EXHIBIT No. 18.-Number of employees, by midmonth count, class I line-haul railways--By months, 1952-57 EXHIBIT NO. 19.—Number of beneficiaries and amount of benefits paid under Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act, 1946–57 Source: Railroad Retirement Board, annual reports, and Monthly Review, March 1958. EXHIBIT NO. 20.—Number of agents and of all employees, class I railroads, Source: ICC M-300 Statement, reporting divisions Nos. 78, 79, and 80. EXHIBIT NO. 21.—Passenger train-miles, class I line-haul railways, 1921–57 Source: Interstate Commerce Commission, Statistics of Railways in the United States, statement M-220. Mr. LEIGHTY. That completes my presentation. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Leighty, for your rather thorough dissertation on the whole problem, and your recommendations and conclusions. Mr. LEIGHTY. I appreciate this opportunity of appearing before your committee and expressing the views of railway labor on many of these problems. Some of them are difficult, but I want to repeat that we feel that a real aggressive attitude, and an attitude of doing something about these problems instead of crying about them would bring results, and you can get that business from the public if you will go out and really make the effort. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. There may be some questions some of the members of the committee will want to ask. There very likely will be. I am left in somewhat of a confused status myself, from what we have been hearing for the last 60 to 80 or 90 days. It is very gratifying, though, to find out the railroads are doing so well. My information the last several weeks has been to the contrary. But I think after all what we all want to do is to see this part of our transportation system being maintained in a sound and efficient manner. That is the important thing to the American people, and everyone connected with the industry. I find myself a little bit at a loss, however, and somewhat confused in a great many instances, as a matter of fact. On page 21 of your statement, you stated that in 1929 passenger traffic for class I line-haul railways was just over 31 billion passenger-miles. In 1958, the latest year for which we have complete data, passenger-miles totaled 28 billion, a decline of 10 percent. In your conclusions just now you referred to exhibit 21 and you stated that in 1921 there were operated 560 million miles, in 1957, 275,766,000, a drop of 50 percent. That confuses me a little bit. You say at one point it is down 10 percent and then in another 50 percent. Mr. LEIGHTY. That picture on the wall of a train is an illustration of it. That is the kind of train they used to run many years ago. You will find those trains had 7, 8, or 10 cars on them. That is the Broadway limited trains, and those were all pullman cars. They still operate all pullman cars on the Broadway. I do know the New York Central, when they used to have over 8 or 9 cars on their 20th Century, would run a second section of that train. Now they will handle that many cars in one train. That operation alone would reduce the train miles 50 percent and they still would have room for that number of passengers. You take your trains between Washington and New York, for example. When you think of the size of the trains back in the 1920's and the 1930's, those trains, if they had 10 or 12 cars, were considered fairly good trains. Any number of those trains today carry 20 cars. But you only have a passenger train mile, even though it does carry 20 cars instead of 10. That and the fact that many branch-line trains have been discontinued, and also streamliners have been put on, accounts for that. In other words, they have decreased their train-miles by 50 percent and in so doing they are still handling 90 percent as much business as they did previously. The CHAIRMAN. Then the distinction is between what you referred to as passenger-miles and train-miles? Mr. LEIGHTY. Well, there is a distinction between passenger-miles and train-miles. A passenger-mile is moving a passenger 1 mile. The decrease in that has only been 10 percent. In other words, the volume of business for which they receive pay has been reduced 1 percent. But the number of train-miles, which represents the cost of doing that business, has been reduced 50 percent, because of your longer trains. The CHAIRMAN. That is what I wanted to ask you about. When you are talking about train-miles, you are talking about the entire train itself and not about a particular car. Mr. LEIGHTY. No; the entire train itself. The whole train is involved, whether it carries 10 cars or 20 cars. The movement of the train 1 mile is a train-mile. The CHAIRMAN. That clears it up in my mind. I was a little confused. Mr. Staggers? Mr. STAGGERS. I have no question, Mr. Chairman, but I would like to make this statement: The legislation we are considering was introduced primarily to help an industry that is ailing. I believe that is the consensus, is it not, that this is primarily introduced to help the railway system of the United States? Mr. LEIGHTY. That is our understanding. They do have some competitive disadvantages. We don't question that at all. We would like to see those things corrected. But we do want to say that we don't think the situation is nearly as criical as has been indicated. In fact, as compared with other years, they are in much better shape. But what disturbs us is these services that are being discontinued constantly, because of its effect on the overall picture. Here is a branch line, for example. Let's assume that they get $1 million worth of |