"I myself have always maintained that the passenger revenues of our railroads do not render their proportion of the cost of operation. The Interstate Commerce Commission has upheld the same contention, as anyone can see by its recent decision granting increases in passenger rates proportionately much higher than the increases in freight rates. These figures of mine show how a privileged class, representing ten per cent, or, at the widest calculation, not more than twenty per cent of the population, have been receiving transportation at far less than the actual cost; while the remaining ninety per cent of the citizens of the United States have paid the freight--literally." The railroader's figures are interesting--to say the least. And we must assume that he has not forgotten the fact that there is one great economic difference between the freight and the passenger traffic. The one must move, and, save in the few cases where waterborne traffic competes, move by rail; a large part of the other is shy and must be induced. If this were not true the big railroads would be advertising for freight business as steadily and as strongly as they advertise for passengers. Of course a large proportion of folk travel because necessity so compels, yet there is a goodly proportion, a proportion to be translated into many thousands of dollars, who travel upon the railroad because the price is low enough to appeal to their bargain-sense. In this great class must always be included the excursionists of every class. These folk must be lured by attractive rates. And as a class they are particularly susceptible just now to the charms of the railroad's great new competitor--the automobile. It was only two or three years ago that the round-trip ticket at considerably less than the cost of two single-trip tickets and the twenty-dollar mileage book, entitling the bearer to 1,000 miles of transportation, prevailed in the eastern and more closely populated portion of the United States. The price of the mileage book was raised to $22.50. Within a short time it is likely to go to $25. And there are shrewd traffic men among the railroad executives of the country who today say that within twenty years it will cost five cents a mile to ride upon the railroad--as against an average fare of two and a half cents today. And I do not think that, in view of the advances in cost--as well as that great necessity in making good that loss in both physical and human equipment, to which I have already referred--the public will make any large protest. The average man does not wish to ride upon a railroad that is neglecting either its property or its employees. He is willing to pay a larger price for his transportation if only he is assured that this larger price is going to make his travel more safe and more comfortable in every way.