tried all usual methods, including ordinary hypnotic commands, with only transient success. Only when he entered into her hallucinations, confining them in part, but mixing other elements with them and giving them new terminations, did marked benefit result. But here a fresh difficulty came up. After each successive delusion that was exorcised, the patient became better than ever before; but each one was replaced after some days by another more obstinate and bad. At last there came a delusion, based on hallucinations of hearing, which made her refuse her food. It persisted so long that, at the end of his resources one day, M. Janet put a pencil into her hand to see if she might not automatically prescribe for herself. "Il faut la forcer, et ce sera fini,” the hand "unconsciously" wrote. But when force was applied, Marcella fell into an alarming hystero-epileptic attack which lasted two hours and made the experimenter momentarily regret his rashness.

From this attack she unexpectedly emerged quite well, and remained so for twelve days. Then she relapsed into the same delusion coupled with the additional refusal to speak; and this condition, terminating by a similar convulsive crisis, never returned again. Before long, however, a frenzied attack of suicidal mania set in, lasted fifteen days, and then spontaneously disappeared, leaving the girl practically cured and oblivious of all that had happened in the previous weeks. Her condition, for several months at least, was normal. But the remarkable aspect of the case is one of which M. Janet saw the significance only late in the series of his operations. The hallucinations were largely based on painful experiences in the girl's life, which came up, as if present again, in her "clouds." Her morbid waking state was a sort of resultant effect of the accumulation of these influences; and each later hallucination that was peeled off, so to speak, by M. Janet gave an older one a chance to become more acute, until the whole regressive series was run through. Her mind was thus gradually freed of a deposit of obsessions that had accumulated during five years. The refusal to eat and the suicidal frenzy were repetitions of crises that she had gone through at the beginning of her malady, and once having thrown them off she got entirely well. Might not such a case well lead our younger medical men to explore their patients' "subliminal selves" a little more than they yet do?

WILLIAM JAMES.

THE WESTERN TRAFFIC ASSOCIATION.

THE purpose of this article is to state in a concrete and practical way the economic reasons for the existence of the Western Traffic Association. On December 15, 1890, the presidents of various Western railway companies met in the city of New York, and unanimously agreed to recommend to their respective boards of directors the passing .of certain resolutions, which were soon after duly ratified. The organization thus established became effective January 31, 1891.

The resolutions were brief; they provided for the formation of an association between the several companies whose lines were situated west of Chicago and St. Louis, its affairs to be managed by an advisory board consisting of the president and one member of the board of directors of each company, which should have power to establish and maintain uniform rates between competitive points and decide all questions of common interest. It was further provided that the rates established and the policy adopted by the advisory board at any time should continue in force and be binding upon all companies composing the association until altered by subsequent action of the board; that the vote of at least four-fifths of the members of the association should be required to make its action binding upon all; that the advisory board should appoint proper arbitrators, commissioners, and other representatives, and adopt by-laws to carry out the purposes of the association; that no company should withdraw from the associa tion except after giving ninety days' notice to other members by vote of its board of directors; and that if any officer or representative of any company should authorize or promise, directly or indirectly, any varia tion from established tariffs he should be discharged from the service, with the reasons stated.

The lines composing this association are as follows: Atchison, Topeka & Sante Fé; Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern; Chicago & Northwestern; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul; Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific; Denver & Rio Grande; Great Northern; Illinois Central; Iowa Central; Missouri Pacific; Northern Pacific; Rio Grande Western; Southern Pacific;

Union Pacific; Wabash. These railroads have an aggregate mileage of about 58,000 miles within the limits of the association, which now include the following States and Territories: Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, and California. The membership does not represent every line within this territory, but it embraces nearly all, and the few lines which remain outside recognize its usefulness and refrain from embarrassing its operation.

Although every combination of capital is viewed with misgiving by the public, the most casual observation shows that active and even violent competition between individual railroads continues to exist, notwithstanding the universal use of association methods. The merits. of each line are compared by all patrons; shippers are importuned without mercy; and every effort is made to perform the transportation service satisfactorily and with dispatch. So far as the rates charged are concerned, it is generally recognized that there is no exaggerated profit in the operation of the railways. The fortunes which have been made are seen to have been the result of dealings in stocks and in titles, the consequences of which, if involving wrong, are rightly charged against the lax legislation which has made such operations possible. The business of carrying passengers and freight from point to point is conducted upon close margins, and produces less net returns than are realized from investments in most other industries. The rates in use in the West have been dissected and the results analyzed by railway commissions and in the public journals, until the feeling has become general that they are in fact upon a low plane. The rate adjustments that give rise to complaints to-day are relative, based upon comparisons, and affecting the standing of particular towns and cities in the struggle for commercial supremacy. Minneapolis is now engaged in a contest with Duluth in respect to grain rates, Eau Claire with La Crosse on lumber rates, Wichita with Atchison on merchandise rates, San Bernardino with Los Angeles on all rates; but in these cases and others like them the adjustment desired could be accomplished by advances at one point as readily as by reductions at another. Local rates in certain States are thought by some to be too high as compared with the rates charged on through traffic, but this complaint might coexist with a universal railway bankruptcy. So far as the aggregate revenues of the roads are concerned, there is now little or no intelligent complaint. The practical question is in respect to

