Even to-day, fully twenty-four months removed from the experiment itself, that is a difficult question to answer quickly and fairly. It is even difficult to say that, regarded merely as an experiment, it was a fair test. Certainly no laboratory expert deliberately would choose the critical final hours of a great war as an ideal time for dispassionate experimentation. It was in such hours that McAdoo, who was the head and front of the entire experiment, worked. When his successor came to high office the entire country was in the "let-down" that swept across the land as the very natural sequence of great national tension and endeavor. The distinguished writer upon railroad economies, William J. Cunningham, James J. Hill professor of transportation at Harvard and himself for a time a subordinate executive of the Railroad Administration, does not believe that the experiment was a success. In a recent issue of the "Quarterly Journal of Economics" he says: Finally we ask ourselves whether our recent experiment in Federal control affords an adequate test of the desirability of a permanent policy of public ownership and management. The answer is plainly in the negative. The results in 1918 were favorable. In 1919 they were unfavorable. They were favorable in 1918 because at that time we were actively engaged in war, every influence of patriotism supported the Railroad Administration, and the organization was held at concert pitch by the critical military needs. The unfavorable results in 1919 may be attributed in greater part to the pronounced reaction from war-time strain, to the serious decline in traffic, and to the disintegration of the organization in a too prolonged closing period. No one should question the expediency of the Government's action in taking the railroads in the emergency. The centralization of power and the more effective coordination with other branches of the Government in the crisis made possible effective results in the utilization of equipment and facilities, which would have been much more difficult under private management. But it is not proper to treat that period as the test of what might be expected under normal conditions. As regards the unfavorable year, 1919, it would be as unfair to make that a test of government operation as it would be to take the present period of subnormal traffic and disturbed economic conditions as the final test of private management.