It is an inevitable result of our unwillingness to think things out logically and thoroughly. Nearly a generation has gone by since we formally recognized and adopted the principle of government regulation of railways, yet in all this time we have failed to develop and apply the principle logically. Regulation has meant regulation of rates and of equipment and operation. It has ignored the fact that regulation unless it is to be progressively destructive must take into account the whole subject of revenue, balancing the rights of the shipper fair rates with the right of labor fair wages and of invested capital fair dividend returns.
The present situation is a striking example of our inefficient and unequal system of control. Eighteen or 20 percent of railroad employees are holding up the nation, figuratively speaking, at the point of a gun. Their demands involve a very heavy increase of the cost of transportation. If granted it will therefore follow that freight rates must be greatly increased or the fund from which dividends, maintenance and extension and wages for the 80 percent of the employees not included in the raise are provided for will be greatly decreased.
In the first alternative, the shipper and consumer are interested. In the second alternative, there are interested the 80 percent of employees not included in the raise, the investors in railroad securities, of which there are nearly twice as many as there are employees demanding the raise, and finally the general public, which is interested in the proper maintenance and extension of our system of transportation. 