This is more distinctly shown in some sections of the land than in others. For instance, up in New England, where the interests owning the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad have accomplished direct or indirect control of all but a comparatively few miles of the steam and electric railroads in five great States, they have also acquired the steamship interests of that district. The New Haven's original excursion into the steamboat business was when it absorbed the Old Colony Railroad--almost a score of years ago--in order to ensure its entrance into Boston. The Old Colony owned a well-famed and highly prosperous steamboat line from Fall River, Massachusetts, to New York City, part of its through New York-Boston route. Eventually the New Haven acquired all the brisk and busy steamboat lines which ran up the Sound from New York to several Connecticut ports--Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, New London, and Stonington. Any one of these lines was not, perhaps, so much of an acquisition in itself, but all of them were potentials in a future rate situation that might arise. It was good executive management to have these potentials under firm control, and so the New Haven established water routes as a recognized factor of its business--under the separate corporation title of the New England Navigation Company. Once when a new company, under the mellifluous title of the Joy Line, sought to injure its coastwise business by establishing cut-rates from Providence to New York, the New Haven placed two of its older boats in a rival and lower-priced service, and, by means of its great resources, was able to bring the Joy Line into its fold. Later, when the Enterprise Line tried a like programme, the New Haven followed the same aggressive tactics and brought the Enterprise Line to bankruptcy. These things are mentioned here in no spirit of criticism. But they are the facts that make it impossible for really independent lines of steamboats to run between New York and Providence for any great length of time, despite ample docking facilities and a great free port at each of these cities. The Metropolitan Line tried to maintain an independent line between New York and Boston with the two finest steamers ever placed in coastwise service--the _Yale_ and the _Harvard_. One of these boats left each city at five o'clock in the afternoon and performed the ocean voyage of 330 miles over the "outside route" in just fifteen hours--and with amazing regularity. But the New Haven Railroad found it to its interest to control the coasting lines around about New England, and so the _Yale_ and _Harvard_ were last winter banished to the Pacific coast.