Not that any one road of the entire twenty-two should be expected to make what will ultimately prove a sacrifice, but that no road should hold back from doing its full part to bring about the conditions essential to the continued prosperity of the city by the development in Chicago of a unified system of traffic handling that shall place this city ahead of any other in so far as efficiency and cheapness are concerned. The fine arts of traffic management should be studied no less than the fine arts of parks and boulevards; for unless Chicago keeps ahead of her rivals in commercial matters, the parks will become pastures, and the boulevards will be deserted. In an address made in Chicago during the winter of 1906-7 Mr. James J. Hill laid the utmost stress on the necessity for improved railway terminals. At that time a cry was going up for more cars. Traffic was delayed, the railways being entirely unable to handle promptly the freight offered them. Mr. Hill pointed out that the main difficulty was not lack of cars, but lack of proper terminal facilities. It was a fact that hundreds and even thousands of loaded cars were at that very moment standing on the tracks in the yards of every one of the great trunk lines, which with their utmost efforts could not place these cars at the sides of the receiving platforms in the various cities. It is not an extreme statement to say that business was almost paralyzed on account of the inability of the roads to handle at the terminals the freight traffic of the country. On all the two-track lines continuous trains could have been handled from one terminus to another, if the cars could have been rescued from the disordering conditions in which they were involved and lost to use. The railroad companies were unable to make proper use of their own rolling stock and main lines, all because of the congested condition of their terminals, in which there were tracks enough, but tracks so badly placed and arranged as to deprive the roads of the full benefit of their aggregate mileage. The bad arrangement of terminal tracks was not alone responsible for the congested condition which then prevailed at Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, and many other points. In an equal or perhaps greater degree the habit of hauling all the freight into the heart of a city and then hauling most of it out again was the cause of the trouble. If freight stations and yards located close to the center of the business district of a city were inadequate under the conditions that obtained in the winter of 1906-7, what will be the result at the next test, which will surely be a more severe one?