100 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. . [P. D. 4. 



is, I assume it is expected that I shall deal with it subjectively 

 for the railroad and objectively for the farmer. 



It is quite possible that our people with their natural force 

 of character would, in the past eighty years, have made sub- 

 stantial progress in settling and developing the more accessible 

 and fertile sections of our country, even without a railroad 

 system much more extensive than that of Russia, which has 

 one-sixth of our mileage with nearly twice our population. But 

 who thinks that anything approaching the present magnificent 

 development could have taken place without the pioneer daring, 

 the masterly constructiveness and the organizing genius which 

 have given us a network of railways of a quarter of a million 

 miles, six times as extensive as that of Germany, eight times 

 as great as that of France, eleven times as great as that of 

 Great Britain, and comprising over one-third of the entire 

 railroad mileage of the world. 



But it is not my purpose to dwell upon what the railroads 

 have done for the country as a whole, how they have so de- 

 veloped their efficiency that to-day they transport freight at 

 an average rate per ton mile of little more than half that of 

 Germany, France or Austria, while paying wages twice as great. 

 Nor of how, for corresponding accommodations, they carry 

 passengers at an average of 33| per cent lower fares than do 

 the railroads of Europe. Nor yet of how the preferences and 

 discriminations of European railroads are practically unknown 

 here. My object is rather to outline for you the attitude of 

 the railroad to the farmer, and the interest the railroad has 

 in the prosperity and development of the farms of the nation. 



Let us recall for the moment, if you please, the extraordi- 

 nary history of the past eighty years since railroads have been 

 a factor in our life, as compared with the previous two hundred 

 years of our existence on this continent and of fifty as a nation. 

 In 1835 the population of the country was 15,000,000, and 

 the total population of the only two States west of the Missis- 

 sippi River then existing (Missouri and Louisiana) was about 

 half that of the present city of St. Louis. To-day the total 

 population of the country has grown sevenfold, while that of 

 the territory west of the Mississippi River is twice as great 

 as was that of the entire United States in 1835. 



