The Italian experiment is still newer. It would not be fair to say that it proves anything against state management; but I do not think that the most fervid _Etatist_ would claim that, either on the ground of efficiency or on the ground of economy, it has so far furnished any argument in favor of that policy. If we wish to study the state management of railroads by pure democracies of Anglo-Saxon type, we must go to our own Colonies. My own impressions, formed after considerable study of the subject and having had the advantage of talking with not a few of the men who have made the history, I hesitate to give. It is easy to find partisan statements on both sides; for example, in a recent article in the _Nineteenth Century_, entitled "The Pure Politics Campaign in Canada," I find the following quotation from the _Montreal Gazette_--a paper of high standing--dated May 27, 1907: "Every job alleged against the Russian autocracy has been paralleled in kind in Canada. First, there is the awful example of the Intercolonial Railway, probably as to construction the most costly single-track system in North America, serving a good traffic-bearing country, with little or no competition during much of the year, and in connection with much of its length no competition at all, but so mishandled that one of its managers, giving up his job in disgust, said it was run like a comic opera. Some years it does not earn enough to pay the cost of operation and maintenance (I may interpolate that its gross earnings per mile are equal to those of an average United States railroad), and every year it needs a grant of one, two, three or four million dollars out of the Treasury to keep it in condition to do at a loss the business that comes to it. When land is to be bought for the road, somebody who knows what is intended obtains possession of it, and turns it over to the government at 40, 50 and 100 per cent advance. This is established by the records of Parliament and of the courts of the land." AFRICAN CAPE GOVERNMENT RAILROADS. Probably no one outside the somewhat heated air of Canadian politics is likely to believe this damning accusation quite implicitly; but even if there were not a word of truth in it--and that the management of the Intercolonial Railway is, for whatever cause, bad, appears, I think, clearly from the public figures--it is bad enough that such charges should be publicly made and apparently believed. Let me quote now from a document of a very different type referring to a colony very far distant from Canada: "A memorandum relative to Railroad Organization, prepared at the request of the Railroad Commissioners of the Cape Government Railways, by Sir Thomas R. Price, formerly general manager of those railroads, and now general manager of the Central South Africa (_i. e._, Transvaal and Orange River) Railways, dated Johannesburg, February 22, 1907."