The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1874-10-01
Selfrt Nisrellang,
( GREAT BRITAIN.

4L .u N4 OF t
The Enormous Realized Wealth Of the Count
& try Fsdrfully Unequal lDistributi0a Of
These Riches-A Million Of absolute Pau
pHs in England. 49,. ..l"....I
,. The enormous realized wealth of Great
Britain forces itself on the observation
Of the traveller every step of his journey
through the Island. The country is as
beautiful as a park. 1t is palace and a
garden. 1t is thickly studded with
great cities, London, with its 3,5OO,OOO
souls, Is the sun of solar system Of
cities, revolving like planets and satel-
lites around it, Solidity and stability
characterize everything. Take, for ex-
ample,
THE RAILWAYS. .H,rr
They are built with a care and perfec-
ton never seen in America. They are
constructed regardless of expense. The
grade or direction conforms very little
10 the face of the country. The lines are
straight, turning neither to the right nor
left hand to avoid natural distractions
If low hills are met, they are cut through;
if valleys, they are filled up; if high
hills, they are tunneled; if rivers inter
pose, they are arched over with stone
bridges; or, if the spring is too long for a
stone arch, they are spanned with iron.
Embankments or deep cuts are either
lined up with stone walls or smoothly
sodded, so the naked earth is rarely
seen. All public highways are either
carried over the tracks on stone or brick
viaducts, approached by easy grades; or
are crossed by the railway on an iron or
stone bridge. The railway never crosses
a public road on the same grade or
level.
In passing into or through cities, the
railway track nearly always runs on a
"HIGH LEVEL"
The roadway usually consists of a Sc.
ries of brick or stone arches, elevated
about 20 feet above the surface of the
ground, and under the arches the traffic
on the street passes without danger or
impediment. The trains are thereby en-
abled to run into depots and through
cities as fast as the companies please to
run them. On the express trains have
dashed through cities and towns, or rath-
er over them, at the speed Of 40 to so
miles per hour, looking down on the
house-tops on the long rows of tile-cOy-
cred brick cottages, and taking in the
whole place at glance from sort
of birds eye view. The railway lines
have all double or
QUADRuPLE TRACKS
Except the merely local roads or short
FEEDER Steel rails are laid on the prin-
cipal lines, and all the hpesare getting
them as fast as steel Sanb manufactured
/ was told that experience proves steel
to be more than ten times as durable as.
iron. Some railroad men declared that
a good steel rail would outlast twenty re-
lays of iron. t.....
The traveller is impressed with the en-
ormous magnitude Of the railway traffic
of Great Britain, by meeting twenty
trains an hour flying past him; rarely
longer than five or ten minutes inter
vene between trains And every half
hour or so, he crosses some railway line,
and sees trains sweeping through the
country in almost every direction. The
tracks Of different railways, so far ~ /
observed, never cross each other
ON THE SAME LEVEL;
one always dviaducts" over the other,
approaching it on a high embankment
or series of arches. The length Of the
lines in the United Kingdom at this
time is about 1900 miles, Of which
there is about l4,009 in England. These
lines have cost S2,SO0,000,0O0 gold, or
$l65,000 per mile. But bear in mind
that nearly all the British railroads have
double and quadruple tracks. If meas
ured by single tracks, as in America, they
must considerably exceed 10000 miles in
length. If the cost of the British rail-
ways is estimated by the actual amount
of labor expended in their construction,
and in the manufacture of the rolling
stock, / do not think that / would be far
wrong in stating that they cost double
as much as all the railroads in the Uni
ted States. This may strike our readers
as wild statement; but let us consider
the facts. There are $1,000 miles ofrali-
way lines in the United States, nearly all
single tracks, nOminally costing $1,000
100000. But $500, 100000 TO $1,000 ,00O,-
600 of this same consists Of "watered
stock" and discount on bonds. Most Of
the bonds were sold for less than S5 per
cent, and some as low as 80. Then, all
the railway constructed since 1851 has
been built with deprecated currency,
worth, on an average, about 75 to so censt
on the dollar Deduct 100000 fdr
water" in the stocks. and discount on
the sales Of bonds, and say $S0O,0O0,000
for discount on currency since 1851, and
there remains only 81, 200, 100000 as
THE ACTUAL COST
of an the existing railroads, with their
q.