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Show H REBUILDING ALWAYS GOES ON Largest Stage of Improvement Will Be the Electrification of the Railroads. It has been said that almost no public pub-lic work lasts more than a generation without requiring in some fashion to be reconstructed; practically, to be replaced. The Erie canal has been rebuilt re-built once a generation, bigger. There is already talk of making the Panama canal a sea-level ditch, even before it is really completed as a lock canal. The railroads are everlastingly in process proc-ess of rebuilding, says the Washington Washing-ton Times. Rails of 120 pounds to the yard have replaced those of 60 ; the big freight car of today would well nigh carry a trainload of freight of the first decade of railroading. Now comes promise of the greatest revolution of all. The convention of master mechanics of American railways rail-ways expresses the serious view that universal electrification will take place soon. It would be in the end cheaper, safer, more rapid and efficient. Then why not? If there is a real obstacle, it is, today, to-day, the difficulty of financing such a giguntie operation. Billions of capital cap-ital would be required. It must be raised from private investors; it can only be raised if there is such confidence confi-dence in the earning powers of the roads, and in the governmental attitude atti-tude toward them, as will guarantee stable conditions. One way to produce this confidence would be to unify and centralize, under un-der the national government, all the instrumentalities of governmental control. |