essential justice of such guarantees and their
great influence and significance as elements in the present financial
and industrial situation of the country. Indeed, one of the strong
arguments for assuming control of the railroads at this time is the
financial argument. It is necessary that the values of railway
securities should be justly and fairly protected and that the large
financial operations every year necessary in connection with the
maintenance, operation and development of the roads should, during the
period of the war, be wisely related to the financial operations of the
Government. Our first duty is, of course, to conserve the common
interest and the common safety and to make certain that nothing stands
in the way of the successful prosecution of the great war for liberty
and justice, but it is also an obligation of public conscience and of
public honor that the private interests we disturb should be kept safe
from unjust injury, and it is of the utmost consequence to the
Government itself that all great financial operations should be
stabilized and cooerdinated with the financial operations of the
Government. No borrowing should run athwart the borrowings of the
federal treasury, and no fundamental industrial values should anywhere
be unnecessarily impaired. In the hands of many thousands of small
investors in the country, as well as in national banks, in insurance
companies, in savings banks, in trust companies, in financial agencies
of every kind, railway securities, the sum total of which runs up to
some ten or eleven thousand millions, constitute a vital part of the
structure of credit, and the unquestioned solidity of that structure
must be maintained.

The Secretary of War and I easily agreed that, in view of the many
complex interests which must be safeguarded and harmonized, as well as
because of his exceptional experience and ability in this new field of
governmental action, the Honorable William G. McAdoo was the right man
to assume direct administrative control of this new executive task. At
our request, he consented to assume the authority and duties of
organizer and Director General of the new Railway Administration. He has
assumed those duties and his work is in active progress.

It is probably too much to expect that even under the unified railway
administration which will now be possible sufficient economies can be
effected in the operation of the railways to make it possible to add to