So in compromise we use the purely regional idea where the purely regional idea best serves high theory and the broad pathways of hard fact and established principle. We begin in New England and there we create an autonomous regional railroad--probably two, for reasons which we have already stated--each as we have seen with headquarters in New England's traditional capital, Boston. Next we cross the Hudson River and tackle the great congested railroad district that lies between it and the thousand-distant cities of Chicago and St. Louis as a bloc. Here begins our problem in dead earnest. Shall we make two great regions of most if not all of it--the one to the north with the dark-green cars and the traditional name of New York Central, and the one to the south occupying all the rest of the territory down to the Potomac and the Ohio River with the wine-red cars and the traditions of the Pennsylvania? No, not unless we want to consider the operation of two great railroads of between twenty-five and thirty thousand miles of line each. If we are to have any sort of intensive or good operation this is out of the question. With twelve thousand miles to be operated, each of these roads at times already flounders. No, I think that we can do better than that. We can easily make four long narrow regions, stretching from New York about four and five hundred miles to the west, and to these give auxiliary regions, or rather regional railroads, further on, to Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. The most northerly of these will be, of course, the New York Central, the unit management of which will be terminated or broken at Buffalo--as of other days--and to which will be handed the Delaware and Hudson, north of Albany, possibly the northern portions of the Ontario and Western, and some lesser properties. It might be possible to go even further and give the generally efficient even though somewhat unwieldy New York Central the Lehigh Valley, the Lackawanna, the Erie (east of Jamestown), the Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburg, and the rest of the Delaware and Hudson. But I hardly think that this would be practicable. We are trying, even in our theories, to keep our feet on the ground. It would be better by far to take this last group and make it the second of our long, narrow northeastern regions--call it, if you will, the Erie-Lackawanna and place its eastern terminals at Albany, at New York, and, by means of the absorption of some sixty miles of the Reading, at Philadelphia too. This would make a well-balanced and compact group, fairly competitive and yet accomplishing great economies in the common use of trackage and terminals. The wastage in these things alone is hardly less than appalling, the opportunities for saving tremendous.