Mr. McDill was a member of the Iowa Railroad Commission for several years. He may, therefore, be presumed to have known that the State of Iowa could not, and did not propose to, regulate interstate traffic, and that the thirteen million dollars railroad revenue to which he referred was derived both from interstate and State traffic; that the latter was only about one-fourth of the former, and that therefore the proposed reduction on the basis of schedule rates would have cut down the net revenue of the roads only about one million instead of five million dollars. But Mr. McDill himself states that the average rate earned by all the railroads of the United States was, for the year 1886, only 2.181 cents per passenger per mile. It certainly was not over 2-1/2 cents per mile for the first-class roads of Iowa. Thus the proposed reduction, instead of being one cent per mile, as stated by Mr. McDill, was only one-half cent per mile; and it only applied to the local business of the first-class roads. In other words, the bill under consideration, had it been enacted into law, would have caused a reduction of 20 per cent. on about 25 per cent. of the total revenue from passenger business of the first-class roads, or of five per cent. on their total income from passenger traffic in the State of Iowa. It will be noticed that Mr. McDill in his calculation made no allowance whatever for the increase of business which would have followed such a reduction. The gain from this source would probably have greatly exceeded the loss due to this small reduction in the fare. In the same address Mr. McDill made many other equally fallacious statements. One of the most devoted advocates of the interests of railroad managers is Marshall M. Kirkman. He is the author of a number of books and pamphlets upon railway subjects, among them a pamphlet entitled "The Relation of the Railroads of the United States to the People and the Commercial and Financial Interests of the Country." Mr. Kirkman introduces his subject with the following rather remarkable statement: