170 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
that they might mortgage them for larger sums to other parties, and, by means of 
sales and statutory releases, these hens were cancelled on all the unfinished roads, 
for the alleged purpose of expediting their completion. In connection with these 
statutory releases, a very fortunate piece of legislation occurred. I refer to the 
so-called exemption acts of March, 1868, by the effect of which seven of the 
principal companies became bound by contract with the State, witnessed by their 
certificates filed in the office of Secretary of the State, to be subject, after March, 
1878, to all laws fixing rales, then in force or thereafter to be enacted. This 
measure saved us from that which cost other States long years of litigation. At 
the same time new lines of road were being projected in all parts of the State, to 
which local subscriptions, in enormous amounts, were every where made, until a 
check was placed upon this reckless expenditure by the financial crisis of 1873, 
which suspended railroad building for a time and gave us an opportunity to 
review the situation. We then had 2,850 miles of road completed, and 700 miles 
more of graded but unfinished lines, very little of which last has been or ever will 
be utilized. 
The amount of means furnished by us and which actually went into the con- 
struction of these lines did not vary much from $50,000,000. This includes 
State aid an,d subscriptions of counties, cities, townships and individual citizens 
of the State. But in closing up the liens upon the roads we had recovered back 
into the State treasury five millions from the Pacific Company, about half a mil- 
lion more from the other companies, and if we add to that the three milHons 
since received from the Hannibal & St. Joseph Company, and about a half mil- 
lion more received by counties and individuals from the sale of railroad stocks 
included in these original subscriptions, it makes the total receipts nine millions. 
But this nine millions recovered back, falls very far short of the amount of inter- 
est that had been paid by the State previous to 1873, in consequence of the fail- 
ure of the companies to meet it, so that if the account could have been closed out 
with cash at that time on the same basis upon which this estimate is made, our 
2,850 miles of road would have cost us considerably more than the original $50,- 
000,000; probably not less than $60,000,000, which is over $21,000 a mile. Of 
course this amount has since increased and will continue to increase by the amount 
of interest paid, until the last railroad debt is cancelled. At the same time we 
had allowed the ownership of the roads to pass into other hands ; but we wasted 
no regrets on that, as we had undertaken their construction, not for the purpose 
of holding them as property, but because we wanted the use of them. 
The enormous shrinkage in values, consequent upon the financial crisis of 
1873, whereby the selling price, not only of the products of our labor, but in some 
instances, that of our real property also, fell to one-third of what it had been 
during the previous decade, coming upon us at a time when we were oppressed 
by an enormous load of debt, both public and private, created universal consterna- 
tion, distress and bankruptcy. By bitter experience we learned that however 
much a debtor's paying capacity may shrink in hard times, his debts do not 
shrink. In this case they were actually augmented by unskillful management of 
