Our Railroads To-Morrow

Do you chance to recall the story of Frankenstein, of the man-made monster, who, having been created, arose to slay the man who had created him? The railroad to-day is in much the position of the man who created the Frankenstein. Having in no small sense created the modern world, having riveted its very sinews of commerce together, it now stands in apparent danger of collapse. The world over, it is at least in peril of bankruptcy. Everywhere it is in trouble. One of the greatest if not indeed the greatest of factors in our social and commercial structure to-day is flying the signals of distress. Its perplexities are upon all tongues. Their solution seemingly has become the problem of all men. The railroad is almost the single great unsolved economic problem of the entire world to-day.

The sweep of a great war, the debris of men and of human understanding that followed in its wake, the new and independent position of labor everywhere, the vast increases in fuel and in raw material costs--all have contributed to the serious embarrassment of our railroads. But never to their breakdown. Please remember this. It is a common phrase these days to allude to "the breakdown of the railroads." But it is an incorrect phrase, decidedly incorrect.

Even in Russia, where transport conditions to-day are the worst anywhere in the world, there has not been a complete railroad breakdown. The Russian railroads after nearly a decade of overburden are to-day functioning--after a miserable fashion, to be sure, but functioning none the less.

For, truth to tell, a necessary railroad structure may never break down completely. It may descend into the valley of deep woes, it may crawl on its stomach in the despair of seemingly hopeless disease, but it may never quite die. That is out of the possibilities of the thing. Dying, a railroad dying? It must never die. A factory, a merchandising establishment, even a whole town may struggle along fitfully for a number of years and then decide to quit, leaving but a forlorn group of ruins as a memento of vanished enterprise. But a necessary railroad may never quit. When a rail highway of any real importance ceases to operate, civilization itself, begins to crumble. For a railroad is a not alone life but also a life-giver. Upon it depends virtually all the life of the community it serves, not merely commercial life but political and social as well. Which means that the mere suggestion that the railroad structure should cease to function is unthinkable. And here thrusts to the front the vexing problem of how not only to enable it merely to live but to enable it to live in the fullest strength, to grow apace withal, to more than keep pace with the growth of the community that it is designed to serve.