ten word upon this subject states that the essential
railroad problems were always far ahead of the
people, and very tardily understood by them. The
great builders themselves had no apprehension of
the larger social and political bearing of the thing
intrusted to them. ¹

Three or four years taught Baldwin so much of
what the railroad means in our total national life,
that he looked upon its influence with a kind of awe.
Steam transportation has been called the most revo-;
lutionary fact in modern life. It not only creates
cities and shifts old racial centres, it shifts economic
and political centres with even profounder results.
As all this opens to Baldwin, we see him begin to
study anew his own problem. To get it as a whole,
he turns back to its beginnings.

These data gave him both patience and impatience.
They helped him to see why and how the vices of
mismanagement arose. They helped him also to see
the nature and extent of the peril to the corporation
and to the public alike.

He was first astonished to find how appallingly
deficient the railroads had been until recent years in
ordinary inspection. But as he came to measure the
rapidity and the conditions under which the develop-;
ment took place, he recognized how impossible ade-;
quate inspection was at first, as there was no realiza-

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