Production and Consumption. 
15 
take to deliver the one hundred million bushels. Having ascer¬ 
tained that we could get 300 bushels in each car, 20 cars to the 
train, would give us 6,000 bushels to the train, 36,000 bushels 
each day, including Sundays, requiring 16,668 trains, 333,360 
cars, taking 2,778 days, or seven years , seven months and thirteen 
days. AVhen we had reached this point, and “ proved the sum,” 
as the pedagogues sav, to see that we had made no mistake, we 
would come to the conclusion, that before we could ship our 
100,000,000 bushels of corn under that contract, the foreign war 
would have been succeeded by peace, our values would have 
shrunk under the pressure of some eight new crops, and that as 
the insurance men say, our risk would be “ extra hazardous !” 
This is not given to test the powers of figures, but to illustrate a 
perplexing fact, which ought to awaken the government out of its 
somnambulic sleep of indifference. 
Such are the results I had estimated from the best lights before 
me, but not wishing to overstate or understate the facts to the 
disparagement of roads, I called on John C. Gault, Esq., assistant 
general manager of the St. Paul railway, whose reputation as a 
railway economist stands No. 1, and that gentleman upset some 
of my calculations as to the ability of the present trunk lines. He 
informed me that the several through lines had agreed to furnish 
the following number of cars to move the wheat crop of ’73, and 
agreed with me that twenty cars to train would be the practical 
maximum: 
Roads. 
No. 
Cars. 
No. 
Trains. 
Michigan Southern (New York Central line). 
350 
18 
Michigan Central (Canada line). 
300 
15 
Fort Wayne (Pennsylvania line). 
350 
18 
Pan Handle(Erie line, I believe). 
200 
10 
1 
This will give the two trunk lines eighteen trains per day. 
They now have one way train, and I believe not less than five 
passenger trains—making twenty-four trains per day, or one for 
each hour, day and night. Mr. Gault agreed with me that this 
number would be to the full capacity of the proposed double 
track road. The freight trains cannot' in safety make over ten 
