# The Truth About The Railroads/Chapter 5

V
THE RELATION BETWEEN THE FARMER AND THE RAILROAD
Agriculture was so highly regarded among the people of antiquity that the Hindus ascribed it to the great god Brahma, the Egyptians believed it to have been given to man by Isis, the Greeks credited it to Demeter, and the Romans to Ceres, and the farmer Cincinnatus was called from the plow to, and twice served in, the highest offices of the state. In the United States it is the greatest business, in the number of people engaged in it, in the money value of the product, and in its importance to the welfare of all the people.
The development of agriculture in the United States began with the settlement of the colonies, and, until the Civil War, was rapidly extended. In the ten years ending in ​1800, the area brought within the limits of settlement was 65,000 square miles. Between 1810 and 1820, the American people, then numbering 8,250,000, increased the density of population in every section of their settled territory, increased their manufacturing capital two-fold in spite of a three years’ war, and occupied 101,000 additional square miles. The Civil War checked the westward flow of people, and retarded development, but did not stop it, and since 1870 the development that characterized earlier days has proceeded without interruption.
The growth of farming in this country shows two distinct phases, one lasting until 1860, and the other starting about that time and not yet complete. Prior to the Civil War, agriculture was treated more as an occupation, or means of subsistence. Fertile soil was practically free to all. There was little outside pressure to make a farmer careful to preserve the productiveness of the soil, and the agricultural products were generally greater than the demand, partly because transportation ​was limited and high-priced, compared with to-day. A movement which began about the time of the war, coincident with the growing demand for technical education, has somewhat changed the nature of farming in this country, and has made it an important business rather than an occupation. Population has grown rapidly, and the demands of the people for food have become great. More and more the attention of intelligent men, in the farming ranks and without, has been directed toward the future and the question of providing the necessities of life to a population fast approaching the one-hundred-million mark.
A rapidly growing country needed men skilled in the sciences and arts of life to deal with its new conditions, and while purely commercial activities were the first to feel this need, farming also began to feel it, and the movement which introduced technical education and in a degree supplanted the old classical schools with those designed to develop the kind of men the country needed gave to ​the business of fanning the first schools for the scientific teaching of agriculture. It was the West, and not the older and wealthier East, that gave the United States its first agricultural school. The second constitution of Michigan, then close to the western frontier, provided in 1850 for the founding of an institution to teach agriculture, and the movement, spreading eastward, resulted in the incorporation of what is now Pennsylvania’s State College of Agriculture in 1854, and the incorporation of Maryland’s agricultural college and the founding of a school of agriculture in Massachusetts, both in 1856. The work thus started reached Congress, and resulted, in 1857, in the introduction of a “land-grant” aid bill, proposed by Hon. Justin S. Morrill, and passed in 1862. The Department of Agriculture was created, first as a bureau, in the same year.
Up to 1905, the progress of agricultural education under this encouragement was such that 66 institutions had been organized, with an endowment fund amounting to $12,045,629. ​In May of 1910 there were 975 institutions giving instruction in agriculture. There has been a rapid development at the same time of college-extension work in agriculture, agricultural education under the county system, and consolidated rural schools, together with numerous other activities, which have been of practical value in creating better standards of knowledge and practice of farming.
One who studies the history of the world’s farming cannot fail to be struck with the fact that the dignity and importance of the farmer’s calling have always been recognized, although more in some countries than in others, not alone by the passing of laws for his encouragement, but by the coöperation and help of those in other occupations. In the reign of Henry VII of England, in the year 1488, a statute was passed to prevent the acquisition of large land-holdings, in order to prevent lands formerly tilled from becoming idle and unproductive. Half a century later the English law shows a quaint statute, curiously like some of the legislation one hears about ​now, which was passed because the growing of sheep had become so profitable that many had engaged therein. It says: “Some have 24,000 sheep, some 20,000, some 10,000, some 6,000, some 4,000, and some more and some less.” And yet it alleged the price of wool had nearly doubled, “sheep being come to a few persons’ hands.” A penalty was therefore imposed on all who kept above 2000 sheep, and no person was to take in farm more than two tenements of husbandry. This attempt at “trust-busting” apparently did not work, for in 1597 it was necessary to enact a new statute that arable land made into sheep-pasture be returned to tillage, and no more arable land be devoted to pasture.
