Business: C. & O. Order

Railroad with the biggest net income in the U. S. is the Van Sweringen-controlled Chesapeake & Ohio which operates 3,120 miles of track from tidewater Virginia through the West Virginia and Kentucky coal fields to Louisville and Chicago. Every year since 1925 C. & O. has earned from two to four times fixed charges. It is the only Class I railroad to continue paying 1929 dividends all through Depression. In 1933 it raised its dividends from $2.50 per share to $2.80. And last week C. & O. hung up another record when it awarded contracts for $11,819,000 worth of railway equipment, biggest single order this year. From American Car & Foundry, Pullman-Standard Manufacturing Co., General American Car Co. and Bethlehem Steel Co., C. & O. ordered 5,000 50-ton steel hopper coal cars, 75 steel underframe flat cars and 50 single deck stock cars—a total of 5,125 units, nearly four times as much as all the freight cars ordered by all the other railroads in the land to date this year.