We have

Mr. MANSFIELD. Here is a point that might be material. heard a great deal of propaganda emanating from railroad sources, especially from The Railway Age.

If you gentlemen have been reading The Railway Age for a number of years you will have found that in some issues it criticizes the waterway improvements under the Board of Engineers because the waterways are not handling any commerce.

In the last issue they are criticizing waterways because they are handling too much commerce, and interfering with the railroads. It seems that it is hard to arrive at a point where it would meet with their approval.

If they are handling too little commerce they are criticized, and if they are handling too much commerce they are also criticized.

I do not know where the editor of The Railway Age would draw the line.

But I want to call attention to the fact that the waterway improvements of this country-and I speak advisedly-have never yet injured any railroad in the United States.

Take the railway statistics. I have here a report for the year ended December 31, 1930, prepared by the railways themselves, from the data embraced in their reports to the Interstate Commerce Commission.

On page 30 there is a map of the United States, showing the groups into which the railways are divided by the Interstate Commerce Commission.

On page 91 of the same volume there is a table showing the business that is transacted by the railways in each of these groups. With the permission of the committee, I would like to insert this particular table in the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, that may be done. (The table referred to is as follows:)

Summary of freight traffic, showing essential assignments, by groups, in 1930 and yearly since 1888

Mr. MANSFIELD. In that connection, Group I of these railroads is in the New England States. Mr. Wigglesworth will know that there are not many navigable inland waterways handling commerce in New England.

We find from this table here that the railroads in New England stood nearly at the bottom of the list in their income and near the top of the list in the charges per ton-mile. This table shows as to New York, Pennsylvania, and northern West Virginia, the group in the same territory where the upper Ohio, the Monongahela, the Hudson, the Delaware and part of the Great Lakes, and the Erie Canal are, which embraces the great volume of inland-waterway traffic, that that group of railroads had the highest pay of any other group in 1930 and the lowest rate per ton-mile on the commerce.

Now, Mr. Chairman, here is a clipping from the United States Daily of August 11, 1931, showing the reports of the railways to the Interstate Commerce Commission, and in point of tonnage carried throughout the country the Pennsylavania Railroad ranked first among the Nation's railroads, during the first quarter, with 35,954,060 tons, and a revenue of $83,025,309. That was the Pennsylvania Railroad.

The New York Central was second, the Baltimore & Ohio was third, the Chesapeake & Ohio was fourth, the Illinois Central was fifth, and the Louisville & Nashville was sixth.

If you will take the maps of those railway systems, you will find that they operate right in the same territory where more than 95 per cent of inland waterway traffic is handled, and those are the railroads that have been the most prosperous. They have handled more business, and the tables show that the rates charged in those groups are less than in those territories where there are no waterways. The highest railroad rates and the least amounts received by the railways are in the groups that operate in my State, where we do not have a pound of freight carried on inland waterways; up in your country, Mr. Williamson, where you have no inland waterway traffic, and in New England, where it is comparatively small, as compared with the interior of the country. I think that is important.

A very large percentage of waterway expenditures now are made largely, and some of them exclusively, for railroad use.

I have tables here prepared by the clerk of our Committee on Rivers and Harbors, taken from the records, showing the amount of car ferriage traffic handled in various ports. I shall not read all of these, but I think it would be important to put them in the record.

We have reference to some seven or eight ports, mostly on Lake Michigan, at some of which almost the entire amount of commerce handled is by car ferriage, and yet the Government has spent every dollar for dredging those ports, and for their maintenance, exclusively for the railway's use.

Then, there are 18,000,000 tons of railway traffic across the Hudson at the port of New York. That is an enormous tonnage. Down at Galveston, in my State, the Government has dredged a channel from Galveston to Port Bolivar, exclusively for the operation of railway car ferriage traffic, for the freight cars and passengers that come into Galveston over the road that runs down over the Bolivar Peninsula. No other traffic uses it at all. The Government spends every dollar for dredging there, and have maintained it for many years.

Mr. COLTON. Do you contemplate that there will be any change in that if the transfer were made?

Mr. MANSFIELD. Railway propaganda is largely responsible for the demand for a change and I merely want to show that the propaganda is not true. I am offering these things to show that it is without foundation, in fact. The railways have been fairly dealt with, and are the principal beneficiaries of waterway improvements.

The railroads prosper more where the waterways prosper. It was the waterways that made the great steel industry. It is the coal that goes down to Pittsburgh over the Monongahela, 30,000,000 tons a year, and the iron ore that is carried down the Great Lakes that has made the steel industry, and the steel industry made the railroads, furnished them with more traffic than any other industry in the world. And that industry to-day is regarded as the barometer of business in this country, and without the waterway transportation we would not have had it.

I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the other members of the committee for their patience in listening to what I have had to say. If there are any other questions I can answer I will be glad to do so.

The CHAIRMAN. We certainly appreciate your kindness, Mr. Mansfield, in advancing all of the information you have given us.