Literature of agriculture, prepared for the help of the farmer, dates back in England to the thirteenth century, and Thomas Tusser created so much interest in 1562 with a volume called “Five Hundred Points of Husbandry” that one hundred and twenty-five years afterward Lord Molesworth recommended that it be taught in the schools. The ​live-stock business was well understood and carefully studied even then. The preface to a volume of Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, published in 1523, is curiously similar to the publications the excellent agricultural colleges are now sending to the farmer, for it says: “An housbande cannot well thryve by his corne, without he have other cattell, nor by his cattell without corne. An because that shepe, in myne opinion, is the most profitablest cattell that any man can have, therefore I purpose to speake fyrst of shepe.” This is sound advice to-day, except that the great “American Hog” is not mentioned, and he is really more important to the modem American farmer than sheep.
Some phases of the present agricultural situation in the United States give reason to hope that the movement to make farming more than ever a business, conducted along scientific business lines, will develop great headway during the next decade. In the twenty years ending in 1910 the population of the United States increased about one third, ​—from 62,947,000 to 91,972,000. Immigration during the ten years ending in 1910 was 8,795,386, or more than double that of the preceding ten years. The total of unappropriated and unreserved lands in the United States has fallen since 1890 from 55.32 per cent of the total area, to 40.98 per cent, and the 59 per cent appropriated or reserved represents the best selections.
In the three States of North and South Dakota and Minnesota, there were, in 1900, 47,654,452 acres of unappropriated and unreserved lands, and in 1910 but 7,536,333 acres. With the reduction in the available government land, farms have become more valuable, and less easily obtained by those of small means. The average value per farm of all farm property has increased from $3,649 in North Dakota in 1900 to $13,109 in 1910. In South Dakota, the average value in 1900 was $2,901, and in 1910 it was $15,018. In Minnesota the average value in 1900 was $3,549, increasing in 1910 to $9,456. It is interesting to compare here the average value of the holdings of the ​owners of the securities representing the Northern Pacific road, $423,000,000, owned by nearly 25,000 people, $16,290 to the individual owner,—not very much more than the value of the average farm in North and South Dakota. (A recent governmental valuation fixed the value of the road at $488,000,000, or $65,000,000 more than the capital outstanding.) The value of North Dakota’s farms and buildings in 1910 was $822,035,000, an increase of 314 per cent in ten years. In South Dakota the total was $1,005,080,807, an increase of 356 per cent in a decade. In Minnesota farm land and buildings were worth $1,259,510,000, an increase in the same period of 88 per cent. These figures show how rapidly farm values have advanced as a result of energetic farm development and improvement, coupled with cheap rail transportation, permitting distribution of farm products to many markets. In 1909 the wheat crop of these three states alone had a value of $216,647,000. The wealth-production of the farms of the United States has increased from $5,017,000,000 in 1900 to ​$8,926,000,000 in 1910,and has nearly doubled since 1897.
The movement of settlers to the West has reduced the areas of government land and increased the acreage on farms from 536,081,000 in 1880 to 873,729,000 in 1911. The occupation of the rich and unoccupied prairie lands has greatly stimulated the development of irrigation in the West, the acres irrigated having grown from 3,361,000 in 1889 to 11,000,000 in 1907, because a decreasing land-supply has made it both necessary and desirable for the people to find ways of utilizing areas formerly unproductive.
Corn retained for domestic consumption has increased from 1,865,000,000 bushels in 1900 to 2,734,000,000 in 1910, while the 1900 exports of 213,123,000 bushels fell in 1910 to 38,128,000 bushels. In 1900, 361,207,084 bushels of wheat were retained for domestic consumption, while in 1910 there were retained 649,824,682 bushels, and the exports of 186,096,762 bushels in 1900 had fallen to 87,364,318 bushels. This drop in exports tells ​clearly the story that our own people are drawing more heavily each year on our farms for their food-supply.
Secretary Wilson of the Department of Agriculture takes the view expressed recently by President Taft, that farm production will keep pace with the country’s necessities, yet it is very apparent, from the shrinking areas of land available and not in farms and from the rising prices of farm-lands due to greater demand for them with the increase of population, that the people of the United States are beginning to catch up with the immense annual farm production, and that in the future, with less raw and very productive land coming in, there must be increasing production, or the people will not be as well fed or as cheaply fed as they have been.
In 1800 only 4 per cent of the people lived in cities of 8000 or more, while in 1910 the proportion was about 40 per cent. In 1840, 77.5 per cent of all at work were engaged in agriculture, and in 1900 but 35.7 per cent. Should the next decade demonstrate that the ​continual drift of people is away from agriculture, thus bringing about a greater demand than the present farm methods can meet, the responsibility upon the farmer will be heavy, for the welfare of the people will rest more than ever before upon him, and upon his efficient work on the farm will depend very largely the solution of the quality and price of living enjoyed by the man in the city.
