Issues and Men.

There are no such fine trains in the United States. It is now announced that seven more high-speed streamline trains are to be built as a result of the allotment of federal loans totaling $2,270,000 to five major railroad companies. But meanwhile it does seem as if with the existing roadbeds and existing coaches trains could be speeded up. In 1883, the crack trains on the Northwestern transcontinental roads averaged twenty-five miles an hour. Probably today, they do not exceed thirty or thirty-five miles, with the exception of the very fastest. Undoubtedly the cost of coal conies in here. Railroads are not going to speed up their trains, as the Union Pacific is now doing, to compete with the airplane and to how a marked superiority in speed and comfort to the private automobile or bus, they must expect to remain far in the rear. Moreover, they should cheapen fares.