16 Wisconsin State agricultural society. 
miles per boar, which by the New York Central line, would require 
196 hours to make the round trip, without accident or delay, 
and allowing one day to load and one to unload, ten days and 
four hours would elapse between the starting of the first train and 
the use of the same cars for reloading, requiring the company to 
have on hand 3,558 grain cars, so as to permit no delay. The 
Milwaukee and St. Paul road, with its 1,283 miles of track, 
mostly devoted to the wheat trade, only requires 2,720 box, 
freight and caboose cars. But suppose the trunk lines to the 
Atlantic have the cars, the freight trains must side track every 
ten miles (after meeting the first inward bound return trains) for 
each freight train, and every fifteen miles for the passenger trains 
each way. According to this view of the case, they must be on 
the side track over half the time—taking double the time to 
make the round trips, and requiring some six thousand cars at the 
depot in Chicago to hold out until relieved by return cars. But 
the most forcible objection to accepting the possibility of running 
so many trains on side tracks is the fact that there is no such 
convenience on any of the roads as switches and side tracks every 
ten miles. Without these I see no possibility of making the 
proposition possible. Still, to give the supposition its full benefit, 
I have re-cast my figures on this basis, and running nights, days 
and Sundays, with no accidents or delays, and it would then take 
two years, six months and sixteen days to move 100,000,000 
bushels. 
Now, if the Fox and Wisconsin rivers were properly improved, 
as well as the Erie Canal, and double locked, so as to permit the 
passage of 300 ton barges under towage by steam, it is easy to see 
that a fleet of ten boats en tantem, on the canals, m?.y be towed by 
one tug, and 50 or more on the lakes, each barge containing, 10,- 
200 bushels of wheat; 10,500 of corn, or 12,000 ^bushels of oats, 
giving 105,000 bushels of corn to a canal fleet; starting 10 fleets 
each day, would require only about 95 days to move the whole 
mass of 100,000,000 bushels. As a question of possible capacity 
this whole mass could be moved in 30 days. 
The simple truth is, that our western granaries are not cleared 
annually:—that our great wheat center has removed, within thirty 
years, 500 miles westward, from Ohio to Minnesota, and still has a 
