The task of securing from old accounting department records an accurate statement of cost is—and the writer says it with the confidence born of experience—an impossibility. It is a job of such magnitude as to be practically prohibitive. The different systems of accounting, the different policies of the management, as to charging betterments to capital or operating expense, to say nothing of the countless errors that creep into the distribution of accounts, place such an undertaking among the labors of a modern Hercules, and, to one who has been engaged even in the task of trying to ascertain what one year's accounting on a large road may do in concealing betterments under the guise of operating expense, it would appear that a result that could be sworn to as correct was impossible of attainment along the lines suggested in this report. The general question of the propriety of the use of mortality tables is discussed elsewhere in this paper. This document, as an addition to the literature of the subject of valuation of properties, is disappointing, for if there were original and valuable methods they are not explicitly described. The cost of making the appraisal was about $13 per mile of line. ----- Footnote 11: _Engineering-Contracting._ THE VALUATION OF TRACTION PROPERTIES IN CHICAGO. During 1906 a complete valuation of the property and franchises of the surface roads of Chicago was made under the direction of a Commission consisting of Bion J. Arnold, M. Am. Soc. C. E., and Messrs. Mortimer E. Cooley, and A. B. du Pont. The report of this valuation was published in the form of a pamphlet which is now practically out of print, as all extra copies were long ago exhausted. The instructions of this Commission from the Chicago City Council were: "To consider the detailed inventories and estimates of value to be submitted by the Street Railway Companies, to investigate the same and to ascertain whether the values thus listed were reasonable, fair and just." Detailed inventories and estimates of value were submitted by the roads, and, from time to time during the progress of the work, additions or corrections to these schedules were made. Reports showing income, operating expense, and traffic statistics were made, and such detailed statements as were called for from time to time were furnished. The Commission organized its force for valuation work by using the office and field organization of the Arnold Company under the direct charge of George Weston, M. Am. Soc. C. E., for the major part of the work, and retained Messrs. Theodore H. Hinchman, Jr., C. V. Conover, and the writer to give special study to certain features of the appraisal. In the determination of franchise values, Professor Henry C. Adams was retained in consultation by the Commission.