Here is another point, seemingly unimportant, but really filled with a good deal of importance, particularly when one comes to view it from the standard of transportation salesmanship. In the days before the war the various parlor-car services of our railroads, whether owned and operated by the Pullman Co. or by the railroads themselves, had a minimum seat-rate of twenty-five cents. War-time administration ended this and fixed the minimum at fifty cents, to which presently was added a 50 per cent. surcharge for the benefit of the railroads, with the result that if a passenger is to ride but a mere fifteen or twenty miles in a parlor-car he is charged the outrageous figure of seventy-five cents for the privilege. These short-haul riders of other days came to a considerable total. They helped fill the parlor-cars and so not only to add an attractive revenue but to maintain a service which, in many portions of the country at least, is a necessity. Yet apparently no one either in the railroad field or in the Interstate Commerce Commission has enough vision or salesmanship to order the minimum rate reduced. It goes, like a good many other things in the railroad situation to-day, by default, and just so far lowers the service standard. * * * * * Our railroads in recent years have faced a new and formidable competitor in the rapid development in the United States of the automobile and, in consequence, of the improved highroad upon which it is wont to travel. I have called attention to this point before and wish again to emphasize it. Whether the privately owned and operated motor-car or the motor-bus operated for public patronage, it is a serious competitor to them. Yet how have they faced its competition, its steadily increased lowering of their passenger business? Have they met it with return competition? Alas, no. The railroads either have railed against the new-comer in their pastures or else have merely reduced their service, with the immediate result that still more traffic is diverted from their trains. In some parts of the country this loss of traffic has come to a serious pass. In certain portions of the State of New York the local service of the railroads is now reduced to a point lower than it has been for the last sixty years.