In building our line we will issue as few bonds in proportion to our stock as will make our company fairly stable in organization, and its proposition attractive to investors. For we shall have to pay our interest coupons upon the bonds from the beginning. We can begin even moderate dividends upon our stock after our enterprise has entered upon fair sailing. The all-important initial problem of financing having been at least partly settled, we will go before the Legislature and secure a charter for our road. In these modern days we shall probably have also to make application to some State railroad or public utility commission. It will consider our case with great care, granting hearings so that we may state our plans, and that folk living in the territory which we are about to tap may urge the necessity of our coming, and that rival railroads or other opponents may state their objections. After the entire evidence has been sifted down and weighed in truly judicial fashion, we may hope for word to "go ahead," from the official commission, which, though it assumes none of our risk of loss in projecting the line, will gratuitously assume many of the details of its management. Perhaps the politicians will poke their noses into our plan; they sometimes do. If we have plenty of capital behind us; if it becomes rumored that the P---- or the N---- or the X----, one of the big existing properties, is back of us, or some "big Wall Street fellow" is guiding our bonds, we can almost confidently expect their interference. After that it becomes a matter of diplomacy--and may the best man win! * * * * * Let us assume that some of these big obstacles have already been passed, that the politicians have been placed at arm's length, that the money needed is in sight--we are ready to begin the construction of our line. The location is the thing that next vexes us. A few errors in the placing of our line may spell failure for the whole enterprise. Obviously, these errors will be of the sort that admit of no easy correction. If our line is to link two important traffic centres and is to make a specialty of through traffic it will have to be very much of a town that will bend the straightness of our route. If, on the other hand, the line is to pick up its traffic from the territory it traverses we can afford to neglect no place of possibilities. We must make concessions, even if we make many twists and turns and climb steep grades; we cannot afford to pass business by. Perhaps we may even have to worm our way into the hearts of towns already grown and closely built, and this will be expensive work. But it will be worth every cent of that expense to go after competitive business.