Mr. WATSON. Have you a contract with the railroads that connect with your line?

Mr. SIMS. He owns the railroad.

Mr. WATSON. Where do you connect?

Mr. BRINSON. At Savannah.

Mr. WATSON. Have you contract tariffs with other railroads?
Mr. BRINSON. No.

Mr. WATSON. Do not trunk lines have traffic contracts with the short lines?

Mr. BRINSON. Not always, particularly where they enter these points like Savannah.

Mr. WATSON. At the other terminal, do you not have a contract? Mr. BRINSON. As to what the big railroads do with one another I am not prepared to say; but they do not with me, I know pretty well. Mr. WATSON. Have your rates been increased since the Federal control?

Mr. BRINSON. I do not remember just what date that increase took place, 25 per cent.

Mr. WATSON. They have been increased?

Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. WATSON. How many trackmen do you employ?

Mr. BRINSON. Trackmen?

Mr. WATSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. BRINSON. To keep the track up?

Mr. WATSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. BRINSON. I could have brought along the figures. I can only tell you roughly now, because I never thought about bringing that sort of information. Normally we would have on our tracks, I should say, about 50 trackmen.

Mr. WATSON. How many officials have you? That is, president, secretary, general manager, and so forth?

Mr. BRINSON. You can look me over and you will see most of the officers. I am the president, I am the general manager, I am the treasurer, I am a wiper in the shop, I am locomotive engineer, I truck freight in the depot, I work in the agent's office, I work in the auditor's office, I work everywhere where I can save a dollar or 5 cents.

Mr. WATSON. You ought to get a large salary?

Mr. BRINSON. I do not get a damned cent, if you will excuse me for the profanity.

Mr. WATSON. Why have not the bondholders foreclosed?

Mr. BRINSON. Because the President said that they could not foreclose on a railroad that was under Government control. Otherwise they would have been at me long ago. They will get me as soon as they turn me loose.

Mr. WATSON. I want to get at this question. Everyone representing short-line railroads say they are not meeting operating expenses and yet the bondholders do not foreclose. I want to konw why the bondholders do not enforce foreclosure proceedings?

Mr. BRINSON. Dear man, that is the reason I am here talking to you. The railroads know that the day of reckoning is coming on pretty close. We are expecting that. Then these people will come just like wolves and nab all of these little railroads and shake them out and my $700,000 and better is going; I can not help it. I do

not mean to be offensive in the slightest degree. I will do the best I can to answer every question. That is my business here. We are in a close place.

Mr. WATSON. You certainly exercise economy in the management of your road?

Mr. BRINSON. To show you how necessary it is for us, among others, it looks like if we let off two or three men we could not turn a wheel; we are working it so close.

Mr. WATSON. Do you own the engines?

Mr. BRINSON. There was one of our troubles that we had. We first got old engines, with the idea of using them until we could get the roadbed kind of settled. On the railroad known as the Brinson Road I had money and was sort of bigoted and I bought new engines and I put them on the new roadbed and it hurt the engines and ruined the track.

Mr. WATSON. What is the weight of the engines?

Mr. BRINSON. They were pretty heavy for the new track. They weigh about 250,000 pounds. In this case I said, "I will not make this mistake; I will buy a lot of old fellows and put them on until I kind of get my roadbed settled. Then I will buy new engines." When the time came to put on the new engines I could not get them; the Government was taking them all.

Mr. WATSON. How many engines do you own?

Mr. BRINSON. Five.

Mr. WATSON. Do you carry the mail?

Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir; a part of the way. We do not carry it all the way. We hope to do it eventually. We do not run all the trains that we ought to. In other words, we are just wobbling along, doing the best we can, under the most extraordinary disadvantageous circumstances that any people ever worked under, I do believe. I am not a quitter and I am not bemoaning my fate or anything like that. I have just come here to talk to you. There was just one thing that I had not done-I had done everything else in the world-was to come up here; that one thing I was keen to do, and I am keen to answer any questions that occur to your minds.

Mr. HAMILTON. As a matter of fact, if the Government had not taken over the railroads, do you believe that you might have had a little better show?

Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir; I do. I feel satisfied that's true. In other words, if the conditions as they existed previously had not been disturbed-it was like opening Pandora's box and letting all the ills out. In the first place, the officials of the railroads had been interested in cutting down expenses, but, in the name of God, what do they care about expenses now-Uncle Sam is paying the bills. The best men that are working for the Government in the railroad business are indifferent-I am just talking generally; I observe that very closely-the system of Government control of railroads is all wrong in that you do not get the best results out of anybody. You can not get information, you can not get politeness, or anything like you did when every fellow was working tooth and nail for business. What difference does it make to them whether they get business or whether they do not? It is a thing to think about. I do not mean to convey any wrong impression. It would not have been

as it is, where we are just simply choking to death. These things that I am undertaking to tell you are facts. I do not mean to tell you anything that is not so. If I do it is because I make a mistake; I do not aim to. The conditions are simply intolerable as they stand. If you can not do anything we are in a devil of a fix. If you can not do anything to help us out we are in a worse situation. Whatever I am doing is from a sense of duty to the people that I owe. I am a trustee for the creditors. If there is no chance of bettering the conditions I will have to go to something else to make a living for my wife.

Mr. SIMS. Of course, you present a very strong case, but there may be many others like yours that we have not heard of. We had not heard of yours until you came here to give us the facts. Now, in so far as any of these short lines were actually injured by taking over their connecting lines, the trunk lines, and so on, beyond their power to prevent, the taking over of the trunk lines being deemed in the public interest in order to help win the war, and damage that accrued to these short lines by reason of that fact ought to be taken care of. Mr. BRINSON. That is my judgment.

Mr. SIMS. If it could be done in no other way, it ought to be taken care of by direct appropriation from Congress.

Mr. BRINSON. That is my judgment.

Mr. SIMS. Because it was a national and international matter.
Mr. BRINSON. I did not want to bring up that part of it.

Mr. SIMS. It certainly appeals to any honest man in that way, because you could not prevent it and would not have tried to prevent it, because you were willing to make the sacrifice, and if the sacrifice had fallen upon all roads alike—

Mr. BRINSON (interposing). I would have just gone on. if it took the last hen off the roost.

Mr. SIMS. Now, we might save you personally and individually from loss by a direct appropriation from Congress, which I think is just and right, but I want to give you a little information which I have with reference to the veto of this bill, which we rushed through both the House and Senate, in order to try to get it signed in time, requiring the Government to take over all these roads or to retain those that had already been taken over. Before that was done, upon the recommendation and advice received through the general counsel, seventeen hundred and some odd roads were relinquished. Now, I have information indirect from the counsel that the object and purpose in that relinquishment was more largely to get rid of a lot of mere plant-facility roads than anything else, and that short lines that could be used would still be contracted with, notwithstanding that they were relinquished, but it is a fact that the bill was vetoed. and the roads were relinquished before it was vetoed, as far as that is concerned, and then, after Mr. McAdoo had given notice of his intended resignation and advocated retention of Federal control of railroads until the 15th of January, 1924, I talked with him personally, and I said, "Mr. McAdoo, what about these short lines that have not been taken over, and also those that have been taken over?' He said. "As a matter of course, they ought to be treated just like the other roads."

Mr. BRINSON. He experienced a change of heart, it appears.
Mr. SIMS. That was after he had decided to resign.

Mr. BRINSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. SIMS. But unless the President exercises the right to return the railroads sooner, under the law the roads may be retained in Federal control for 21 months after the proclamation of peace is published, during which time it seems that the condition of roads such as yours is going to go from bad to worse.

Mr. BRINSON. Absolutely.

Mr. SIMS. But that is not the saddest feature of all this matter. You might fade away and lose all you have, and perhaps the world would not know much about it, but from your statement and from what seems to be the absolute facts, the road could not be operated under present conditions, no matter who owned it, and pay operating charges in the future, and therefore there is an absolute loss, unless somebody, the Government of the United States or the trunk lines or some other financial power able to take them over and operate them without profit, takes them over, the road ought to stay there and be operated forever. Your road runs through a good country. To take it up and destroy it would be a step backward in the progress of your country which would affect indirectly every other State in the United States. Now, that is one of the largest propositions in which the public is interested that I can see in this whole situation, but so far as taking care of you and your short line is concerned, it is nothing but ordinary common justice which nobody can deny that because they were not taken over or being taken over by the authority taking over their connections, they should not be permitted to suffer while their connections are not only not suffering, but are receiving the highest average return that they ever did receive during any three years of their existence. Now, if you can advance something along that line that we can do and have the power to do, so far as I am concerned, I will be glad to see it done.

