best interests of the farmers as well as of that of every element of our industrial life demand strong and efficient carriers in order to furnish the means of distribution of the products of human labor, for those are the only means of enabling the producer to reach the market. I would like to add this proposition to that: Since 1916 the railroads have invested $4,422,853,368 of new money in order to furnish transportation service. The net railway operating income in 1916 was $1,040,084,517 higher than it has ever been since, although there has been a constant input of new money, and in 1923, which was the highest of any year except 1916, it was only $961,236,657. So that there has not been earned one penny upon the nearly four billion and a half of new money that has been put into this railroad business. It has just cost that much more to make a little less net. The CHAIRMAN. You mean that they have put in more than they have taken out? Mг. THOм. No; I mean that they have put in about four billion and a half in that time of new money, and with that increase of investment they are earning less than they did when they put it in-net. The CHAIRMAN. Net value? Mr. THOм. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. I believe that this closes the hearings on this subject. Mr. J. D. SHATFORD (representing the stockholders of the railroads). Mr. Chairman, as I was going South I read that you were only going to allow a very short time to make a statement in behalf of the proponents of this resolution, and I wrote on the train a very short statement which I ask to be permitted to put in the record. I sent for a stenographer and had it written out. It is on behalf of the stockholders. It may be that I shall want to add that to my brief to the Interstate Commerce Commission in the Grain Rate case, if I am permitted. The CHAIRMAN. Yes; you may submit that. And at this point I will ask the reporter to incorporate in the record the paper which I hand him, and which was referred to in a previous part of to-day's proceedings. (The paper referred to is here printed in full, as follows:) Rate of return on property investment, large Class I roads, 1922-23 |