Our railroaders are expert already in the efficient use of the somewhat antiquated tools which they already possess. I have said long ago that man for man they are not excelled anywhere in the world in the small technical details of rail transportation. Their expertness was won in a hard school. Since that day, fifteen or twenty years ago, when the running expenses of our carriers began their long uphill climb, these men have been forced to great operating economies merely to make both ends meet. They have gone the limit in these savings. Now they must have more tools, bigger tools, finer tools. They must have electrification, better signaling, newer and larger terminals. Remember all the while that if they do not have them, and have them soon, it will not be the railroaders who will suffer primarily. It will be the communities that they aim to serve. Bigger and more modern tools will serve, it is true, to bring vast economies, but they will also help bring the United States a better railroad service, which is a point never to be forgotten. To many of these suggestions your typical banker would reply that they were fine on paper but that in reality they cost money, a commodity in which the average American railroad is sadly deficient these days. Yet what better way to obtain the money to pay for them than to announce the decision to adopt them with the sweeping economies that would follow in their wake? If A. is the village grocer and B. the local capitalist, and A. wishes to borrow money of B., does he go to him and talk this way? "I'm sorry, B. but I've been up against it a good deal lately; they've put a lot of new and unjust rules upon me that tell me just how I must run every detail of my business. And things are going to get worse. I don't see just how I am going to pull through with my worn-out equipment and all." A. never talks that way, not if he has any real hope of getting money out of the financier. He is more likely to argue after this fashion: "Times have been pretty bad with me, to be sure, but I feel confident that I see daylight ahead. I've got to get some equipment, expand my business along lines that seem pretty sure to win, and turn some new tricks in my trade. Here's one or two of them." That is the sort of talk that generally brings confidence, and with confidence, hard-cash loans. Our railroads might try a hand at it. If they should come with some pretty definite plans for the extension of electrification upon their properties, the modernization of their terminals, a better correlation between their service and those of the carriers upon the highways, the real development of the container system, better signaling, and all the rest of it, they might command better credit. Such things have happened. It is not unlikely that they would happen again.