The lines owned and operated by strong British companies are quite the most prosperous in the country: many of them were fortunate in their choice of locality, each of three climbers of the Serra do Mar for example remaining the only negotiable link of the coast with interior regions: the Brazilian Government, in common with certain of the other countries where Federal control of transportation has been tried, has reaped small financial reward from lines officially operated. In an exposition of Brazilian railway conditions made before the Rio Legislature in October, 1915, Elpidio de Salles declared that better supervision was badly needed: “deficits constitute the normal state of the Federal services” and it is only from privately owned companies that profits are obtained, he declared, proceeding to show that from systems leased to other companies by the Union an average income of five thousand contos of reis is paid to Brazil, these contributions coming regularly from the Great Western, the Ceará-Piauhy, the Viação Bahiana, Sul-Mineira, Central of Rio Grande do Norte, Madeira-Mamoré, the Auxiliaire and the Santa Catharina lines. On the other hand, Cardoso de Almeida has shown that the Brazilian Government has spent 1,100,000 contos of reis (at normal exchange, about £75,000,000 or $375,000,000) on construction and “rescision” of railroads, bearing the burden of forty thousand contos due annually as interest. Railroad debts are, however, those which a sturdy developing young land can bear better than older countries can hope to do, and Brazil certainly is not over-railroaded: Argentina, next door, with a quarter of Brazil’s population and one-third of her territory, has thirty-five thousand kilometers of line.