Mr. BRINSON. If you had a dozen short lines and you would examine into the needs of each particular short line without prejudice and do the best you could, I believe that could be done, but where you have seven or eight hundred of these little fellows scattered all over the United States, how you could promulgate any rate that would suit all individual cases I do not know, unless you made it abnormally high. Mr. SIMS. So high as to depress development on the line. Mr. BRINSON. Yes. You see, these short-line railroads under the situation that has heretofore prevailed, have, by the practice of small economies and large ones, too, been able to get along on thin revenue. They did not pay, for example, standard wages. They took a kind of fatherly interest, so to speak, in the few employees they had and kind of kept them together by furnishing houses for them and various little things of that sort which were things they could do which the big railroads could not, and they were able to keep their costs down, but we are confronted now with a situation that is the most extraordinary I have ever seen. I had a boiler maker the other day working on an engine-I hope I do not tire you gentlemen-he had been working for me off and on for 15 years. He used to work for me at $3 a day and give me good service. He is now getting, I believe, 88 cents an hour. He was putting in a few staybolts, and I said to him, and there was nobody listening but him, "John, sort of push along. I am obliged to have this engine to-morrow. You are not doing your duty. You are not doing like I know you can do, push along and give me this engine." There was nobody listening, but he got up and brushed the dust off of his overalls, the son-of-a-gun, gathered up his tools and walked off. Mr. SIMS. It has been suggested in these hearings that we might, by legislation, compel discriminatingly favorable divisions of a through rate on freight originating on, or delivered to, or destined to these short lines as compared with the trunk-line haul; would a thing of that sort save such situation as yours? Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir; I believe so. Any rules or laws could be made that would suit generally, whether you could fit the case to the individual railroad or not, how you would do that, I am not prepared to say. So far as I am concerned, if I knew that I could pay expenses and interest, without making a dollar-I am not talking about the stock, I am talking about the interest on my debt-for the next three or four years, I would be tickled to death. Mr. SIMS. And you would take a chance on the country growing? Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir. Mr. DEWALT. Mr. Brinson, I am going to ask you these questions, they are rather personal questions Mr. BRINSON (interposing). All right, I will answer them as far as I can. Mr. DEWALT. I will not be offended if you do not answer them. Your railroad is 88 miles long? Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir. Mr. DEWALT. It runs out of Savannah? Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir. Mr. DEWALT. What is the other terminal point? Mr. BRINSON. Stevens Crossing, where the Georgia & Florida Railroad runs between Augusta and Madison, Fla. Mr. DEWALT. How many connecting roads have you? Mr. BRINSON. The Georgia & Florida, the Central of Georgia, and the Savannah & Statesboro, which is a subsidiary of the Seaboard. Mr. DEWALT. How many trunk lines? Mr. BRINSON. The Central of Georgia-well, I suppose you call the Georgia & Florida a trunk line; it is 300 or 400 miles long. Mr. DEWALT. What did your road cost you, the 88 miles? Mr. BRINSON. It cost a little over $1,200,000. Mr. DEWALT. What is your stock issue? Mr. BRINSON. So far we have issued $500,000 worth of stock. Mr. DEWALT. Is it all common stock or some preferred stock? Mr. BRINSON. It is all common stock. Mr. DEWALT. What is your bond issue? Mr. BRINSON. $360,000. Mr. DEWALT. Your stock and bond issues aggregate $860,000 and the cost of your road was what? Mr. BRINSON. About $1,200,000. Mr. DEWALT. You built just preceding the war; just about the time that the war opened. Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir. I thought I was mighty shrewd to build while everything was cheap. Mr. DEWALT. What was your deficit the first year? Mr. BRINSON. $45,000. Mr. DEWALT. What was the deficit the next year? Mr. BRINSON. $58,000. Mr. DEWALT. And this year? Mr. BRINSON. Up to the 1st of September, $63,000. Mr. DEWALT. $63,000 represents this year's fiscal deficit? Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir. Mr. DEWALT. And the other two amounts for the other two fiscal years? Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir. Mr. DEWALT. How is this stock owned; by two or three parties or by yourself? Mr. BRINSON. By myself, except 4 shares to qualify. Mr. DEWALT. In this 88 miles, how many towns have you along the line of any size; which are the largest towns? Mr. BRINSON. The only town of any size, except the terminal in Savannah, is Statesboro. Mr. DEWALT. How large is that? Mr. BRINSON. About 7,000 people. Mr. DEWALT. How many villages have you of, say, 500 inhabi tants along the line? Mr. BRINSON. Pineora, where we cross the Central Railroad, has probably 800; Garfield, where we cross the Georgia & Florida, has probably 1,500; and then we have another little town, Portal, of 600. Mr. DEWALT. The towns which you have mentioned are not of any size at all, and you have what you call a railroad running through an agricultural region? Mr. BRINSON. There is considerable timber there. There is more timber proportionately along our line than any railroad running into Savannah for its length. Mr. DEWALT. Let me ask you a personal question. What was the incentive to build this road? Mr. BRINSON. I had built two or three other railroads and had come out all right, made a little money, not a great deal. You take Bulloch County and Emanuel County, Ga., I look upon those counties as the richest in the best State in the South. Mr. DEWALT. That is all right, but that does not answer the question. Mr. BRINSON. I thought I could make it pay, certainly. Mr. BRINSON. No, sir. Mr. DEWALT. Your contention is because you went into an enterprise, which is solely a personal enterprise and because the war came on you could not get locomotives and cars, that now the Government ought to take over the road or in some way legislate so as to make your road pay? Mr. BRINSON. Let me say a word right there. I say this, that the Government did me wrong, as it did every other short-line railroad which was not taken in under the general scheme, when we were not allowed to go in with the other roads. That is the thing that I am standing on. Mr. DEWALT. You built your road before that was contemplated. Is not the fact this, without any sympathy at all, that you like every other man took a risk? Mr. BRINSON. I did not take that sort of a risk. How in the devil was I to know that the thing was going like that? I do not mean to be offensive. Mr. DEWALT. Nobody else did. Mr. BRINSON. Let me say this. Mr. DEWALT. Yes; that is what I am after. Mr. BRINSON. What right has this Government to take over a part. of the railroads and leave the others out? What right did Mr. McAdoo have to leave these little roads out two or three hours before the bill was signed by the President? Mr. DEWALT. You ask me that question? Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir. Mr. DEWALT. I would say that I think it was the wrong thing to do. Mr. BRINSON. I am much obliged to you. Mr. DEWALT. I agree with you there, but nevertheless, as a basic idea, taking away all the sympathetic features of the question, this resolves itself into this: A thought he could build a railroad through an undeveloped country in which there were only three towns of any considerable size. He did not anticipate the conditions and put in a lot of money, and the thing did not pay. Now, A says to the rest of the people of the United States, "I was unfortunate in this thing, and I want the rest of the people in the United States to contribute in some way, either by raising the rates or through some legislation, to let me out of the difficulty." Is not that the bald proposition when you get down to the business end? Mr. BRINSON. No. Mr. DEWALT. What is it? Mr. BRINSON. It is this: If the United States had never taken over any of the railroads-I took a chance, a fairly legitimate 152894-19-VOL 3-19 chance, building a railroad through a country that needed development. I had done that before and had helped the country and had made a little money. Here comes a situation that nobody could foresee. I built this railroad during a very depressed period. I furnished work for labor when there was hardly anything else in the country which did. I got the work done cheap. Then, the Government comes along and takes over the big railroads, which are fixed and settled and making money and doing business, and then they leave the little fellows out. Why did they do it? What was the cause? Why should I be left out if John Smith was put in! "Expediency," they say. Is it expedient to go to work and destroy all these little railroads because you have the power to do it? There are two sides to it. You can look through the knothole; you have to look at it directly. Mr. DEWALT. Mr. McAdoo's idea was that he did not want any cripples in the Railroad Administration. Mr. BRINSON. Who crippled