RAILWAYS: Two Presidents

On a September morning, 68 years ago, Samuel Rea was born in the town of Hollidaysburg, Pa. On an October morning, last week, Mr. Rea called at the White House and was given the benefit of President Coolidge’s first expression of opinion on the railroad situation. Of the intervening years Mr. Rea has spent 50 in the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad—as railway engineer, as fourth, third, second, first and plain Vice President, and during the last ten years as President of the Company. The man whom Mr. Coolidge chose for his expression of policy is known, even among railroad presidents, for the tenacity with which he clings to his convictions. He worked hand in glove with James McCrea*, his predecessor as head of the Pennsylvania, but failed after long efforts to cooperate with other railways in building a bridge across the Hudson at Manhattan. Then, carrying on the project for the Pennsylvania alone, he tunneled the North and East Rivers, and built the Pennsylvania Station and the famous Hell Gate Bridge. To this veteran, Mr. Coolidge confided his plans, or, rather, suggestions. At one stroke the President suggested that it would be possible to alleviate two of the major troubles now afflicting the country. He asked: 1) that freight rates on wheat for export be lowered to facilitate disposal of the wheat surplus abroad; 2) that freight rates on coal to Northeastern states and coal destined for Canada be equalized. (The President understood that coal shipped to Canada paid less freight charge than coal shipped to cities in this country, but immediately adjoining the Canadian border.) Mr. Rea left the conference without public comment. But other railroad officials were less reticent. They declared that freight rates on wheat for export are already less than on wheat for domestic use. Rates per hundredweight on shipments from Chicago to the Atlantic seaboard are 30¢ for domestic consumption and 22½¢ for export; from St. Louis, 34¢ for domestic consumption, 26½¢ for export. It was asserted that the railroads would only lose money by a further increase, and that the farmers actually would not benefit, because there is no foreign market for more wheat.

As for coal freight rates, railroad officials declared that there is no discrimination in favor of export coal to Canada, that the rate per mile is the same to cities within this country and to Canada.

Special meetings are scheduled to consider the President’s suggestions. From previous comment, it seems likely that they will decline voluntarily to lower rates on the ground that it would result in severe losses which the railroads cannot now afford.

* The late James McCrea was President of the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1907 to 1912. Hin son, Colonel James Alexander McCrea, Vice President of the road, aged 48, died last week of pneumonia, in Pittsburgh.