LOCOMOTION BY RIVER AND RAILWAY. 



stocks arc selling, and the dividends they divide, illustrate the 

 matter by incontestable facts. 



The year 1852 was the most prosperous year for the American 

 western railroads in operation and in progress. Their increased 

 earnings are said, upon good authority, to average an increase 

 of 15 per cent, upon their mileage, and 10 per cent, upon their 

 cost. This vast increase is attributed partly to abundant crops 

 and partly to a general increase of activity in every department 

 of business ; but in that country more than in any other, the 

 extension of the railroad system seems likely to exert a beneficial 

 effect upon each individual railroad for itself. There is scarcely 

 such a thing now heard of as travelling or freight transportation, 

 except on railroads or by water. The public sees that undue 

 importance has been hitherto attached to canals, and it is now 

 found to be difficult, if indeed it will not ultimately prove impos- 

 sible, to get the people of the State of New York to appropriate 

 10,000,000 dollars more for the final enlargement or completion of 

 the canals already built in that State alone. Transportation or 

 travel by canals is too slow it does not suit the electric speed of 

 the age. We may, therefore, expect in the future that little moro 

 will be done for canals, while a network of railroads seems destined 

 inevitably to cover that continent. 



7. Americans themselves can hardly imagine the railroad progress 

 of the United States till they come to the figures of what has 

 actually been done ; much less can they comprehend their probable 

 progress in the future. Those who have bestowed the most 

 reflection on the subject entertain no doubt that the construction of 

 railways in the south-west and west that boundless granary of the 

 world will continue and increase with augmented ratio for a long 

 time to come. If that vast district should be supplied with railways 

 as Massachusetts now is, it would demand at least 100000 miles 

 of railway ! "What political economist in England or in America 

 can fail to draw an inference here in favour of Free Trade ? With 

 the superior facilities of Great Britain for manufacturing iron, and 

 the still greater facilities of the United States for the prosecution of 

 agriculture, who is so blind as not to see that they ought to take 

 our iron and to pay for it in bread, unless bad and unhealthy legis- 

 lation interrupt this natural order of the law of Providence ? * 



8. The extraordinary extent of railway constructed at so early 

 a period in the United States has been by some ascribed to the 

 absence of a sufficient extent of communication by common roads. 

 Although this cause has operated to some extent in certain districts, 

 it is by no means so general as has been supposed. In the year 



* "Times," September 3, 1853. 

 54 



