CHAPTER I

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RAILWAYS

THE introduction of railways created a new world. So accustomed have we become to a civilization with railways that it requires conscious efforts to realize the economic, social, political, and moral influences which have emanated from them. Just as a single life spanned the gap between the Declaration of Independence and the laying of the first rail of the Baltimore and Ohio on July 4, 1828, so a single life still active upon the scene may have stored in its experiences all the manifold changes wrought by this modernized stage-coach; and the experiences of youth united with the work of manhood and the reflections of old age constitute the history and philosophy of railways as we know them to-day.

For every four hundred of the population of the United States there exists one mile of railway, or an aggregate of nearly 196,000 miles. These railways directly employ more than one out of every hundred of the population. They represent a capitalization equal to about one-eighth of the total wealth of the country, annual gross earnings amounting to $23 per capita, net earnings equal to

$7.67 cents per capita, and $2 yearly in dividends for every enumerated member of this nation. For every fifty-five persons the railways operate one freight car, and they place at the disposal of every sixteen hundred persons a little less than one passenger coach. Had all persons, young and old, travelled the same distance, each would have travelled 218 miles; and the tons of freight carried one mile approximates 1860 per capita.1 These are mere playthings, but they are likely to convey to one's mind more definite notions than these same facts expressed in accurate statistics.

The beginnings of railways in all countries were accompanied by opposition from interests that looked upon steam locomotion as a threatening power. The fear of economic derangements acted as a retarding force even in localities devoid of adequate means of transportation and communica

tion.

In territories enjoying improved facilities this opposition sometimes resulted in violence. Of the latter, the United States knows relatively nothing; the former can be illustrated in every state and territory. The early opposition to railways foreshadowed in a negative manner what actual development was to demonstrate in a positive way with respect to their social and economic influences. The pack-horse, the stage-coach, and the country tavern, and all that goes with these

1 Based upon figures compiled from official sources for The Commercial Advertiser for November 29, 1902, Financial Supplement, and the Reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

were soon superseded by other agencies better adapted to meet the new conditions of life. Limitless areas were transformed into fruitful farms, and the railways themselves became objects of wealth in the land whose value they had helped to create. The isolated settler was placed in touch with the world; and his wants, no longer dependent upon garden or farm or local market, could draw for their satisfaction upon the storehouses of the earth. The merchant's bazaar henceforth could offer commodities produced under many flags, and the man of learning exchanged ideas with scholars the world over. International unions, scientific, literary, industrial, and political even, sprang up in quick response to the throbbing of the larger life. The "bonds of consanguinity," concerning which earlier American statesmen expressed so much solicitude, could now be preserved indissolubly among all sections of our country. The government became omnipresent and the law omnipotent. Such was the revolution caused by the railway.

As a means of accomplishing great ends, the significance of railways is not diminishing. Russia is using railways in order to gain permanent control of Manchuria; in Persia railway rates provide a means of evading the most-favored-nation clause of treaty obligations; Germany is financiering a railway through the Tigris-Euphrates valley in order to gain influence in what is destined to become a clearing-house of continents, while at

home Germany is making her railways the occasion of a closer federation; in South Africa the railways constitute the greatest lever for raising that long-suffering region; Canada is sending locomotives as missionaries into her great northwest; Mexico is attempting to use railways in controlling trusts and adverse tariff legislation; Peru is trying to push the iron road over the Cordilleras and unite ocean and river; in the United States "twentieth century limited" and "overland limited " trains are closing the "suture" between East and West. The world over railways are harnessed in the interest of progress. To be sure, railways have made and unmade towns; they have caused flowers to blossom and to wither; they have strangled one and made the other fat; they have raised their wizard's wand and commanded puppets to do their bidding; they have placed legislatures on wheels and hauled them whither they had constructed the track. But with it all, railways have been and continue to be one of the greatest agents of universal progress which the world has ever known. If we can but harness the railway as an institution as the railway engineer has harnessed the steam in his locomotive, human progress will be accelerated and human welfare become more widely diffused. This harness is the law.