This matter is vital not only to the railroads, but to every business man. It is the immediate concern of every large city. Cities can grow, they can escape decline, only as the movement of business between and through them is kept free. When the people find that their business cannot be handled, they must either move away or cease producing and consuming. They will decentralize their traffic, so far as that can be done; and the inability of the railroads to prevent this, by reason of conditions imposed on them from without, will work injury to all the great markets which have arisen through the free play of economic forces and the wise judgment of the builders of our prosperity. No city can afford to place its trade, which is its life, on a false basis. When the commerce naturally tributary to it is handicapped by poor terminals, or overloaded with too heavy charges on account of the excessive cost of enlargement, it will go elsewhere. There are a dozen places between the Maine coast and Norfolk that could be made available for relief. A city can never grow great enough to defy safely the demands of the laws of trade and its proper accommodation. Should the decentralization plan be forced on traffic, some of our greatest cities would not merely forfeit their natural share in national growth, but they would surely decline in business, wealth and power. Interest in this question should be not local only, but national. A railroad terminal performs the same function as a harbor. It is actually the largest and most valuable harbor used by the nation’s commerce. Probably no greater volume of rail and water traffic is transferred in any city anywhere than in Duluth-Superior. On the land side almost the whole of this is carried by three railroads. It is received, transferred and discharged without congestion in the busiest seasons and with expedition because the terminals there have been specially created for the work they have to do. The nation has properly made the provision of adequate harbors its care, and expended millions of dollars on our seaboards and the Great Lakes to ensure ample facilities for loading and unloading cargoes. It is not to be supposed or desired that the nation should furnish the money to provide those great harbors known as railroad terminals, although they are vastly more essential to the free movement of trade. But it should smooth the way and make easy the task of those whose business it is to provide them.