Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 07.djvu/495

RAILWAYS lines of the newly built railways. It was the beginning of the period of big and intensive enterprise.

Ever farther and farther westward pushed the railways. In 1852 Chicago was reached, and two years later the Mississippi river was in railway communication with the East. The produce of the big Mississippi Valley, which hitherto must be shipped down the river to New Orleans, now found a quicker channel to the markets of the world directly eastward. It was as though river steamboats, hitherto the only means of freight transportation on a large scale, had suddenly found it possible to sail over land as well as water, regardless of the devious paths of the waterways.

During the ten years ending with 1840 nearly 3,000 miles of tracks were laid. During the ten years following, ending with 1850, over 6,000 miles were laid, and at the end of the ten years following there were over 30,000 miles of track laid in the country.

The Civil War, naturally, checked the further development of railway enterprise for five years, but with the close of hostilities it was continued more energetically than ever. Railway lines were now pushed out into the great broad, fertile prairies, and where only a few years before buffaloes and Indians had roamed undisturbed, vast grain fields began to appear. Man power being insufficient, machinery was invented to work these broad stretches of rich agricultural lands, and the reaper and harvester appeared.

On May 10, 1869, the last spike was driven which fastened down to the sleepers the last rail necessary to complete the railway connection between the Pacific Coast and the Atlantic Seaboard. Now the rich fruit country W. of the Rockies was thrown open to the East and to Europe. The political significance of this achievement was no less important than its economic aspect, for without railway connection and the tremendous commerce which was to develop between East and West, it is highly improbable that the United States would have remained united under one Federal Union. A broad wilderness would have separated the two coast regions and divided their political interests, and each would have naturally followed its own course. Without railway communication so broad an area under the jurisdiction of one government would be inconceivable on a democratic basis.

Until 1890 the building of railways in the United States developed at a rate much faster than the rate of increase of the population. The building was being

done on the prospects for the future. Then, gradually, there came a slowing down. The following table shows the rate of railway construction in the United States by decades:

In 1918 the total mileage of railways had reached the total of 253,529, but since then there has been a decrease, rather than an increase, construction having come practically to a standstill since the beginning of the war with Germany.

The importance of the railways as an industry employing labor is shown in the following table:

The employees enumerated in the above table include only those directly employed in the operation of railways, and not the many thousands of additional men engaged in the building of railway cars and equipment.

The financial aspect of the railway industry is told in the following figures:

During the past forty years the passenger traffic, or the use made of the railways by the people for purposes of travel has increased three times faster than the population. And while the population doubled, freight traffic increased twelvefold. During the past 18 years, while population has increased a little over a third, freight traffic has increased by 180 per cent.

In 1916 and 1917 there came a crisis in the railway industry which has usually been associated with the war as a cause, a fact which is only indirectly true.

Early in the seventies the constant friction between the farmers of the Middle West and the railways over freight rates has led, largely because of the agitation of the Patrons of Husbandry