Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 November 1878 — Railroad Building. [ARTICLE]

Railroad Building.

During the last four years, accordiug to the Director of the Bureau of Statistics, we have been building railroads at the rate of 2,224 miles per year. The importation of railroad bars, both iron and steel, fell from 595,321 tons in 1871 to twelve tons in 1877; but the production of iron and steel bars in the United States increased from 2,058,141 tons during the five years from 1867 to 1871 to 4,056,340 tons during the five years from 1873 to 1877, an increase of 37 per cent. The supply of iron and steel railroad bars necessary to meet the demand of our 79,000 miles of railroad already in operation, for renewals of track and for the extension of track facilities, in order to meet the necessary requirements of traffic, is now about three times as large as the supply required for track-laying on new roads. This production of bars to supply railroads in operation has, in fact, mainly sustained the iron and steel rail interests of the country in their present state of efficiency.