REPORT OF THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION WASHINGTON, D. C., November 1, 1937. To the Senate and House of Representatives: The Interstate Commerce Commission has the honor to submit herewith its fifty-first annual report to the Congress. The period covered by this report extends from November 1, 1936, to October 31, 1937, except as otherwise noted. A statement of appropriations and aggregate expenditures for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1937, is contained in appendix H to this report. TRAFFIC AND EARNINGS OF TRANSPORT AGENCIES The recovery in the traffic and gross earnings of steam railways continued throughout the calendar year 1936 and well into 1937, with some recession in recent months. The freight ton-mile index, adjusted for seasonal variation, for January 1936, was 78.0 percent of the base period average (1923-25) and with small interruption rose to 95.5 in December 1936, and to 99.2 in March 1937. By June it had fallen to 90.0 and for the month of August stood at 85.9. This was, however, above the 81.5 for August 1936. For the 12month period ended with July 1937, the total number of freight ton-miles for class I railways was 368 billions, which was 9.1 percent under the 1923-25 average and 17.7 percent under the 1929 total. The 1923-25 average, although here taken as the base, is to be regarded as less than normal, considering the growth in population and industrial production since that time. If 1936 railway tonnage is compared with what it would have been had it advanced since 1923 in the same proportion as the Nation's economic productivity, a deficiency of nearly 200 million tons in railway freight traffic appears, to be accounted for partly by diversion to other transport agencies, partly by other economic changes, and to some extent possibly by imperfections in the various indices of production or in the statistics of commodities carried. The freight revenue shows a trend somewhat similar to that for the ton-miles, but less favorable because the course of the ton-mile 1 |