TWENTIETH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 565 



of the Cummins bill, which restored to the Interstate Commerce Com- 

 mission full rate-making and control powers, such as was possessed prior 

 to the war. Unfortunately, after the bill was passed by both houses of 

 congress it was vetoed by the president. Then came the long-drawn-out 

 fight on railroad legislation as to our attitude towards the roads when 

 they are turned back to private ownership. This legislation, aside from 

 the Peace Treaty and League of Nations, is the most important and 

 means more to the American people than anything considered by con- 

 gress since the close of the war. 



Two bills were prepared and introduced in congress, one known as 

 the Cummins bill in the senate, the other as the Esch bill in the house; 

 neither of which were satisfactory. Strong efforts were made to amend 

 them before passing the respective houses in which they were introduced. 

 However, satisfactory progress was not made in this way and the bills 

 were finally passed by their respective houses and reported to a con- 

 ference committee in a form that was very unsatisfactory to the ship- 

 ping public at large. So on December 29th a general conference of rep- 

 resentatives of shippers' organizations was called to meet in Chicago to 

 consider pending railroad legislation and work out if possible some plan 

 to secure important amendments which it was felt should be made to the 

 bills. 



Some two hundred representatives of various shipping interests met 

 in this conference and your association was represented by your attor- 

 ney, Mr. Thorne, and myself. At this conference a legislative committee 

 composed of some twenty-four men, which included Mr. Thorne and your 

 president, was selected to draft a memorial setting forth our position 

 and requesting that certain amendments be made to the bill by the joint 

 conferees, before it was submitted for final passage; this memorial to 

 be presented by the committee to the joint conference committee at 

 Washington who was considering the bill. 



As a result of the efficient work done by this committee while in 

 Washington the transportation board, the enforced consolidation of par- 

 allel lines, the pooling of earnings and other bad features of the bill were 

 eliminated and amended until as it now stands, with the exception of 

 the 5V2 per cent guarantee, I feel that we have a fairly good bill. We 

 have strenuously and consistently opposed the guarantee feature of the 

 bill on the grounds that it removes the incentive to personal initiative 

 and the desire on the part of officials of one line to excel both in service 

 and earnings the other competing lines, and that it is a bad and dan- 

 gerous policy for our government to begin the custom of guaranteeing to 

 private corporations certain dividends. 



Another legislative matter of very great importance to our members 

 and farmers in general was in securing an amendment to the income and 

 excess profit tax law, which exempts individuals and partnerships from 

 the operation of the excess profits tax feature of the old law. 



Under the 1917 law the individual whose income was sufficiently 

 large was required to pay an excess profits tax based on his invested cap- 

 ital as well as an income tax, and this worked a very great hardship on 

 the farmer who bought his land when it was cheap, as under the rulings 