them? Mr. DEWALT. Any more than the Secretary of War wanted any cripples in the Army. Mr. BRINSON. Who crippled them? Mr. DEWALT. That is about the way it was done. Mr. BRINSON. Who crippled them? Mr. DEWALT. That is the question. I do not know about that. Let us come down to this. In the legislation that Congress passed it attempted to take care of these short-line railroads by saying that they should have their due proportion of equipment and that they should also have facilities given to them by the Railroad Administration from the trunk lines and that there should not be diversion of freight from the short lines. You remember that, do you not? Mr. BRINSON. I remember the contract that I made: yes, sir. Mr. DEWALT. That was in pursuance, no doubt, of the legislation. amending the act afterwards, I think it was an amendment or the original act where we provided that the short lines should have equip ment and that there should be no undue diversion of freight from them. The CHAIRMAN. We sought to legislate on that, but we never got it through. Mr. DEWALT. It did not go through? The CHAIRMAN. No, sir. This matter of the contracts with the short-line railroads was made outside of the Federal control act: it is practically a voluntary arrangement. Mr. SIMS. I can tell you what was in the original law. Mr. SIMS. Under the provision of law in connection with the Government controlled roads, where it was necessary to divert freight from a short line, they should then route unrouted freight over tist short line as far as possible to make up what the short line lost by not having the freight. That is it substantially. Mr. DEWALT. Has that worked out well? Mr. BRINSON. No, sir; not for anything. Mr. DEWALT. Are there any other roads in your State that are under the same condition as yours, practically privately owned and capitalized? Mr. BRINSON. May I just make a little statement as to that? Mr. DEWALT. That is what I forewarned you before; you can have that stricken out of the record if you desire. Mr. BRINSON. No; let it go. You said something about sympathy, striking out sympathy. You can hardly do that. In other words, if you take out sympathy in this world, there would not be very much left. Mr. DEWALT. Permit me to interrupt you. Sympathy can not affect the question. Mr. BRINSON. But I say that your premise, in my judgment, is incorrect. When through no fault of their own the short-line railroads were left out by Mr. McAdoo and when it was allowed to stand by Congress, if it was right for you to pass that law, mind you, and let it be a complete law except for one thing, the signature of the President, and then Mr. McAdoo during the night goes to work and shuts them out into utter darkness, that was prima facie evidence, to my mind, that if he had been right he would not have done it. Mr. SIMS. You refer to the bill which was vetoed? Mr. BRINSON. It was not vetoed; it was turned down in the darkness by Mr. McAdoo. The CHAIRMAN. It was also vetoed. Mr. BRINSON. After Mr. McAdoo had turned them loose; it was simply backing up Mr. McAdoo's order. Mr. DEWALT. I want to say this in due deference to Mr. Brinson, that he having been so frank as to answer these questions which were, perhaps, of a personal nature that, if the chairman of the committee and the rest of the committee think that they reveal his private business affairs I should be entirely willing to have it all stricken from the record. Mr. BRINSON. No; I do not ask that. Mr. DEWALT. I simply wanted to get a typical case. The CHAIRMAN. If the witness does not object to it and wishes it to remain in the record, we will let it stand. Mr. BRINSON. I have nothing to conceal. When I get talking about this thing I could continue it all day; but you have not the time to listen to me. Mr. WATSON. I may ask personal questions, but probably you have answered them in your reports to the Interstate Commerce Commission. How much did the company receive from the sale of the stock? Mr. BRINSON. As a matter of fact, I have put into the property myself a little over $700,000 of the $1,280,000 that it cost. Mr. WATSON. Who are the owners of the bonds? Mr. BRINSON. They are scattered about. I can not tell you offhand. They are not held by any one concern. Mr. WATSON. Has the interest on the bonds been paid? Mr. BRINSON. It was paid up until May, 1918. Mr. WATSON. The interest on the bonds has not been paid for over a year and you have a deficit of $63,000 on the road? Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir; this year. The CHAIRMAN. Up to the 1st of September. Mr. BRINSON. That is the sum this year, $63,000, Mr. SIMS. For less than one year? Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir; for less than one year. |