Mahlon Pitney

“ In the case before us, if the earning capacity of the railroad, present and prospective, really is as small as appellant claims, it may be doubted whether the road is worth what it cost. But it is sufficient for the present to say that the experimental period was too brief; there is too little showing of an effort to develop traffic along the line of the road from property other than that of complainant; and conditions during the entire period covered by the testimony have been too abnormal to enable us to say that the Commission's rates are confiscatory. ”

“ But, as yet, there has been no serious effort to develop traffic even from that country, aside from complainant's own properties. If the road was built rather as a branch of the Illinois Central, and with a view to extending it into a more lucrative territory, any extra cost of construction attributable to this is hardly to be accounted as a part of the fair value devoted to the use of the timber traffic. The circumstances that a road may have been unwisely built, in a locality where there is not sufficient business to sustain it, may be taken into account. ”

“ Its traffic consists almost wholly of shipments of logs in carload lots from points along the line to the terminus at Batesville.
Pending the construction of the road, the Batesville Southwestern Railroad Company was organized as a corporation to take over the property, but the road remained in the hands of Darnell as lessee. In April, 1912, he established and promulgated a tariff providing a uniform rate for freight on logs in carload lots, with a minimum of 4,500 feet, regardless of the kind or character of the timber ”