The hue and cry against what is called “big business” is the turbulent protest of the untutored mob--the yelp of the Bolshevik. In our modern social structure certain concentrations of wealth are inevitable and seem necessary to our economic life. The physical expression and realization of great individual ideas are impossible without them. Such ideas have developed the potential and latent resources of this country so that it has become a world power. The savages, who at one time owned the entire continent, could not have done this, any more than Captains Teach, Morgan and Kidd, and the rest of that destructive crew would have done it if they could. They would never have made it possible to transport a ton of freight a mile for less than a cent and a quarter, which is now done in America as a result of intelligent organization, co-operation and cumulative effort. In the absence of such highly perfected co-ordination a Chinese coolie, working for twenty cents a day, with two baskets suspended from a yoke on his shoulders, with the greatest physical effort, transports commodities at a rate which would be the equivalent of one ton per mile per day, or twenty cents per ton. There are so many factors that enter into the intelligent carrying out of large constructive ideas that it would be quite hopeless to attempt to enumerate them in a brief general reference to the subject. We might for illustration take certain enthusiastic promoters, who, with a vision of what transportation facilities might produce from some region with vast undeveloped resources, conceive the idea of the construction of a railroad. Through their optimism, persistent agitation and presentation of the commercial possibilities of the project they finally attract the requisite capital. First the funds are provided for preliminary surveys to determine the most feasible route. Reports are made by experts, money is furnished for grading, men in the forests are cutting timber for ties, cars, bridges, buildings, etc., others are toiling in distant mines extracting ore that long low steamers take over the Great Lakes to the steel mills, where it is swung out of the holds by huge cranes. In glowing furnaces it is metamorphosed into red streams that cool in the forms required for the infinite fabrications to follow. It enters into the construction of rails, locomotives, box cars, passenger coaches, telegraph wires, block signal devices, and all the countless other things that, in this age of steel and wheels, go into that great expression of the triumph of mind over matter--the modern railroad.