CHAPTER IX. 



DID RAILROAD BUILDING CAUSE OUR INDUSTRIAL 

 DISTRESS ? 



OUR late Secretary of the Interior, in his Cincin- 

 nati speech, hereinbefore referred to, charged 

 the cause of our industrial distress not only to " great 

 wars resulting in immense destruction of wealth," 

 but, in addition, to u excessive enterprise, such as the 

 building of railroads where they were not needed 

 running from point nowhere to point nowhere." 



The editor of one of the great journals published 

 in Chicago, Horace White, Esq., in testifying before 

 the Hewitt Labor Committee, in August, 1878, also 

 charged our distress to excessive railroad building. 

 When such men lead in fallacies a multitude is sure 

 to follow. Let us also examine this charge and see 

 what there is in it. 



In what way did the employment of a large number 

 of men, after the close of the war, in building railroads, 

 cause our industrial distress ? 



Edward Atkinson, of Boston, says that 250,000 men 

 (see Industrial Redistribution, in International Re- 

 view), being only one twelfth of those discharged 

 from the armies of the North alone, and the indus- 



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