This all seems most logical. In the case of New England it so happens that the super-power plan--which is now seemingly certain of eventual execution--embraces just that section of the territory where there is the least surplus of water-power. The rough, wild rivers of the north of Maine, of New Hampshire, and of Vermont can and yet will operate almost all of the mileage of the railroads of those States; the distant mines in the Pennsylvania and the West Virginia hills will run the lines in the rest of New England. Power--power to move railroads--will cease to move across the most congested strip of North Atlantic seaboard in noisy and overcrowded and inefficient car-loads of coal. Power will come on the copper wire and will move the silent trains around Boston, New York, and Philadelphia--and many of them--some of them with big and efficient locomotives and others by sturdy small individual motors set within the car-trucks. The steam locomotive in this northeastern territory is nearly doomed. I think that eventually it will be doomed everywhere within the United States (our disappearing coal supply will be the chief factor in this), but first and foremost of all in the great congested areas which, having no coal of their own, live in constant and deadly fear that an overworked and overgrown railroad structure may yet fail to bring to them all that they need for their imminent necessities. That such a step will bring eventual economies, vast economies, one can have no doubt. The New Haven for the nonce may be failing to make a profit on its elaborately electrified main line between New York and New Haven, to the power-station of which it must haul coal a long way and over congested rail routes. But with that unseen power stretched further and further upon its lines I have no doubt that adequate transportation service, freight and passenger, can again be given to the communities which it serves. What is true of the New Haven is equally true of the Albany, the Boston and Maine, and the other railroads of the New England area--after all, railroads of real inherent strength despite the great abuses which they have suffered. And what is true of all these railroads of New England is of course true of the railroads elsewhere within the nation, and true even if the economy be but the one of coal or oil consumption in a central power-station; far more true of course if water-developed electricity be found available. For notwithstanding the great developments of our water-powers that have been made in the last fifteen or twenty years, the experts of the geological survey down at Washington say that the undeveloped water-power of the United States is still approximately 54,000,000 horse-power. Much of this is of course in the West and the Far West where there is as yet but little traffic congestion upon the railroads. In such cases the gasolene-unit cars are ofttimes the best solution of the problem of the local passenger service.