Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1892 — Our Railroads. [ARTICLE]

Our Railroads.

The marvelous growth of railroads in the United States is shown by the following statement, which gives the mileage finished at the close of the decades named: Miles, 1830 23 1840.. 2,818 1850.. 9,021 1860 80,180 1870 62,922 1880 08,296 1830 166,817 August, 1831 ; 170,003 The aggregate capitalization of these roads represented by their share capital and funded and unfunded debt reaches the enormous sum of $10,600,000,000, or a little more than $60,000 a mile. In rolling stock there is an average of one locomotive engine and one passenger car for every five miles of track and seven freight cars for every mile of track. Our estimate of the rate of increase in the wealth of our country to-day is $2,200,000,000 a year, or at the rate of $6,000,000 a day, and an average of $1,100,000 of this wealth goes daily into the expansion of our railroad system. We now have nearly one half of the railroad mileage of the world. It is a fact that the cost of carrying freight and passengers has steadily grown less in the past twenty-five years, greatly to the benefit of the people, as the decrease has tended to cheapen the necessaries of life. If a barrel of flour is now carried a thousand miles for sixty cents when twenty-five years ago the cost of such service was $3.50, it means a saving of $2.90 a barrel to consumers. In the present mode of distributing breadstuffs 62,000,000 barrels of flour (which is our present home consumption for a year) are carried on an average 1,000 miles. The saving of $2.90 a barrel to consumers means the aggregate of $180,000,000. Nothing more forcibly than this statement exhibits the enormous gains to the masses of the people which mechancal appliances bring, hut which they do not adequately appreciate. And bread Is only 10 per cent. In its cost of the food consumed by our people, and mechanical industry, including railroads, gives almost an equally large saving to the masses in the other foods consumed. Some idea of the magnitude of the work done for our people by railroads alone is shown in the fact that during 1890 they carried one ton of freight 1,250 miles for every man, woman, and child of the population. In the end all these wonderful appliances have not favored individuals alone, hut the whole race. The earnings of the year per passenger mile were 2.185 cents, against 2.198 cents the year before, and the earnings of the roads per ton mile of freight were .935 of a cent, against 1.057 cents in 1889. The net earnings on the capital invested averaged 3.4 per cent. Railroads have been the greatest civilizers of the world. The missionary enterprises of Christendom have been as nothing compared to theni in raising the human race to higher levels, and securing food, clothing, and shelter, and the manifold blessings which come with the better modes of life which those tendrils of the earth’s great heart have made possible. The cause of true civilization has been advanced further during this century than during all the other centuries of the historic period, for more has been done during this time to subjugate the forces of Nature to man’s uses. No matter what may be the intentions or motives of the men who have built the railroads, they have simply been agents in the hands of an all-wise Intelligence in carrying out His plans for the betterment of the whole human family.— Pullman Journal.