The Russellville Democrat., 1882-02-02
The Great Corporations.

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 pop ulation of the Northwest was clustered around the lake ports and on the mar gins of the rivers. The scattering set. tiers in the interior lived in the poorest primitive manner. If they raised little surplus in the way of crops, the cost of getting it to market exceeded its total value. A farmer living in Jefferson or Dane county would take from two to four days to get wagon load of wheat of 30 bushels, or l 800 pounds, to Milwaukee, and half that length of time to return to his home, and his expense on the road both ways, and while transacting the lit tie business involved in it's 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 a year. and during that time there was ! literally no market at all for wheat. Ev- cry pursuit of industry and trade sympa- thized with the depression in agricul. ture. The merchant and the mechanic were no better off than the farmer, for, as the people had but little to bay with, the manufacturers and dealers could sell but little, and there was no growth or prosperity in any department of labor or commerce. This was not the case in Wisconsin alone. It was so everywhere.
 4 farmer who lived fifty miles from seaport at the East WAS no better of l than one in the middle If Wisconsin or
 Iowa, for his produce had to be hauled by wagon roads to a market, and the cost of transportation equalled the prce for
 which it could be sold. Throughout PenDsylvaniA, Ohio, Indiana and Illi- nois, farming on large and profitable scaie was impossible, because farmer could raise nothing that he could sell at a price exceeding the cost of getting it to market
 Travel from place to place was
 wretched experience. It took majority of congressman from three days to two weeks to reach Washington from their homes. Members oi the legislature were frC m two days to week reaching Madi- son. It is but few years ago since
 member of the assembly, MT. Whittle. sey, of Bayfield,, tramped on snow-shoes two hundred miles to reach the capitol |
 peared in his travelling outfit is now in the State Historical rooms at Madison. Six cents a mile was the lowest 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 a year, it took him month and more to go and come, and give few days to business. Relatives and friends in parts of the country distant from each other were as absolutely separated as people now are on opposite sides of the world. A man now living in San Fran cisco can visit New York as easily as one could living in Pittsburg thirty years ago and every species of personal and commercial communication was then proportonately inconvenient slow, toil- some and expensive.
 | No lapse of years, no process of time
 or change, no influences of growth or culture, would have changed this condi- i ton of things, without means for rapid l transportation from onepart of the coun- | try to another. The country would have l become very thickly settled near the l lakes and rivers and by the artificial
 water.cOurses; but the vast interiors the | rich forests, the broad prairies, the mag
 nifieent intervales would have had but a
 slightly increased population curing this
 era. and it would always have been a
 rude population, badly housed, poorly
 schooled. roughly clad, with few of the
 comforts of life aside from the food pro-
 duced on the soil, like the frontiersmen
 and borderers whom we know in tradi.
 ton and romance. The land twenty
 miles away from the steamboat landings
 would never have been worth much
 mort than the eorginal government price,
 certainly not to exceed S5 to Sl0 an acre
 There would have been but little or no
 wealth in houses, barns and farms, and
 in stock and grain no or but few school.
 houses and churches; but few and scat tering remote villages, and the nation would have been poor, provincial, in its
 pupiage and adolescence.
 The railroads have wrought the re volu , lion which has been accomplished before : oureyes. Halflhe cost in money of travel , and seven -eights of the time are saved
 in effect lengthening many fold the du