If the population grows at its present rate, we shall have in the United States by 1950 two hundred million people, and the demand for the farm products required for their subsistence will have doubled. Competent authorities estimate that to meet this demand it will be necessary to increase the product of each acre of land one per cent a year, or one tenth for each succeeding ten years. The land-heritage of the people of the continental United States is about 1,900,000,000 acres, of which 1,000,000,000 acres or a little less is now considered untillable. The United States Department of Agriculture estimates the total arable land of the country at 950,000,000 acres, of ​which 873,729,000 acres have already been taken up and are in farms. There remain 76,271,000 acres of arable area not in farms, and while it must be conceded that, of the area classed as untillable, future scientists will find means of utilizing some portion, it will probably be no great part. What remains to be utilized for farm purposes, plus that which may later be brought under cultivation, is small, compared with the probable population in 1950 and the proportion of the arable area now occupied by farms.
It is fortunate for the future of North Dakota and the adjoining States of South Dakota and Minnesota that their areas of unoccupied land, and consequent opportunities for the settler, are so large. Of North Dakota’s total land-area, 45.5 per cent is in farms. Of South Dakota’s area, the land in farms amounts to 32.2 per cent, and in Minnesota but 38 per cent of the land-area is in farms. The best authorities in North Dakota estimate that there still remain about 10,000,000 acres that can be profitably put into plow land, and ​that future years will see some growth in this amount. In Minnesota and South Dakota similar possibilities exist, yet neither the farmer nor the business man should forget that the present rate of farm-development is rapid, and that the time when these States will come to the limit of their present unused arable-land resources is within sight.
The number of farms in North Dakota has increased two and two thirds times in twenty years. For the ten years ending in 1910 the increase of population was about 81 per cent, but the increase in acreage of farm land was about 83 per cent. The number of farms increased 64 per cent, and the increase in land-values alone added $557,028,000 to the wealth of the farmers. In South Dakota the percentage of increase in the number of farms was greater than the percentage of increase in population, and was ten times as large as the average increase for the ten years ending in 1900. Minnesota showed less increase during the decade, but added 1478 new farms. The effect of this demand for land is shown in the ​large addition to the wealth of the farmers from the rising value of North Dakota land. For the three States this total amounts to the surprising sum of $1,730,228,000, or at the rate of $14,418,566 a month for the entire ten years.
Railroad-building began in North Dakota in 1871, when the Northern Pacific reached Fargo. In 1872 it extended its main line west. In only forty years there has been a great change. The people from 1860 to 1875 suffered many discomforts, whether they were farmers or railroad men, compared with the comforts and even luxuries that are common to-day all over the State, as a result of the working together of the two great forces of agriculture and transportation.
The present conditions of life are gratifying, and younger men should remember the hard work of the last forty years in overcoming obstacles, and realize the responsibility for the future laid upon them. The people of this country will demand an increase of acre production amounting to 10 per cent a decade during the coming fifty years.
​To the extent that the people of the country as a whole appreciate their growing needs, there will grow up a public sentiment and demand for better farming. There is a personal responsibility upon every farmer to meet the demand of consumption. The average wheat-yield, which for a year like 1909 in these three States was 14.8 bushels an acre, must be raised ten years from now not merely one bushel an acre a year, which would add to the income from this crop from $10,000,000 to $15,000,000, depending on the price of wheat, but a bushel and a half, to make an average of 16.2 bushels. Within twenty years the average will have to be raised to 17.8 bushels.
If only ten men farm well, and their fellow-farmers in a county farm poorly, these averages cannot be met. It is the consistent result, rather than the occasional exploit of a brilliant man, that counts. In these three States there are men who are making good profits out of farming, producing yields far better than the average, and not only maintaining, but in some cases increasing, the fertility of their fields. ​They are demonstrating what has been proved in Germany and England, where some of the cultivated land has been cropped for ten centuries, that constant cultivation, if it is wise cultivation, does not exhaust the soil. In those countries, and on this old land, the crop-yield is much heavier than in this country. The soil of Europe has no peculiar characteristics to account for this better production; on the contrary, there is every reason to believe that the same methods of cultivation, which resulted there, as they will here, from the pressure of larger demands for the products of the farm, will produce the same yields in these states.
