The defects of the Government administration of the railways have been the subject of both criticism and apology. A diagnosis published by the _Engineering News Record_ of New York states that the whole difficulty is ascribed to the employment of bankers in high places of railway management. Railroads, it was asserted, cannot be run by men of the banking type of mind. The article continues: "Here was, and is, an agency with daily influence on the life of every member of the community, performing a service essential to the nation's life. Yet it has few friends among the people at large; more now than formerly, however, due to the number of those whose pity has been excited at the railroads' plight. The first of the railroads' plagues was the type of management--manipulation, it would better be called--which regarded the properties not as carriers but as media for stock-jobbing operations. Consolidations with the addition of water, and reconsolidations, with still more water, were the order of the day; while those operating the properties danced riotously over their territories waving insolently the flag of 'The Public Be Damned.' Rebates, car-withholding tyrannies, all manner of schemes were worked to aid the favored few, while the purchasing methods honeycombed the organization with rottenness. "Then came the day for the people to have their say, and one national and forty-eight State commissions began to bedevil the carriers. What the stock-jobbers and the grafters had failed to do the people in their vengeance helped to complete. The public at large, which under intelligent management of the properties would have been the railroads' best friend, had been alienated. As a result we have had the drift into bankruptcy which has been railroad history during the past decade. Instances need not be cited. Each one can supply them from his own neighborhood. Probably the mention of the New Haven will furnish sufficient nausea to carry the right impression. "And that _débâcle_ we attribute to the banking type of mind, that type of mind that places personal profit ahead of all other considerations. The engineering type of mind, we hold, would have analyzed the purpose of the railroads--would have seen that service to the public at large, and not to any private interest, was the prime object, would have erected that as the railroads' ideal and builded a machine for its attainment." BRITISH RAILWAY MANAGEMENT