estimating the growth of traffic for the decade ending in 1933 also estimated the minimum amount of capital that would be required to handle the prospective traffic. The estimate was $7,870,000,000 for a decade, or a capital investment in railroad facilities averaging $787,000,000 a year. This estimate is considered by many men to be much too small. Inasmuch as the investment in railroads at the present time probably exceeds $21,000,000,000, the above estimate of the annual requirements for the ensuing ten years is less than 32 per cent. of the present invested capital. Certainly at least that percentage of new capital will be required.

How many hundred millions of dollars will be needed each year to provide electric railway facilities and to meet the demand for freight and passenger transportation by motor trucks and busses. can only be conjectured. Apparently the development of transportation facilities in the United States during the next ten years will require not less than two billion dollars of capital annually. That amount will be in addition to whatever may be needed for the construction and maintenance of highways, for which $500,000,000 a year would be quite inadequate. These figures indicate that the people of the United States must expect to spend between two and one half and three billion dollars annually to provide transportation facilities.

Reasons for PRIVATE OWNERSHIP AND OPERATION OF RAILROADS

IN THE UNITED STATES.

The size of the transportation industries and the vital relation which transportation bears to economic prosperity and social wellbeing combine to give importance to the public policy adopted towards transportation. The first big question that the public must decide is whether transportation facilities should be provided by the government or by private enterprise. Fortunately this question seems for the present to have been decided in favor of private ownership and operation, but there is more or less widespread and continuous advocacy of government ownership and operation of railroads and other transportation agencies, in spite of the fact that sound economic and political philosophy as well as practical experience indicate that private ownership and operation of railroads and other transportation agencies is the wiser policy for the United States.

The reasons why private ownership and operation of the railroads are preferable to government enterprise are not always clearly understood. Briefly stated the main reasons are

(1) That private ownership and operation of railroads is in harmony with the genius of the people of this country. The country has gone ahead with amazing rapidity because the principle of private initative in economic life has been adhered to.

(2) The management of a railroad is an executive task for which a democratic government is ill adapted.

(3) The successful management of a railroad or other large business enterprise requires unity of thought and continuity of purpose on the part of the directors and executive officers. Government management is subject to legislature control which in a democratic country renders impossible that continuity of purpose essential to success in railroad management.

(4) Private enterprise invests funds in response to business needs. Private railroads are developed where there is the largest traffic demand. Government appropriations for railroads would be subject to political as well as economic influences.

(5) The officers and directors of a railroad company are under constant pressure to keep expenses down. They will employ no more than are needed. In government enterprises this is not the prevailing practice.

(6) Men of greatest efficiency and highest technical training are less attracted to government positions than to private business activities. If the railroads were owned and operated by the government, they would in a few years be operated by men of less efficiency than the men engaged in private enterprises.

(7) The expense of operating railroads under government management would be greater than under private management. Rates and fares would have to be higher or the tax payers would have to meet annually recurring deficits. With very few exceptions, government operation of railroads has resulted in deficits borne by the tax payers.

(8) The acquisition of the railroads by the United States government would double the present debt, large as that has been made by the recent world war. If the debt were doubled, the interest

rate would be increased. The financial burden borne by the taxpayers would be much heavier.

GOVERNMENT POLICY-ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF REGULATION. Government regulation rather than government ownership and operation of the railroads and other transportation facilities is advisable in the United States. Government regulation is necessary in the public interest. It is also necessary that regulation should be in accordance with sound principles.

The public generally now has a much clearer understanding of the problem of government regulation of railroads than it had prior to the World War. Up to that time, the main purpose of government regulation of the railroads was to punish abuses in the railroad service and to prevent their recurrence. The Transportation Act of 1920, however, is framed in accordance with the principle that the government's relation to the railroads must be constructive and helpful as well as corrective. Most of the railroad abuses of the past have been eliminated. The primary aim of the government now is to assure adequate facilities.

