Mr. Adams, from whom I have already quoted, was the first Chairman of the Commission. He has described their position as resting "on the one great social feature which distinguishes modern civilization from any other of which we have a record, the eventual supremacy of an enlightened public opinion." That public opinion is supreme in this country, few would be found to deny; that public opinion in railroad matters is enlightened, few would care to assert. But given the enlightened public opinion, one can hardly doubt that it will secure not merely eventual but immediate supremacy. In truth, as Bagehot once pointed out, a great company is of necessity timorous in confronting public opinion. It is so large that it must have many enemies, and its business is so extended that it offers innumerable marks to shoot at. It is much more likely to make, for the sake of peace, concessions that ought not to be made than it is to resist a demand that reasonable men with no personal interest in the matter publicly declare to be such as ought rightly to be conceded. To sum up in a sentence the lesson which I think the history we have been considering conveys, it is this: Closer connection than has hitherto existed between the state and its railroads has got to come, both in this country and in the United States. Hitherto in Anglo-Saxon democracies neither state ownership nor state control has been over-successful. The best success has been obtained by relying for control, not on the constable, but on the eventual supremacy of an enlightened public opinion. Nearly 20 years ago, in the pages of the _Economic Journal_, I appealed to English economists to give us a serious study of what the Americans call the transportation problem in its broad economic and political aspects. Since then half-a-dozen partisan works have appeared on the subject, not one of them in my judgment worth the paper on which it is printed; but not a single serious work by a trained economist. And yet such a work is today needed more than ever. Let me once more appeal to some of our younger men to come forward, stop the gap, and enlighten public opinion. FOOTNOTE: [I] Further, it is common knowledge that the Senate only passed the bill (and that by a majority of no more than three) because M. Clemenceau insisted that he would resign if it was not passed, and, though they disliked nationalization much, they disliked M. Clemenceau's resignation more. RAILWAY NATIONALIZATION BY SIR GEORGE S. GIBB. A paper read at a meeting of the Royal Economic Society, on 10th November, 1908.