The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad. One transformed millions of acres of uncultivated land into fertile farms, while the other furnished the transportation which carried the crops to distant markets.

The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad. One transformed millions of acres of uncultivated land into fertile farms, while the other furnished the transportation which carried the crops to distant markets.

A story was told many years ago of Commodore Vanderbilt which, while perhaps not strictly true, was pointed enough to warrant its constant repetition for more than two generations. Back in the sixties, when this grizzled railroad chieftain was the chief factor in the rapidly growing New York Central Railroad system, whose backbone then consisted of a continuous one-track line connecting Albany with the Great Lakes, the president of a small cross-country road approached him one day and requested an exchange of annual passes.

In the early forties the commercial importance of Philadelphia was menaced from two directions. A steadily increasing volume of trade was passing through the Erie Canal from the Central West to the northern seaboard, while traffic over the new Baltimore and Ohio Railroad promised a great commercial future to the rival city of Baltimore.

Before introducing a friend to a distinguished stranger, it is advisable to give him some account of the person whose acquaintance he is about to make; and so, fellow-traveler, whom I introduce to the New York and Erie Railroad, it may be well to prefix here a brief sketch of the history and present condition of this, the Lion of Railways.

When the scheme for the construction of a railroad from Baltimore to the waters of the Ohio River first began to take form, the United States had barely emerged from the Revolutionary period. Many of the famous men of that great day were still living.

In 1862, when the charter was granted by the United States Government for the construction of a railroad from Omaha to the Pacific coast, the only States west of the Mississippi Valley in which any railroad construction of importance existed were Iowa and Missouri.

Like the Union Pacific charter, that of the Northern Pacific also contained an extensive land grant. From the modern viewpoint, such land grants look colossal, but in those days the general opening up and development of the Western country had progressed to so slight an extent that the significance of giving away millions of acres of the public lands to encourage a precarious railroad enterprise was then no more than the passing over to capitalists today of exclusive rights in extensive tracts of territory in Brazil and the other South American Republics.

The Santa Fe Route, or the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, which has in modern times developed into one of the largest and most profitable railroad systems in this country, was projected long before the idea of a transcontinental line to the Pacific coast had taken full possession of men's minds.

The States which form the northern border of the United States westward from the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast include an area several times larger than France and could contain ten Englands and still have room to spare.

In the year 1856 a small single-track railroad was opened from Richmond to Danville, Virginia. This enterprise, like many others in ante-bellum days, was carried out largely with funds supplied by the State.

The man who really reaped the harvest and who at the same time gave the Union Pacific that position among American railroads which its founders foresaw was the last, and some writers think, the greatest of all American railroad leaders.

The details that comprise this problem have been indicated to some extent in the preceding pages--the speculative character of much railroad building, the rascality of some railroad promoters, the corrupting influence which the railroad has too frequently exerted in legislatures and even in the courts.