already been replaced and officials of the individual roads have given him assurance that the terms of his order will be carried out, and it is being done. Within the past two years, 225 additional steel cars have been purchased, and there are 65 steel underframe, 267 steel reinforced and 98 wooden cars less in service. There are already under construction, during the year 1928, 239 additional steel cars and 80 steel motor cars. It is evident, therefore, that legislation proposed in the bill under consideration would require a large number of steel cars only where neither necessity or hazard seems to warrant, and involve a large expenditure and waste of present equipment without real benefit. As the committee of course knows, the act of July 28, 1916, requires that railway postal clerks and numerous officials of the Postal Service shall be carried without additional compensation. In other words, they are carried free, although the railroads have the same liability toward them as exists toward passengers. They have special facilities in the apartments, which are equipped with individual toilets, lavatory, separate tanks for ice and drinking water; clothes closets, arranged for their comfort and convenience, and which are not only furnished but require daily attention. The existing law with reference to postal cars and the authority of the Postmaster General will be found in the act of July 28, 1916, which reads as follows: All cars or parts of cars used for the Railway Mail Service shall be of such construction, style, length, and character, and furnished in such manner as shall be approved by the Postmaster General and shall be constructed, fitted up, maintained, heated, lighted, and cleaned by and at the expense of the railroad companies. While practically no hazard exists on secondary lines, branch and short-line trains, it is an important fact that the hazard to all railway postal clerks, including the 2,800, as well as passengers, over 860,000,000 traveling annually, and 331,000 train employees, has been very greatly reduced and minimized through general railroad management in various directions of transportation safety through enormous operating expenditures and capital investment. Safety organizations exist on every road. General safety of travel in trains has been the result. To show the large expenditures for general improvements contributing to this result, attention may be called to the operating expenditures for the year 1927 amounting to $351,131,929 for maintenance of way and structures, $427,061,838 for maintenance of equipment. Similar operating expenditures are going on from year to year. In the past five years, an additional capital investment has been made of $4,338,721,000 to provide for additional track, heavier rail, signal systems, stronger bridges, switching and yard improvements, steel equipment, etc. The railroads are not opposing steel equipment, and this is evident from the rapid progress made in that direction as to all classes of cars. They are building no other type of passenger or mail equipment, and have not been doing so for some years. As an indication of the effectiveness of these measures and the greater transportation safety resulting, it may be noted the Interstate Commerce Commission report for the year 1926, that the col lision fatalities on the railroads of the country compared to 1907 were reduced 80 per cent, and the collision injuries reduced 75 per cent. Senator PHIPPS. Is that compared with 1927? Mr. MACK. 1926 compared with 1907-20 years. Reference to this report shows the number of collision fatalities in 1926 was 149, of which 38 were passengers, 107 employees, 2 under contract, and 2 not classified, yet there were 860,343,000 passengers carried in that year. Since this memorandum was prepared I have learned by inquiry at the Interstate Commerce Commission that a very remarkable showing occurred for the year 1927. In the first six months of 1927 there were 12 passengers killed on all the railroads of the United States, and for the first 11 months, the figures not being available for the final month of that year, there were but five passengers killed in collision accidents, four being derailments. The greater number of casualties on the railroads occur from other causes. In the same year 67 fatalities occurred when persons came in contact with structures, 447 getting on or off cars and locomotives, 2,442 in highway crossing accidents, 2,579 being struck and run over, but of the total fatalities, including employees and trespassers, only 5 per cent represent those occurring in train accidents. Railroad managements appear to be fulfilling their responsibility effectively in this direction. Hazard does not exist alone in railway transportation service and relatively is becoming slight, yet attention seems always to have been directly centered upon it. It may not be particularly pertinent to this legislation, but bearing upon the question of hazard, it is noted that industrial accidents in the State of New York where statistical information is available, shows that the number of accidents reported to the industrial commission in that State alone in 1927 was 521,624, of which 295,429 occurred in the city of New York. In 1926 in that State, 99,673 accident cases were closed under the compensation law, of which 1,110 were deaths, 17,368 