Horses and mules, and even sail cars, made more rapid progress than did the earliest locomotive.

Consequently many large railroad systems of heavy capitalization bid fair to run into difficulties on the first serious falling off in general business

With the reorganization of 1898 finished, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad entered a new period in its history.

The public conviction that a railroad linking the West and the East was an absolute necessity became so pronounced after the gold discoveries of '49 that Congress passed an act in 1853 providing for a survey of several lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad. One transformed millions of acres of uncultivated land into fertile farms, while the other furnished the transportation which carried the crops to distant markets.

Farmers, merchants, manufacturers, and the traveling public have all had their troubles with the transportation lines, and the difficulties to which these struggles have given rise have produced that problem which is even now apparently far from solution.

The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion as was the ship