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WHAT IS A TAP LINE? Originally it was usual to refer to all the rails used in a lumber mill operation as a " logging road." But since the practice of making allowances to the lumber companies west of the Mississippi River has crept in, and more particularly within the last four or five years, the rails leading from the mill to or through the timber,, and usually to a logging camp or company town, have come to be known as the main line or " tap line." The spurs radiating into the forest from that point or from other points along the main line are now usually referred to as the " logging road."
The tap lines shown on the record differ from one another in details and no description of one would be an altogether accurate description of another. It is possible, nevertheless, by a general description to give a fairly accurate impression of their physical characteristics and their relations to the proprietary lumber companies:
TAP LINES GENERALLY DESCRIBED.
Some new mills have been erected within the last four or five years. In most of these cases the tap lines were constructed in the name of an incorporated railroad company, owned, however, either by or in the interest of the lumber company. But in the great majority of the cases on the record the present incorporated railroad company operates tracks that were originally constructed and operated directly by the lumber company as a facility in its manufacture of lumber. Later the title to them was turned over to the newly incorporated railroad company in exchange for its stock. In all these cases the railroad company is directly owned by the lumber company or n its interest. In most instances the tap line was incorporated for no other purpose than to give the lumber company the color of a legal right to receive allowances. Witness after witness, as heretofore stated, broadly and definitely admitted at the hearing that the sole object in incorporating his tap line was to obtain and legalize the allowances. For the Bernice & Northwestern a witness said:
“Well, we really chartered to get the divisions; we had to charter before we could get them. We chartered in order to get the divisions.”
This statement was not made under the stress of cross-examination but in reply to an inquiry as to why his road had been incorporated. It is illustrative of many similar statements made on behalf of other tap lines; they were incorporated, in other words. not to serve the public, but primarily to get an allowance. When the Rock Island lines were pushed into this territory already served by other lines it entered upon an active contest to share in the lumber traffic by offering higher allowances or divisions than the other lines were paying. A standard form of contract was prepared to which both the lumber company and its tap line were usually parties. One of its requirements was that the lumber company must route not less than 50 per cent of its traffic over the Rock Island lines. An-other clause, inserted as a protection against possible future troubles and obligations, provides that in case this Commission or a state commission or any court should declare the contract unlawful or the allowances excessive, the former should at once become void, and in either event no claim for damages should result against the Rock Island. It appeared at the hearing that in many cases the lumber companies had incorporated their tap lines on the advice of the Rock Island or other public carriers serving this territory. For the Sabine & Northern Railroad, Mr. Walden said:
We incorporated because the traffic department of the Kansas City Southern advised me that it was the opinion of their legal department that they could not pay divisions * * * unless the roads were legally incorporated as common carriers, and in order to get these divisions we incorporated.
The record is filled with similar admissions by other witnesses representing other tap lines. Counsel for one trunk line in order, as he explained, to get the fact of record, said that his legal department some years ago advised the traffic department that it would be illegal to pay an allowance or a division of any kind to an unincorporated tap line, but that it would be legal to pay a division to an incorporated tap line. Subsequently, his traffic department advised the lumber interests that had been receiving allowances that they would no longer be paid unless their lines were incorporated, and new lines were advised that they had to be incorporated.
But, generally speaking, there was no change after the tap line was incorporated, either in its physical characteristics or in the extent or nature of the service that it performed for the lumber company by which it was owned. The tracks and equipment of the lumber company were simply turned over to an incorporated railroad company and the work of the controlling industry went on precisely as it had when the tracks and equipment were operated directly by it. The only dissimilarity that exists between tap lines that receive allowances and those that do not is that the former are incorporated while the latter are not; and this dissimilarity resulted in many instances from the suggestion of the public carriers that wished to have some appearance of a legal basis for securing the traffic. In a number of cases the tap line is well built; in other cases there has been an improvement in that regard since its incorporation. In some cases the tap line has been extended beyond the immediate needs or requirements of the industry through the forests of the lumber company to a connection with a second trunk line. In most of these cases it frankly appears that this expense was not incurred until after the trunk line had given the lumber interest the assurance of better allowances than it was receiving from the trunk line on which its mill was built. The record makes it clear that the trunk lines were bidding for the traffic by offers of increased allowances, and that the lumber companies, the real beneficiaries, were selling their traffic for the allowances.
