BUTLER COUNTY RAILROAD. The Butler County Railroad Company is owned by the Brooklyn Cooperage Company, while most of the timber land which it reaches is owned by the Great Western Land Company. All are subsidiary corporations of the American Sugar Refining Company, the cooper-age company manufacturing chiefly sugar barrels. The railroad company was incorporated in September, 1905, and its capital stock issued and outstanding amounts to $1.63,500, issued for the tracks and equipment which it then acquired from the cooperage company. It is also indebted to the cooperage company in the sum of $50,000.

The tap line is in two disconnected sections. One connects with the Iron Mountain and the Frisco at a point in or near Poplar Bluff, Mo., known as Linstead, and extends to and into the plant of the cooperage company which is within three-fourths of a mile of the two trunk lines. The other section is the principal track of the tap line and connects with the Iron Mountain at Lowell Junction, about 72 miles from Poplar Bluff, running thence southward about 7 miles to a point known as Baileys, with a branch about 3 miles in length connecting with the main stem at Rossville. At Baileys a connection is made with the unincorporated tracks of the cooperage company that run through its timber and are used largely in logging operations. Over a considerable portion of this unincorporated track the tap line has a trackage right. It also enjoys the privilege of running its trains over the Iron Mountain from Lowell Junction to Poplar Bluff, for which it pays 65 cents a train-mile for 25 cars. The equipment consists of 2 locomotives, 2 passenger coaches, 3 cabooses, and about 1.00 freight and log cars.

The timber is all hardwood and the logs are loaded on the cars by the employees of the cooperage company and hauled by its locomotives to a connection with the track of the tap line. The tap line then hauls the cars over its own rails to Lowell Junction, then over the Iron Mountain to Linstead and over its own track for a fraction of a mile to the mill., where they are unloaded by the cooperage company. A charge of 1 cent to 1-1/2 cents per 100 pounds, amounting approximately to $4 per car, is made by the tap line against the cooperage company for the log movement to the mill, being the regular manufacturing rate tinder the Missouri distance tariff. The tap line switches the loaded cars from the mill to the tracks of the Frisco or Iron Mountain, a distance in each case of less than 1 mile. It receives from the trunk lines an allowance of from 2 to 5 cents per 100 pounds. The rates from points on the tap line, including the mill at Linstead, are in all cases 2 cents higher than the rates of the trunk lines from Poplar Bluff, excepting to New Orleans and New York, where the most of the cooperage company's shipments actually move; to those points the Poplar Bluff rates apply from points on the tap line.

The traffic of the Butler County Railroad for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1910, was chiefly forest products, amounting in the aggregate to 184,688 tons, as against 2,475 tons of other freight. Of the first figure, 107,527 tons was logs and cooperage material, furnished by the controlling interests; 77,161 tons of logs, bolts, piles, ties, and lumber were moved for outsiders, but all of the timber came from lands of the Great Western Land Company. The 2,475 tons of miscellaneous freight included 1,195 tons of inbound machinery and coal for the proprietary companies. The passenger revenue for the same year was $4,104.22. The tap line operates three mixed trains in each direction daily between Linstead, where the plant is located, and Melville, a point on the unincorporated track south of Baileys. Two of these trains are said to be used principally for passenger business.

There are several independent industries on the tracks of the Butler County Railroad near Poplar Bluff or Linstead which secure their timber material from the Great Western Land Company, the tap line switching their product to the trunk lines. These industries lease their factory sites from the cooperage company; and the admission appears of record that the leases were made for the purpose of securing the traffic to the tap line so that it would obtain divisions thereon. There are also a few independent producers of ties, handle bolts, etc., that team their logs to the sawmills and ship out their products over the main track of the tap line into Lowell Junction. But such shippers pay either the local rate of the tap line in addition to the charge of the trunk line or pay a through rate that is 2 cents higher than the rate from Poplar Bluff.

This is a striking example of the advantages that an industry can get out of a tap line that it owns and holds out as a common carrier. The sugar company, as is well known, has important refining establishments at New Orleans and New York, and it is to its interest to have all the hardwood along the Butler County Railroad made avail-able to it. The rates to New York and New Orleans are therefore so adjusted as to induce movements to those points and restrict movements to other points.

For its service in moving the products of the cooperage company's mill to the Iron Mountain and to the Frisco, a distance of less than 1 mile, this tap line may lawfully receive out of the rate nothing beyond a reasonable switching charge, which we fix at $1.50 per car.