Back of the President, back of the Newlands committee and its rather dazzling sense of importance, sits the nation. It is far superior to any mere committees of its own choosing and it is weighing the entire railroad situation as perhaps it never before has been weighed. It is considering the enlargement and the strengthening of the Interstate Commerce Commission--together with it a feasible method for the Federal incorporation of our roads--this last a vital necessity in the mind of any man who has ever tried to finance an issue of securities for an interstate property with each separate state trying to place its own regulations--in many cases both onerous and erratic--upon them. With the spirit of Congress willing, there still remains the very large question of how far its power would extend, in attempting either to reduce the power of the state boards or to make them more amenable to the Federal commission. Our states have been most jealous of their sovereign rights. And it is easy to conceive that their aid and cooperation--so very necessary to the success of the entire ultimate project of the nationalization of our railroads--is not to be obtained by the mere wishing.[22] President Wilson has set the beginnings for the plan and set them well. As I write it is still up to Congress to undo its mischievous legislation which, if it is made to include an eight-hour day, should render a genuine eight-hour day, one applicable to every class of railroad employee--although it would be difficult to imagine a railroad superintendent or general manager or president quitting at the end of the short-term service. They are schooled to harder things. And with the eight-hour day must come these other things to which we have already referred, not once but several times. First among these are the matters so closely correlated in President Wilson's program that they cannot be separated from the eight-hour day: arbitration--compulsory arbitration, if you please--the strengthening of the power of the government to seize the railroads and operate them in a time of national panic or military necessity, the enlargement of the powers and the personnel of the Interstate Commerce Commission. With all these things accomplished, and the situation just so much strengthened, it will then become the duty of the railroads to reach out more generously toward their opportunities for further development as the transport service of a great and growing people. It will be necessary for them to attract, to train, to reward new executives of every sort; to further their credit by deserving credit, to show outwardly in a more potent way the thing that so many of them have believed they inwardly possess--true efficiency, both for service and for growth.