The main or tap line in a few instances has acquired a part of its right of way by condemnation proceeding. Ordinarily, however, the lumber company not only owned the real estate where the mill is, but all the property through which its tap line runs. In many cases care has been taken to deed the right of way to the incorporated railroad company; but in a large number of cases the tap line enjoys only a lease of its right of way. In some cases this is a tenancy at will, no written lease having been executed. In a number of cases the public carrier has supplied the rails used by the tap line on a nominal rental basis; in some cases both the rails and the equipment are owned by the lumber company and are leased to its tap line. The result in such cases is that the tap line, even though incorporated as a common carrier, has no really permanent character. The record discloses several instances where they have not only abandoned their operations but where the rails have been torn up. The Ouachita & Northwestern Railroad is such an instance. Fourteen miles of the main line of this tap line were taken up notwithstanding the fact that it had served a number of good farms and had moved some agricultural products for the farmers. When asked how their traffic was now being moved, the witness for this line said that the farmers hauled it for themselves over the country roads. There was another small mill on this tap line, said to belong to outside interests; it is now draying its lumber to the public carrier that moves it to the markets. The Kendall & Sulphur Springs Railway went out of business as a common carrier after its pine lands had been cut over. It is still operated, however, as a facility of the lumber company, which is now manufacturing hardwood lumber. The explanation made is that the public carriers declined to give it allowances on hardwood, and it gave up the claim of being a common carrier, although it had some traffic from outside interests. There are other cases of tap lines operated as an alleged common carrier that were bodily removed when the forests had been cut over, and reconstructed through other forests of the lumber company. The record is not free from instances where the mill, rails, equipment, and all the other property of a lumber company were removed to a new territory. With a few exceptions there is scarcely a tap line on the record that would not necessarily cease its operations if the lumber mill of the proprietary lumber company were moved or ceased to run. Instances are shown of record where the tap line stopped running while the mill was temporarily shut down.
A few of the tap lines are incorporated as common carriers of freight and not of passengers. In most cases a caboose is the only car available for passengers; but several of the lines named on the record operate one or more passenger trains daily. A few run a passenger coach in their log and lumber trains; but many have no real passenger traffic and make no charge against the farmers and others who occasionally ride on the locomotive or in the caboose.
Different lumber companies move their logs from their forests to their mills in different ways. Ordinarily all the operations in the forest are conducted by the lumber company; the trees are felled by its employees and the logs are usually loaded on the cars by its steam loaders. Ordinarily they are hauled over the logging road by the lumber company with its logging engines to the point where commences what we have referred to as the incorporated tap line. They are ordinarily hauled thence to the mill by tap-line locomotives. In many cases, however, the tap-line locomotives run up into the forest and haul the log trains over the logging roads to the tap line and thence to the mill. In other cases the lumber company hauls the logs directly from the forest over its logging road and thence under trackage rights over its incorporated tap line to its mill. There are about as many cases where the tap line receives no pay for the trackage rights as there are cases where the lumber company goes through the form of paying it some compensation for the use of its tracks. When its locomotives go into the forest and haul the logs over the logging road to its own rails the incorporated tap line, in the usual case, makes a charge against the lumber company for the service. But ordinarily no charge is made against the lumber company by the tap line for hauling the logs over the incorporated line to the mill. This part of the service is supposed to be covered by the allowances paid to the tap line by the public carriers. In some cases the employees of the tap line participate in loading the logs on the cars in the forest, and in some cases they unload the logs into the pond at the mill. Where this is done the service is supposed to be covered by the charge made by the tap line against the proprietary lumber company. Ordinarily, however, both the loading and unloading are done by employees carried on the pay rolls of the lumber company.
It is only in a few cases that any waybill or bill of lading is issued to cover the movement of the logs to the mill. This is true even where the rates are constructed in the form of milling-in-transit rates. In many cases the conductor of the logging train does not even hand in a slip to indicate the quantity of logs brought in to the mill. When the manufactured lumber goes out, billing is issued by a tap line or lumber company employee and in most cases dated on the day the lumber is tendered to the public carrier for transportation. This is done by an agent of the tap line who is sometimes exclusively employed by it, but is more often an employee of the lumber company; in many cases he is also the agent of the trunk line at the junction point. When no allowance is made, the mill is shown as the point of origin; but if the lumber is destined to an interstate point it gets an allowance and the other end of the tap line is shown on the billing as the point of origin.
