When Mademoiselle Susanna Vere de Vere, haughty and capricious, talcumed and beflounced, rides east at 10:00 a.m., ensconsced in green plushed parlor car comfort, think you she recognizes as she rolls along, the significance of the irregular hedge that flanks for miles her chosen pathway? Can she see in that jagged sky line of uneven box car roofs, so unlike the matched uniformity of the coral beads in her necklace--the source of the revenue which purchased the ornament? Probably not. Does Oliver Opulence across the isle, with fattening jowls and the latest periodical, attribute his golfing privileges and bank balance to the agency of the lowly freight car? No, not in the fullest measure. The routine duties of John Jones Limited in to-day’s strenuous commercial struggle are based entirely on what freight service has done or will accomplish for them, and during conferences with their purchasing and traffic assistants, concrete equipment needs are dealt with daily but the vital usefulness of each empty car as a retainer and carrier are thought of only in an abstract way, yet they are as essential as the “G.T.R.” or three daily meals. Not until such time as the advent of an industrial calamity that will destroy them all, leaving coal man, merchant and bacon baron stranded high and dry, will shippers unanimously appreciate their individual worth, and not until then will cease the desire of corporate interests to haul their valuable loads along this or that favored highway of steel. Not a pulley in manufacture could turn without their direct aid, meagre would be the housewives’ meals and pelts again be their children’s portion if the wheels refused to whirr: then indeed, would Mademoiselle Susanna Vere de Vere understand the sudden death of Pullman palaces from commercial paralysis.