In the meantime, our competitive system continues to remain one of our pet railroad extravagances. Remember that the mistakes that Mr. McAdoo made in his direction of the Federal Railroad Administration were quite overbalanced by the obvious economies that he was able to make the moment that he had eliminated the competitive factor in our national transportation machine. As he was able more and more to overcome the long established competitive feeling between the railroad executives--to no small extent, perfectly natural and human personal jealousies--the more he was able to effect and extend these economies. The Railroad War Board which the railways had appointed early in 1917 and which was in many ways an anticipation of the coming of Federal control, despite its good intents and honest endeavors and real results, was constantly hampered by this competitive feeling even between its members. Yet as we have seen it lacked the autocratic power of the government director-general, and so it failed and had to be replaced. And the obvious war-time economies--the direct routing of traffic, the pooling and interchange of equipment, the joint representations and the like--came into being. To accomplish these things nationally and permanently, to lessen competition rather than to increase it (no sane man imagines that we are ever to succeed entirely in removing the competitive element), may yet mean the complete reorganization of our national railroad system. Yet even so radical a step need not be regarded as either fatal or impossible. It is entirely within the possibilities to-day that our privately owned and operated railroads, at least as they are at present constituted, may fall. There is but little in the present situation to make one optimistic as to their future success, along the present lines at least. The sole alternatives to private ownership and operation are government ownership and operation. To the majority of Americans the very idea of a further governmental control is extremely distasteful, to put the matter mildly. To them railroad nationalization is a very real menace. Yet the menace cannot be avoided by merely singing a song of hate about it. It can be overcome and finally prevented by some definite national plan or policy in regard to our roads--a simple thing in which for a number of years past we have been sadly lacking. If such a plan means their radical reorganization we must begin. And the sooner the better. CHAPTER XIV THE REGIONAL RAILROAD OVERSEAS