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Take the railroads. With already the cheapest railroad transportation in the world, people were clamoring for it to be made cheaper. Crazy Populists were telling the farmers it ought to be free, like the air. Prejudice against railroads was amazing, irrational and suicidal. All profit in railroading had been taxed and regulated away. Incentive to build new roads had been destroyed. If by a special design of the Lord a railroad did seem to prosper the politicians pounced upon it and either mulcted it secretly or held it forth to the public as a monster that must be chained up with restrictive laws. Sometimes they practised both these arts at once. Result: the nation’s transportation arteries were strangling. No extension of the arterial system for an increasing population was possible under these conditions. What would the sequel be? Rome for all her sins might have endured if only she had developed means of communication, namely, roads, in an adequate manner. It was obvious and nobody saw it. Well, now he was trying to save people from a repetition of that blunder. He was trying to make them see in time that unless they allowed the railroads to prosper the great American experiment was doomed.