The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1873-10-03

extremity, and thence westerly
along the northern frontier of the
United States, to Pugefs Sound
lon the Pacific.
This road would solve the tan.
Igled problems which so frequent
ly arise with Great Britain, speak
; ing to her in. tones of defiance,
both military and commercial
checking her at any effort on hel
part to- control the trade of the
world across the continent through
British America, or at any at
tempt to threw superior forces oil
invasion into our Pacific states,
/ while in the absence of any Brit.
ish railroad to the Pacific, We
could at will control the whole
coastend Islands, from San Diego
to Bhering Straits. e5asa1
/ These roads should all be built
in the best possible manner, with
steel rails and double tracks with
facilities for enlargement into four
tracks when needed. The paraI-
lei tracks should be laid at a uni
form distance from each other, so
that trains of cars strongly framed
together could be run abreast on
two or more tracks, carrying the
heaviest possible loads of military
munitions and ordnance, much too
heavy for q single train or sim
gle track. In this way heavy for
ices of men and vast quantities of
supplies could be, quickly trans
ported from point TO point as the
exigencies of war might demand.
Besides being of untold i'm
portance in times of war, such q
system of roads, with their ten
thousand branches and feeders,
built by private enterprise under
the fostering care of the general
government, would develop and
strengthen the bands of commerce
and amity between the most ex-
'treme portions of the country.
! The cotton, fruits and lumber of
the South would find easy ex-
change with the products of east
ern and northern industry. The
lumber of the exhaustless forests
of the Rocky mountains and the
Pacific States would be a boon to
the prairies and plains of the in
terror, while the vast corn fields
and pastures of the prairies would
furnish food and winter clothing
to the manufacturers, planters,
miners and lumbermen in every
part of the country. ,
The fields for educational eff
fort and moral enterprise would
become more easily accessible.
The ideas and habits of the ener-
getic northern communities would
more readily stamp their impress
on other regions. Never, perhaps,
in the history of the world has a
nation had it in its power to so
thoroughly unite in bonds of no.
mogenity the extremes of so wide
an empire! Driven from the
ocean during the years of
the Great Rebellion, and slow
to gain our former position
as a naval nation, we may, if
we choose, become the worlds
carriers on terra firma, within our
own territories, with the rates of
the trade and travel of the world
in our own hands. Never before
has it been so thoroughly in the
power of any great empire to eff
fectually control the travel and
traffic of all the great commercial
nations to the east and west of us,
as America may now do by the
proper construction of a wisely
planned system of trans-continen-
tai railroads. AS the carriers and
handlers of the worlds freight,
which must break bulk on either
side of us; and as the entertainers
and feeders of the worlds travel
ers, the United States of America
would become the most wealthy.
powerful and renowned nation in
the universe!
| Fellow citizens: I have pictured
to you what should be tbs glori.
GUS achievements of q great peo-
pie like ours, occupying the finest
continent on earth, under just
system of internal commerce.
Let us for a moment examine our
condition under the present frag-
mentary, haphazard plan. Need
inform you that, under the present
commercial, financial and political
condition of the country, the fore
going conceptions and aspirations
are the merest speculations? That
instead of entertaining ideas OF
greatness and national grandeur
it behooves US to look well to oul
liberties! To examine whether
we are not being choked and
cramped into premature decay
Whether our present railroad and
financial management is not pro
ducing damaging results from
which nothing can save US short
of a general, popular GacakeninQ O
all classes of community to the
realities of the danger?
Mr.. r. II. Ferguson. a railroad
} man of Troy, New York, after .
careful calculation, submits to the
. public q table of figures, showing
that three hundred tons of freigh
can be moved by rail, from 81
Louis to New YORK City, for 1926
or considerably less thai
: one dollar per ton. The charg,
under the present management il
: twelve dollars per ton and upwards
} These figures are astounding
: Railroad men are called upon tt
show their fallacy, if they arc no
correct.
Have my hearers ever devoted
thought as to what becomes of tn
money which the producers an,
5 cons u mers of the country wrong
e fully pay on high railroad charges
q When Tom Scott, or the great rob
b bert, Baron Vanderbilt, chooses t
: ilevy an additional dollar or fiv
|, dollars on each ton of freight car
: ried on all the railroads of tn
Icountry, can my hearers tell m
: Whist becomes of the additions
Y millions which flow into the col
? fers of these irresponsible despoi
!, in consequence of such levy? Th
{ money is not sunk in the Atlanti
q ocean, Far better for the countr
a were it SO disposed off Nor is
locked up in the misers safe.
- that case it would be less harmf'
than nowl
/ Let me tell you what becomes I
" it. Itfiows east into the hands of
? very few men, who operate an
2 control the raiIi Dad of the entir
b nation. The total amount last We:
was 473 millions of dollars. On
moiety of this inconceivable sui
: is paid ont for operating the road
8 Another tribe is spent on marb
4. palaces, fast horses and splendi
,e equipments and entertainment
s. The remaining hundreds of milliol
t. ara used in thousand ways whiG
n no man can describe. Large salari
n are paid to able lawyers In all citi
., of the Union, to retain them In q
10 interests of railroad cooperation
16 E-~.-k ~IzS.k. ..oyto,,sSa