There are cases shown of record where tap lines receive allowances, in one case as high as 4 cents per 100 pounds, on lumber as to which they perform no service whatever, either on the logs in or the lumber out. In another case the tap line does not reach the mill, but the logs are taken across a river by a conveyer running on a cable. The finished lumber is handled out of the mill by the trunk line. Nevertheless the tap line receives an allowance of 4 cents per 100 pounds on the theory that the lumber has originated at the other end of the tap line in the woods. When questioned, the witness for this road frankly admitted that his tap line performed no service what-ever on the outbound lumber and that the allowance received was not paid to it for any transportation service but was a payment " for developing the traffic." In another somewhat similar case the unincorporated logging road reaches the river and the logs are floated thence across to the mill. The lumber is hauled by the incorporated tap line from the mill to the trunk line, a distance of 2-1/2 miles. Out of an 18-cent rate to St. Louis the tap line, which has no outside traffic, receives 4 cents for its haul or twice the rate under the state switching tariff, while the trunk line retains 14 cents for a haul of nearly 400 miles to destination. In all but a few exceptional cases the mill is located within an ordinary switching distance from the tracks of a public carrier and the latter is therefore able readily to handle the lumber out of the mill without the intervention of the tap line.
In general it may be said of all but a few of these incorporated tap lines that they have no real freight stations and are not otherwise equipped properly to handle less than carload freight or general merchandise; all claims to the contrary are shown by the record to be a mere pretense in most cases, and this is generally understood. Points on tap lines shown on the tariffs can often be located by no visible land-marks and have no real existence. Their so-called general offices are usually in the offices of the lumber companies; their accounts are very often kept by the bookkeepers of the lumber companies. Their cash often is kept in the same bank account with the cash of the lumber company, and in some cases the lumber company's checks are used for paying tap line bills. Not infrequently the allowances are paid by the public carriers directly to the lumber company for the account of the tap line, there being no other way to handle the transaction, and in practically all cases the officers of the tap line are also officers of the lumber company and the salaries paid to them are ordinarily shared in by each company. The free passes that they receive in their capacity as railroad officials are used by them when traveling in the interest of the lumber company. This was frankly admitted.
One feature in the distinction drawn by lumber companies between their incorporated tap lines and their unincorporated logging roads must not be overlooked. As just explained, when the tap line does not own its right of way it usually holds it under a formal or informal lease from the lumber company. But the lumber company never surrenders its ownership and absolute control over the logging roads, and there is a definite purpose in that course. It is ordinarily explained that the logging roads are more or less temporary in character, while the tap line is built in a more permanent way. But this explanation, while having some foundation in fact, is not complete. In most cases the tap line extends through lands of the proprietary lumber company that have already been cleared of pine and where hardwood only remains, or through pine forests that for some reason it is not lumbering; the logging roads reach beyond into its forests where its lumber operations are being conducted and often lie in the direction of forests owned by outsiders. In the usual case the incorporated tap line is not so located as to be easily available to outside interests, while the unincorporated logging roads often closely approach the forests that are owned by others. While Mr. Foster, president of the Malvern & Freeo Valley Railroad, the tap line of the Wisconsin & Arkansas Lumber Company, was on the stand, he was asked why the tracks of his incorporated line ended at Landers and why the very extensive logging road of his company had not also been turned over to his incorporated company. He first declined to answer, but when told that the question was a proper one and that he must answer, he replied:
The reason we did not incorporate the tap line into the timber was because we wanted to control the timber in that section of the country so no outsider could come in and acquire it.
Other witnesses admitted that a lumber company, by retaining the direct ownership of the logging roads, acquires a virtual monopoly of the adjacent forests. Moreover, it is demonstrated by the whole record that the tap lines being constructed by and in the interest of their respective lumber companies are not only laid out but are operated so as best to serve the interests of the lumber investment. |
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