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to move and more people to travel. In other words, the railroads are not carrying an average maximum of freight and passengers since the increase in rates. Of course, the commission doubtless has figures on this question which throw more light than I can by general observations.
It is needless for me to point out to you and the commission that the railroad situation is a problem which has not been solved to any great degree by the transportation act of 1920. The thing which I am greatly interested in is the matter of freight and passenger rates to be placed within reach of the average person, and at the same time give the railroads a reasonable income for their investment. Both the public and the roads deserve an honest living, but I fear that both are now suffering. Because of high freight rates there are products in my State which are now being shipped in such small quantities in comparison with production and demand.
I hope that an adjustment can soon be made which will bring down the rates, and I would thank you to let me have any information on the matter at your convenience which may have been gathered or published by the commission.
With high esteem, I am,

Very sincerely yours,

WM. J. HARRIS 23

I leave the analysis of the American political style here displayed to grammarians. They will find plenty of further clinical material in the speeches of Mr. Harding—the one-he combination in the first sentence of his inaugural address, illy in the fourth sentence of his first message to Congress, and many other choice specimens in his subsequent state papers. Nor are politicians the only Americans who practise the flouting of the purists. In a serious book on literature by a former editor of the Atlantic Monthly, 24 edited by a committee of Yale professors and published by the university press, I find the one-he combination in full flower, and in a book of criticism by Francis Hackett, of the New Republic, I find pin-head used quite innocently and to do him proud topping it. 25 Hackett is relatively conservative. The late Horace Traubel, disciple of Whitman, went much further. All his life he battled valiantly for the use of dont (without the apostrophe) with plural subjects!

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