I make no pretense as a doctor. But in the course of ten years of study of our American railroads certain conditions have forced themselves upon my attention--time and time again. I have had the opportunity to see the difficulties under which the railroads labor and some of the difficulties which the railroads have carved for themselves. I have had the chance to see how a mass of transportation legislation has acted and reacted upon these great properties. I have known and talked with their employees--of every station. And I have made up my own mind as to the great opportunity that still awaits the railroad in America. For I am firmly convinced that the great transportation organism of the United States has but scratched the surface of its usefulness. It is this last phase of the railroad that is, or should be, of greatest interest to every American. Within the short space of the pages of this book, I am going to try to show first the financial plight that has overtaken the overland carriers of our country. I am less of a financier than physician. But the figures upon which my premises are builded have been obtained by a veteran railroader; they have been carefully checked by expert auditors and railroad statisticians, and as such they may be called fundamental. Given first the financial and the physical plight of our railroads as it exists today, we shall come to another great phase of its weakness--the labor question. Partly because of a disposition to put off the real solution of this problem to a later and apparently easier day, and partly because of conditions over which the railroads have had no control whatsoever, this problem has grown from one of transportation to one of politics--politics of the most vexed and complicated sort. We shall look at this labor question from the most engrossing angle--the human one--and we shall try to look upon it from the economic and financial angle as well. And we shall reserve our real opinion as to its solution until we have had the opportunity to look from the depressing picture of the railroad of today to the picture--by no means conceived in entire fancy--of the railroad of tomorrow. Upon that second picture we shall build our opinion as to the present necessities of the railroads. Because, in my own mind, it is only as the railroad seeks opportunity, as it seeks to enlarge its vision, that it will be given the chance to live as a privately owned and managed institution. It is today close to the parting of the ways, and the men who control it have come now to the point where they will have to choose--the one path or the other. It will no longer be possible to delay the decision of a really vital economic question to a later, and an easier, day. * * * * *