Rate Upping

Led by George Blow Elliott, president of Atlantic Coast Line, the railroads of the South last week joined those of the East and West in a united movement for the general freight rate increase projected last month in Chicago (TIME, May 18, June i). Meeting in Manhattan's Hotel Biltmore, the executives of all the important carriers of the land appointed a committee to petition the Interstate Commerce Commission within a week for blanket authority to up rates 15%. The committee: New Haven's Pelley, Milwaukee's Scandrett, Louisville & Nashville's Cole.

Though they were asking for a 15% rate increase on all freight as an emergency measure to offset lost revenues and thereby avert wage cuts, defaults and receiverships, the carriers intimated they had no idea of using such wholesale authority, if granted, to an extreme. Many rates, particularly those on short-haul goods for which trucks compete, would not be changed. What the roads were really after was I. C. C. permission to adjust rates of their own choosing within a 15% range, thereby increasing their operating revenue by 10%. To avoid protracted arguments over individual rates, they consolidated their plan into one blanket petition for a horizontal increase for all lines.

The I. C. C. was "sympathetic" toward the carriers' plight and ready to speed up hearings on what promised to be its biggest case of the decade. At the earliest, however, no final decision was expected before autumn.

Last week the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce swung to the carriers' support, contended that a rate increase would turn the economic trend.. And to the I. C. C. from the North Dakota Board of Railroad Commissioners came the first formal protest against the carriers' proposal on the theory that its authorization "would greatly prolong" the Depression.

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