"I can sit in my office," he says, "and each morning within an hour talk with each of my subordinate executives--in Pittsburg, in Cleveland, in Detroit, in Chicago, in St. Louis, in Cincinnati." Yet that is just the trouble. Too many railroads in this country have been operated on the long-distance telephone principle. Ten minutes' talk over a copper wire is hardly equivalent to a day of personal contact, once every ten or twelve or fourteen days. That the men who are at the very tops of our largest railroads have done wonders with the long-distance telephone I shall not deny. But I do not think that they have accomplished intensive railroad direction with it, or anything like intensive railroad direction. And I have not noticed them accomplishing any remarkable results in bettering their relationships with their workers, or with raising the morale of their roads. * * * * * Yet just as regional operation and a pretty well divided regional operation, is essential to the best operating results in our American railroads, so on the other hand is centralization fairly vital to any large traffic or financial results. It will be argued always against any plan for the centralization of our railroads that it makes an easy first step toward government ownership. Such argument is foolish. Yet if it might be good business for the Federal Government in some distant day to take such a step, why is it not good business to undertake it to-day? Particularly when it is in a position to command valuable governmental assistance in the taking of the step. Here is the real nub of this question. For few practical railroaders will deny certain vast advantages to be gained by the complete centralization of our rail properties--not only in financing and in rate-making, but also in traffic solicitation and control, in expert staff study of mechanical and operating problems, and in the production of proper personnel, particularly for the filling of future executive positions. All of these functions and more too, the United States Railroad could and would undertake. In contentions which might arise from time to time between the regional roads, its word of decision would be absolute, its authority supreme. And nowhere is this more necessary to-day than in the vexed question of rates--particularly of freight-rates.