The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1886-09-04

started. It requires a good d, al OF
courage to parallel two railroads, one
of which has earned no interest on It's
capital stock for years, and both OF
which have done little more than pay
operating expenses and fixed interest
charges IF they have done so much
through the practice of the most rigid
economy. But that is neither here nor
there so far as the Territory is con-
cerned. 1t is none of our affair if the
little traffic which arises here shall be
divided among four instead of two.
That is a matter which concerns the
railway stockholders rather than the
people. What We want to say is that ii
is ridiculous to suppose that the new
roads are going to reach the Salt Lake
Valley and stop, as the others have
done. They are going on to the Pacific
Ocean, where they can make sone
money, or at least get share of the
transcontiEental business They are
not going to permit the line that has
enjoyed the control and monopoly OF
the carrying trade west of Salt Lake to
continue master of the situation. Fs-
fore the new roads reach here their
engineers will be in the field
Surveying ways to the ocean. This is as
certain as that they are coming in this
Edirection. Then would it not be wise for
the Union Pacific or D. & R. G., 10
lead out for the Pacific and get three or
four years the start of its competitors,
as well as the choice of routes? Both
these roads jut up against the Central
Pacific at Ogden and there stop, being
com pletely at the mercy of hostile
corporation. 1t has been said that they
go nowhere and haul up at no place:
that they were begun but never finished.
And this remark is eminently correct.
They can never be prosperous unit,
they have through lines, and can be in.
dependent. A few years ago the Union
Pacific undertook to extricate it
self from the difficulty, by
going around it, when If wise rail-
road forethought had been in control,
it would have gone straight through.
The Oregon Short Line was considered
to be q grave blunder from the moment
the ground was broken, by all save
those interested in doing the work and
getting the money for it. Whether the
blunder was big enough to bankrupt
tn company remains to be seen. If
the money that it cost had been put into
a road continuing the main line to the
Pacific instead of having an elephant on
its hands, weighing it down, the Union
Pacific would to-day be independent,
and could laugh at all other transcon-
tinental roads, instead of being in far
worse fix than it was before the Short
Line project was conceived. 1t is too
late to correct that error of judgement,
if it were only an error, but it is not too
late to make a ten-strike by carrying its
Salt Lake & Western or the Utah Cen
trail to the Coast. Either of those can be
built along a route 200 or30O miles shorter
than that of the c.. P, and with less,
grades, while the cost of construction
would be only fraction of the sum that
the Central cost. 1t is to be hoped
that the Union Pacific or the D. & r. u.
will see it to be its interest to build to
the coast, and that the work will early
be commenced. Utah doesn't need any
more railroads to the east, but is sadly
in want of one going west.