XIV COST OF RAILWAY REGULATION Nothing in the record of railway development in the United States has increased with the rapidity of the cost of their regulation under the act creating the Interstate Commerce Commission. Since the first Commission, composed of Judge Thomas M. Cooley, of Michigan, chairman, William R. Morrison, of Illinois, Augustus Schoonmaker, of New York, Aldace F. Walker of Vermont, and Walter L. Bragg, of Alabama, Commissioners, and Edward E. Moseley, Secretary, and Prof. Henry C. Adams, Statistican, to date the yearly expenditures on its account have been as follows: From this it appears that the cost of regulating American railways has increased ten fold in twenty years. Of this only $34,000 is chargable to the increase in number and compensation for the Commission under the Hepburn Act. Of the balance it was charged by Representative Adair of Indiana in a speech in Congress last January that $450,000 annually was for "Interstate Commerce Detectives." XV STATISTICS OF In the following review of the mileage and traffic statistics of the principal divisions of Europe and other countries, the information has been derived from the latest official sources wherever available, and where estimates have been resorted to as noted they have been Total... United States.. *State only. 255,700 $26,780,369,418 $913,630,350 $1,741,848,683 $246,062,543 $2,927,596,573 1908 230,494 a 12,840,091,462 566,832,746 1,655,419,108 171,554,135 2,393,805,989 †Including Siberian. a Exclusive of switching and terminal companies (1,626 miles). computed from ascertained facts. From the data here furnished it is possible to arrive at a close approximation of the passenger and freight rates in the countries. named. The average passenger journey and freight haul in the United States is nearly twice as long as the average for the rest of FOREIGN RAILWAYS the world. In comparing net results it should be remembered that rentals and taxes should be deducted from the American figures. For further details of the railways of Canada, the United Kingdom and the German Empire, for which complete statistics are avail able, the reader is referred to succeeding pages. Here the writer would acknowledge the courtesy of the Railway Department of Canada for advance copies of the Dominion railway statistics for 1909. |