As Mr. Frederick Taylor, President of the Western National Bank of New York, who has all his life been a close student of the railway question, says: “Though the railroads have probably contributed more than all other agencies combined to make the United States what they are, no one will deny that the incalculable benefit which we have derived from their growth and development has not been, and is not, wholly ‘unmixed of evil.’ Leaving out other considerations, it is not unfair to say that three-quarters of all the legislative corruption from which we have suffered during the past fifty years have been directly chargeable to the railways; and that a very large proportion, perhaps nearly as much as half, of the litigation that has occupied our courts during the same period has been directly connected with railway matters.” The great panic of 1873 was directly due to the over-building of railroads. Following it came several years of terrible business depression throughout the country, in which time and money was spent in trying to clear away the wreck. Hundreds of railroad companies were bankrupted and loss and suffering were entailed upon hundreds of thousands of persons who had invested their savings in these enterprises. In no end of instances the stocks of the companies were wiped out of existence entirely, the roads sold under foreclosure and reorganized. Again, in 1877, when the country was just beginning to recover from the shock, it was disturbed and depressed for a long time by the trouble between the railroad companies and their workmen, which in some cases culminated in riot and bloodshed. Another period of artificially stimulated railroad building reached its culmination in the panic of 1884, and two years later widespread strikes among railway operatives again disturbed the entire business of the country. During all this period the legislatures of the various States and the National Congress were busy with legislation intended to modify or remedy the evils complained of. The question presents such difficulties that many students, including Mr. Taylor, can find a solution of the question only in the suggestion of national control of the railroads throughout the country. Mr. Taylor’s idea, however, is that they should not be owned and operated by the nation, but that the government should have the same sort of control which it now exercises over the national banks; in other words, that the national railway commission should supervise the railroads with the same authority which the Treasury Department exercises over the national banking system.