Official Proceedings Volume 24 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 Excerpt: ...extent now, that belongs to the highest executive officers of the railroads, and until they do take hold of it, and take hold of it in a tremendously vigorous way, it will not receive the attention that we have been trying to tell them for perhaps fifteen years, it deserves. It is too big to be treated as a secondary proposition. Mr. Collett gave you some figures on the magnitude of the existing fuel bill. The railroads today are paying an average of $4.05 per ton for coal, excluding the item of haul on user's rails, which I estimate will not be less than 75 cents per ton. When the Committee of Operators, the Committee of Mine Workers and the Secretary of Labor get through in Washington, I predict that a further increase of perhaps one dollar per ton will be added to the existing mine price--retroactive as of the time that Mr. Lewis alleged that he had ordered his mine workers back to work. That will add $100,000,000 or $150,000,000 more to the railroad's fuel bill annually--offering a further incentive to our railroad executives toward taking hold of this great problem, by Taking it under their immediate consideration. In the past two months I have attended meetings called by the regional directors, meeting the Federal managers, and other operating offcials in St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Roanoke, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Paul and Denver. I perhaps met more Federal managers on that trip than any one man connected with the Railroad Administration has met since the beginning of Government control. I said to them, and I have attempted to write, perhaps somewhat vigorously, in a forthcoming circular, No. 21, that the fuel problem is now one "of attitude of mind." There is very little that is new about it; everything that has been said here tonight...