But even in the prosperous sections of the West--of the larger proportion of the country--one who rides and sees and thinks cannot fail to be impressed with another great cost, yet to come. I am speaking of the removal of tens of thousands of highway grade crossings, in our towns and cities and in the open country. Already a good beginning has been made; but it is as nothing compared with the work which remains to be done. The coming of the automobile has hastened the necessity of the completion of this work. The railroads have contrived many ingenious and perfected methods of safeguarding their highway grade crossings. The best of them are most inadequate, however. The fact remains--a fact that must be particularly patent to you when you ride across Michigan, or Indiana, or Illinois, or Iowa, or any of their sister states--that here is a great and vastly expensive work awaiting the railroads of this country. In the larger cities--New York, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, to name a few striking examples--many millions have been expended in this work within the past few decades. While the several communities--in some instances the state treasuries--have borne a portion of these expenditures, the burden has fallen invariably upon the backs of the railroads. Fortunately the railroads which have succeeded in absolutely eliminating many of their highway crossings--and, in so doing, reducing a large part of their accident claims--have been the wealthier roads. But that is little satisfaction to a community unfortunate enough to be situated on the lines of a bankrupt road. The chances are that its grade crossings, being more poorly protected, are more dangerous. One thing more, while we are upon this subject and are speaking particularly of this lack of development of the railroads of the West and of the Southwest. It is an interesting fact that there are but three railroads--the Santa Fé, the Union Pacific, and the Southern Pacific--which have done any considerable amount of double-tracking west of the Missouri River. Yet, as we shall see when we come to the military necessity of our railroads, it is only a double-track railroad which is competent to handle any really considerable volume of traffic. And it is equally true that it is more than foolish to attempt to build or to develop any considerable mileage of branch lines until there are double-track main stems to serve it adequately. James J. Hill had all these things in mind when he made his definite statement as to the financial needs of the railroads of the United States during the present decade. And he did not need to give consideration to the abnormal traffic which the great war has given to our railroads. The normal development of the West, its gigantic possibilities, were sufficient to convince that man of great vision, to set his ready pencil at statistics.