"This address well expresses the spirit of the railway managers and employees toward all forms of investigation, and the complete lack of understanding, on the part of these managers, of the legal and moral relations which they bear to the communities which they serve." Belonging to this so hateful class, and having also ventured to question whether Professor Adams has said the last and most perfect word on the subject of railway valuation, the writer is neither surprised nor disheartened to find that he, also, has caused Mr. Riggs undisguised dissatisfaction. It is a misfortune apparently inseparable from his profession and his conception of his obligations to his employers and to the public. As has been already noted herein, the question is not whether railway property shall be officially "valued," but rather (first) as to how the "value" which is to be ascertained is properly to be defined, and (second) how the determination of "value," as properly defined, can be made most accurate. The essential difference between the view advocated before the American Economic Association by Professor Adams and that of the writer was, and is, that the former now desires to exclude all elements of value which are not physical and tangible, while the writer holds that, if it is worth while to ascertain, on a general scale, at the cost of a necessarily large expenditure of taxpayers' money, and as to a particular date, so unstable a fact as railway value, the kind of value the ascertainment of which could be of sufficient utility to warrant the effort can be nothing less significant than the "fair value" which the Courts have said is a proper element for consideration in fixing reasonable rates of charge. The fundamental difference between these two conceptions of value is admirably indicated by the following quotations, both of which rest on the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission. FAIR VALUE. "The present value of a railroad property is necessarily very largely a matter of opinion only; it depends upon a vast number of contingencies and uncertainties, a road apparently of great value to-day may soon become worthless by the opening of a competing line having superior advantages or by the competitive struggles of other lines which operate to reduce the income of all; the value of a railroad largely results from the personal characteristics of its officials; the policy pursued by directors for the conservative and economical or progressive and daring, is a great factor in the determination of the current value of the property; a railroad property is not necessarily worth what it would cost to replace it and, on the other hand, it may be worth very much more than that."[34] REPLACEMENT COST. "The bill in question makes use of the phrase 'fair value.' Unless there is some legislative necessity, which we do not perceive, we question the advisability of using this phrase.