Daily union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1865-1866, 1866-11-03
THE TENNESSEE CENTRAL OR PACI-
FIG RAILROAD.
The Business Of Railroads always TX
eeeds the Calculations OF their PrOjec
tors.
MR.. DEDow's LErrERs-No. XIV.
gned IHOS. SWAMI.
Governor of Maryland"

Mr.. DEBOW'S LETTERS-NO. XIV.
The proposition is laid down at large, and
the individual cases of except ons are un-
worthy of note.
The principle is fonrd to operate in every
period of the history of these great labor
saving and labor creating machines, and the
reason is obvious enough. Our calculations
have a general reference to the business and
transportation of the country, as it exists,
when the road is projected, whereas the road
becomes the creator of that which feeds and
sustains it. The man who travels once, is
induced TO travel ten times, and the goods
which he is enabled to dispose of or consume,
instead Of being conveyed in trunks or in a
few boxes, require now huge crates, hogs
heads, and even cars.
1t was once thought that railroads would
not carry passengers and Mr.. PORTER, in
his Progress of the British Empire" mem
tons the fact that all the first roads con-
structed in that country were with the view to
freight only. Half the persons, it was
argued, who had taken the old stage road,
between Liverpool and Manchester, would
prefer the railroad, but experience showed
that the increase was from :, 259, in 1881,
when the work was in its infancy, to $50, 1888
passengers in 1916. 1t was found, he says,
in every case that "the number of passengers
quadrupeled what existed before. Notwith-
standing the vast increase of passenger
traffic on the English roads, the freight
traffic, which was at first less in value, was,
in 1856, three times as valuable.
The freight traffic on the American roads
has exhibited the same marvellous increase,
as is shown by the quantities of merchan-
die which pass and repass between the
Great West and Northwest and the Atlantic
States, including coal, iron, salt and rock,
the heaviest and least valuable material.
These freights ascend and decend grades
that at one time were regarded impractical
ble-arch over wide rivers and penetrate
and traverse huge tunnels under the solid
earth.
Even cotton can be transported from North
Alabama and Georgia through Nashville,
and onward by railroad to the North as
cheap and cheaper at times than by river
and ocean.
In referring to the general influences upon
the country exerted by railroads, in former
paper it is stated that they frequently exceed
the most saDguine expectations Innumer-
able examples of it may be furnished. A
patent one is that of the Mobile and Ohio,
of which President MILTON Brown said, in
1859, "the earnings of the Mobile end Of
the road have gone beyond the estimates
made before its construction. These esti-
mates were seven and one-half per cent OF
profit on the cost, whereas the net profit Of
this part of the road, after paying all ex-
penses, was eight and five-eighth per cent
of the cost" The gross earnings when the
road was twenty milesin length were $22,-
459.
That road running through a country SC
poor and unpromising as that which exists
upon the first hundred miles of the one from
Mobile should exceed the calculation made
for II and In point OF fact produce handsome
revenue, is one ofthe most conclusive argu-
ments in favor of the productiveness of rail.
roads. The same experience has been in
fact realized in the poor piney woods regions
of Louisiana and South Carolina, through
which much of the length of their great rail-
roads extend. The business of the Jackson
road wentup from $277 ,00S in 1857 to 81 ,27S,.
620 in 1862, and was, in November, 1865
with all its defects of stock and road S114,799
When this road was first talked of Col
! TARPLEY made much to do about the chick
ems and the eggs and the pine knots that
would employ its active energies.