Take a hundred different-sized locomotives, each adapted to different work under different conditions, and separate each piece of metal; it would be possible to value all these parts, but the aggregate would be far less than the value of the locomotives from which they were taken. Again, it would be possible to construct from these parts a hundred locomotives of such poor design, their respective parts so out of adjustment and balance, that they would be worth even less than the parts out of which they were assembled. The highest paid intelligence has not yet contrived the perfectly balanced locomotive, but a large part of the so-called "physical value" of every locomotive represents this sort of highly paid intelligence put forth at every stage from the opening of the mine where the ore was obtained to the delivery of the completed locomotive. Take ten railways of a thousand miles each, every one of them efficiently constructed, and equipped with proper terminals, stations, signals, rolling stock, and trained employees, and each properly adapted to the requirements of its territory and traffic; separate them into piles of ties and rails, groups of locomotives and cars, acres of land, unorganized bodies of men of varied capacity and training; what sort of intelligence will it require to build up out of these masses ten railways as efficient and useful as those that originally existed? Why, then, should the "physical value" of the locomotive include the assembling of its parts in proper balance and the "physical value" of the railway exclude the cost of the much more complicated adjustment of its elements of machinery and labor and location to each other? At an early point in his discussion, Mr. Riggs makes an announcement, highly becoming on the part of one who proposes to deal with the problem solely from the point of view of a civil engineer, that he does not intend to argue the public utility of any sort of valuation, but only the method by which it may best be made, should one be determined upon. He says: "This paper is confined to a discussion of the methods which should be used in arriving at a correct figure of cost of reproduction and depreciation—it does not take up questions involving the propriety of those figures when reached. The propriety or legality of using such figures as a basis for an assessed valuation, as a basis for rate-making (rate-making being an art in itself involving complications as great as those encountered in valuation), or any arguments as to the justice or injustice of legislation restricting issues of stocks or bonds, will be conceded no place in this paper. It is assumed that all these questions would have been taken up and a satisfactory answer reached before a valuation could have been ordered."