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222 of the President's suggestion would actually work a hardship to the employés themselves by throwing thousands of them out of employment. (Of course, the hoary old question as to whether improvements in machinery in the long run do actually throw laborers out of employment might be discussed just here, but I fancy that while we were discussing it a great many brakemen might starve.)

If such a matter as this could be left by all the States, by unanimous consent, to the Federal power, and if, instead of so sweeping a law as the President suggests, a statute might be provided requiring the draw-heads of all freight-cars manufactured or admitted into the United States to be of a uniform height and to be within projecting frame corners from the rail surface, everybody can see that not only humanity but perfect justice both to the railway company and to the employé would be subserved.

We are not at present discussing the question of automatic couplers; but this illustration shows: first, the necessity of a single and uniform railway law-maker, and that the law-maker should be guided only by expert knowledge and act only after adequate discussion and deliberation as to the best methods for not only preserving the lives of employés, but of conserving to them the opportunity of earning a living, and to the railway company the opportunity to earn the money to pay them their wages. It is certainly not necessary to go further into the subject already so fully discussed in these pages; but when the reader of former papers remembers the absurd and arbitrary laws passed by certain State Legislatures, such as prescribing the size and cost of station-houses, the number and distance even, without the slightest regard to the business or the earnings of the company, he will see at once how prohibitive of profitable railway enterprises (and so how perilous to the public, and even to the national prosperity) it may be, to leave all statutory control and regulation of railways in its present indifferent, undecided, and altogether chaotic state. It seems to me that it is the interest of the nation, of the public at large, of the railway companies, of their employés—in short, of all concerned—that such an adjustment may be arrived at as will secure, if at all, a Federal control of railways in the spirit of