The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1899-03-04
RAILWAY PROBLEMS
SENSIBLY ANALYZED
THE ooUNTRY's INDEBTEDNESS
TO THE RAILWAY.
Speech of chauncey M. Depew at the
Congress of the Railway Employees
of the Middle and Western States
Held at Chicago Few Days Ago.

Transportation in its modern sense
Is one, and the most important, of the
mighty agencies which made the nine
teenth the most important century in
the history of mankind. 1t has always
been possible for commerce to thrive
along navigable water-courses but the
difficulty in reaching the interior, the
cost of transportation increasing for
every mile by old methods, made popu-
lation and industries impossible upon
any modern scale. The imagination is
appalled, in the effort to grasp where
the world would be today and what the
condition of its inhabitants If the
steamship and the railroad had not
been invented Without the railroad
there would have been no northwest
ern, no mountain and no Pacific states.
The few people in this vast territory
between Chicago and the Pacific ocean
would have been engaged exclusively
in agriculture. Their harvest, their
flocks and their herds would have been
useful only for the food of themselves
and their neighbors. The cost of
transportation would have been prohi
bitiVe. Cheap transportation by the
railway has enabled the Dakota far
iner to sell his wheat to the miller at
Minneapolis or at Buffalo, the miller
to sell his flour to New England and
the Middle states. 1t has enabled the
artisan to live, the factory, the mills
and the furnaces to exist, the mines
to be opened and comforts and luxuries
to be enjoyed by all the people. With
modern system OF transportation
wholly developed within the three
score years and ten allotted to the
span of life, every family, without re-
gard to it's position in life, enjoys the
comforts and luXurieS in the products
of other climes, other countries and
other continents which even the rich
est could not procure a hundred years
ago. Upon the table OF every working
man is the food which has come thous-
ands of miles across the continent and
the oceans, and in his family are the
clothing, the furniture, the tools of his
trade and the equipment of his home,
which represent a lesson in geography
of varied industries, of raw material
and its place of growth and place Of
conversion into the manufactured pro-
duct, Of the lives and conditions OF far
distant peoples which were hardly
within the possible information of a
college professor in the time of his
grandfather.
FIGURES THAT STUN.
Since the construction of Stephen
sons locomotive, seventy years ago.
there have been built in the whole
world $4,000 miles of railway, which
were capitalized at thirty-five billions
or dollars The aggregate length Of
the railways of the United States Is
$4,000 miles, and is capitalized in stock
and bonds at ten billions six hundred
and thirty-five millions of dollars. The
mileage of our railroads is six times
greater than that of any other country,
and $4,000 miles longer than all the
railroads Of Europe put together. While
the United States occupy but six per
cent. of the land surface OF the earth,
they have forty-one per cent. of its
railway mileage. The internal COM
merce of our country is SO vast that
the tonnage annually carried by our
railroads is greater than the totals for
Great Britain, Ireland, France and
Germany combined, and to that may be
added the ocean tonnage of all the
seas also.
Railway development in the United
States commenced in 1880. In that year
forty miles We're built. Up to 1860 we
had reached in the thirty years only
$4,000 miles, or less than q thousand
miles year. The Civil War, by death
and wounds, took two millions of men
out OF the active Industries of the
country; it destroyed over ten thousand
millions of dollars worth of property;
1t added three thousand millions to our
national debt; it devastated ten states,
and yet the benefits and the blessings
or the abolition of slavery the removal
or the danger of disunion and the uni
fication of the Republic in one great
nation We're so great that between 1860
and 1870 2l,000 miles of railway were
built; between 1870 and 1880 81, 900 miles
more and between 1880 and 1890 a. 900
miles still additional while from 1890
10 1897 there were added q 900 miles
more. These figures are more elouuent
than the most glowing utterances that
nave moved armies to victory, senates
to action and peoples to religious
frenzy. Every mile of railroad built
means tens of thousands of acres
brought under cultivation and opened
for settlement; it means villages ana
cities, happy homes and industries and
thriving populations. 1t is safe to say
that without the railway development
of today if the population Of Europe or
America We're the same, the congestion
would lead to poverty, starvation mis-
cry and anarchy beyond the power Of
the imagination to conceive
EQUIPMENT.
The equipment of the railways of the
United States, by the report of the IN
terstate Commerce commission. was.
in round numbers. on June 30, 1897, 86. .
600 locomotives, $4,000 passenger cars
and 1,222O 900 freight cars. There were
in the service of the railroads-that is.
on their pay-rOlls--at the same time.
900 men, and there were paid TO
these men in that year $3.50, 900, 600, or 60
per cent. of the entire expenses of the
railways for their operation. There
were at least a million more men en-
gagged in building cars and locomotives.
In mining coal in getting out ore, in
making steel rails and their attach
ments and In a multitude of other en-
ployments which exist only to suppIy
the railroads; so that one i'm every If
teen of the persons i'm the United States
who are engaged in economical DUR
suits or earning wages or salaries get
their living from the operation OF the
railroads Of the country. The gross
earnings of the railroads of the United
States In 1897 was Sl,2iS,OOOOO0 OF this
A66 900 900 went for labor directly on
the payroll; S2S7 OOO,O0 for material
and supplies, which were mainly la
bor; SSS,OOO,OOO for rentals to the owners
or real estate, mainly occupied for
yards, warehouses docks etc. Si4 ono =