The government cannot avoid regulating railroad rates and in the long run the federal and local government will inevitably regulate the rates of common carriers other than the railroads. This means that the revenues of railroads and other carriers will be determined by public policy. It needs no argument to prove that government regulation must not go so far as to prevent the carriers from making a fair profit upon their investment. New capital, and the amount required is large, must be secured from investors; and investors will place their capital only where there is hope of at least a reasonable

return.

This fact is recognized by the Transportation Act of 1920 which directs the Interstate Commerce Commission to adjust and establish such railroad rates as will yield the carriers a fair return upon the property devoted to the service of the public. This is the heart of Section 15A of the Transportation Act, concerning which there has been much public misunderstanding. In the public interest, it is necessary that the principle of regulation underlying Section 15A should be maintained and developed.

Another general principle of regulation that has been partially recognized by legislation is that carriers serving the public should

work with each other instead of against each other. Up to the time of the World War, legislation sought to minimize the coordination of the railroads. Now their coördination is favored. The law contemplates the voluntary consolidation of the 200 large railroad systems and the 1,400 minor ones into a limited number of systems (possibly twenty). This is to be done without abandoning competition in services. The maintenance of competition in service is desirable and possible, and will not be prevented by the consolidation of railroads in accordance with the plan contained in the Transportation Act of 1920.

The desirable coördination of carriers includes not only the consolidation of our present railroads into a limited number of permanent systems of relatively equal strength, but also the correlation of railroads, waterways, and highways in such a way as to form a unified transportation system. The coördination of rail, water, and motor carriers involves the physical connection of railways and waterways and the interchange of traffic of the railroads and waterways with each other and with common carriers by motors. In the future, the aeroplane and the airways will have to be brought into the picture. What the country needs is a coördinated or unified transportation system, including all transportation agencies so regulated by the government as to permit carriers to serve the public with maximum efficiency and to provide the country, year by year, with the additional facilities required for its untrammeled economic development and for its progressively greater social well being.

PHYSICAL FACTORS IN PREDICTING THE BASAL

METABOLISM OF GIRLS.*

BY FRANCIS G. BENEDICT.

(Read April 26, 1924.)

That there are reasonably close relationships between the size of the individual and the total twenty-four hour basal heat production and particularly between the surface area and the metabolism have for many years been considered by most physiologists as established facts. The original concepts were based upon startlingly few experimental data, however, and it was not until the collection of a large mass of metabolism measurements upon different normal individuals became available that closer study of these relationships could be made. After many urgent requests on the part of workers in metabolism, the Nutrition Laboratory in 1914 listed its measurements on normal individuals.1 A consideration of certain of the factors affecting metabolism followed this presentation, but the final analysis of the figures was designedly left until they could receive proper biometric treatment. These original measurements have played a most important part in several discussions of basal metabolism. Du Bois and his collaborators have discussed the question chiefly from the standpoint of surface area, finally recognizing the age and sex elements. Dreyer attributes special importance to weight and age, differentiating between males and females, while Gruber has laid special emphasis upon length. Finally, the bi

6

* From the Nutrition Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Boston, Massachusetts.

1 Benedict, Emmes, Roth, and Smith, Journ. Biol. Chem., 1914, 18, p. 139. 2 Benedict, Journ. Biol. Chem., 1915, 20, p. 263.

3 Harris and Benedict, Carnegie Inst. Wash. Pub. No. 279, 1919.

* Gephart and Du Bois, Arch. Intern. Med., 1915, 15 p. 835; ibid., 1916, 17. p. 902; also Du Bois, Am. Journ. Med. Sci., 1916, 151, p. 781; also Du Bois, Cornell Univ. Med. Bull., 1917, 6, No. 3, Pt. 2.

5 Aub and Du Bois, Arch. Intern. Med., 1917, 19, p. 831; also Cornell Univ. Med. Bull., 1918, 7, No. 3, 19th paper, p. 9

& Dreyer, Lancet, 1920, Part 2, p. 290.

7 Gruber, Sitzungsberichte d. Bayerischen Akademie d. Wissenschaften, 1921, p. 341.