direction, as in Great Britain and the United States. I have tried the
various trains de luxe and Blitzzüge of Continental Europe and their
slow progress and often indifferent accommodations make one long for an
English or American express train. And then to hold first-class tickets
in Germany, and be refused admission to first-class compartments still
empty "because some officials may want them," as was my experience in
going from Nürnberg to Mainz, does not add to one's desire for
governmental control. The best European trains do not for one moment
compare with those of the privately owned British and American
railroads.

According to statistics published in 1913, the railroads of the United
States were capitalized at $60,000 per mile under private ownership; the
government-owned German roads at $109,000 per mile, and this in spite of
the far cheaper costs of building. Railroad rates in the United States,
both freight and passenger, under private ownership have been among the
lowest in the world. The first thing that our government control has
brought about is a raise in rates that exceeds by far what the private
managements would have dared even to imagine, much less ask of the
Interstate Commerce Commission. And this has been accompanied by a
marked deterioration of service, all of which can by no means be blamed
upon conditions resulting from the war. Poorer service at higher cost is
the almost universal experience, in the long run, of government-owned
public utilities both here and abroad.

The Boston _Commercial_ in 1913 called attention to the fact that in
France the year 1912 was marked by the largest increase in gross
receipts on record, for both government and privately owned railroads,
but the privately owned roads showed an improvement in net earnings
almost three times as great as that of the nationalized railroads. These