But the thing has become so awful until this paper can keep still no longer.
Our business men here in Royston--and we suppose it’s the same way in Lavonia, Bowersville, Canon and Bowman--are losing money every day in the week through this giant corporation’s ill-treatment. Our cotton buyers have hundreds of bales of cotton stored here in every conceivable place because they can’t get cars to ship it away.
Our merchants have goods on the road which were shipped to them days, weeks and almost months ago, and are losing sales daily because they can’t get the goods delivered on time.
Sometimes there is no freight train to arrive here for two days at a time. Whose fault this is _The Record_ doesn’t know, but it must be the “Big Guns” who own the road.
Not a freight train has arrived here on time in two months. Thousands of dollars have been lost to the merchants and farmers of this section through the criminal neglect of those who are at the head of this greedy octopus, better known as the Southern Railway, which has Georgia in its power as strongly as ever a boa constrictor of South Africa encircled its victim.
How long? Oh Lord! How long, will this thing last?
Hasn’t Georgia’s Railroad Commission some power to do something for the people of Georgia in this matter? If they haven’t they might as well close up shop and go home and try and find some calling more suitable to their respective talents, provided the members of that representative (?) body have any.
The depot agent at this place is as painstaking and gentlemanly as any railroad official in Georgia, but is helpless. He is worked to death for want of sufficient help. He is doing the work of two men.
From the section boss to the highest official on the line in question--the Elberton Air Line--that’s the road we’re talking about--the pay is less by one third than it should be and not half enough help is employed in any of the departments.
If the crew on the freight train that runs on this road were animals, we could indict the authorities for cruelty to animals, but as they are only human beings there is no law to cover the case. More’s the pity. There’s something wrong with the law when it allows a greedy corporation to work its men to death.