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The hidden hand across the sea
WHEN a few weeks ago (CM November 1 1968) I gave an account of attacks on the American Trucking Associations for paying money to politicians it did not seem likely that a companion piece would present itself so quickly. The latest accusation in the USA is this time by the ATA against the railways.
Whether the campaign against road operators achieves permanent success remains to be seen. It will be remembered that it was conducted by a number of interests of which the more important seemed to be the /American Automobile Association. The politicians concerned were those supporting a Bill to increase the permitted widths and weights of lorries on interstate highways.
The first round has gone against the operators. After being passed by the Senate the Bill did not get through the House of Representatives and has therefore lapsed.
However, a report from the USA Department of Transportation regards as inevitable increases in the physical size of long-distance buses and trucks. There are expected to be larger interstate bulk carriers and long multiple-trailer freight units. In view of this Bill is likely to be reintroduced after the new President takes office. While he was still a candidate Mr. Richard Nixon promised the matter fair consideration under his new administration. The subject now falls to be considered by the New Secretary for Transportation, Mr. John Volpe.
In the meantime come revelations about another more extended campaign against the road transport industry in the USA. The responsibility of the railways for the attacks which have now been uncovered has been carefully concealed until recently when another politician, Senator Lee Metcalf, made the facts public in a statement to the Senate.
Experience
The once invisible link in the undercover transaction is said to be the Industrial News Review (INR). This organisation has had long experience in propaganda on behalf of public utilities and some 40 years ago was running a campaign for the power companies who according to a Federal trade commission investigation were paying $84,000 a year. Senator Metcalf has said that INR will not normally disclose the fees it charges and this applies to the work done more recently for the Association of American Railroads (AAR).
The main technique followed in the campaign has been described in Transport Topics, the journal of the ATA. It depends for its success partly on the fact that there are so many newspapers in the USA. Some 11,000 editors all over the country receive each week an editorial service which invariably contains one article in support of whatever issue is important to the railways at that particular time. The opportunity is also taken to criticize road transport and the canals.
Apparently a good many newspapers publish the material they receive in this way without checking its provenance. They may use the text verbatim even with the same heading. The average reader is likely to assume that what is then published as an editorial represents the genuine opinion of the editor who is often a highly regarded figure in the local community.
The next stage of the operation is as ingenious as it is impudent. Press cuttings of the editorials come back to INR and are suitably presented to the Interstate Commerce Commission or other Government bodies as evidence of public opinion. Whether the organizations who receive the material actually accept the reflection as the real thing without further investigation is not recorded.
The allegations which the articles make against road transport are familiar the world over. One article will call for higher taxes on lorries because they are not paying their fair share of road expenditure. The same charge is pressed the following week perhaps for the additional reason that the level of taxation gives road transport an unfair competitive advantage over the railways.
In subsequent handouts the attack is switched to safety. The large number of road accidents is used as a contrast to the situation on the railways where it is claimed that accidents are rare. The report of the collapse of a road bridge is used as a peg on which to hang a similar homily.
Cynicism
British operators with a taste for cynicism may be inclined to say that this kind of indirect campaign on behalf of the railways is hardly necessary in their country where the Government seems prepared without prompting to accept many of the allegations against road transport. It was not so long ago that a report by the Ministry of Transport on road track costs was defending or endeavouring to defend the very high additional taxes on the heavier goods vehicles which were proposed in the original Transport Bill.
The authors of the report gave the impression all the way through that they had been dragged to their desks very much against their will. There was a continued note of protest that the work on track costs within the Ministry had not reached finality. The proper approach to the subject, said the report, "cannot produce answers quickly". It was a difficult approach and "slow to mature" but it was ultimately "the only fruitful one".
Alien
Evidently this brooding agricultural attitude of mind was alien to the energetic Mrs. Barbara Castle. Almost sulkily therefore the report came up with a surprising table which showed how the revenue derived from taxing each form of road transport compared with its share of the cost of the roads. The ratio for cars was 2.1:1; for passenger service vehicles 1.4:1; for light vans 3.3:1; and for heavy goods vehicles 1.8:1.
The table purported to sum up the facts, behind the proposed road haulage charge. Obviously the figures did not bear this out and it might have been unwise for the Government to proceed with the plan for the road haulage charge as though nothing had happened. It was a clever sleight of hand to withdraw the proposal, while not admitting that it was unjustified, and to get twice as much revenue from road transport by increased taxes in the last spring budget.
In comparison with what happens in Britain the taxation on American road users is light. Perhaps the railways feel it necessary to take the matter into their own hands as they have evidently done. The objections by road operators are not so much against the action taken as the methods adopted.
There is nothing wrong in syndicating articles or in publishing them. Criticism can only arise where a deliberate attempt is made to conceal the real authorship. Perhaps because the number of publications is smaller there is less chance in Britain that a vigilant editor would let through a piece of anonymous special pleading.
At least the latest attempt by the railways to beam their case to the Government by the agency of remote satellites has stimulated some choice invective from the road transport side. The associate editor of Transport Topics began a long account of the subject with the well-flavoured accusation that the railways were "once again manipulating a third-party canned editorial service that flagrantly perverts our so-called independent and free-thinking press".
He goes on to speak of the "diaphanous veneer of railroad innocence" (a slight clash of metaphors here). Later he explains "how the AAR has brazenly fired truck-aimed fusillades while it remained safely concealed behind a bankroll-studded bastion of lilywhite innocence".
Senator Metcalf also is rarely at a loss for the descriptive phrase. The railways' dummy organization he denounces alliteratively as one of the "principal prefabricators of public opinion" in the USA, Each package of editorials, he says, "contains one piece which streaks a glossy coat of pristine virtue across the big black diesels of the railroad industry". The progress made by the prorail campaign, says Senator Metcalf, goes to show "that the spoonfed newspapers have swallowed the homogenized choo-choo pabulum freely dished out by the hidden pantry of the railways".
While the railways can inspire such rhetoric there is at least one good reason for keeping them.