Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 203, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1916 — First and Last. [ARTICLE]

First and Last.

Less than SIOO was paid for the first locomotive in China. It weighed 22 hundredweight. The rails were about the size of walking sticks and lay 30 Inches apart. ( One day, after the seven-mile line had been operating only a few months, a trespasser was nm over and killed by the little engine. The rails were promptly torn up and shipped to Formosa to rust, thus ending the fate of the first railroad in China. That was only 42 years ago. Now China has more than 0,000 miles of railroad, with a net revenue of more than $8,000,000 a year. And C. C„ Wang of the government railroad bureau stands sponsor for this prophecy: “It is no exaggeration to say that there will be more railroads built in China during the coming 25 years than in all the rest of the world combined.”'