If President Wilson shall succeed in persuading Congress that the entire control of the railroads should be placed in the hands of an enlarged and strengthened Interstate Commerce Commission, he will have earned the thanks of every man who has made an honest study into the situation. Such a commission, clothed with the proper powers, could and would do much not only toward relieving the railroads' immediate necessities in regard to both physical betterment and the enlargement of their pay-rolls, but in enabling them to grasp some of the opportunities which we have outlined in previous chapters--opportunities requiring a generous outpouring of money at the beginning. If I mistake not, public sentiment is going to demand that, if the railroads be granted the relief of unified regulation, they shall be prompt in their acceptance of at least some of these great avenues of development. We have heard much in late years of the banker control of our railroads and of absentee landlordism in their management. The two things are not to be confused. Banker control is not, in itself, a bad thing. Absentee landlordism invariably is. There are good stretches of railroad in every part of the country that today are failing to render not alone the proper income returns to their owners but, what is worse, service to their communities, because of this great canker, this lack of immediate executive control and understanding. And it is significant in this close connection of two phases of the railroad situation that it was the banker control in New York of the one-time Harriman system--the Union Pacific, the Southern Pacific, the Oregon Short Line, etc.--that gave to it at one fell swoop, five presidents--one at San Francisco, one at Omaha, one at Portland, one at Tucson, and one at Houston--each a young, vigorous man equipped with power and ability. The good effects of that far-seeing move--that instant wiping out of the charges of absentee landlordism that were being lodged against the Harriman system--are still being felt. It is not banker control that is essentially bad for our railroads. It is banker control together with an utter lack of vision, that has cost them so many times their two greatest potential assets--public interest and public sympathy. Banker control plus vision may readily prove itself the best form of control for our carriers. And that our bankers do not entirely lack vision may be argued by the far-seeing and opportunity-grasping way in which our bankers of the newer school are today reaching for American development in South America, in China, in the Philippines, and in other parts of the world.