specific authorization in advance, it being understood that the face value of these securities is not to be construed as an obligation on the public. ... A growing railroad has constant need of money, and its officers and directors are the best judges of the amount of its annual requirements. It is manifestly to the interest of the company and of the public that a road should get its money as cheaply as it can. The policy of allowing a floating debt to accumulate with a view to its extinction by the sale of permanent securities upon the completion of its improvements, is not a good one and should be avoided wherever possible. An administrative body whose approval was required in advance for the sale of securities would have great difficulty in always acting promptly enough to enable the roads to avail themselves of favorable money markets, and avoid the creation of floating debt, and might do its work so carelessly as to result in shielding the directors from responsibility, instead of acting as a safeguard to the public."

These words are as true now as they were then and quite as much ignored. Is not an honest and experienced board of directors a better judge than the Interstate Commerce Commission-or what is more frequently the case, members of its staff of what kind of securities should be sold, in what amounts they should be sold, when they should be sold and at what price? And is not the time to sell securities the time when capital is abundant and money can be raised at low interest rates? What is gained by interminably long hearings before the Commission and why compel the justification by

proof, of why the money is wanted and how it should be spent? Let the carriers obtain their money when they can and when they believe it best to do so; and let regulation, if regulation there must be, take place when it comes to its expenditure. Neither should, in fact, be required.

22

Fortunately for the welfare of the public, the railroads have in the past spent a large part of their earnings in improvements, betterments and additions, and the money so spent must perforce be recognized in determining what is the so-called "fair value" on which the so-called "reasonable return" is to be allowed. Fortunately this will for a time mitigate the harmful effect of present policies. Although the methods of valuation employed by the Interstate Commerce Commission have not yet been passed on by the Supreme Court, the decisions of that Court in other cases indicate that the final valuation on which the carriers will be permitted to earn a return will be largely in excess of the tentative valuations of the Interstate Commerce Commission so far announced. In that case, government ownership would probably be deferred.

The public is under the mistaken. impression that the Transportation Act provides a guaranty by the United States Government of a certain rate of profit to the carriers, when it really acts merely as a limitation on profits. Let the carriers have recourse to the courts to secure a reasonable return on the fair value of their property and they will fare better than they are likely to fare under existing law. The carriers are running a great

danger in allowing the public to remain under this impression that there is a guaranty.

Having seen what our problem is, why it is, and asked ourselves what of it, the fourth question, which it is said Professor Sumner was fond of propounding, remains: what are we going to do about it?

What can be done to avert government ownership with its economic and therefore political and social evils, and to assure the country an adequate transportation system?

The present practical remedies are few and seem to be: first, a modification of the corporation tax law so as to exclude carriers from its operation; second, the repeal of the recapture feature of the Transportation Act; third, the adoption of the recommendation of the Railroad Securities Commission that the carriers shall be free to sell securities without restriction and that the regulation (if regulation there must be) shall be solely in respect to the expenditure of their proceeds.

It is a tragedy that the experience of previous generations goes to waste and that only by its own experience does each generation learn. But it is not too late for this generation to profit by its own experience. Intelligence, freedom from prepossession, prejudice and passion are needed in dealing with the railroad problem. Have we that intelligence and freedom? If every person could realize how much the railroad problem is his own individual problem, we might be in a fair way of a solution.

No man engaged in business other than the transportation industry

would consent to being held responsible for results if his powers were circumscribed as are those of the railroad executives. In spite of this, politicians continue to clamor for still further restriction. Fortunately, restriction can go but little further. A few more steps and government ownership will "steal upon us ere we

are aware.

The Constitution of the United States prevents confiscation of property. That protection fortunately cannot be taken away from the owners of railroad property by legislation. Nearly everything else constituting ownership has been taken. The great mass of the people do not realize the serious consequences to them, involved in the present situation and neither speeches nor pamphlets nor books, nor yet magazine articles are going to make them realize it. Only by trial, error and suffering will they be brought to a realization of how deeply their fortunes are involved in the correct solution of the railroad problem, and when they finally do realize it, it may be too late to apply the appropriate remedy. The mischief will have been done. We are on the brink of the precipice of government ownership; another few steps in the direction in which we are moving and over we go.

The closing lines of Webster's speech are as appropriate here as the opening lines:

"Ah, sir, this is but the old story. All regulated governments, all free governments have been broken by

disinterested and well-disposed interference. It is the common pretense."

O

N THE register of the Lying-In Hospital I was an extern in obstetrics, but to my colleagues on the District and to Dr. Challoner my chief, I was just another baby-snatcher-and a pretty verdant one at that. In the traditional manner of Harvard medical students I was fulfilling my obstetrical requirements by delivering babies in the slums of Boston. Along with three other stripling 'prentices I was quartered in an out-patient branch of the Hospital-the Clinic, we called it an ancient lodginghouse squatting gray and toad-like in the center of the District. Around us the District coiled like a great urban jungle, peopled by sallowy nyctalops and other mysterious bipeds, intersected by creeks of dark traffic and refuse-choked lanes. It was a region of deeps and crevasses that no mere extern could hope to chart, fathom or conquer. To the south it struck the water-front and reeled jaggedly along the docks; on the west it was fringed by railroad yards; and far to the east it ended smack up against the stench and desolation of the city abattoir. This was our terrain; in this area of reeking tenements, flooded cellars, dives, alleys, piers and passageways, we delivered in one summer

exactly 101 babies, and lost only one. And there was greater mourning among the baby-snatchers for the one that was lost, than rejoicing over the hundred that were justly delivered.

a

Fancy babies of the silver-spoon species have often cost their parents upward of a thousand dollars, and infants of the ordinary gurgling variety can be picked up moderately cheap for two or three hundred. But on the District all babies are admitted gratis, else they would never be admitted at all. Prenatal care, actual delivery, nursing, instruction, medicine-yes, and sometimes quarter in the gas-meter-are details of the service maintained by the Hospital for the benefit of the District. But although the Hospital maintains the service, the babysnatchers actually do the work. As student obstetricians we received no fees, and were allowed to accept no gratuities. We paid for our own food, laundry and transportation. We lost our own sleep, wore out our own shoe-leather, and dropped from three to five pounds a week on the arduous job of ushering black, yellow and white babies into their respective homes. After a month on the District we were bundles of raw, uninsulated nerves. But for every

penny we spent and for every pound we lost, we gained an unpurchaseable experience of medicine and a firsthand feeling for humanity. Of teachers, the District is the sternest and greatest-and obstetrics is not all it teaches either.

