POTENTIAL GREATNESS OF NEVADA 



lay within a few hours' ride of Virginia City. But the 

 difference, nevertheless, wrought momentous results in 

 the fortunes of States. 



The railroad situation is another important factor in 

 the backwardness of Nevada. Whenever a single rail- 

 road controls the inlet and outlet of a State, the indus- 

 trial and commercial destinies of that State are, to a large 

 extent, committed to the keeping of that railroad. These 

 facts are further emphasized when it happens that the rail- 

 road runs through agricultural territory and possesses a 

 land grant covering every other section for a distance of 

 twenty miles on both sides of the track. Development 

 necessarily hinges on the policy of the railroad, both as 

 to rates and as to the encouragement of enterprise. The 

 only alternative is to build a competing line, and this is 

 extremely difficult if the construction of the first lias 

 not resulted in the development of the country and the 

 growth of its population. Nevada in a flourishing con- 

 dition would invite competition not merely for its own 

 business, but also for the rich spoil of California's traffic. 

 Nevada as a stretch of hopeless desert, on the other 

 hand, constitutes a perfect insurance against competi- 

 tion for the larger prize on the farther side of tho 

 Sierras. It has not been the policy of the Central 

 Pacific to make this "risk" extra-hazardous, or to in- 

 crease its cost, by developing the territory between Utah 

 and California. It is sometimes charged that the Cen- 

 tral Pacific is distinctly hostile to Nevada. The prob- 

 able truth is that, having the interest of their whole great 

 system to consider, the managers arrange their policies 

 according to the dictates of shrewd business sense, and 

 that Nevada has merely the ill-fortune to be pinched in 



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