The rest of the journey would be that of ordinary freight, save that at the destination the shipping process would be exactly reversed--the motor truck performing its part of the work again, if necessary, and the container going direct to the merchant or manufacturer with the least possible delay and with no expensive intermediate handlings, with their consequent labor expense as well as the possible danger from breakage. This idea is not chimerical. Also, it is not inexpensive. It requires much study to work out the details and when these have been brought into practicability it would require much money for the initial investment in containers. They would have to be built in large quantities, in order to justify the large immediate expense to adapt any number of freight cars, terminals, and warehouses to their use. But as to their efficiency and their ultimate economy, few transportation men who have given much real thought to the subject, are in doubt. Such schemes quickly ally themselves with the entire problem of terminals. "Terminals?" you say, and immediately think of what we were discussing a few minutes ago--the Grand Central station and other monumental structures of its sort. But those were passenger terminals. And now we have come to the great opportunities to be found in the handling and the development of the freight. Perhaps you are not impressed with the importance of freight terminals. They are not the impressive gateways of large cities; but in many, many senses they are the most important. Through them pour the foodstuffs--the meats, the fish, the vegetables, the fruits, the milk, the clothing, the fuel, the thousand and one things, necessary for the comfort of man and his luxury. Bar those gateways but for a single day and then see the panic that would overcome your city. * * * * * While we were speaking of the new Grand Central station and the important step it typified in the economic and efficient progress of our country, we called attention to the allied facilities that were springing up roundabout it--hotels, clubs, office buildings, auditorium, all of them more or less closely affiliated with the business of the great north gate of a metropolitan city. Is there any reason why the freight gateways should not be the housing places of affiliated industries--industries, if you please, more or less dependent upon the rapid movement of either their raw material or their finished products? Suppose that the railroads were ever to seek out and solve that fascinating problem of the universal unit container. Would not the most fortunate manufacturer be he whose shipping room, his entire modern and concentrated factory as well, was so close to a comprehensive freight terminal as to permit the handling of his containers, his other freight too, by means of chutes or elevators--with even the motor truck, to say nothing of less modern forms of city truckage, entirely eliminated?