This Association was born out of a happy inspiration. I think these troublesome problems are approaching solution. The railway companies must obey the law. The people ought to see to it that the law which the railway corporations are obliged to obey is a just law, and that is to be ascertained only on painstaking inquiry, and not through the speeches of enthusiastic orators or on the floors of Congress. It has got to be at times that where there was no other issue upon which a political contest could be fought out, the easy, obvious and last resort was "let us go for the railroads," or, as a Governor of Minnesota once expressed it, "Let's shake the railroads over hell." The truth is that the interest of the railroads is the interest of the people. The railroad company is dependent upon the people for its life and its sustenance, and the people are no less dependent upon the railway company, and between the two there should be even-handed justice. They should be dealt with calmly, and legislation should only follow deliberation and investigation, and a law once enacted should be impersonally enforced, not enforced against some and left to fall into innocuous desuetude as to others. RAILROAD PROBLEMS OF TODAY BY J. B. THAYER, Vice-President Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Address delivered before the Traffic Club of New York, Saturday Evening, February 16, 1909. Problems--both many and varied--have always confronted the railway manager. Particular problems come to the front from time to time that tax all of our resources. They differ with different periods of our history. Today one of the most serious depends more for its solution upon our lawmaking bodies, both State and national, than upon the railroad men, and for the present, at least, we must feel like the old Arkansas darky, who said he was "in the hands of an all-wise and unscrupulous Providence." In the early days of railroads the chief problem was that of construction and equipment; later, when more railroads had been built than there was traffic to feed, there came the traffic problem, and all the abuses which followed in its train. These, in turn, led to the legislative problem accompanied by the Interstate Commerce Law of 1887, and through the '90s all sorts of problems--including bankruptcy for many. Now, within the past few years has come the great problem of enlargement--the construction period again, but in a different shape. Not experimental, for we had learned how to build and how to equip; not the building so much into new country, but to take care of the traffic which was overflowing our rails.