Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/136

126 of the Atlantic seaboard and the Ohio Valley. In 1850 the West had 79½ miles of railroad, all in Louisiana. All the rest of the westward stretch of the nation to the Pacific was without so much as a single rail. What Louisiana could so proudly boast of in 1850 was less than the mileage operated by the Boston and Maine and its branches in Massachusetts that same year. By 1900 the total had swelled to 87,406.13 miles out of the 193,345.78 miles in the United States and the percentage from .25 to 45.2. On the basis of miles of railroad per 100 square miles of territory Iowa leads with 16.56 and Nevada is lowest with .83. In miles of line per ten thousand inhabitants Nevada is first with 214.98, and Louisiana last with 20.44.

In view of the enormous railroad construction in the West in the past thirty years it is worth while to recall President Buchanan's telegram to John Butterfield, the pioneer of Western overland transportation, when the first direct overland mail arrived by stage at Saint Louis from San Francisco October 9, 1858:

I cordially congratulate you upon the result. It is a glorious triumph for civilization and the Union. Settlements will soon follow the course of the road, and the East and the West will be bound together by a chain of living Americans which can never be broken.

In 1850 there were thirty-one banks west of the Mississippi; twenty-five in Louisiana and six in Missouri, with deposits aggregating $9,500,000. It is difficult to figure the condition of the people with regard to money as statements of private banks are obtainable in only a few states and the national banks are the only guide. On July 16, 1902, the individual deposits in these amounted to $639,180,306, and the loans and discounts to $615,116,949.