I recall a man who purchased in an early day large bodies of Iowa land at from three to five dollars per acre. His rentals must have equalled twenty percent per annum on his investment. Then he watered the capitalization and sold these lands at seventy-five dollars per acre. They are now worth over two hundred dollars per acre. But, even at seventy-five dollars, they made him a millionaire, financially. Then he assailed the railroads for watering their capitalization, though money invested in a railroad never yielded a quarter as large returns as his land investments netted. His opposition to railroads, however, made him a millionaire, politically. Some years ago a man asked me to join him and some friends in promoting a railroad to the coal fields of Alaska. I asked him who owned the coal and was told that anyone could have all he cared to buy at a nominal price. I called attention to a statute that forbade the same men owning both the railroad and the coal. Then I proposed that I take the coal and let him and his friends build the railroad. If they succeeded, I would then go to the Interstate Commerce Commission and get a rate that would give them six percent on their investment and I would take all the profit. I reminded him that the public thought six percent was enough for money invested in railroads. The road has never been built. I met a friend not long ago who, in explaining that the world had been good to him, told me that some years before he had bought a large body of badly located but excellent timber back in the mountains of Washington, at fifteen cents per thousand on the stump. Then a railroad was built up to his holdings. That was some years ago and during the period of national development. When the road was completed, he went to the Interstate Commerce Commission and got a rate so that he was then selling his timber, which cost him fifteen cents per thousand, for five dollars per thousand, while those who builded the road are presumably getting six or eight percent on their investment and will until the timber is exhausted, when their road will be worthless. My friend is not a reactionary but is far-sighted. I think he said he studied finance from the standpoint of a farmer. A few years ago, at a Chamber of Commerce dinner in New York, Myron K. Jessup asked me if I knew that he was once president of a railroad in Iowa. The road extended from Dubuque to Farley. I asked him if he remembered when an engineer by the name of Smith made a preliminary survey from Farley to Sioux City, and reported that there was nothing west of Iowa Falls worth building a railroad into. “Remember it!” said he. “He made that report to me.”