Baggage Plan

Before the War, people with hurried, valuable or perishable parcels to ship addressed themselves directly to the American Express Co., the Adams Express Co., or Wells, Fargo & Co. During the War, the Government monopolized railroading and expressing. In 1918 a single new company, the American Railway Express Company, inherited from the Government a monopoly of the express-carrying business of the U. S. The three oldtime companies have valuable stock interests in this temporary express trust, which enormously increases the market value of their own shares. The holdings of Adams Express in American Railway Express stock were estimated last week at $10,904,300 of the total $34,642,000 capital.

Last week President William Benson Storey of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co., Chairman of the Committee on Uniform Express Contracts of American Railway Executives, announced flatly: "We are going to consider within the next week at a meeting in New York whether to go further with the plan or not." The "plan" is for the railroads to assume the $300,000,000 to $400,000,000 annual business of the American Railway Express Company. Later, President Storey declared, rather to the surprise of railroad executives generally, that he had the approval of railroads carrying 75% of the U. S. express traffic, hence he thought the plan would go through.

The list of Chairman Storey's committeemen is formidable: Brigadier General William Wallace Atterbury for the Pennsylvania Railroad; Patrick Edward Crowley for the New York Central; Charles Donnelly for the Northern Pacific; Laurence Aloysius Downs for the Illinois Central; Carl Raymond Gray for the Union Pacific; Edward Jones Pearson for the New York, New Haven & Hartford; Bird M. Robinson for the American Short Lines Association.

The contract between the American Railway Express and the railroads for hauling express expires in February 1929. At that time, according to the contract imposed by the Government, the railroads may exercise a legal option to purchase the American Railway Express at cost less depreciation. Suppose, ruminated Wall Street, the new "invisible" owners of the American Railway Express decline to sell and invent ingenious legal delays. Then the eight railroad masters, aided by legal masters, would reply by simply purchasing express wagons, express trucks, renting express offices for the railroads of the U. S., leaving the American Railway Express with great experience in handling express but with no railroads to haul it.

But Chairman Storey spoke amiably last week about measures "for the protection of the express company." And he also said: "There is plenty of time between now and next February for the railroads to organize their own express business."