The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10
D E P "A R T M E N
TOMORROW WILL MARK
 A GREAT ANNIVERSARY
Thirty Nine Years Ago the Last Spikes Were Driven in the First Railroad to Link the Great West Commer- cially With the Rest of the United
 States-Development of West.

on so per cent of it's mileage from Salt Lake City to San Francisco, a maximum grade of four-tenths of 1 per cent, or a fraction over 21 feet to the mile. In other words, this road through the most moun- tainous region of the country has been so constructed that it's locomotives will have a hauling power equal to that of engines on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, whose line traverses the level east On the Union Pacific in early days the grades increased the operating ex- penses 300 per cent; contrarywise, the lack of grades on the Western Pacific means saving just that much in cost of opera ton.
 There is one respect in which this new est road which is going down from Salt Lake to San Francisco has not tried to outstrip it's predecessors-tha of speed in building. There has been nothing nasty about it's planning or construction; in- deed, in it's fruition 1t has been slower, though far safer, than were the earlier lines. The Western Pacific was born in the brain of E. T. Jeffery, who closely fol- lowed General Palmer as president of the Denver and Rio Grande. and it has been brought to completion by him. MT. Jeff fiery has been in the railroad business 50 years, and this youngest child of his inn agination is more than 15 years old,
  not been going on all that time.
 As soon as he succeeded to the presiden- cy of the Rio Grande in 1S91 MT. Jeffrey sensed the need of an outlet to the Pa cific coast. The pioneers in Pacific rail- roading took no account of local freight, but as experience has proved that this class of traffic makes up 95 per cent or the total the new enterprise, instead W building to reach the coast somehow, any, l. rrsfl, for all the commercial factors, to the end that it might get the most carrying business, open up the most promising territory and thus earn the largest divi- dends.
 There in a word, is the greatest diff ference between the early roads and the latest. Two generations ago the west was rgarded merely as a gap to be bridged in order to secure the supposed Oriental trade Today the trade with the Orient is an almost negligible factor compared with the importance of providing for To- cal traffic and developing new territory.
 In 1869 the west was nothing from the traffic managers point of view; in 1908 it is everything; and the change has been marked by the growth simultane- ously of the railroads and the country through which they pass But the most 
 employed in putting through the early Pacific roads and those used today ap- pears on the financial side
 Thirty-nine years ago the idea was sirn- ply to build a railroad, railroad that will at the same time furnish the people of it's territory transportation facilities that will make it profitable and an op- portunity for secure investment.
 The Union Pacific required for its con- ftat1 and dn1IE CI1hGi. dies Sometimes these took the form of millions of acres of land, sometimes of cash additions in the shape of bonds. In certain cases the subsidies aggregated S4S GOO a mile, and never did they fall below $16,000. The west has come Into it's own however, and now it has to look to no one for help in its great works. Not only has the Western Pacific received no subsidy but it has actually paid the gov ernment for timber cut on the land along it's right of way which the government laid claim to.
 With a population that has grown to 30 900 900 from the 100000 of people it had when the Union Pacific was built, the west realizes it's own gigantic possibili- ties and welcomes another railroad. Whereas moneyed men ridiculed what they regarded as a visionary scheme and refused to invest in the Union Pacific, so that it was almost impossible for the pro- motors of that great enterprise to secure capital some of these same sconerS has, tened to give their support to the present undertaking. The entire bond issue Of the Western Pacific, amounting in round figures to s50,000,OO0, was subscribed be- fore a spadeful of earth was turned on the right of way
 Two-thirds of the way through the last century the west was a desert now It is the great producer of freight. Then its railroads were built as daring gam ble. now they are constructed as an as- sured investment from the start. Then the per cent grade was an impossibility; now if is a characteristically twentieth century money-maker-so expensive in the beginning that it would have frightened the previous generation, but so certain in result that it makes a strong appeal to this one.