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Railroads Face In Efforts: They contended that the new, duced rates exceeded their out-of-pocket costs r handling the traffic, that the shippers bene-ted, and that the railroads were better off with 3 traffic than without it. Opponents, however, *ued that fully distributed costs should deter-ne the low-cost carrier; obviously, this would /or the truck • and water carriers, whose fixed its are a good deal less than one third of rail-id fixed costs. The case was in litigation for ars; whatever its outcome, it suggests the great Bculties railroads face in efforts to price their vices by normal business standards.
Railroads face massive and well-publicized iblems. The chief of these is mounting com- ition from highway, air, and water carriers 1 pipelines. Others are rigid government cons, overemployment and an acute shortage of ewal capital. Against these drawbacks, howr, must be measured the built-in efficienciest railroads, and railroads alone among indus-
s, enjoy.Characteristics. Railroad efficiency starts from ground up. The steel wheel rolls on the steel with far less resistance than a flexing rubbertire rolls on pavement or a hull plows through water.
Southern railroads, comprising a number of small lines, were neither integrated into a system nor into the war effort. Without "a single bar of railroad iron" being rolled in the Confederacy, its railroads also disintegrated for want of repair. Davis exhorted but did not coerce the railroads to pool their equipment, control their rates, and coordinate their schedules. Only in 1865, when it was too late to matter, did the Confederacy move to supervise its railroads effectively. |
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