River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1882-01-26
THE GREAT CORPORATIONS.
Iheir Benefit in Developing tn
Country

by contrasting the situation of the
great Northwest now with what it was
thirty years ago, we can imagine what
it would still have been but for the rail-
roads which have been built across it
in all directions. Thirty years ago the
population of the Northwest was clus-
tered around the lake ports and on the
margins of the rivers. The scattering
settlers in the interior lived in the poor
est primitive manner. If they raised a
cost of getting it to market exceeded
its total value. A farmer living in one
of the interior counties would take
from two to four days to get wagon
load of wheat, of thirty bushels, or l.
800 pounds, to market, and half that
length of time to return to his home,
and his expenses on the road both
ways, and while transacting the little
business involved in its sale, left him
but little or nothing out of the price for
which he sold his wheat. The lakes,
which were the only outlet for the pro-
duce of the West, were closed five
months in year, and during that time
there was literally no market, at all for
grain. Every pur uit of industry
and trade sympathized with the
depressions in agriculture. The mcr-
chant and the mechanic were no bet
ter off than the farmer, for, as the .peo-
pie had but little to buy with, the man
ufacturers and dealers could sell but
little, and there was no growth or pros
perity in any department of labor or
commerce. This was not the case In
one state. 1t was so everywhere. A
farmer who lived fifty miles from a
seaport at the east was no better of
than one in the middle of Wisconsin
or Iowa, for his produce had to be
hauled by wagon roads to market,
and the cost of transportation eoualled
the price for which it could be sold.
Throughout Pennsylvania Ohio, Indi-
ana and Illinois, farming on large
and profitable scale was impossible, be-
cause a farmer could raise nothing that
he could sell at price exceeding the
cost of getting it to market.
Travel from place to place was q
wretched experience. 1t took ma
jority OF congressman from three days
to two weeks to reach Washington
from their homes. Members of the
| legislature were from two days to a
week reaching the capitol. 1t is but a
| few years ago since a member of the
Wisconsin assembly, Mr.. Whittlesey,
of Bayfield,, tramped on snow-shoes
200 miles to reach the capitol of Wis
consin, and bis picture as he appeared
in his travelling outfit is now in the
state historical rooms at Madison.
Six cents q mile was the low
est rate at which passengers were
conveyed by stage-coach, and
rates by the natural water-routes
were in proportion. If business man
was called to New York once year it
took him month and more to go and
come, and give few days 10 business.
| Relatives and friends in parts of the
| country distant from each other were
as absolutely separated as people now
are on oppo tie sides of the world. A
man now living in San Francisco can
visit New York as easily as one could
living in Pittsburg thirty years ago; and
every species of personal and CONNER
cial communication was then proper
tionately inconvenient, slow, toilsome
and expensive.
No lapse of years, no process OF tune
or change. no influences of growth or
| culture, would have changed this con-
| dition of things without means of trans
portation from one part of the country
to another. The country would have
become very thickly settled near the
lakes and rivers and by the artificial
| warehouses;; but the vast interiors.
the rich forests, the broad prairies, the
magnificent intervales would have had
but slightly increased population dur
ing this era, and it would always have
been a ride population, badly housed,
poorly sch ooled, roughly clad, with
few of the comforts of life aside
from the food produced on the
soil, like the frontiersmen and bor-
derers whom we know in tradition and
romance. The land twenty miles away
from the steamboat landings would
never have been worth much more
than the original government price,
certainly not to exceed 80 to $50 an
acre. There would have been little or
no wealth in houses, barns and farms,
and in stock and grain; nor but few
school houses and churches; but few
and scattering remote villages, and the
nation would have been poor, provincial,
in its pupilage and adolescence.
The railroads have wrought the rev.
olution which has been accomplished
before our eyes. Half the cost in money
of travel, and seven eighths of the
time are saved, in effect lengthening in
many fold the duration and increasing
the capacities of life. The products of
the farm are now worth as much at the
farmers door as they previously were
after being hauled long distance by
his teams. Land 200 miles from the
Great Lakes is worth from $40 to $75
an acre, which, without railroads, never
would have been worth to exceed $40
an acre. A thrifty farmer can become
rich in few years by the sale of the
surplus of his farm, which, but for rail
roads, he could not sell at all. The
handsome farms, the fine school houses,
the elaborate churches, the comforta-
BILE dwellings, the thickly- planted vii
lagos of the whole northwest, are the
direct result of the railroads, which
have made every county accessible and
convenient for settlement. There are
100000 acres of land in Wisconsin,
which, taken as whole, has been In
creased S. per acre, or 100000, 900 in
the aggregate. This land is assessed
for taxation at $500,000,000, which is
less than half its actual value, and it
might also be said that every dollar of
additional value above $40 per acre has
been placed upon it by the railroads,
which carry its products of grain,
stock, lumber and manufactures to dis
tant markets, which they would never
have reached but for the iron highway.
This relates to Wisconsin alone.
When the mind considers the vast ter
ritory which lies to the northward, be-
tween the Mississippi river and the
Rocky Mountains, and which forms
ne vast t-feld, waving in the
harvest time with the yellow grain
which, but for the railroads penetrating
and crossing all is diverse sections,
would have remained wild, barren and
worthless in all the future as it had in
all the past, we can have some idea of
the vast individual and national wealth
which the railroads created. They
have increased MANIFOLD the value of
every farm, the value of every product
of industry, and of every class of prop
erty in the northwest and throughout
the country.
Individual capital industry and en-
terprise would have been totally pow
erless to build the systems of railroad
by which there splendid and beneficient
results have been established. Vast