The railroads, then, have proved themselves competent and trustworthy. But if they are to furnish the necessary additions and provide new terminals, without which the traffic of the country can no more continue to move than a derelict can voyage from port to port, the money will not come, as a magician catches coins, out of the air. It must be either earned or borrowed. It seems clear to any one familiar with the conditions and requirements that both resources must be drawn upon. First capitalization must be materially enlarged. But the railroads must be able to show that they can earn a fair return before they can add to the principal of their debt. The very fact of additional capitalization involves additional fixed charges. The investor must be assured that such earnings will not be prohibited by the law before a loan can be placed at a bearable rate of interest. And the higher the rate, the greater must be the future charge on traffic to meet it. The country comes to a stop before a financial “no thoroughfare”, from which no exit can be found save through a relaxation of the rigid and hostile prohibition of all rate advances that now absolutely negates the proper and necessary expansion of traffic agencies in this country. The theory of encouraging home industry has prevailed in this country during the greater part of our national existence. Import duties averaging 41.22 per cent were levied in 1911. The advocates of the system claim this is done to protect American Labor. Our manufactures are protected as a matter of national policy. Transportation costs the public from one-third to one-half as much here as in Europe. This cheapness is not purchased at the cost of the workingman. In 1910 the average daily earnings of railway employes in the United States were more than twice as great as in the United Kingdom, and two and three-quarters times as much as on the Prussian-Hesse system in Germany. As employers of labor and also as producers of a commodity that everybody uses directly or indirectly, paying that labor more than it receives anywhere else in the world and supplying that service for less than is charged anywhere else in the world, the railroads deserve a public consideration not extended to them now.