A fifth contradiction is the effort to connect up rate-making with physical valuations. If it will be a satisfaction to the politicians to have a physical valuation of all the railroads in the United States, and the people are willing to be taxed to pay the great expense of obtaining it, perhaps no great harm will be done; but I believe all of us here would concede that valuations by the ablest engineers, if separately made, would not agree, and that before such valuations could be finished, they would be out of date. Some of us probably think that for rate-making purposes the Government may as well be employed in making a physical valuation of farms and farm improvements in order to ascertain what is a fair price for wheat; or, for that matter, perhaps be as well employed in adding up car numbers. I know something of a piece of railroad out west, which in a great mining excitement was built through rocky and tortuous gorges, and with four per cent grade hung upon the precipitous sides of awful mountains in a climate described by one of the inhabitants as consisting of three seasons--July, August and winter. Later the boom evaporated and the business of the road got down to one train a day. In the low ebb of traffic a brakeman one day "sifted" into the trainmaster's office and asked for a job. The trainmaster put him through the catechism, and among other things inquired, "What would you think if you saw a train carrying green signals?" to which the applicant promptly responded, "I'd think business was picking up." Now, can any of us tell what they would do in Washington with a physical valuation of a road like that? Its rates today are only about one-fifth what they were at first.