Our business is handicapped on every side by the failure of our transportation facilities to grow with the country. It is useless to talk about increased production to meet an increased standard of living in an increasing population without a greatly increased transport equipment. Moreover, there are very great social problems underlying our transport system; today their contraction is forcing a congestion of our population around the great cities with all that these overswollen settlements import. Even such great disturbances as the coal strike have a minor root in our inadequate transportation facilities and their responsibility for intermittent operation of the mines. We are all hoping that Congress will find a solution to this problem that will be an advanced step toward the combined stimulation of the initiative of the owners, the efficiency of operation, the enlistment of the good will of the employees, and the protection of the public. The problem is easy to state. Its solution is almost overwhelming in complexity. It must develop with experience, step by step, toward a real working partnership of its three elements. The return of the railways to the owners places predominant private operation upon its final trial. If instant energy, courage and large vision in the owners should prove lacking in meeting the immediate situation we shall be faced with a reaction that will drive the country to some other form of control. Energetic enlargement of equipment, better service, cooeperation with employees, and the least possible advance in rates, together with freedom from political interest, will be the scales upon which the public will weigh these results. Important phases of our shipping problem that have come before you should receive wider discussion by the country. As the result of war pressure, we shall spend over $2,800,000,000 in the completion of a fleet of nineteen hundred ships of a total of 111,000,000 tons--nearly one quarter of the world's cargo shipping. We are proud of this great expansion of our marine, and we wish to retain it under the American flag. Our shipping problem has one large point of departure from the railway problem, for there is no element of natural monopoly. Anyone with a water-tight vehicle can enter upon the seas today, and our government is now engaged upon the conduct of a nationalized industry in competition with our own people and all the world besides. While in the railways government inefficiency could be passed on to the consumer, on the seas we will sooner or later find it translated to the national Treasury.