Take such speed, such even traffic flow, and apply it to our overburdened trunk-lines of the Northeast; to make the most definite instance and the greatest necessity. Suppose that no more main-line tracks need be laid upon the railroads east from Chicago and St. Louis, north from Washington and Cincinnati, no more expensive notchings in the mountains that hem in Pittsburg or fresh expenditures in Buffalo, if but a far quickened movement of freight can be obtained over existing rails. Here then is a double economy effected not alone in the use of fuel (still leaving the water-power solution in abeyance) but in a greatly bettered use of existing terminals and trackage. If our railroads can save three quarters of a billion dollars a year by burning their coal and oil in central power-stations instead of in locomotive fire-boxes, it may be fair to say that the terminal economies that might be effected by increasing the existing facilities from 40 to 50 per cent. without physical enlargement would equal the first saving. When the shoe begins to pinch there is many and many a way of relieving the foot. * * * * * There are railroaders, and shrewd railroaders too, who will not chime in rapidly. Here is one of them--in the Far West, a mighty operating executive schooled years ago by one of the half-dozen of the real captains of the industry. He feels the need of great relief to the traffic pressure upon his own great system--the greater need of a smoother movement of the traffic upon its rails. "The game," he says, "is simplicity itself. It is to take the friction out of the pipe and at the same time increase the pressure." Which in his case means a combination of more freight-cars--or better loading of the existing equipment--and more second or double tracks across the long reaches of the West. Yet when I suggest electrification as a method for the removal of pipe friction, he shakes his head sadly. "My old chief," he begins, his loyalty showing in his very phrasing, "once thought as you now think. He was anxious to install electric motive-power upon the stiff grades of our mountain division. He had reports made upon the possibility of the thing from three separate sources, the two big electrical equipment companies and our own fairly expert corp of engineers. There was little variance between the reports of these different interests. Almost uniformly they figured the cost of the job at a little more than ten million dollars, or at that time about $550,000 annual interest. A fuel bill on the volume of traffic that we then had of about $300,000 would be saved. That sort of saving did not appeal to me. I told the chief so."