MEMOIR OF DANIEL TKEADWELL. S63 



" Upon any route where the traflic docs not require such frequent trains as to maico a 

 single road insuflicicnt or unsafe, (for the double track is required to accommodate frequent 

 trains rather than a great amount of traffic,) it must be as good for the public as a double 

 one, and more profitable for its stockholders, even if the cost of building the latter were 

 no greater than the former ; or, in other words, most of the single roads of Massachusetts at 

 this moment arc more valuable than they would be if made double without cost to their 

 owners ; or, if the government would offer to lay down a second track upon such roads without 

 expense to the proprietors, upon condition only that the proprietors would conduct tlicir 

 business upon the double tracks, and keep the whole in repair, it would not be for the interest 

 of the proprietors to accept the donation, because their income would be no greater, their 

 running expenses no less, while the i-epairs would be so much enhanced as to affect materially 

 the net income from which the dividends are made. 



" The wliolc of this leads to the unavoidable conclusion, that, if the proprietors of the Chester 

 and Holyhead Railroad, for example, would break up one of their tracks and tumble one of 

 their tubular bridges into the Straits of Menai, their property would be more productive than it 

 is as it now exists, or they would be in the way to receive dividends sooner than they will if 

 the whole be preserved. Does not this go to account for the greater profits obtained from 

 the New England than from the European railroads, and the superiority of the system upon 

 which they have been planned and constructed ? 



" With the exception of the single track and the wooden sleepers (or ties') no considerable 

 improvement has l)een made upon railways or the machinery connected with them in the 

 United States. Some changes have been made by us in locomotives and cars, and there have 

 been improvements in the sense of adapting them to our condition and modes of intercourse, 

 but they have not to any great extent affected the great system of railway locomotion. The 

 wooden sleepers were adopted purely to save the greater cost of stone, and without any fore- 

 sight of the superiority which is proved to be inherent in them." 



In June, 1851, the Hon. Nathan Hale, in an article on American Railroads in 

 the Boston Daily Advertiser, of which he was then editor, compares these roads 

 with the English roads, and shows that the progress of this improvement has been 

 more rapid and more successful in tliis country than elsewhere ; that the cost of 

 construction and management has been less, and the retnrn to the stockholders 

 much larger. In 1849, the aggregate length of the nine principal railways in 

 England was 2,258 miles, built at a cost of $217,000 a mile ; from these the average 

 dividends paid the shareholders was less than three per cent, tlie other railways, 

 equalling these nine in length, paying less, and some of them nothing. Comparing 

 small things with great, it was shown that, at the same time, of the G13 miles of 

 railroad in Massachusetts (238 miles of double track, and 375 miles of single), 

 costing about |53,000 per mile, more than half paid, in 1850, an average divi- 

 dend of eight per cent from the net profits of the year, and the average dividend 

 paid on all the roads exceeded seven per cent, each company having retained a 

 greater or less reserve. This was done notwithstanding the far smaller amount of 



