It is clear that our railroads have been capably managed, and that the resources and powers entrusted to them are being used to the highest business advantage. How the money they spend is being employed is shown by the fact that our railroads move 272 ton miles of freight per dollar of net revenue, where the United Kingdom shows only 58, Germany 172 and France 88. For honest and efficient conduct our railways have no equals in the world. By this supreme test they declare their fitness for the gigantic work that still remains to be undertaken. Not only, as I have shown, have they not charged to capital the cost of improvements covered by stock and bond issues in other countries, but they have shared their gains liberally with the people through rate reductions. It has become common to think of the progressive lowering of rates, while all other charges are rising, as the work of legislative compulsion. On the contrary, many of the most important reductions made in the past were voluntary. These are the lowering of charges on the great staple products of the soil. This has made settlement possible. It has made it possible for the farmer to realize the benefit of high prices for his crops. It has doubled production again and again. It has made possible the movement of lumber from the Pacific Coast to the Middle West and even the Eastern markets. It has become a definite policy. And it has left in the pockets of the people an enormous amount of money that would have gone to the carriers or at least been shared by them if they had fought against cheap transportation for the farm instead of fostering it. If the freight and passenger rates in force on the Great Northern system in 1881 had remained unchanged until 1910, there would have been collected from the public $1,267,411,954 additional. This amounts to more than eight times the average par value of its outstanding stock and bonds in the hands of the public during the same period. That is to say, if there had been no rate reductions on that system during the past thirty years, it could have paid off its entire capitalization every three and three-quarters years. If railroad rates in the United States had increased as much in proportion as the prices of commodities and the wages of labor between 1894 and 1909, the country’s bill for transportation for those fifteen years would have been over seven billion dollars more than it was.