EFFECT OF RAILROAD BUILDING. 175 



tries which sustained them, were so employed. Did 

 the keeping of that number of men out of idleness, 

 giving them employment, and consequently the means 

 of buying food and clothing, and other necessaries and 

 comforts of life, bring misery upon our whole country, 

 or assist in doing it ? Did the employment of one 

 twelfth of those discharged from the armies, and their 

 attendant industries, bring poverty and distress, not 

 only upon the other eleven twelfths, but upon our 

 whole people ? 



The idea is a fit companion for that which charges 

 the cause of our distress upon the war. It has not 

 one fact, or grain of common sense, to sustain it. It 

 is a gross perversion of the results of labor, of indus- 

 try, of enterprise. 



The truth is, the industry that was developed in 

 railroad construction delayed to just that extent the 

 general distress that is now upon us% The capital 

 that was thus used set into activity the wheels of in- 

 dustry in many avocations, and acted beneficially on 

 all. The great trouble was, that railroad building 

 was almost our only industrial development, and the 

 other eleven twelfths who had been in government 

 employ were compelled to divide the work with those 

 already employed, or remain idle. In railroad build- 

 ing there was no tc destruction of wealth," no "large 

 industries ministering to the work of destruction," 

 but large industries creating that which ministered to 

 the wants of man ; the making of something useful 

 where nothing before existed. 



Not a dollar of capital that was thus expended was 

 lost, or wiped out of existence. It went to draw out 



