The history whose outline I have now very briefly sketched shows, I think, that whereas there is everywhere a tendency towards further state control, the tendency towards absolute state-ownership and state-operation is far from being equally universal. I shall have a word to say presently as to the reasons why America shows no signs of intention to follow the example of continental Europe. Meanwhile it is well to notice that American experience proves also the extreme difficulty of finding satisfactory methods of control. Sir Henry Tyler said some five-and-thirty years ago in England, in words that have often been quoted since, "If the state can't control the railroads, the railroads will control the state"; and President Roosevelt has again and again in the last few years insisted on the same point. "The American people," he said in effect, "must work out a satisfactory method of controlling these great organizations. If left uncontrolled, there will be such abuses and such consequent popular indignation that state-ownership will become inevitable, and state-ownership is alien to American ideas, and might cause very serious political dangers." Perhaps some of my hearers may remember Macaulay's graphic description of the passion that was aroused by Charles James Fox's proposed India Bill; it was described as a Bill for giving in perpetuity to the Whigs, whether in or out of office, the whole patronage of the Indian government. The objection felt by American statesmen to handing over their railroads to the National government--for I think it may be taken for granted that if they were nationalized it would have to be wholly under Federal management, and that the separate states could take no part in the matter--is in principle the same. There are something like a million and a half men employed on the railroads of the United States, say roughly 7 or 8 per cent. of the voters. Americans feel that rival political parties might bid against each other for the support of so vast and homogeneous a body of voters; that the amount of patronage placed at the disposal of the executive government for the time being would be enormous; and that the general interests of the nation might be sacrificed by politicians anxious to placate--to use their own term--particular local and sectional interests. How far this fear, which is undoubtedly very prevalent in the states, is justified by the history of state railroads in other countries is a question exceedingly difficult to answer. Dealing with state railroads in the lump, it is easy to point to some against which the charge would be conspicuously untrue. To take the most important state railroad organization in the world, the Prussian system, no one, I think, can fairly deny that it has been operated--in intention at least, if not always in result--for the greatest good of the greatest number. But then Prussia is Prussia, with a government in effect autocratic, with