The law for consolidations is not sufficiently effective to be expeditious.  Additional legislation is needed giving authority for voluntary consolidations, both regional and route, and providing Government machinery to aid and stimulate such action, always subject to the approval of the Interstate Commerce Commission.  This should authorize the commission to appoint committees for each proposed group, representing the public and the component roads, with power to negotiate with individual security holders for an exchange of their securities for those of the, consolidation on such terms and conditions as the commission may prescribe for avoiding any confiscation and preserving fair values.  Should this permissive consolidation prove ineffective after a limited period, the authority of the Government will have to be directly invoked.

Consolidation appears to be the only feasible method for the maintenance of an adequate system of transportation with an opportunity so to adjust freight rates as to meet such temporary conditions as now prevail in some agricultural sections.  Competent authorities agree that an entire reorganization of the rate structure for freight is necessary.  This should be ordered at once by the Congress.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

As no revision of the laws of the United States has been made since 1878, a commission or committee should be created to undertake this work.  The Judicial Council reports that two more district judges are needed in the southern district of New York, one in the northern district of Georgia, and two more circuit judges in the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Eighth Circuit.  Legislation should be considered for this purpose.

It is desirable to expedite the hearing and disposal of cases.  A commission of Federal judges and lawyers should be created to recommend legislation by which the procedure in the Federal trial courts may be simplified and regulated by rules of court, rather than by statute; such rules to be submitted to the Congress and to be in force until annulled or modified by the Congress.  The Supreme Court needs legislation revising and simplifying the laws governing review by that court, and enlarging the classes of cases of too little public importance to be subject to review.  Such reforms would expedite the transaction of the business of the courts.  The administration of justice is likely to fail if it be long delayed.

The National Government has never given adequate attention to its prison problems.  It ought to provide employment in such forms of production as can be used by the Government, though not sold to the public in competition with private business, for all prisoners who can be placed at work, and for which they should receive a reasonable compensation, available for their dependents.

Two independent reformatories are needed; one for the segregation of women, and another for the segregation of young men serving their first sentence.