LETTER SUBMITTED BY THE SPRAGUE SAFETY CONTROL AND SIGNAL CORPORATION. Hon. JOHN J. ESCH, NEW YORK, October 11, 1919. Chairman Committee on Interstate Commerce, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: My attention has just been called to the fact that a number of witnesses interested in automatic train-control devices recently appeared before your committee. I was not aware that this hearing was to be held, or else I would have made it a point to be present. Possibly the hearing was held at the request of some of those concerned. I beg therefore to inquire whether there will be further general hearings before your committee on this subject, or if not, if at such time as will meet your convenience you will permit me to personally appear before you. I am the president of the Sprague Safety Control and Signal Corporation, which has been actively engaged for several years in the development of automatic train control. This development represents an expenditure of over $350,000, and has, in my opinion, been brought to a more advanced state perhaps than any other which has either been tried or has been under consideration. It has already been the subject of a unanimously favorable report, after months of investigation by the most critical of railroad committees, and also has been several times inspected by the Division of Safety of the Interstate Commerce Commission and the recently appointed automatic train-control committee of the Federal Railroad Administration. I would therefore like to have the opportunity of emphasizing some facts on the general situation, based upon my own personal experiences. I have been much interested in the railway bills which have been introduced in the Senate and the House, and in view of the interest manifested in the automatic train control as one of the safty features of railway operation at the hearing above referred to, it seems proper to suggest that in any bill provided for the return of the railroads to private ownership, but under increased Government supervision and control, there should be reserved to the Government the absolute right to insist upon the introduction of any specific class of safety devices, whether in the nature of automatic signals, automatic couplings, brake equipment or automatic train stops or train control, whenever it should be clear to a Government controlling body that the safety and efficiency of railway operation would be increased by such adoption. During the past decade the Interstate Commerce Commission, on the reports of the Block Signal and Train Control Board and the Division of Safety, have steadily pointed out the needs of automatic stops or automatic train control to offset the man failures which have been the cause of repeated disasters, and urged upon the railroads that they should actively undertake the development of such. The Interstate Commerce Commission, although the representative of the National Government, has had no power to enforce its recommendations, and as a rule they were ignored, many railroad officials being actually opposed to this development. Moreover, the technical employees in the signal and braking departments are already fully occupied with their normal duties, and it has been increasingly evident that the work must be undertaken by outside agencies, preferably cooperating with the railroads and with or without Government assistance. Under these conditions various forms of automatic stops or train control have been developed at an expense of millions of dollars, and they are the inventors' answers to the recommendations of the Interstate Commerce Commission and to the increasing demand on the part of the general public for some means to prevent the recurrence of the numerous wrecks due to man failures. Of course, many of the automatic systems proposed were crude and unworkable, and many railroad officials being continually harrassed by their advocates, some of whom knew little of the details of signal and brake systems and railroad operation, became increasingly hostile, so that later, when really promising systems appeared they met the antagonism engendered by their predecessors. Meanwhile the Interstate Commerce Commission, spurred on by the continued occurrence of wrecks, the inactivity of the roads and the public demand for greater safety, continued to urge progress. Then war came, and with it a temporary end of individual railroad official responsibility. The nonreliance upon existing safeguards has time and again been emphasized by the heads of railroad organizations, and is evidenced in the special precautions which surround, for example, presidential journeys and oftentimes the trips taken by railway presidents, when not only special cars are frequently provided, advantageously located in the trains, but pilot locomotives sent on ahead, the track cleared of normal traffic and siding switches removed or spiked.. The railroads are now under the Federal Administration, which has amply demonstrated its power, both as regards purchases, rates, labor, and operation. It has created an automatic train control con mittee, which is charged with the duty of reporting the results of its studies and the making of recommendations which shall be constructive in character, to the end that what the Government has ineffectively sought to have the railroads do in the past shall now be put. into operative force by an administration which has the necessary power. On account of the probability of an early return of the railroads to private ownership it is quite likely that, although the power to put in effect the recommendations of this committee is still unabridged, the railroads may pass out of the present Government control before anything is actually done. In such case, it is clear that, without specifying in detail any equipment, the Government shall retain the power to enforce that which for the past 10 years it has repeatedly urged and recommended. There is much in my own experience which I can present to your committee which I believe is of interest and value, and as stated above, I should be glad to have the opportunity of doing so. It is quite possiblle you are not familiar with my own standing or work. I will state that I have been actively concerned and responsible for 5 of the principal electrical developments during the past 30 years, and am the past president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, American Institute of Consulting Engineer New York Electrical Society, and the Inventors' Guild. Respectfully, yours, FRANK J. SPRAGUE, President. LETTER SUBMITTED BY ANDERSON & GUSTAFSON (INC.). Hon. JOHN J. ESCH, CHICAGO, October 14, 1919. Chairman Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, Washington, D. C. Subject: Proposed legislatiton with respect to pooling of private equipment. SIR: In the bill now pending before Congress providing for the Government to take over privately owned tank cars there may be a lot of good, but there also may be some things about the bill which might work to the disadvantage of the tank car operators and owners, to the extent of offsetting whatever good might accrue to the public in general. Being interested, as owners or lessees, of several hunndred cars in petroleum service, we feel that we are qualified to speak with a certain degree of knowledge on this subject, and therefore, take the liberty of addressing you. First of all we feel that there are certain fundamental principles which make legislation of this character inimical to the best interests of the independent oil industry, which of itself is enormous We believe that we are correct in stating that from the inception of the transportation industry it has been the