The idea that competition is an essential to real railroad service is gradually dissipating. People are coming slowly but very surely to realize that no public utility is in its essentials competitive. And this despite the fact that Congress through the expression of its Transportation Act has given a formal approval to the idea that the only thing that can save our sick man of America business is a retention if not an extension of our competitive system of railroading, through the adoption of a "competitive consolidation" plan. This is the scheme upon which the experts of the Interstate Commerce Commission have been engaged these many months past and of which the first outlines have recently been issued. The very expression of this principle within the Transportation Statute shows that a huge extension of the size of our individual railroad units is now contemplated despite the fact, long since recognized, that many of them have already gone beyond the limits of efficient operating supervision and management. Upon this point alone a whole book might be written. It is sufficient here and now to say that, with a few exceptions that prove nothing whatsoever, the only railroads that are to-day being successfully operated in the United States are the small railroads (small in comparative sense at least), properties like the Boston and Albany, the Lackawanna, the Bessemer and Lake Erie, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg, the El Paso and Southwestern, to single out but a few--railroads operated as individual units and by men who are not only on their ground but in close and constant personal touch with every inch of it. That genius of American railroading, Harriman, more than a decade ago recognized this point when he began the decentralization of his railroad properties, placing five presidents upon them west of the Mississippi River, each with all but autonomous powers. The Pennsylvania has more recently recognized it in the construction of four regional systems within its giant property, each in many essentials a separate railroad and to a large extent separately operated. It has made good beginning but has not yet gone nearly far enough. The principle stands recognized, however, that you can reach a point and pass it where your obvious economies and strengths of centralization are offset by the disadvantages of having created a top-heavy and almost unworkable machine. There comes a point in the growth of any railroad system toward mere bigness where, like the locomotive and the box-car, efficiency is passed and inefficiency comes in again. * * * * *