EFFECT OF RAILROAD BUILDING. 177 



creation of these railroads, and all that grew out of 

 their construction, was the labor of man and so it 

 is in all that man produces and consumes ; it is labor 

 only that enters into the construction, crystallizes, and 

 there remains, an addition to material wealth, whilst 

 the capital always returns to the capitalist and the 

 true reason why our great industrial distress came 

 upon us is found in the fact that only one twelfth of 

 the late army employes found uncompetitive employ- 

 ment, while the other eleven twelfths remained in 

 idleness, or by constant competition with those al- 

 ready employed forced a continual reduction in wages, 

 uncertainty in and partial employment, a reduction in 

 the means of living, a lessening of consumption, with 

 continual decrease in the demand for manual labor in 

 production. It is this great weight of idleness that is 

 crushing the life out of us. 



The allegation that excessive railroad building was 

 a cause of our general distress, is not true. It was 

 that enterprise that delayed and made more gradual 

 its approach. The charge that we built " railroads 

 running from point nowhere to point nowhere," as 

 well as the whole allegation against railroads, had its 

 origin in the Northern Pacific, where the great finan- 

 cial panic of 1873 first developed ; a road which had 

 then only 585 miles completed, with starting points 

 of no mean importance, and running through and 

 opening up, so far as completed, as good a region of 

 country as can be found in the valley of the Missis- 

 sippi. If that road did not then pay dividends, it 

 was simply in the same condition as some of the old- 

 est and best roads in our country. 