There is great force in public opinion. The demand for a “safe and sane” Fourth of July in the United States reduced the deaths resulting from the celebration of the national holiday from 215 in 1908 to 57 in 1911, and greatly limited the sale of dangerous fire-crackers and explosives. Public opinion killed the practice of rebating on the railroads of the United States, for people generally came to the view that it was wrong, although it had existed ​for many years, and there were laws against it which were ignored by shipper and railroad man both until public opinion brought about their enforcement.
In the Western Territories of the United States the possession of a horse was so essential to life that horse-stealing at one time was regarded as a crime of such degree that one taken in the act was put to death by hanging from a limb of a tree. Justice was thus summarily meted out to the offender who willfully deprived his neighbor of his property. Yet to-day a careless farmer allows weeds to grow in his fields without concern, and the seeds are carried by the wind, and a whole neighborhood may be seeded. The injury to his neighbor is just as definite and tangible as though he had deliberately gone into his neighbor’s fields and gathered and carried away the crops. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” was the ancient law. This would require damage for damage. In a case which was carried up to the highest tribunal in Missouri, where a property-owner allowed weeds to grow unrestrained in a ​vacant lot, it was decided that an ordinance compelling cutting of noxious weeds was valid, that no injustice was done the individual in requiring him to cut the weeds, that it was in the interest of the public health, and that the municipality had the authority to compel the owner of the offending property to cut the weeds and abate a public nuisance. What palliation can be offered for the man who, through carelessness and indifference to the welfare of the community, allows weeds of the most vicious character to grow unrestrained on his land and allows the seeds to be carried throughout the neighborhood? Is this less a crime than depriving a man of his just property by theft? Yet we often see fields in which weeds are allowed to grow and mature their seed, where a few hours’ work would save great loss. Whole valleys, thousands of acres in extent, have been polluted with foul seeds by the careless indifference of one man who neglected to destroy a small patch of weeds that grew in his field.
Carelessness of regard for one’s neighbor is ​as wrong to-day as it was a thousand years before the time of Christ. Then it was decreed: “If an ox gore a man or woman, that they die, [and] if the ox were wont to push with his horn in time past, and it hath been testified to his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but that he hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put to death.” (Ex. xxi, 28, 29.) If a man was careless of the safety of his neighbor, if after he had been duly warned that his ox was “wont to push with his horn,” he still allowed him to run at large, then the most severe penalty known to law, that of death, was meted out.
Public sentiment in some states goes even further, and there are state boards charged with the stamping out of stock diseases, which are given power to enter upon a farm and destroy animals, if it is necessary for the protection of the sound stock of other farmers. In the Pacific Northwest there are state laws and state inspectors for the purpose of stamping out orchard pests, and the inspectors have a ​right to cut and burn diseased trees. The growth of a strong public opinion against poor orcharding is marked by the formation of voluntary associations of fruit-growers, with their own inspectors, having the same powers.
Sound public opinion should be encouraged, and the sentiment of farmers, as a body, should be such that poor farming will be stamped as a moral crime, a crime against one’s fellows, for shiftless farm methods injure the property and offset the labor of the adjacent farmer who is trying to produce the best results; and a crime against the people as a whole, for they have charged the farmer with production of their food and expect him to meet the responsibilities they have imposed. It is noticeable that an excellently managed, well maintained, and highly productive farm in a community creates a spirit of emulation, and tends to elevate the standards of farming on adjacent properties. With a knowledge of how to farm better, local public opinion tends in the direction of condemnation of the careless and indifferent farmer.
​The average wheat-yield of 1909 is a fair standard by which to judge the average production of these three states. The average wheat-production per acre for the United Kingdom during the ten years ending in 1899 was 33.1 bushels. These states, with comparatively new and very rich land, are therefore raising but 44.7 per cent of the crop that is being produced on the very old lands of Great Britain. Germany’s average for the ten years ending in 1899 was 28.9 bushels, almost twice as much as Minnesota and North and South Dakota raised, and more than twice as much as the general wheat average in the United States. In 1900 the tri-state wheat acreage was 15,600,000 acres. At the average farm value of December 1st, the value of the wheat-crop was $216,647,000. If this new and rich land had produced as high an average yield as that of the United Kingdom, the harvest would have been increased by 273,966,000 bushels, and $255,500,691 additional would have found its way into the farmers’ pockets. In other words, the farmers would have con​siderably more than doubled their returns from a single crop. Divided among the 308,141 farms in these three states in 1910, this increased harvest would have brought each farmer an additional $829.13, or a premium of $829 in one year for doing as thorough and productive farming as is done in the United Kingdom.
