cars, better stations, more and better trains, grade-separations, etc. These complaints can be adjusted only by expenditures of very large sums of money, which, of course, can be obtained only by earning it or by borrowing it. Borrowing cannot continue indefinitely unless the rates received for service are sufficient to pay all proper expenses,—taxes, interest, and a sufficient margin to permit some improvements to be made each year out of earnings and some return to the owners of the securities. It is, therefore, to the interest of every one to realize that while he, or the community in which he lives, would like to have his or its particular rate reduced, or its particular facility improved, nevertheless, in the interest of New England as a whole, the general rate-situation should permit earnings sufficient to meet the payments above described.
It is no disparagement of Theodore Roosevelt to say that for a part of his official life he seemed to be opposed to railroads and railroad methods as he understood them, and yet in one of his messages to Congress he used these
