Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1906 — Startling Trade Figures. [ARTICLE]

Startling Trade Figures.

The final trade statistics for the year 1905 confirm the figures of the preliminary forecasts and show a phenomenal degree of prosperity throughout the country. So enormous was the product of farm, mine and factory that, had it been moved at one time, it would have filled 33,184,857 freight cars, 4,000,00 Q more than would have been required in the prosperous year of 1904. Afhirty-three million freight cars, if made up into one train of fabulous length, would extend for a distance of 224,400 miles, or would girdle the earth about nine times at ths equator. If this mythical train, with the 825,000 locomotives which would be required to haul it, had traveled out into space on a trip to the moon, the leading moguls would have been puffing through the valleys of the earth’s satellite before the conductor’s buggy had rumbled out of the freight yards at the starting point. Merely to store the cars and engines in such a train would require the use of nearly all the railway mileage in the United States.