244 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
struction in the United States is to be found in the fourth vol¬ 
ume of the Census of 1880. Prior to this report, the Census 
had made little effort to reduce railway facts to a statistical 
basis, and even now it found it necessary to resort to legal pro¬ 
ceedings, or admonitions through the United States District At¬ 
torney, in order to persuade certain of the railroads to contri¬ 
bute their answers to the questionnaires of the bureau . 2 The 
reluctance of the companies to reveal the facts of their history 
throws some doubt upon the accuracy of the tables thus ob¬ 
tained, but the Census was at last able to publish, in 1883, an 
elaborate volume on the construction and operation of Ameri¬ 
can railroads. In this volume are to be found schedules which 
give for each road the amount of mileage built in each year 
from 1830 to 1879. The totals of construction thus obtained 
are not far from, the fact, yet the figures are so arranged that 
considerable skill and foreknowledge are required for their 
reading. The inveterate tendency of railways to reorganize 
and change their names mjakes it difficult to identify single 
lines. And since only the mileage of each year is given, with¬ 
out reference to terminal points, the figures are useless for geo¬ 
graphical reference. Thus, the mileage given for the Illinois 
Central Railway,—1852, 14m.; 1853, 117m.; 1854, 294.75m.; 
1855, 202.47m.; 1856, 77.28m.,—conveys no idea of the 
facts of construction from three or four points, in as many di¬ 
rections', and of the closing up of gaps in 1855 and 1856. 3 
The tables prepared for the Tenth Census have been the basis 
of most of the statements recently made respecting the ante-bel¬ 
lum railways of the United States. They were, in part, re¬ 
printed in 1888 by J. L. Ringwalt, editor of the Railway World , 
in a popular illustrated compilation which is often cited as 
though it possessed an independent value as a source . * 1 It is, 
however, only an aggravating mixture of railway journalism 
and census statistics, which is confusing at best, and fails to an¬ 
swer the questions respecting the actual locations of the pioneer 
2 Tenth Census, 1880, Transportation Volume, 3. 
s Tenth Census, 1880, Transportation Volume, 359. 
i Ringwalt, J. L„ Development of Transportation Systems in the 
United States, (Philadelphia, 1888), 