general practice for carriers to supply all needs of equipment. True, in recent years the Interstate Commerce Commission and the courts have ruled that certain classes of equipment, such as tank cars, for instance, were not of necessity to be furnished by carriers. This view is not held by all, and there are many reasons why it should not be so first, because it forces the shipper to invest heavily in property outside of his sphere as a business man. It forces him also to lose direct control over his property because it passes into hands other than his own and becomes removed miles and miles from his immediate jurisdiction. You must not lost sight of the fact that in giving the Government the right to take over and operate the tank cars of shippers without question of ownership, you are transgressing upon the tradition of the rights of property. The enormous invest ment which the independent oil men have made in this car equipment, which we as a unit feel the railroads should have always supplied, will not be given up without some concessions from the other side. We must know that our rights of property will ultimately be protected to the last degree. hard In cases before the Interstate Commerce Commission it has been conclusively proved that the mileage return of one cent per mile which the carriers are now paying owners and lessees of tank cars is not a fair return on the property. You may ask, then, why we make these enormous investments, and why we furnish the cars? The answer is this-that the independents have only the tank car in which to transport their oil, and they must fight the greater oil corporations, which have pipe line facilties denied the small operators. The railroads will not furnish these tank cars, or if they do, it is only in a desultory fashion and without respect to our contractural relations between the buyer and seller of the oil. For years the independent oil men, in order to be assured of service under contract, have been accustomed to make agreements with consumers of oil to supply said consumers over an extended period, perhaps a year or more, and in order to have regular stated deliveries they have purchased or leased and placed in service certain cars which travel back and forth from the producers to the consumers at almost stated intervals. They can control this shipping simply because they own the cars and can, therefore, have a reasonable assurance that their contract of sale will be reasonably fulfilled. Were cars placed under pooling arrangement, there would be no assurance of this kind, and great losses might result because of the inability of the seller to carry out his contract. Certain cars used in the oil industry have been prepared to some extent for certain commodities. For instance, it is not possible to haul gasoline or kerosene in cars which have been in crude-oil service. One is a manufactured product of clarity, standardized gravity, and other physical properties which require that it be carried in cars prepared for shipment in a certain manner. On the other hand, crude oil, fuel oil, gas oil, and other residual products have sediment, foreign substances, and other matter in them which render a car unfit for other service. Under a pooling arrangement there would be no assurance that the cleanliness of a car would be preserved, and were a car taken from our company, for instance, and placed with another, we would have no assurance that it would not be used in service which would ultimately render it absolutely unfit for carrying our product, unless subsequently cleaned and treated at considerable expense. Our company has seen nothing in the papers or any reports from the committee or Congress that the matter of compensation for owners of equipment has been mentioned. In order that this pooling arrangement should work out in a fair manner, there would of necessity have to be some basis of settlement for the owner or lessee for the equipment which is used by others. It might be that this can be worked out on a per diem arrangement, but such an arrangement has already been frowned upon by the Interstate Commerce Commission. See the report of the commission in the private car case. If the return to the owner or lessee is to be based on a mileage agreement, it would certainly have to be more than the railroads now pay. We can get along under the present arrangement of one cent per mile, simply because we can't get any more and because we have control of our cars. If we lost control of our cars, it is not out of reason to say that there would be no more investment in private equipment, in so far as the petroleum industry is concerned. We hope you will give this bill a very close scrutiny when it comes to your attention, as we feel that the proposal to pool private equip ment is of such vital importance to a great industry that those charged with carrying out the policies of our Government would only vote for or against this provision after having heard the case from all angles. Our company feels that you will do this, and asks your respectful attention to the facts outlined above. Yours truly, ANDERSON & GUSTAFSON, INC., General Traffic Manager. LETTER SUBMITTED BY MR. FRANK A. LAW. Hon. JOHN J. ESCH, WASHINGTON, D. C., October 15, 1919. Chairman Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. MY DEAR MR. ESCH: In my recent statement before your committee I took the position that the bill H. R. 4378, as introduced in Congress, confers jurisdiction on the Interstate Commerce Commission over water lines engaged in the Alaskan trade, both as to regular routes and as to irregular ports serving the canneries, and you stated on page 1768 of the hearings on said bill that you "did not assume that this bill" would apply to the fugitive trade of these irregular cannery ports, and when I stated that we so read the bill you remarked "possibly because you are rather hostile to the trend of the legislation." My hearing is not acute, and I did not fully grasp the significance of this remark, or my answer would have been more directly re-ponsive, and would have pointed out the basis of my view as to the effect of said bill on the point above referred to. Such basis was this: The port-to-port business of the water lines is now under the regulation of the United States Shipping Board. but by the act of its creation (Sept. 7, 1916, sec. 1, 39 Stats., 72) the board's jurisdiction is expressly limited to transportation of passengers or property "on regular routes from port to port." Section 1 of the pending bill retains in the Interstate Commerce Commission its jurisdiction over interstate transportation partly by rail and partly by water, and aims to extend such jurisdiction to the port-to-port business of the water lines, these objects being effected by the following provisions of said section: That the provisions of this act shall apply to all common carriers engaged in (a) the transportation of passengers or property by water, or party by rail and partly by water, * * * The term "water" as used in this act shall include the lakes, rivers, canals, and other inland waterways within or bordering on the United States or the Territory of Alaska * and all waters within or without the 3-me limit from the coast of the United States or the Territory of Alaska traversed by vessels permitted to engage in the coastwise trade of the United States. It will be seen that the jurisdiction thus sought to be conferred on the commission extends to common carriers, and is not, as in the Shipping Board act, limited to the business of regular ports, but is made to embrace all transportation of passengers or property by water. Viewing this extended jurisdiction in connection with the |