The business in which the farmer is engaged is the most important in the United States. The business of second importance is that of transportation, which I represent. The two are very closely related, and the success of agriculture means the success of the railroad, for it hauls what the farmer produces and consumes. The farmer is equally dependent upon the railroad, for without transportation he could not market his product, and his success depends upon the regularity and adequacy of the transportation available to him and the fairness of the rates. The close interrelation of
these two businesses is less appreciated than it should be. The farmer should not be led into the error of believing that the railroad is trying ​to charge more than a fair and reasonable rate, for the success of each business in its own field depends upon the fair and square treatment it receives from the other, and the degree of fairness shown toward it by the people.
When one sees the ordinary operation of the railroad going on without much interruption, except from heavy weather, one does not always realize the great work that has been done in creating the railroad machine in the United States, and the really vast amount of expense and work to keep it going day by day. It seems very simple to see the passenger-trains run in and out of the station, to order the freight-car and send the grain to market, to telegraph to the nearest large town for supplies and in twenty-four or forty-eight hours have them delivered. But it is not so easy and simple as it seems, and there is danger to-day that the next great uplift in business in the United States will find the railroads, as a whole, sorely taxed to furnish the transportation needed for the commerce of the country. Why? Because a misdirected public opinion is demanding ​rates too low, taxes too high, wages too high, service too elaborate, and there are not cents enough in the dollar to meet all these obligations and still permit the business to be attractive enough so the man with the dollar will invest it.
Our American railroads have done good work, and can do own better, and it is to the farmer's own selfish interest to see that they are so treated that they will be ready at all times to handle his business. To be ready requires constant expenditure.
| American railroads are capitalized at | $ 60,000 per mile |
| British railroads are capitalized at | 275,000 per mile |
| French railroads are capitalized at | 141,000 per mile |
| German railroads are capitalized at | 112,000 per mile |
| Austrian railroads are capitalized at | 115,000 per mile |
| Average pay of American railway employees is | $668 per year |
| Average pay of British railway employees is | 251 per year |
| Average pay of French railway employees is | 260 per year |
| Average pay of German railway employees is | 382 per year |
| Average pay of Austrian railway employees is | 260 per year |
| Average charge for hauling a ton of freight 100 miles | |
| United States | $0.75 |
| England | 2.80 |
| France | 2.20 |
| Germany | 1.64 |
| Austria | 2.30 |
In the United States the railroads haul each year 2500 tons of freight one mile for every ​person in the country, in France only 400 tons, and in Prussia only 700 tons.
These few figures show you that the American roads perform a greater freight service than the European roads, at a much lower average charge, pay the employees much higher wages, and have much less capital upon which a return should be made. Even with this relatively low capitalization, the Securities Commission, whose report has just gone to Congress, shows that the return is less than four and one half per cent, a return not very satisfying to an energetic man, no matter what his business may be.
In North Dakota the rates on all grain are about one fifth lower than they were ten years ago. On twelve-bushel wheat from 1000 acres, shipped from Bismarck to the Twin Cities or Duluth, the saving in freight to the farmer is $1 a ton, or more than enough in one year to buy the farmer two of the best eight-foot grain-binders with a couple of hay-rakes thrown in. In the country as a whole, the average freight-rate has gone down about one ​fourth since 1888, very largely through the voluntary action of the railroads themselves. On the freight tonnage shipped over the railroads in 1910, this meant the very large saving of $615,928,000.
A bushel of wheat sold for about $.62 in Minneapolis in 1896. That $.62 at that time paid for transporting a barrel of flour 161 miles back into Minnesota. A bushel of wheat sold for about $1 in Minneapolis in 1911, and that $1 paid for transporting a barrel of flour from Minneapolis out into North Dakota 436 miles. In other words, the farmer’s bushel of wheat in 1911 would buy nearly two and three quarters times as much flour-transportation as in 1896, although the wages paid by the railroad and the cost of most materials used by it are very much higher now than in 1896.
The present freight rate is very small. How small it is can be better understood when one realizes that for 25 cents, what it costs, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, for the farmer to move a one-ton load by wagon one mile, the Northern Pacific Rail​way, at its average rate last year, will move the one-ton load 27.2 miles. For the cost of a two-cent postage-stamp it will move a ton about two and a quarter miles. For the cost of ten pounds of ten-penny nails it will move a ton 44 miles; for the price of a No. 2 Ames shovel, 166 miles; for the money it takes to buy a good milk-pail, 138 miles; and for the price of an ordinary lantern-globe, 16 miles.
