The reaction of high interest rates on the practical sense of American capitalists and engineers has made operation at the earliest possible moment and with the smallest possible investment of capital the very essence of American railway building in new territory. Actual earnings are expected to furnish capital, or a basis for credit, with which to make good early engineering defects. All this, of course, is but another way of saying that the criterion of engineering efficiency is not "perfection," but "good enough." This distinction has placed a large measure of genuine efficiency to the credit of American engineers, and it explains why Americans have done many things that others were unwilling to undertake. It is a great thing to build a fine railroad in Patagonia, but I am sure we all rejoice that the first Pacific railroad did not have its terminus in the Nevada sagebrush. The standard of technical perfection set by the Italian engineer did not fit the facts. It is not the failure to attain his standard but the failure to measure up to a well-considered standard of "good enough" that stands as an indictment against American railway enterprise. Viewed in historical perspective the business environment of the pioneer appears to have been dominated by two outstanding facts: one, seemingly inexhaustible resources; the other, a set of political and economic doctrines which told him that these resources must be developed by individual initiative and not by the State. The faster the resources were developed the more rapidly the nation became economically independent and economically great, and since they could not be developed by the State it is not strange that private initiative was stimulated by offering men great and immediate rewards. These rewards have encouraged individuals and associations of individuals to aspire to a quick achievement of great economic power, and their aspirations have been realized. Such achievements have been a dominating feature of our business life, and we have regarded them as an index of national greatness. Abundance of resources, if it did not make this the best way, at least made it an obvious way, for the nineteenth century to solve its business problems. From our vantage point we can see that serious mistakes were made. When we set the foresight of our fathers against our own informed and chastened hindsight their methods appear clumsy and amateurish. But in the main they did solve their problems: they gave us a settled continent; they gave us transportation and diversified industry. We now have our garden and the tools with which to work it. If the pioneer allowed the children to pick flowers and in some cases to run away with the plants and the soil, he did not fail to develop the estate.