Partll.l RELATION OF THE RAILROAD. 99 



THE RELATION OF THE RAILROAD TO THE FARMER. 



GEORGE A. CULLEN, PASSENGEB TRAFFIC MANAGER OF THE DELAWARE, 

 LACKAWANNA & WESTERN RAILROAD COMPANY. 



The subject upon which your Board has honored me with 

 an invitation to speak, "The Relation of the Railroad to the 

 Farmer," is one involving such nation- v/ide interests, is so 

 related to the history of the progress and development of our 

 whole industrial and social life, and is so charged with sug- 

 gestiveness of possibilities for the future, that it is with a very 

 real hesitancy that I undertake to speak at all upon it to an 

 audience so well informed as this, and especially, in the cursory 

 and sketchy way that is -necessary in the limitations imposed 

 by an occasion like this. 



There is an obvious fitness in linking the farmer and the 

 railroad. They represent, in the order named, the two inter- 

 ests which stand at the head of the industrial life of our 

 people, and comprise between them nearly 30 per cent of the 

 total national wealth, the estimated value of the farms and 

 farm property at the present time being approximately $50,- 

 000,000,000, and of the railroads almost $20,000,000,000. 



But it is not alone, or chiefly, as the two most important 

 of our industries that the two components of our subject find 

 their relationship, but rather in the interdependence of their 

 very existence under the conditions which have made, and, 

 let us hope, are still to keep, our nation the greatest mankind 

 has known. 



If your Board had phrased this subject, "The Relation of 

 the Farmer to the Railroad," instead of "The Relation of the 

 Railroad to the Farmer," you would naturally expect the 

 emphasis to be laid upon what the farmer has done for (or 

 perhaps what he should do to) the railroad, but styled as it 