permanent injuries. Two hundred and fifty fatalities occurred from falls alone. In the present day one can not consider the matter of hazard to human life without thought of the constantly increasing fatalities in automobile accidents occurring on our streets and highways. For the same year in which I have referred to railroad casualties, 1926, there were 23,264 fatalities in automobile accidents, the highest of record having occurred in the four weeks ended November 5, 1927, 686 in number. The increase in such fatalities has almost doubled from 12.6 per 100,000 of population in 1922, to 22.4 fatalities for the year ended February 25, 1928. If we make comparisons, it will be found that about three times as many persons were killed in automobile accidents in the city of Washington, as passengers killed in collision accidents on all the railroads of the United States in the year 1926. There is another very important practical matter for consideration in connection with the provisions of Senate bill 2107. It has been pointed out that most of the 2,382 steel cars which the railroads would be required to purchase under this bill would be for operation on secondary lines, branch lines, or short lines. This class of railroad service, particularly the branch line and short line service, is in a precarious situation. How long any or, in fact, all of it will continue can not be foretold. There was a decrease of passenger revenue in the single year 1927 compared to 1920 of $310,247,149, or 24 per cent, resulting from inroads of automobile use, private and commercial, and the other chief decline in this passenger revenue is from falling off in local traffic, particularly on branch lines, where, perhaps, to-day there is not a train of this character in the South or West that pays one-half of operating cost and many of them not one-fourth. Every railroad has already been obliged to discontinue many such trains, and it seems certain that hundreds more in a very few years must be abandoned. In dealing with this situation they have first reduced the number of cars per train, then the number of trains, in some instances have substituted motor cars where steam trains were no longer warranted, and then, in turn, many trains have been finally taken off. A statute requiring purchase of a large number of steel cars for mail service on such trains would not only require scrapping of present serviceable equipment with the waste involved, but the very steel cars purchased would probably not be needed within a few years, and expenditure required by the legislation would, in all probability in many instances, hasten withdrawal of such trains as an alternative to the purchase of equipment under the prevailing conditions. Even where trains are continued there is no assurance that the Post Office Department will not discontinue the use of the mail apartments from time to time, as mail service has been discontinued on over 1,800 trains in recent years. It would be a pretty serious matter to compel the purchase of equipment while railroads are facing such a problem in dealing with train service on branch and short-line railroads. Equipment, of course, is but one item which the railroads are obliged to consider in the use of capital investment. They must take into account, with relative values, all elements in connection with railroad service, having responsibilities which can not be escaped. It would seem unwise to enact a law which would compel so large an expenditure as here involved, which in reality discriminates in favor of steel cars, for certain special purposes in which a very small number of persons will be carried, and where practically no hazard is involved. So far as postal equipment is concerned, it is our view that it should be worked out in the spirit of cooperation which has existed, as the facts show, and now exists with the Postmaster General under existing law. There has been no indifference or negligence which would seem to require a resort to legislation in view of what has been done and is being done and under circumstances which have been set out. The CHAIRMAN. Have you anything to show the number of trainmiles operated on the branch lines and short-line roads? Mr. MACK. No, sir; I have not those figures, Senator. The CHAIRMAN. This equipment which you speak of as being necessary to scrap is wholly unavailable for any other use? Mr. MACK. Yes; because we have an adequate number of cars to-day. Such cars as are being purchased of course are steel cars. Our experience shows that we are constantly having a surplus of cars as it is, and there is no use for these mail cars with the withdrawal of branch-line service. We are simply scrapping additional cars even now; and this bill would of course mean we would have to scrap the remainder. There are some steel underframe cars, I have said about 600, which might perhaps be converted into baggage cars if there were development of increased express business, but the fact is that the express business is declining throughout the country. I think the decrease last year was 2 or 3 per cent. It is not growing; it is declining. There is not half the baggage carried that was formerly the case. So we have little or no use and would have little or no use for these cars if we were obliged to purchase new steel cars to take their place. The CHAIRMAN. Where