No, that would hardly do. The Iron Mountain reaching in a splendid strategic position from St. Louis to Texas, shorn of its wretched mesalliance with the Missouri Pacific and given instead the Alton and certain portions of the 'Frisco and Missouri, Kansas, and Texas systems, would make an excellent feeder for the Texas Lines right through to Kansas City, to St. Louis, and Chicago, and still avoid the operation of too many miles or too attenuated a single system under one executive head. Meanwhile the competitive factor in the competitive territory which we have permitted to remain within the land would be appeased by the fact that the Rock Island, the Santa Fe, and the Burlington would also bind the Texas Lines to Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago. Our plan continues to balance, and to balance extremely well. The Texas Lines would have still another competitive entrance into Chicago. We will take the Illinois Central--deleted, if you will recall, of its rather superfluous line to Omaha--and make it the main-stem and core of a far larger railroad which we may well give the more dignified and embracing title of Mississippi Valley railroad. From New Orleans straight north to Chicago, west to Beaumont, northwest to Shreveport and to Little Rock, possibly east to Mobile, and northeast to Birmingham--here is the making of a really dominating and yet very logical regional railroad. It also might and probably would be both practicable and possible to make it live more closely to its name and give to it the line along the eastern bank of the upper Mississippi, between St. Louis and St. Paul, now operated by the Burlington. * * * * * There still remains the southeastern corner of the United States--and right here our problem reaches its final and most perplexing phase. Whether to rearrange it in two or three simon-pure regions or to have two or three competing systems within a comparatively large regional district is a question not easy of correct solution. I believe that the latter is the solution most likely to come, however. The inter-ownership of the Atlantic Coast Line and the Louisville and Nashville railroads is a factor not easily to be ignored. Ranged against this combined system--which in its final entity probably would include the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis and the historic Georgia railroad--is the huge Southern railway, upon which much thought and money has been expended within the last ten or twelve years, and which would meet it at virtually every important competitive point.