Freight Rates and Leather Belting.
Some little children and many of their mothers do not know that a great deal of the power that makes the wheels go round in this industrial beehive is transmitted by belting.
The shops of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway at Elkhart, Indiana, are equipped with 13,288 running feet, or practically two and one-half miles, of leather belting. This belting cost the railroad company $6,235, or an average of 46.9 cents per running foot. The belting was shipped from Boston to Elkhart, a distance of 937 miles. The total freight charges amounted to $18.37, or fourteen one-hundredths of one cent per running foot. An increase of 10 per cent would add $1.83 to this cost, or fourteen one-thousandths of one cent per running foot.
This belting, moreover, cost the railroad company $1,082 more than it would have cost at the prices prevailing in 1899, representing an increase of 21 per cent. During this same period there was no change whatever in the freight rate.
LESSON XII.
The Railways and National Development.
Now listen to the sober words of the one man who has perhaps given more official attention to the subject than any other citizen of the republic:
"Without regard to the personnel of railroad officials, without regard primarily to the interest of stockholders, but in the interest of public welfare and national prosperity, we must permit railway earnings to be adequate for railroad improvement at advantage and profit.
"To my mind it is a most impressive fact, so great as to elude the grasp of imagination, that the railway traffic of the country fully doubled in the first seven years of this twentieth century. This enormous addition to the volume of transportable goods overtaxed, as you know, the existing facilities, and the resulting condition perhaps accounts for much of the hostility which has been manifested in various quarters. For the man who has raised something by hard labor or made something with painstaking skill, which he could sell at a handsome profit in an eager market, and finds that he cannot get it carried to destination, and so sees his anticipated gains turned into a positive loss, is naturally exasperated and unthinkingly 'blames it' on the railroads, and is ready to hit them with anything he can lay his hands to; and as the state legislature seemed to be the most convenient weapon he wielded it for all it was worth.
"I dwell upon this a moment further, because it seems plain to me that the prosperity of the country is measured and will be measured by the ability of its railroads and waterways to transport its increasing commerce. With a country of such vast extent and limitless resources, with all the means of production developed to a wonderful state of efficiency, the continued advancement of this great people depends primarily upon such an increase of transportation facilities as will provide prompt and safe movement everywhere from producer to consumer; and that we shall not secure unless the men who are relied upon to manage these great highways of commerce have fitting opportunity, and the capital which is required for their needful expansion is permitted to realize fairly liberal returns."