o have
the ability to hold up their end in unscrupulous corporate
warfare where, as one railway president expressed it, 'the
greatest liar comes out ahead....'

"Government control will enable railway users to dispense
with the services of such high-priced umpires as Mr. Aldace
F. Walker, as well as of all the other officials of
sixty-eight traffic associations, fruitlessly laboring to
prevent each of five hundred corporations from getting the
start of its fellows, and trying to prevent each of the five
hundred from absorbing an undue share of the traffic. It
appears that each of these costly peace-making attachments
has an average of seven corporations to watch....

"With National ownership the expenditures involved in the
maintenance of traffic associations would be saved and
railway users relieved of a tax that, judging from the
reports of a limited number of corporations of their
contribution towards the support of such organizations, must
annually amount to between $4,000,000 and $5,000,000.

"Of the six hundred corporations operating railways,
probably five hundred maintain costly general offices,
where president, secretary and treasurer pass the time
surrounded by an expensive staff. The majority of such
offices are off the lines of the respective corporations, in
the larger cities, where high rents are paid and great
expenses entailed, that proper attention may be given to
bolstering or depressing the price of the corporation's
shares, as the management may be long or short of the
market. So far as the utility of the railways is concerned,
as instruments of anything but speculation such offices and
officers might as well be located in the moon, and their
cost saved to the public....

"Railways spend enormous sums in advertising, the most of
which National ownership would save, as it would be no more
necessary to advertise the advantages of any particular line
than it is to advertise the advantages of any given mail
route.... A still greater expense is involved in the
maintenance of freight and passenger offices off the
respective lines, for the purpose of securing a portion of
competitive traffic. In this way vast sums are expended in
the payment of rents and the salari