Excerpt from Railroads and the Citizen: Their Relation This is the comparative measurement in a rough way, of the sum distributed annually by the railroads among holders of their securities; - the sum which goes out into the general circulation of the country through the medium of more than 61 per cent of our citizenship, and when it is remembered that the securities upon which this sum is paid out into the channels of circulation represent more than thirty-one per ecnt of the asset of life insur ance companies, and almost ten per cent of the total deposits in all banks throughout the land, the economic value and social effect of railroad earnings, in so far as the public is most directly con cerned, becomes more clearly, yet not fully apparent;-not fully because there are not included within the more than sixty-one per cent of interested persons heretofore referred to, the holders of fire and accident insurance whose issuing companies have be come important holders also, of such securities. The exact ex tent to which their asset is so invested I do not know, but there is before me sufficient data from Harraman's American Invest ments to pretty clearly indicate that contraction of railroad earnings, would affect, if not jeopardize, a part at least of the asset back of much insurance of that character. Beyond these features of the public direct interest in the mat ter, the employment of labor to produce those things essential to the operation of railroads is a factor of great proportions also. Oi the two billion and seven hundred million dollars of ninety-six per cent of the railroads which were defi nitely analyzed last year or per cent, was paid out for coal alone, to be burned at shops, power stations, stations and in locomotives in the process of operating the roads, for the production of which not less than sixty per cent of the purchase price paid by the roads, or went to the labor eu gaged at the time in producing itg - and it is here in order to say that this estimate of wage proportions is low, being made so by the writer for purpose of conservatism, and that in the district with which I am most familiar the miner receives sixty-seven and six-sevenths (676-7) cents for digging from its bed of deposit one ton of the coal used by railroads, (i. E., run of mine coal), after which it passes through numerous other hands in going from the miner's pick to the railroad cars or locomotives, each of whom receive a daily wage of from down to by whichit is found that in reality about eighty per cent of the cost to ra1lroads of their fuel coal goes to the labor engaged in producing and making it ready for the road's consumption. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.