preserving existing competitive methods and agencies with due regard to the proper balancing of competitive forces. It is well worth while to endeavor to understand, if possible, just how the Western Traffic Association is useful to the public.

In the first place, it should be noted that agreements of this character are not new, but are of long standing; are not local, but are practically universal. With differences in machinery and detail, they have been found necessary and have existed ever since two railroad companies first met in competition for common traffic. Imagine, if possible, that our present railway system was effaced, and that there was only one road between New York and Chicago. Then suppose another line to be some day opened with facilities in every way equal to the first. It starts out with the same rates as the former, but after its newness wears away it discovers that traffic largely pursues the channels with which custom has bred familiarity. In order to attract business to itself, the new line ventures upon a fractional reduction in its rates. Traffic instantly changes its course, for the slightest variation in railway rates always accomplishes an immediate result. The old line sees its customers leaving, and they do not hesitate to say that they go because they are better treated elsewhere. A prompt response is made by the company first in the field, which cannot afford to have it said that the new road can do business cheaper than itself. And so the merry war goes on, with a cut here and an under-cut there, until dividends are passed, rolling-stock goes without repair, bridges are left to decay, wages are reduced, the service becomes demoralized, coupons at last remain unpaid, and the aid of the courts is invoked by the bondholders. Such a history, which has been many times repeated in the United States, is a calamity, not only to the owners of the roads, but to the public also. Every rate war unsettles values, breeds discriminations, impairs the safety of property and life, and tends to the ultimate extinction of competition.

Under present conditions there is but one preventive, namely, an agreement between the competitors themselves upon the rates which shall be charged and the processes to be employed in the ascertainment. of the traffic charge. The line which desires the lowest rate will always have its way, and competitive transportation cannot be conducted except under rates, rules, and regulations which are either absolutely equalized or are differentiated by agreed concessions. The dangers arising from unregulated competition increase in a geometrical ratio with the multiplication of competing lines. There are now eight

strong lines in operation between New York and Chicago; and the unremitting efforts of the Trunk Line Association east of Buffalo and Pittsburg and the Central Traffic Association west therefrom are unable to prevent a constant condition of uncertainty in the rates. So long as our railroads are operated by individual managements, there can be no absolute establishment of railway charges upon a firm and unchangeable basis. The best that can be done in that direction is merely tentative, and must come from the voluntary action of the executive officers of the railroad companies themselves.

In one aspect the railway association may be regarded as an expedient by which, in periodical seasons of difficulty, arising sometimes from short crops and light traffic, sometimes from financial stringency, sometimes from hostility between railway managements carried to ruinous excess, a temporary protection is obtained against impending corporate bankruptcies. When the bar has been tided over and the competing carriers find themselves once more upon an apparently open sea, former methods are gradually resumed, excuses are readily found for the abandonment of pledges hard to keep, and the strife of traffic officers soon precipitates a renewal of disastrous conditions. The Western Traffic Association is built upon the sand and is liable at any time to vanish from sight, like its numerous predecessors, and be forgotten. But in such a case there must presently be a return to some similar arrangement; possibly not until some of the competitive lines have been "absorbed," but certainly at some time, unless Congress shall modify the present laws, which, while ostensibly framed to perpetuate railway competition, in fact tend to its ultimate extinction.

In passing it may be observed that this history is by no means peculiar to the business of transportation. Although competition between railway carriers is peculiarly exigent, by reason of the almost countless points of contact which exist, similar conditions are found in the business of insurance and in professional vocations, in manufacturing and merchandise, in labor and agriculture, in fact, in every calling where two or more men seek the same market for the same thing. A distinguished judge in Wisconsin once used the following language: "But I apprehend it is not true that competition is the life of trade. On the contrary, that maxim is one of the least reliable of the host that may be picked up in every market-place. It is in fact the shibboleth of mere gambling speculation, and is hardly entitled to take rank as an axiom in the jurisprudence of this country. I believe that universal observation will attest that for the last quarter of a