Febeuaet 19, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



295 



the managers of a great trunk line to put 

 an end to transfers of passengers at state 

 boundaries and local terminals, and to run 

 the palatial trains across the continent upon 

 harmoniously adjusted schedules, which, 

 far from being ' in restraint of trade, ' have 

 done more to promote it than all the laws 

 for preventing combination or all the suits 

 begun in pursuance thereof. The system 

 of the holding company undoubtedly in- 

 creases the power of the big financiers, but 

 it enables them in many cases to go for- 

 ward with far-sighted plans for meeting 

 the certain expansion of local traffic in our 

 imperial city, or of international traffic be- 

 tween the grain fields of Minnesota and 

 the markets of Asia, which would be diffi- 

 cult or impossible under the old system of 

 petty competing organizations governed by 

 the restricted vision of some neighborhood 

 magnate. 



America has a great destiny to perform 

 in the industrial development of the world. 

 She can perform it only by applying to 

 every part of the machinery of production, 

 transportation and exchange the principle 

 of the greatest economy of effort to obtain 

 the greatest sum of results. The oppor- 

 tunity for every man to rise by his talents 

 from the lowest to the highest place, the 

 right to reap and. hold the rewards of one's 

 labor without excessive taxation or vexa- 

 tious visitation, the privilege of transfer- 

 ring property on the stock exchanges with- 

 out the fetters imposed on such transactions 

 in Europe, and the freedom to extend new 

 methods of economy and combination in 

 trade and finance across the continent, un- 

 trammeled by local tariffs and state bound- 

 aries, are among the weapons which give 

 our country its great advantages in dealing 

 with older competitors. 



The new methods and the new projects 

 are going through the test of fire to-day, 

 and some of them are being consumed. 

 The tests which weeded out the badly or- 



ganized and incompetent of the early stock 

 companies, which drove to the wall the 

 'wildcat' banks of ante-bellum days, and 

 which wiped out dividends and stock rights 

 in badly managed railways, are now being 

 applied to the new forms of organization 

 which have been the growth of the past de- 

 cade. But the stronger and better organ- 

 ized of these new corporations are likely 

 to meet these trials without disaster or to 

 modify their methods to conform to the 

 teachings of expei-ience, until there remains 

 to the financial world a valuable residuum 

 of new methods for giving flexibility to 

 capital and promoting its transfer promptly 

 and efficiently from the industries Avhere 

 it is not needed to those where it will render 

 its highest service. 



Social and Economic Significance of Street 

 Baihvay Traffic in Cities: E. Dana 

 DuEAND, Bureau of Corporations, De- 

 partment of Commerce and Labor, Wash- 

 ington, D. C. 



This paper embodied many of the results 

 of the census inquiry on street railways 

 (1902), covering a period of twelve years 

 since 1892. In this period trackage had 

 grown from 8,123 miles to 22,589 miles. 

 Passengers carried were about three times 

 the world's population. In 1902 the num- 

 ber of rides was 170 times the country's 

 urban population. In some of the larger 

 cities the number of street car rides ex- 

 ceeded 250 per capita annually. 



Among developments cited as character- 

 istic were the substitution of electrical 

 power, the extension of trackage outside of 

 city limits as suburban and interurban 

 lines, consolidation among urban lines and 

 improvement in street railway service gen- 

 erally. 



The social and economic significance of 

 these agencies appears in their capacity as 

 distributors of population to and from 

 centralized localities, in which industries 



