Part II.] RELATION OF THE RAILROAD. 101 



It is more than a coincidence that this remarkable growth of 

 population in this country parallels so closely the development 

 of the railroads. Railroads were inaugurated at about the same 

 time in all the civilized countries of the world, and in none of 

 the others has there been anything to compare with the situ- 

 ation I have just described, except subsequently in Canada, 

 Brazil and the Argentine, where America's already successful 

 experiment was copied. Now, the reason for the difference is 

 not hard to find. In America alone, broadly speaking, was 

 the policy adopted from the start of pushing the railroads out 

 ahead of the population, not only into the far and middle 

 west, but also into unsettled sections of the east. In all these 

 cases the railroad projectors built upon hope, and with a 

 vision and a financial courage unequaled probably in all the 

 history of mankind. 



Coupled with the marvelous achievements in securing the 

 capital, solving the engineering problems and marshaling and 

 directing the forces of men and material, there was another 

 phase of this pioneer work that some of us not yet in middle 

 life can well remember as boys, especially if, as in the case of 

 the speaker, we lived in one of those gateways through which 

 its visible manifestations marched in an unbroken procession to 

 people the new promised lands flowing with possibilities of 

 great harvests of grain and vegetables and cattle, to say nothing 

 of blizzards, cyclones and grasshoppers. I refer, of course, to 

 the gigantic colonization agencies of the Union Pacific, the 

 Burlington, the Santa Fe, the Rock Island, the Missouri Pacific, 

 the Northern Pacific and other great systems of the west, 

 which, not content with posting quarter sheet cards on every 

 telegraph pole, fence and barn in staid New England, sent its 

 emissaries by the thousands across the sea, and there preached 

 the gospel of prosperity and happiness in the land of freedom 

 to the daring or the disappointed of Europe. We know how 

 whole States, such as Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota and the 

 Dakotas, were peopled in this way. 



We often forget, however, that the government did not do 

 this, and that the people of the United States as a whole did 

 not do it, but that we owe this, which has probably been one 

 of the most important factors in our present national great- 



