlordism invariably is. There are good stretches of railroad in every part of the country that today are failing to render not alone the proper income returns to their owners but, what is worse, service to their communities, because of this great canker, this lack of immediate executive control and understanding. And it is significant in this close connection of two phases of the railroad situation that it was the banker control in New York of the one-time Harriman system—the Union Pacific, the Southern Pacific, the Oregon Short Line, etc.—that gave to it at one fell swoop, five presidents—one at San Francisco, one at Omaha, one at Portland, one at Tucson, and one at Houston—each a young, vigorous man equipped with power and ability. The good effects of that far-seeing move—that instant wiping out of the charges of absentee landlordism that were being lodged against the Harriman system—are still being felt.
It is not banker control that is essentially bad for our railroads. It is banker control together with an utter lack of vision, that has cost them so many times their two greatest potential assets—public interest and public sympathy. Banker control plus vision may readily prove itself the best form of control for our carriers. And that our bankers do not entirely lack vision may be argued by the far-seeing and opportunity-grasping way in which our bankers of the newer school are today reaching for American development in South America, in China, in the Philippines, and in other parts of the world.
Back of the President, back of the Newlands committee and its rather dazzling sense of importance, sits the nation. It is far superior to any mere committees of its own choosing and it is weighing the entire railroad situation as perhaps it never before has been weighed. It is considering the enlargement and the strengthening of the Interstate Commerce Commission—together with it a feasible method for the Federal incorporation of our roads—this last a vital necessity in the mind of any man who has ever tried to finance an issue of securities for an interstate property with each separate state trying to place its own regulations—in many cases both onerous and erratic—upon them. With the spirit of Congress willing, there still remains the very large question of how far its power would extend, in attempting either to reduce the power of the state boards or to make them more amenable to the Federal commission. Our states have been most jealous of their sovereign rights. And it is easy to conceive that their aid and cooperation—so very necessary to the success of the entire ultimate project of the nationalization of our railroads—is not to be obtained by the mere wishing.[22]
President Wilson has set the beginnings for the plan and set them well. As I write it is still up to Congress to undo its mischievous legislation which, if it is made to include an eight-hour day, should render a genuine eight-hour day, one applicable to every class of railroad employee—although it would be difficult to imagine a railroad superintendent or general manager or president quitting at the end of the short-term service. They are schooled to harder things.
And with the eight-hour day must come these other things to which we have already referred, not once but several times. First among these are the matters so closely correlated in President Wilson’s program that they cannot be separated from the eight-hour day: arbitration—compulsory arbitration, if you please—the strengthening of the power of the government to seize the railroads and operate them in a time of national panic or military necessity, the enlargement of the powers and the personnel of the Interstate Commerce Commission. With all these things accomplished, and the situation just so much strengthened, it will then become the duty of the railroads to reach out more generously toward their opportunities for further development as the transport service of a great and growing people. It will be necessary for them to attract, to train, to reward new executives of every sort; to further their credit by deserving credit, to show outwardly in a more potent way the thing that so many of them have believed they inwardly possess—true efficiency, both for service and for growth.
Please do not forget this great point of growth—of development, you may prefer to put it. In my mind, men, institutions, nations, even railroads never stand still; they either grow, or else they decline, they shrink, they die. But the Railroad, as the greatest servant of a great people, cannot die without bringing death to the nation itself. Therefore he must grow. He must plan. He must announce his plans. He must bring Public Sentiment to his aid. Law can do many things—but few of these latter ones. Public Sentiment may accomplish every one of them, and almost in a crack of a finger. No wonder that Capital—that conservative fellow—longs to have him stand at the bedside of the Railroad.