If there were no other argument at all for the development of electric rapid transit installation in the metropolitan areas of our largest cities, this alone would be one well worthy of the considerate ear. The huge interurban trolley-car, so very valuable at one stage of our national progress and development, to-day is an interloper in the streets of even our good-sized towns. Nowhere has this been recognized more keenly than in two important up-state cities of New York--Rochester and Syracuse--where the completion of the new Barge Canal has left the pathway of the abandoned Erie Canal a desolate streak of muck and mud through their very hearts. Each of these York State towns is to-day a real hub of interurban trolley traffic, to an extent that adds greatly to their existing street congestion. It is now proposed that the old bed of the Erie be adapted and used as a sub-surface terminal and approaches for these heavy interurban cars--a suggestion that now seems quite certain of being put into effect. Both Rochester and Syracuse for a considerable time past have been fretted and perplexed by the amount of room these cars have taken in their streets. Their problem is one that is shared by many and many another ambitious city across the land. * * * * * There is a phase of American railroad operation that already I have touched upon and to which I shall again refer--the problem of the small branch line. In a following chapter when we shall discuss at some length the possibilities of the gasolene motor-car as applied to this small but always intensive transport problem, we shall go into the possibilities of this arm of the railroad--to-day its most neglected arm and, in consequence, shriveling terribly. There are many places where the withered arm can be made healthy and strong once more by electric treatment. Let me illustrate. Here in one of our Northeastern States (yet out of the super-power area) is a line that runs from S---- through W----, a small city of considerable importance as a local metropolis, on to C----, a railroad center, and then up to B----, in the heart of the mountainous forest. For the first twenty-eight miles of its distance, from S---- to C----, this road runs through a fairly closely built industrial territory, where the intermediate towns all but touch one another. Forty years ago this line had four passenger-trains a day in each direction; to-day it has but four once again. There was a little time when it had five or six. The motor-car, privately operated, and the motor-bus, publicly operated, brought it back to four. And even these four are not well filled.