The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1902-10-24
RAILWAY FIGURES.
What This Country Would Be Without
Railroads.


Railroads.
Did you ever stop to think what
this country would be without rail
waysf Less than eighty years ago the
vast majority did not know the mean
ing of the word and in 1922, when
the first charter, for line from Phila-
delphia to point on the Susquehanna
river, was granted 1.-THE line was never
bulit, by the way correspondent
asked a Baltimore paper "what is a
railway line, anyhow" The editor re-
piled that he did not know but per-
haps some correspondent could tell.
In general way we know that the
United States has nearly half of the
railway mileage of the world; that
such mileage is capitalized at $i2, OOO,-
600 600 aud the value of the entire as
sets is $500, 900. 00U greater. We know
that of single track road we have
nearly 200, 900 miles while. if the dou
BILE track were added, there Is enough
to reach from the earth to the moon
and part way around that satellite.
The New York Commercial, in
carefully prepared article of recent
publication, gives a number of inter-
esting Notwithstanding as well as
interesting and dazzling to any but
the American who has grown SO &C
customed to great figures as to take
them almost as a matter of course.
The value of the railways of the
United States is greater than the en-
tire production of gold since the dis
covery of America in 1492; greater
than the aggregate of deposits in all
the banks of the United States; equal
to about one-fifth of the total wealth
of this country.
One railway system in the United
States has gross earnings amounting
to nearly twice as much as the entire
revenue of the UAited States postoffice
department. In the fiscal year of 1901
the gross earnings of all the railways
in this country amounted TO 81, 5SS,
526 037-this is equivalent to more
than one dollar for each inhabitsnt of
the earth and the figures are larger
than the total number of tons of an
thr&cite coal that have been mined
since 1920.
1t is concluded mat about one person
in twenty in the United States is sup
ported directly by the railways as
there are more than 900, 600 employees
and each employe is supposed to sup
port, on an average, three other per-
sons. Salaries and wages paid in 1901
amounted to 500, 713. 600. These totals
of persons and of wages did not in
clnde the 100, 900 or more who are en-
ployed in the mines that furnish rail
ways with fuel and ores, the number,
greater than that, employed in con-
structing locomotives, freight and
passenger cars or the 8, 600 men who
furnish ties. Of railway ties between
eighty and one hundred thousand are
used annually and the statistician says
that after their production space is
laid bare each year that would make a
path a mile wide from New York to
San Francisco. The railways use be-
tween two and three million tons of
steel rails each year at an aggregate
cost of seventy to hundred millions
of dollars and they add annually to
Oh
and co. passenger and freight
cars
In the fiscal year 1901 the passengers
carried were 6O7. 27s. 12l and the tons
of freight, 10, $50. 226. 440.
A government statistician figures
that an equivalent amount of land
transportation to that furnished by
the railways could not be obtained
for less cost than $11. coo. 900. 900 a
year The receipts of railroads being
less than 81, 600. 600, 600. the aggregate
saving effected py the railroads is
$40. 900, 900, 600. This however, is
rather in the realm of the speculative
than of the actual. It is interesting to
note, however, that Carroll d. Wright,
United States Commissioner of Labor,
as long ago as 1885. reported that to
do the work performed by the $4,000
locomotives in the United States at
that time would require, in round
umbers, 81, 600. 900 horses and Is, 800, !
900 men. Minneapolis Times.