I was assigned to the District on June 28, 1927. It happened this way: I had already landed a job as dietician on the Floating Hospital, and was planning to cruise around Boston harbor all summer, preparing menus for two hundred hungry babies. But the day before we weighed anchor, the hospital burned to its keelson, and I, with a whole summer ahead of me, was without a job. So I called up my medico-political friend Charley Breadon, a house officer in the City Infirmary, and a bag-man born.

"Charley," I said, "here's a seagoing Osler, a young but nautical tonsil-slicer without a berth.”

"No pun intended," he replied, "but can you deliver babies?"

"Anywhere. Why not?" I was bluffing, and Breadon knew it.

"Well, if you think you can handle an obstetrical service for the summer, there's a vacancy at the Lying-In. Falls due at six to-night. And in case you feel shaky on your technique, I'd suggest that you hop over to the maternity ward and watch a delivery."

"Good idea," says I, hanging up. I hurried over to the Lying-In, and while three doctors and as many nurses hovered over the patient, I witnessed for the first time the thaumaturgic wonder of a baby coming into the world.

And that night at ten o'clock, I

went out on my first case-alone.

The young extern going on his first assignment carries a bag of instruments, an instruction book, a flash-light and a pious realization of his own ignorance. True, he has examined all the diagrams, has read hundreds of pages on the technique of delivery, and has gone through all the maneuvers with a dummy torso and a baby doll. He is armed with the assurance that eighty-eight per cent of all children are born normally, and would be delivered perfectly whether he were in attendance or not. He knows further that in the case of an abnormal birth, a telephone call will bring immediate assistance from his chief, and that in the event of serious complications an ambulance will land his patient in one of the finest maternity hospitals in the East. He knows all this, but the knowledge does not prevent him from being as nervous as a rooky under his first barrage.

The evening began slowly. I reported to Dr. Challoner, the House Officer (hereinafter to be termed the H. O.) and was given a hatful of instructions to mull over at my leisure. The H. O. was himself a young doctor on the last lap of his internship. Sentimentality was not his failing, and so his closing remarks may be regarded as a fair and unpoetical statement of the District philosophy.

"Remember," said Challoner, "you're on an important service, a service that calls for patience, nerve, and at the proper time, action. We realize that you are not an expert. But you've got the rudiments of a brain, and we ask you to use it. Now these women who are to be your patients are for the most part

foreigners, usually ignorant and almost always dirty. But never forget that they are women and human beings. I want you to give them every care and attention you'd give a Social Register matron. And mind you, no superior airs. Don't make the mistake, as others have done, of thinking that you're doing these women a favor. Ignorant as they are, they are contributing greatly to your education as a doctor, and for every hour you spend with them you're being rewarded ten times over. Another thing; they think you are a full-fledged doctor, and never permit them for a moment to think otherwise. Actually you are a doctor; you have a permit from the State to engage in a limited practice of medicine. When you step over the threshold of a house, take the command you're entitled to. Get out in front and stay there, or else you'll find the neighborhood midwife putting it all over you, or perhaps a stevedore husband will decorate the ceiling with your viscera. Lastly, preserve asepsis! Boil everything, scrub up six times over, otherwise your patient will get Rocky Mountain spotted fever or something worse. That's all. Now stand by for a call."

I stood by, or rather fidgeted about until nine o'clock, taking last glances at my charts and diagrams, and addressing as many questions as I dared to Holt and Purdy, my confrères on this baby-snatching detail. They were veterans of two weeks' service, with records of nine and ten babies respectively; for an hour they alternated in giving me the usual hypodermic jabs of advice. Much that they told me was practi

cal and helpful; to conclude their performance they enacted a tableau that was as indescribable as it was priceless. Then, seeing I was still nervous, Purdy came in gravely with, "There's really nothing to it, big boy. After the first seven hours it's a cinch. Of course, if pre-eclamptic toxemia sets in, and the blood pressure hits 250 or in case its triplets-why God help you. But otherwise you won't have much trouble. Seriously though, I advise you to hit the mattress for a blink of sleep. You're Number One on the blackboard, and you can't tell when you'll make your next connection with sweet 'sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,' as Shakspere says."

I realized I was wearing myself out, and started to get undressed, laying my clothes firemanwise on the backs of two chairs. My head was barely on the pillow when the telephone rang. I was at the receiver before the bell stopped vibrating. A heavy frightened foreign voice clotted the wire with jumbled noises. Finally I gathered that some one's Minnie was having a baby, and that I was wanted quick.

"Name and address?"

"Jake Sidoloufkos, 14 Beeler Street. Come quick.”

"I'll be right over. Get some water boiling."

I slid into my clothes, at the same time reading Minnie's prenatal history in the clinical register. She had made her calls irregularly, and her record was far from complete. But I found that she was a Lithuanian, had married a Greek, was twentyfour years old, the mother of four children, all previous births normal,