the gas train is substituted for the steam train, those cars are of the same construction? Mr. MACK. Yes, sir. There are 80 of them under construction, or, rather, under order, in 1928. The CHAIRMAN. Those are not apartment mail cars in any instance? Mr. MACK. Some of them. Our own line has undertaken to meet the branch-line situation by having two-car trains, one motor car with passenger equipment, and a trailer with 15-foot mail apartment and the remainder baggage. But in our experience there is not sufficient business to keep all of those trains going, and we really do not know what to do with the equipment. It is a very serious problem for the branch lines. There is no question about it. Senator FRAZIER. I understood the gentleman to say that there were some 290 steel cars under construction at the present time? Mr. MACK. Yes, sir. Senator FRAZIER. What cars will they replace? Mr. MACK. They will replace some of these cars. Mr. MACK. No, sir; steel underframe cars. These steel cars that are now being purchased are under the terms of the Postmaster General's order which I described and are used in connection with steel passenger equipment; that is, between the engine and the steel baggage or some other car, where the majority of the cars in the train are of steel. These cars meet all the objections which the Postmaster General raised to the use of steel underframe cars. They are very good, high-grade cars, these steel underframe cars. Ten years ago they were considered something very strong and fine, and they are very good to-day. The underframes are all steel and the end reinforcements are steel, just the same as steel cars; but the Post Office Department objects to the wooden sheathing as not furnishing the same protection to the clerks as the all-steel cars, and they all run in fast and heavy trains. Senator STECK. I would like to ask the witness to what extent the proviso on page 2, beginning at line 7, would protect or affect the independent short-line railroads. Mr. MACK. I discussed that feature with a representative of the short lines, and I am informed that approximately 60 short lines would come under the exceptions in this bill, involving perhaps 100 Of course "short line" would have to be defined, because the act itself does not define short lines; and if left to the Post Office Department or to the Interstate Commerce Commission I apprehend cars. they would consider short lines those roads which have annual earnings of $1,000,000 or less. But that is, of course, conjecture. A great number of these cars might be required on the trunk lines of the country, Class I roads, for use in service very similar to the short lines. (Witness excused.) Mr. THOм. I wish next to present Mr. P. J. Schardt, assistant to the vice president of the Southern Railway. STATEMENT OF P. J. SCHARDT, ASSISTANT TO VICE PRESIDENT, SOUTHERN RAILWAY, WASHINGTON, D. C Mr. SCHARDT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I shall be very brief. Mr. Mack has presented quite fully the general views of the railroads on the proposed legislation as embodied in Senate bill No. 2107. It will be my purpose merely to supplement his general discussion of the subject with a brief statement of some tangible evidence of the efforts by the managements of the individual railroads to provide every possible safeguard for the protection of life and limb for the men who are obliged to ride trains in the discharge of their duties, for the traveling public, and for those who in any way have occasion to use the right of way, or pass upon or over the property of the railroad company. The railroad with which I am associated, in harmony with the policy of other railroads, never relaxes in its campaign to drive home the principle that It is the duty of every man to protect himself and those associated with him from accidents which may result in injury or death. Safety is of the first importance in the discharge of duty. In line with these principles, the management of the Southern Railway system has authorized the expenditure of over $1,600,000 since 1923 for the purchase of new steel R. P. O. cars and mail apartment cars, and over $100,000 to standardize steel underframe 30-foot and 15-foot apartment cars in conformity with department specifications. In that time it has retired from mail service 61 wood mail cars. At the present time there are 683 railway postal clerks assigned to mail trains operated by the Southern system. Of these 481, or 70 per cent, work in steel cars; 154, or 221⁄2 per cent, in steel underframe cars, and 51 clerks, or 72 per cent, in wood steel reinforced cars. Under date of May 13, 1927, the Postmaster General promulgated order No. 5438 amending sections 1580 and 1583 of the Postal Laws and Regulations of 1924, so as to require that mail apartments intended for operation in trains where a majority of the cars in the train are of steel construction, shall be of steel, and that steel underframe mail apartment cars shall not be operated between adjoining steel cars or between steel car adjoining and the engine, and in other ways prescribing regulations looking to the better safeguarding of the clerks in the cars and the mails carried in them. As the result of a conference with the Postmaster General and officials of the Second Assistant's bureau, railroad companies were given until |