"Railroads under government supervision must set their rates close to the maxima then, and maintain them there, for their own salvation. There are many times when, if it were possible, we would like to lower freight charges to meet some special emergency, such as the necessities of a district suffering from a crop failure, for example. "That is not philanthropy, but commercial sense, to help the man who creates business for you, when he is hard pressed, and to increase the volume of traffic that is falling because people have not the money to pay the price they have been accustomed to pay easily. But if we should once lower our rates--possibly to the point of loss, as American railways have done frequently in crises--we would not be allowed to restore them later, when they could be fairly restored. * * * * * "The wonderful growth and development of the United States is the admiration of the whole world. I have no doubt it is to be attributed largely to the freedom you have always enjoyed in your commercial and industrial life. "Opportunity is given here for railways and communities to be mutually helpful, and splendid use has been made and is being made of it. The few cases of complaints against your railways, the expansion of trade through the opening of European markets to the producers of your Central and Western States, who are enabled to deliver their products abroad, the low cost of transportation that enables them to compete there with the foreign producer near at hand, whose railways are in no position to help him--all these things seem to me sufficient evidence of the success and desirability of the American practice in the management and regulation of railway matters. "Any economist, any business man, any transportation manager will tell you that the present American method of fixing freight rates is the only logical and rational one."