Truth. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1901-1908, 1905-12-09
WHO ARE THE RAILROADS?
(By B. L. WinchelI.)

lie WHO W Siuoo
against class Is no more a demagogue
than the man who attempts to bring
about strife between the people and
the creations of their own industry,
the vested interests they hold in civil
lization. The cartoonist who, to fur
Their an idea, depicts suppositious
battle between the people and the
railroads as human conflict with a
fearsome and soulless creature of
iron, smoke and fire, lacks that fine
quality of imagination which points
even in prophecy always to the truth,
Ills which may arise in the admins
tration of that intergral part of ma
TONS life, transportation, can not be
treated as an external plague of for.
eign and hostile origin. They are
symptoms of internal and not external
disorder. To urge the people to war
upon the railroads of the country is
equivalent to telling them that by de-
stroying their own property, created
by themselves, they can right fancied
wrongs. To burn the house that it
may be cleansed is not an American
method of reform.
The People and the Railroads.
The railroads are the people and the
people are the railroads. OF no other
great industry can this so truly be
said, for none enters into the warp
and wool of national, local and indi.
vidual life with such intensity, such
completeness and such barometric
sensitiveness to it's environment.
To build single mile of track in
any one state stirs the energies OF
hundreds of people in a score OF
others. OF land, timber, mineral and
labor, all taken from the stores OF
the nation, is the mile of commercial
highway constructed. First, the peo
pie give their consent; then capital
that surplus derived from other in.
dustries and seeking new employment
is scattered broadcast among the la
borers of the land that rails may be
laid, no occupation failing to receive
it's quota.
The building of railroads in the west
and south has done more to equaliz"
commercial power throughout the
United States than any other force at
work in the upbuilding and solidifica-
ton of this nation of people, scattered
as they are over wide and unlike
areas. The building of these roads
has overcome the tendency toward
Capitalization of power in any one
section.
The near motive for the building is
the hope of a surplus over the cost c
operation to repay those who furnish
of their savings that the work may be
done. The ultimate effect is far-reach.
ing, however, for hen a new railroad
is built, conditions of life throughout
the country can be readjusted for the
better, in that another outlet is pro-
vided for labor, homeseekers and the
surplus products of older commune
ties, to say nothing of the new stores
of natural wealth placed within reach.
The center of population has been
pulled hither and thither, though ever
with southwestern tendency, as rail-
roads have appeared upon the face
of the land and set a new pace for the
growth of the nation.
Value of American Railroad Property.
Nearly fifteen billion dollars repre-
sents the actual commercial value of
railroad property in the United States
today, an increase in forty years of
over one thousand per cent. It is
largely, If not entirely, due to this in
crease in transportation facilities that
during the same period of time the
resources of national, state, private
and savings banks have increased
four hundred fold, and the material
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