A comparison of the movement of gross earnings with operating expenses introduces still another disturbing factor, namely, the changes from year to year in the level of freight rates as well as in the character of the traffic handled. The effect of fluctuating costs of production of transportation having just been considered, we may now turn to the fiscal returns as affected by the price obtainable for the service given. Any long-time comparison of results reflects the influence of the steady decline of freight rates during the generation prior to 1900. Thus comparing 1880 with 1898, as shown by the preceding table, operating expenses grew in the ratio of 100 to 221, while gross income grew from 100 to only 190. Three fold the freight business produced less than twice the revenue. Pushing the comparison later, down to 1906, operating expenses grew after 1880 from 100 to 394, while gross income rose to only 346. This reflects the influence during the last few years of the rapid rise in prices and wages. * * * * * According to the opposite diagram, comparing 1890 with 1910, both operating expenses and gross income from operation seem to have moved together; the curve of gross revenue rising proportionately only a little faster than that for operating expenses. The latter have risen from a general figure of about $800,000,000 before the depression of 1893-1897, to $1,822,000,000 in 1910; the former from about $1,200,000,000 to over $2,750,000,000. Both alike somewhat more than doubled, therefore, in twenty years. At times, especially during the rapid revival of business after 1897, before rising prices began to affect costs of operation, extraordinary increases in earnings appeared, outstripping the growth of expenditures. Comparing the year 1899 with 1895 we find that the gross earnings of the railroads of the United States increased by twenty-two per cent. This involved an increased expense of operation, however, of only eighteen per cent. Similar comparison year by year, there having been an enormous expansion of business, shows an increase in gross earnings somewhat more rapid than the growth of operating expenses. This differential advantage has progressively lessened since 1902, and especially since the let-up in 1907. The official returns for 1911 with the marked decline in gross, show an even more distinct drop in net earnings. Whether the need of an increase of rates commensurate with the augmented operating costs is imperative, can only be ascertained after a return to more normal business conditions.