Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 10).djvu/88

88 and repair of such a road, $173,718.25. Thus the computed cost of the railway exceeded that of the turnpike but about twenty per cent, while the annual expense of repairing the former would fall short more than fifty-six per cent. In addition to the advantage of reduced cost was that of less time consumed in transportation; for, assuming as the committee did a rate of speed of fifteen miles per hour (which was five miles per hour less than the then customary speed of railway traveling in England on the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad, and about the ordinary rate of speed of the American locomotives), it would require only twenty-three hours for news from Baltimore to reach Columbus, forty-two hours to Indianapolis, fifty-four to Vandalia, and fifty-eight to St. Louis.

One interesting argument for the substitution of the railway for the Cumberland Road was given as follows:

"When the relation of the general Government to the states which it unites is justly regarded; when it is considered it is especially charged with the common defense; that for the attainment of this