In prosperous times the railroad returns very promptly to the community a large proportion of all the money it collects, in paying for labor and material. About 30,000 men are employed on the Northern Pacific, at an annual payroll expense for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1911, of about $23,000,000. Materials costing almost $15,500,000 were purchased during the same year. Transactions are large, and it takes a great many passengers and a great many tons of freight to pay the bills. For example, coal burned by the Northern Pacific during the year ending June 30, 1911, cost $6,858,764, and would have kept warm, during the same period, 800,000 persons,—more ​than the population of North Dakota. During the calendar year of 1911, the Northern Pacific Railway bought 65,398,665 feet of timber. That was sufficient to lay a plank road eight feet wide and two inches thick in a straight line for a distance of 774 miles; in 1910, before the great fall in earnings, necessitating the most rigid economy, the lumber purchased would have been enough to build a similar road from St. Paul to Boston, 1108 miles. In one year the Northern Pacific used 29,470 gallons of paint on freight equipment, cars, and stations. That amount would be sufficient to paint 627 dwelling-houses of average size with two coats. To repaint a building 24 by 55 feet (equivalent to an average nine-room house) requires 47 gallons of paint.
Here are some figures about smaller things: 105,000 lead-pencils are used in a year. That number would have supplied 5250 schoolchildren two pencils per month during a school term of ten months. 4464 penholders are issued in a year. 249,552 pen-points are issued in a year. That number would have ​supplied 4991 school-children five pen-points per month during a school term of ten months. 1125 gallons of ink are furnished in one year. That amount would have supplied 5800 schoolchildren with ten two-and-one-half-ounce bottles of ink for a school term of ten months. The total charge for “stationery and printing” for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1911, amounted to $259.968.76, and the officers are all the time trying to save on small items as well as on large ones. Ten per cent saving of this class of expense would be nearly $26,000,—enough to build a mile of branch-line railroad in certain parts of North Dakota. If the 30,000 employees of the Northern Pacific, by energetic work and careful use of material, saved only one cent a day, it would amount in a year to $109,500,—enough to buy five good locomotives. If the great army of railroad employees in the United States, more than 1,500,000, should save, by careful, thorough work, one cent a day, the total would be the large sum of $5,475,000. A freight locomotive, suitable for handling the grain-crop, costs, ​delivered at Fargo, a little more than $21,000. The average receipt to the railroad for hauling grain from North Dakota points to the Head of the Lakes or the Twin Cities is 15 cents a hundredweight, or 9 cents a bushel,—say 10 cents for ease in calculation. To buy a locomotive requires the gross earnings to the railroad for handling 210,000 bushels of wheat, which at 13 bushels to the acre means 16,150 acres.
The capital requirements of railroads, if they are to keep pace with the demands of the public, and provide safe, adequate, and regular service, will continue to be very heavy. During the five years from 1904 to 1908 investors added $4,167,554,569, or an average of $833,510,914 per year, necessary to add to and improve the railroads so that they could serve the public. It will require in the future from $600,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 a year for a number of years if the railroads are to grow fast enough to keep ahead of the growth of the country and the demands of the people. In providing this capital, the railroads have a ​task fully as difficult and serious as that of the farmer in increasing his product one per cent per acre per year, and both tasks must be accomplished if we are to make the best use of our wonderful resources.
You cannot have a good railroad without good track and good equipment, and good men to maintain and operate that track and equipment. You cannot have good farms without good soil, which you have in these three states; good farm equipment, which you can get and should keep in good order; good men, who will use that soil and equipment by proper plowing and cultivation, by the selection of good, clean seed instead of poor, dirty seed, by intelligent combination of various crops and live-stock.
Sound public opinion can help both the farmer and the railroads in the important work of the farmer and of the railroad. It is important that fairness and consideration be shown to both: to the farmer, that he may have every encouragement and the assistance of the best agricultural education, scientific ​research, and extension work, so as to produce a larger food-supply; and to the railroad, that it may help the general prosperity by being able to provide sufficient transportation when it is needed.
The people can have good farming and good railroading, but it means hard work and plenty of it. Men who stand off on one side and find fault, criticise, and embarrass those who are really doing the constructive work in the country, by numerous petty, foolish restrictions, are not helping, but are really hindering the work of better farming and better railroading, and the country will sooner or later wake up to this fact.