One railroad reaching out of New York into the mountains at the northeastern corner of that State and losing itself at some obscure town, a railroad without valuable connections and ramifications, has made its passenger business a little gold-mine by scientific nurturing. It sent its passenger representatives up into the country towns, and they sought to improve conditions of every sort there. They started agitation for better roads from the railroad into the uplands where city folk were prone to wander; they helped the boarding-house landlord and the country hotel-keeper to bring their facilities up to attractive standards. In some cases they induced capital to come in and build new hotels. In every case they offered free space in the railroad's summer resort literature. Under a single general passenger agent pursuing such a campaign unflaggingly the passenger receipts of that small railroad increased 125 per cent in eight years! [Illustration: THE FAMOUS THOMAS VIADUCT, ON THE BALTIMORE & OHIO AT RELAY, MD., BUILT BY B. H. LATROBE IN 1835, AND STILL IN USE] [Illustration: THE HISTORIC STARUCCA VIADUCT UPON THE ERIE] [Illustration: THE CYLINDERS OF THE DELAWARE & HUDSON MALLET] [Illustration: THE INTERIOR OF THIS GASOLINE-MOTOR-CAR ON THE UNION PACIFIC PRESENTS A MOST UNUSUAL EFFECT, YET A MAXIMUM OF VIEW OF THE OUTER WORLD] Take the case of Atlantic City. That town used to be a collection of wooden hotels, set along a sandy, pleasant beach, which were content with six or eight weeks of good business in midsummer. The railroads that stretched their rails down to it registered good earnings during that hot season, and they had to put in extensive plants to handle that six or eight weeks of heavy traffic. The extensive--and expensive--plants were idle a great part of the year, and there was a lot of capital wasted. The managers of the railroads told the summer hotel proprietors that, and asked why beach property should be a losing investment ten months out of the year. That was a new sort of proposition for a summer resort hotel proprietor but it seemed sound argument and the hotels extended their seasons at either end. They combined with the railroads in making attractive special rates for these duller parts of the season, and before long the spring was well nigh as popular and as profitable as midsummer.