The whole broad national field of railroad operation awaits the coming of the motor-truck and its detachable body into terminal handling. It is to be a great factor in the railroad of to-morrow. Come east, if you will, from Cincinnati into New York. Now we have a teaser of a problem. Far worse, even, than that of the city by the bend of the Ohio. The freight terminal problem of the island of Manhattan alone is to-day the greatest single problem of transport in all this land, if not, indeed, in all the world. Into it constantly is being injected idealism, engineering, politics, common-sense--all of these, apparently to but little avail. An elaborate plan has been formulated lately for the correction and revision of the entire terminal problem of the New York metropolitan district (including not only all the outlying boroughs such as Brooklyn, Richmond, and the Bronx, but Jersey City, Bayonne, Weehawken, Hoboken, Newark, Paterson, Passaic, and many other closely allied communities). This plan is being engineered by the newly created Port of New York Authority, modeled closely upon a similar body for the port of London. As this is being written, it is being resisted stoutly by the city administration of New York. I shall not go into this phase of the problem however. There are enough others to be considered, and this particular one sooner or later will come to an automatic solution. For no matter whether the city administration or the Port Authority (created by the States of New York and New Jersey) comes atop, the island of Manhattan will remain the crux and key of the whole problem. For its relief it may be necessary, as has been suggested, to build relief belt-line railroads no nearer than forty miles away from it. That is a matter for the future. For the present consider that disregarding political boundaries--traffic takes little or no thought of them--the commercial center of metropolitan New York (in the sense which I now mean, a well-grouped city of ten million people, even though in two separate States) is and must remain upon Manhattan Island. There is the commerce done. There the freight comes to a clearing-house. Manufacturing may increase and probably will upon the outer rims of the district. But distribution will remain close to its heart.