The Interstate Commerce Commission raised it to 3.6 cents a mile, upon hints from the private operators of the roads. It is but fair to add, however, that there are certain members of the commission who long ago had conceived the idea that the passenger-rates were not bearing their proper burden of the costs of railroad operation. It is these men who have to-day steeled their hearts against any lowering of passenger-rates to a point where the service might at least have some competitive attraction against that of the automobile, publicly or privately owned or operated. In all this discussion at the moment of the possible lowering of freight-rates nothing whatever is being breathed of a readjustment of passenger-fares, with the single exception of a recent bill passed in the United States Senate for the enactment of a Federal statute compelling the roads to sell mileage-books at a low wholesale rate. This neglect of itself is, I think, a most unhealthy sign. While the 23 per cent. lowering of passenger revenues in 1921 as against 1920 is a fairly definite expression of that unhealthiness. To my mind this is not entirely a question of the proper equalization of operating costs to revenues; the question of setting the tariffs of charges to a point where business shall again be attracted to the railroads, to my way of thought, is the real kernel of the problem. That is the way that the average merchant or manufacturer would look at the similar problems that confront him. To get the business the rates must be made attractive. If it then becomes necessary to reduce operating costs so as to exist at the lowered revenues, then the business man will move heaven and earth to reduce his costs. Apparently the Interstate Commerce Commission does not see the question in this light. One understanding the complexion of its membership would hardly expect it so to see it. The commission is absolutely honest and, to a large extent, able; but it is generally dull. It has no traffic sense; no sense of salesmanship. It has no vision. It always looks backward, rarely forward. Being composed almost exclusively of lawyers,--long ago it was recognized apparently that it would be a fearful thing to place an honest, far-sighted, energetic railroad executive in its personnel,--it spends a great deal of time seeking for precedent. Therefore it hardly can be expected to look forward. "What _is_ the precedent?" it keeps asking. "How has it always been done in the past?" This is one of the very great reasons why our railroads to-day are not marching forward in step with the progress of the other great businesses of America, why so often they are called, and with such a deadly truth, "the sick man of American business," why they have lost so much of public confidence and of public support, why the morale not only of the rank and file but of many of the executives as well has come to so low a pass.