were not a fact that since they were constructed railroads have steadily lowered rates, while increasing the extent and raising the quality of their service, and at the same time steadily increasing expenditure and work for the development of the country, America today would not be what it is. Its development would have been retarded and its progress slow.
To-day, however, the railroads are a big target at which many shoot. Out of 92,000,000 people relatively few in the regular course of their lives and business come closely enough into contact with railroads to know railroad officers or understand the business. Those who do not must depend upon casual information—what politicians say, what magazines print, what appears in the daily press—for their knowledge about railroads. The arguments hurled at railroads by some of the magazines are often more calculated to increase circulation than to educate the American people as to the actual facts. Many of the charges which have been believed by thou-
