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.

While no one railroad can completely duplicate another line, two or more may compete at particular points

The close relationship between railroad expansion and the genera development and prosperity of the country is nowhere brought more distinctly into relief than in connection with the construction of the Pacific railroads.

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

The States which form the northern border of the United States westward from the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast include an area several times larger than France and could contain ten Englands and still have room to spare.

When the scheme for the construction of a railroad from Baltimore to the waters of the Ohio River first began to take form, the United States had barely emerged from the Revolutionary period

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.