Mr. Elbert Hubbard, of East Aurora, N. Y., recently remarked that "when God sent a current of common sense through the universe most of the reformers wore rubber boots and stood on glass." Our troubles are with this class--well-meaning men who have zeal without knowledge and enthusiasm without sanity; these we may not reach, but the great mass of the solid and substantial citizenship may perhaps be induced to stop and consider whither we are drifting and whether this greatest of all the country's industries is being fairly treated. RAILROADS AND THE PUBLIC BY HON. JOHN C. SPOONER. From the address delivered at the annual dinner of the Railway Business Association, New York, November 10, 1909. The topic which has been assigned to me is brief, but very large: "Railroads and the Public." It suggests nothing of humor, but everything of gravity and involves considerations which affect the prosperity of our whole people. The railroads, often berated in legislatures and in congresses as leechlike and piratical, are, after all, vital to the happiness of our people and to the progress of our industries and commerce. The people are apt to forget that they have been the greatest factors--I say the _greatest_ factors--in the development of our resources and the enlargement of our commerce, both in times of war and in times of peace. If one would stop to think of what would have happened if, during the war for the preservation of the Union, we had been without railroads, ready and willing to serve the government upon its demand and at prices fixed by it, how long would the war have continued? And what might not have been its result? They carried troops from the North to the places of rendezvous in the fields; they enabled the government to transfer quickly from the East to the West, or the West to the East, as emergency demanded, troops essential to successful military operations. They carried munitions of war, they carried the mail to our soldiers, they carried food and raiment to those who were fighting under our flag.