"I wanted to come back to your city here. I was more than surprised at your growth and I am more than gratified. I rather gathered that you had grown fast and that possibly you wanted a resting spell, but I don't see that there is any rest for you now. I think that you will go on as you have begun, and I was more than glad to see what you are doing in the way of adjusting your street grades. It is inexpensive; the burden may be hard upon some people, and difficult to carry, but it will cost infinitely less to do it now than in five or ten years, after those streets were lined with buildings that had cost a great deal of money and you could not afford to throw them away. Lay your foundations right and the structure will take care of itself. "It will grow by degrees, and, when it is finished it will be part of a complete whole and you will be glad you did it. We have a good many communities to take care of along our railway, and with every one of them we have always the feeling that their prosperity means our prosperity. They have to earn the money before they can pay it to us, and what they do pay us we think is a small part; but we expect the railway business must depend upon close management and small savings. "Take the dividend of the Great Northern railway. _Three copper cents in moving a ton of freight ten miles pays our dividends._ A ton of freight on a country road would be a fair load for a farmer's wagon, and ten miles would be a fair day's work if he returned the same night. We do that. Our dividend amounts to about 3 cents--a little less than three copper cents--for moving that load of freight. We find that we have neither poisoned the air nor the water and you have all the highways that you had before we came, but we give you a better one and a cheaper one. MUST HAVE MONEY. "And remember that you never can injure the railway without injuring yourselves. The railway has only two sources from which to get money. It must either earn it or borrow it, and if it borrows, and borrows judiciously, the rate of interest ought not to be high, but whatever it is, high or low, you pay it. Sometimes people who do not know better think that they are serving a good cause to stick the railway--the company is rich--a personal injury case or something of that kind--but it is a railway and they can afford it--stick them. Now, who pays the bill? Can we charge that up to the construction of a station? "It is a part of the expense, and the law says that you must pay us for the use of our property enough to pay our expenses and our taxes, and a reasonable return upon the investment, so that all is charged in your bills.