Similar minimum passenger-schedule agreements rule the service between Chicago and the Twin Cities (St. Paul Minneapolis), Chicago and St. Louis, Chicago and Kansas City, St. Louis and Kansas City, Chicago and the Pacific coast points--elsewhere across the land. When a few years ago the Post-Office Department sought to establish a really fast mail-train service between Chicago and St. Louis--a train that would make the 283 miles in six hours--it found no enthusiasm whatsoever for the project in the four so-called competing railroads that connect those cities and who long before had fixed their minimum running time between them at a rather leisurely eight hours in order to suit the necessities of the slowest and the most roundabout of the four. Eventually the Post-Office Department carried its point and the Chicago and Alton to-day carries a through mail train from Chicago to St. Louis in six hours and ten minutes. But the regular passenger-trains still remain at the old slow running-time. These instances might be multiplied. Have I shown enough now to make my point? When you go between New York and Chicago on either of the two highest-grade roads that connect those cities you ride on virtually the same trains--the Pullman equipment that each carries is standardized down to the finest details--at the same rates of fare, in the same running time, and in and out of passenger terminals equally advantageously located. The only deciding points between the two roads are such minor ones as whether you prefer the excellent griddle-cakes of the Pennsylvania's diners or the excellent ham and eggs of the New York Central's; the scenery of the Alleghanies or that in the valley of the Mohawk. Are these not rather fine distinctions to hold up as a real competition? Competition did not bring the excellence of these trains, any more than it prevented the removal of their comfortable observation-cars a short time since, through agreement. Competition did not force the Santa Fe into its wonderful equipment of overland _de luxe_ expresses with their whole fleets of solid compartment-cars. Competition has never given the United States a through train from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We have to go up north into our rather thinly populated neighbor's country, Canada, to find such travel boons. Competition has never given a really creditable service between New York and Montreal, the two metropolitan centers of the great sister nations of North America.