The situation to-day is hardly improved, despite desperate efforts on the part of the roads to reduce their operating expenses. What they have accomplished along these lines, aside from a further lowering of the reduced service that they are rendering these days, is shown in the fact that by June, 1921, they had brought their wages and transportation costs to eighty-two cents out of each dollar that they earn, and by October it was seventy-four cents. Less than a year before this was slightly over ninety-five cents. By the present time it is just above seventy. The roads themselves are now inclined to attribute much of their financial depression to two things; to the vast industrial slump with its obvious effect upon their revenues, and to their huge pay-rolls. Ingeniously they argued this last point before the Railroad Labor Board out at Chicago in the early summer of 1921 and succeeded in getting a cut of some $500,000,000 in their huge annual wage-bill. But the average railroader of the rank and file still is paid considerably over 100 per cent. more than in 1913. (In exact figures his average pay to-day--on an eight-hour day basis--is $1700 for the twelvemonth, as compared with $761 nine years ago.) This is the figure, along with the figures representing his increased fuel and tax and material costs, that he uses when he justifies the increase of his carrying charges. Yet the potent fact remains that the high rates are not only not attracting business but actually are driving it away. The long-haul use of the motor-truck, to which I shall refer in more detail in due time, is not due in these days of industrial depression to a lack of box-cars or to yard congestion, but is a protest against the existing rates. And that the railroads themselves are not deaf to these protests is shown by the fact that under the guise of "revising" their freight charges they are actually beginning to lower them. I am inclined to the belief that the partial failure at least of the Transportation Act must have taught all the wise men at Washington, and also a goodly number of our fairly wise railroaders, one distinct thing: You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. Which, being freely translated, means that you can raise railroad rates to a point where traffic begins to fade away, to find other pathways for itself, or to cease altogether. This is particularly true of passenger rates. A nation-wide rate of more than three and one-half cents a mile, with a heavy increase in the Pullman rates to keep pace, is not a particular inducement to travelers. Moreover the persistent refusal of our railroads to create a lower class of fares than the standard, with a slightly lowered quality of service, give the would-be traveler of modest means no alternative whatever, except possibly to ride in a small motor-car, or to stay at home. A good many of them are riding in motor-cars these days; and a good many more are staying at home. The