The Cordele Dispatch And Daily Sentinel

ENCOURAGING RETURNS

Net earnings of the Southern
Railway in 1923 totaled
$15,136,998 after deductions
for charges, according to the
preliminary earnings statement.
This is equivalent to
$10.11 a share on the $120,
000,000 common stock, as compared
with $4.85 a share in
1922.--News Item.

We are honestly in perfect good
humor and glad that we can report
this news item to our readers. It
applies to one of the great systems
which draws some of its business in
this territory. We are not undertaking
to say how much this line
should be allowed to make. We only
know this is a report that the
Southern doubled its earnings in
1923 over 1922.

It has a business organization of
men who deserve to make advances
in the earnings of their line. Reward
for individual effort in legitimate
direction should come to those
who work. And so an increase in
earnings is deserved.

Let us turn for one moment to
the great army of fellows who made
the business for the Southern--
made their share of it--the farmer,
the fruit grower, the truck grower.
If he could have shown any sort of
increase in earning in 1923 over
1922, we likewise should have been
happy. He needs something he does
not now enjoy in the form of inducement
to go out and make the
crops. Should we dare to intimate
here that if his freight rate on his
commodities had been more reasonable,
he might have had more nearly
a satisfactory showing--for he
could have reached the consumer
with his, more nearly at a price the
consumer could pay. He had to accept
a price for it--because of
freights and other handicaps--that
would not net him an income.

We could quarrel all the time
about these inequalities. Maybe
they will come out somewhere--maybe
the farmer will find some way
to reach his consuming trade. Maybe
he will some day receive a price
that will be his reasonable dividend
for his labors.