The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1874-07-11
Railroads and Social and Material
Progress.
[Galvestoa News.

lbblNcetOh NtNSsl
In recent speech before meeting
of citizens in northern Texas, Govern
or Throckmorton remarked that he
had Railways favored internal improve
ments and had advocated the intro
ducton of railroads, both as u means
of civilization and as Il means OF from
tier protection, but had never advocat-
ed money subsidy for any road.n
Governor Throckmorton is an avow-
ed candidate for congress in his dis
trict. He il, of course, aware of the
popular feeling against the previous
legislative policy of Texas and Of other
states in favor of railway corporations.
With this knowledge it required no
ordinary moral courage, and no ordi-
nary elevation of thought to place his
advocacy of railroads on the broad and
high ground that opposition to them
is hostility to civilization.
But 1t Is not our purpose to discuss
the hazard or the strength of the posi-
ton thus taken by Governor Throck-
morton in the character of II solicitor
of popular support AS candidate for
congress. We refer TO the occasion
because it suggests the vital import
ance which railroads have come to
hold in all countries to the interest Of
social and material progress.
1t was long ago remarked that the
highways of n nation are the measure
of its civilization. In the earliest his
torical period civil culture followed the
sea coasts and the great navigable riv-
ers, because they afforded the best of
natural highways The principle at
work in this fact found its most signal
illustrations in the Egyptians, Ph@ni-
clans, the Carthagenians and the Ro-
mans. 70 say that the Romans were the
greatest conquerors and civiliZers OF
the ancient world, is to say that they
were, at the same time. the greatest
road buildings. 10 say of any COM
munity that it is hopelessly deficient
in facilities of domestic or exterior in
tercourse is to say of it that it can new
er take on the habilments or enjoy the
fruits of n high civilization. To say
of any interior region, however fair
and fertile, that it is Incidentally
roadless, is to say of it that it is devot-
ed to conditions of irredeemable bar
barism.
What would the great riverless eX-
panses in the west, including Kansas,
Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada, Utah.
and q large part of California, be at
this moment without the railroads by
which they are traversed? What
would the wide interior spaces of Texas
be at this moment without the railroad
system which, fortunately for the state,
has been measuraDly well developed
within her limits?
1t is the eclectric touch of railway
enterprise that has thus early awaken
ed these regions to the uses and amen
tiles of advanced civilization. Other
wise, they would be still lingering UNI
der the dominion of the wilderness and
the savage. Otherwise, the most cul-
tured aud the most prosperous of the
populations inhabiting them would be
as stagnant and as lethargic as those
isolated Mexican communities, which
know nothing of the great world surg
ing beyond their barriers of trackless
waste or mountains, and which live,
after their feeble fashion, in changeless
customs brought down from the days
of Cortez and Montezuma.
Compare those positions of Texas
which are still unprecedented by rail
roads with those portions which realize
4 the abundant presence of these re.
claiming and civilizing agencies--and
what contrast! The Texas seen on
the one hand, is not the Texas seen on
the other. With few exceptions, the
llawlessness, the mobocracy, the san
culinary atrocities which have so as
persed the fair fame of the state, have
been confined to districts remote from
railroads, and destitute of any but the
rudest and most precarious methods oil
commerce and travel. The surest, per-
haps the only effective, way to substi-
tute the supremacy of the laws for the
supremacy of criminal lusts and pas
sions, in districts thus situated, is to
embrace them in further develop
ment of the railway system.
Let the railway system be extended
to every interior locality and to all the
eXtremities of the state, and law and
order, peaceful industry, security for
life and property, education and the
refining arts, will be universalized
within her limits.
SO great, indeed, are the advantages
offered by railroads in promoting all
that appertains to social and material
progress, that it would be hard to
name price too high for Texas to pay
for railway system traversing every
, portion of her interior and co-exten.
sive with her boundaries. She could
richly afford to give away, in further
ance of railway enterprise, every acre
of her public domain, rathertE than abide
in the indefinite postponement OF
contamination so indispensable to hel
: civil Conference and integrity, and tt
her final safety and welfare.
9 To the Editor OF the Dallas Herald: