There is another side to this. The railroads are making more than a new traffic for themselves, they are making a new wealth for the communities through which their rails are stretched. It has been estimated by a Pennsylvania agronomist that the value of the staple farm crops in the Keystone State in a single year exceeds $170,000,000; and that some 224,000 farmers entered into this production. If by training and education each of these farmers can increase his yield of corn one bushel to the acre, the additional corn revenue from that one State would be $1,044,000. Further than that, he says that $780,000 would roll into the pockets of these farmers if they would choose their seed corn carefully and thus add ten kernels to each ear of corn grown by them in the course of a twelvemonth. That sort of thing looks like a cooperative benefit from almost any angle from which you may view it. The Rock Island Railroad has begun to preach dry farming down through the Southwest. Wheat six feet in length is exhibited by that railroad in its offices throughout the East as sample of what the farmers in its territory do, under its help and supervision. That sort of thing silently makes traffic every day in the year. It is worth a dozen times what it costs the railroad. But the railroad is not confining its efforts at making traffic to the products of the soil. What is good method with the farmer is similarly good method with the manufacturer. So you now see the railroads, east and west, working with the aid of industrial commissioners. The industrial commissioner is like a High Minister of Commerce. Take, for instance, a typical railroad running from New York to Chicago. It has ample docks upon the sea board, extensive ramifications within the coal-mining districts; in the West it taps both the Great Lakes and the transcontinentals, which reach across the land to the Pacific. In all this district it is under hard competition, gaining its traffic--every ton of it--by the sweat of the general traffic-manager's brow. That railroad has its Industrial Commissioner, and if you are a prospective manufacturer looking for a site for a new plant, you are sure to come to him. You tell him that you want to build a factory. He tilts back his chair and looks at you easily. "What kind of a factory?" he asks. "We've room for 10,000 more along our rails. If it's a silk mill I can suggest Paterson, where the help is trained, and the dyes and raw materials handy. If you are going to turn out a steel product somewhere in the Pittsburgh district, Youngstown, Ohio, is the most economical point in the United States to-day for the turning out of finished steel. Perhaps yours is a canning factory," he laughs. "If you want to can fruit we can fix you out up in Western New York among the orchards; if you want to can tomatoes, well, sir, there is nothing like Indiana for tomatoes."