Mr. STINESS. Did I understand, Mr. Brinson, that you made a contract, or your road made a contract, with the administration at any time?

Mr. BRINSON. Yes.

Mr. STINESS. What was that contract?

Mr. BRINSON. It was what they called their standard form of shortline contract.

Mr. STINESS. What did that obligate you to do or what benefit did you get from it?

Mr. BRINSON. Well, I never did believe there was a great deal in it for the short-line railroads, but it was all I could get and I wanted it. I wanted anything that would look as if it was going to help us a little. For example, they have what they call a per diem reclaim which gives you two days of free use of cars that you heretofore have not had, which amounted to, say, $1.30 on each car that you kept for any length of time. That would amount to, counting the cars we get from other railroads, maybe $200 a month, maybe a little less or maybe a little more, depending on the business you do. That was something. Then there was something that was nebulous and uncertain, and the verbiage was of a nature that I could not understand, but I was just simply hoping that maybe somebody might get something out of it, and if other people did I could, and that was about giving us freight for the freight they took away from us. We never have not a pound. I never expect to get a pound of freight given to

us for that which has been diverted from us. That is gone. That is folded and tucked away and I will never get it. It was not clear and I did not believe at the time I would get it, and I do not believe it now. Another thing was that we were to get cars. There is not one of the short lines that I know of that has cars enough. For example, we have probably 110 cars. We were able to get them before the war came on but after we could not get any. They are not one-half or one-third as many as we need.

Mr. STINESS. You mean then that the Government did not live up to its contract?

Mr. BRINSON. Certainly; that is what I mean. For example, as I said a while ago, you probably did not catch what I intended to convey, the agreement was in this contract, and that was pretty plainly stated, that we were to be treated fairly with reference to the car supply, which I understood to mean that they would share, and share alike, kind of on the wheelage basis, as it were, according to our needs, and if they could not give us what we asked for, they would give us a proportion about like what they took themselves. The facts in the business are that they notify you that they are short so many cars and they can not give them to you. In other words, if they have the cars sitting about, not doing anything, and they are not likely to need them any time soon, maybe you can get them. It was just one thing after another. Of course, I could go on here and talk to you about the pay rolls and the high cost of fuel and the high cost of materials. and things of that sort indefinitely.

Mr. STINESS. I just wanted to know whether the Government lived up to its contract with you or not.

Mr. BRINSON. No. I have told you the truth.

Mr. STINESS. Yes; you have answered my question.

Mr. BRINSON. I would not like, as a matter of fact, for Windom to know that I came up here and said he had not done what he was told to do, because he might give me a few less cars.

The CHAIRMAN. If there are no other questions, the committee is obliged to you, Mr. Brinson, for your testimony. Mr. BRINSON. Thank you, sir.

Hon. JOHN J. ESCH, M. C.,

MIDLAND RAILWAY, Savannah, Ga., September 27, 1919.

Chairman Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce,

Washington, D. C.

MY DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: I am by this mail returning typewritten copy of my testimony before your committee on Monday last, with such minor corrections as I could remember.

In reading over the questions and answers at that hearing these additional thoughts have occurred to me, which I should like to submit as an addenda to the testimony already presented.

First. The general railroad bill should carry as a matter of right a clear provision that they, the short-line railroads, should be reimbursed for the losses that they actually sustained during the entire period of railroad control; these losses to be ascertained through their report to the Interstate Commerce Commission or by special auditing of their accounts by accountants duly authorized by the Interstate Commerce Commission. Thus and by that means the Government will not pay them a profit, as they did with the big railroads, but will simply make good only the actual losses which the short-line railroads sustained by reason of being unfairly turned out when it was clearly the intention of Congress that the short lines should be taken over on a parity with the trunk lines, or else they would never have passed the bill which was nullified by the action of Mr. McAdoo before the President's signature would have made it a law.