Some day we shall have to change our statute laws and then, instead of barring our railroads from our waterways, we shall invite, urge, implore, and if necessary compel them to use these great natural arteries of inland transport, chiefly for the relief of their overcrowded rails, particularly the rail terminals. And how overcrowded these are yet to be, it is hard to realize in this present moment of industrial slump. In that day the container is to be, as I have said already, the binding agent between these different avenues of transport. Its flexibility, its adaptability, its obvious economy are going to bring it into its own. * * * * * In the meantime great progress is being made in its development. A. H. Smith, the big, energetic president of the New York Central, with his usual verve and enthusiasm has taken hold of the idea and seems bound to put it over. Already he has had built ten steel units of containers four for passenger service and holding ten boxes each, and six for freight service and holding but six boxes apiece. The passenger service units are being tried out in the United States mail service; the freight-service ones are in experimentation by the American Railway Express. Just what will be the final development in operation of these units Smith himself does not know. He believes that the possibilities are almost too great for instant grasp. That is why he has his road and himself back of the new idea. He has watched it carefully, almost apprehensively. Because of a certain indefinite fear that one of the great steel boxes might some fine day be hurtled from the platform of a car running at high speed and into some group of waiting people by the side of the railroad, he has caused extraordinary care to be taken to have them firmly fastened not merely upon, but into, the platform-cars. A long steel girder-side of the car does the trick, while in these days of bandits and rumors of bandits along the line the fact that there is no possible process of opening the steel door of the container-box once it is set into its place upon the car gives an assurance of protection to the merchandise that no other form of carrier can offer. Here again the motor-truck correlates. In the first experimental trials by the New York Central of this forward-looking device, they have come into quick and easy terminal service; the big olive-green trucks of the United States Mail service and the deep-blue ones of the American Railway Express. * * * * *