798 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
4. Frequently property owners refuse to sell at a reason¬ 
able price, and it becomes necessary to resort to condemnation 
proceedings wbicb not only add greatly to the immediate cost 
of the land but involve costly delays. For this reason, it is 
sometimes more economical to give a stubborn land owner 
many times the value of his property rather than to resort to 
legal process. 
Fortunately, it was possible to investigate the relation of 
Tight of way to ordinary value for three lines of road built 
within the state during the five-year period, by different com¬ 
panies and under widely different conditions. These lines are 
as follows: (1) A branch of the Chicago, Milwaukee and 
-St. Paul railway about 32 miles in length, extending from 
Janesville, Pock county, to the southeast and leaving the state 
near the southwest comer of the town of Bloomfield in Wal¬ 
worth county; (2) a branch of the Chicago and North west¬ 
ern railway 93.7 miles long, extending from Princeton, Green 
Lake county, to Marshfield, Wood county; (3) a branch of the 
Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha railway, 28 miles 
long and extending from Chippewa Falls, Chippewa county, to 
Holcombe, in the same county. 3 
The first of these lines was built through a fine agricultural 
district which was already well supplied with railroad facili¬ 
ties ; it cut nearly every farm it touched at such an angle as to 
damage the farm seriously, and moreover some of the contract¬ 
ors were already on the ground before all the right of way had 
been secured. In short, the case could scarcely have been 
more unfavorable for the railroad company. 
The second line named was built through a region occupied 
by farms of much less value than the first, and, for a consider¬ 
able portion of its length, remote from existing railroads. 
However, that portion lying between Grand Bapids and Marsh¬ 
field lies alongside the Wisconsin Central railroad so closely 
3 This line extends some 2'5 miles beyond Holcombe to Hannibal, 
Taylor county, but owing to the extremely small number of sales of 
land along the line between Holcombe and Hannibal no attempt was 
made to determine the ratio for this portion of the line. 
