Two worth-while books of readings are those of E. G. Nourse, Agricultural Economics (1916), and T. N. Carver, Selected Readings in Rural Economics (1916). See also the selections in Bogart and Thompson.

On the public lands consult T. Donaldson, The Public Domain (1884), and L. H. Haney, A Congressional History of Railways in the United States, 18501887. On the farmers' uprising, see S. J. Buck, The Granger Movement (1913), and F. L. McVey, The Populist Movement (1896), in Economic Studies, Vol. I, No. 3, Publications of American Economic Association. Two phases of southern agriculture are presented in M. B. Hammond, The Cotton Industry (1897), in the Publications of the American Economic Association, and by M. Jacobstein, The Tobacco Industry (1907), Columbia University Studies, Vol. XXVI, No. 3, and a phase of western agriculture in R. A. Clemen, The American Livestock and Meat Industry (1923).

On farm machinery see H. N. Casson, The Romance of the Reaper (1908), and H. W. Quintance, The Influence of Farm Machinery on Production and Labor (1904), Publications of the American Economic Association, 3rd Series, Vol. V, No. 4. Interesting as a foreigner's viewpoint is P. Leroy-Beaulieu, The United States in the Twentieth Century (1906). On special aspects see C. R. Van Hise, Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States (1912); C. E. Russell, The Story of the Nonpartisan League (1920), and K. L. Butterfield, The Farmer and the New Day (1919).

The recent effort of the federal government to extend agricultural credit is discussed in Herbert Myrick, The Federal Farm Loan System (1916), which includes the full text of the Federal Farm Loan Act; and A. C. Wiprud, The Federal Farm Loan System in Operation (1921). See also L. C. Gray and H. A. Turner, Buying Farms With Land-Bank Loans (1921), Bulletin 968 of the United States Department of Agriculture, as well as other bulletins of the Department.

On irrigation see George Thomas, The Development of Institutions Under Irrigation (1920).

SELECTED READINGS

SANFORD, A. H., The Story of Agriculture in the United States, Chaps. XVIIIXXIX.

BAILEY, L. H., Cyclopedia of American Agriculture, Vol. IV, pp. 64 ff., 102 ff., 113 ff., 174 ff., 386 ff., 422 ff., etc.

CARVER, T. N., Selected Readings in Rural Economics, pp. 254-337; 487-536; 645-699.

HAMMOND, M. B., The Cotton Industry, Chaps. IV-VI.

BUCK, S. J., The Granger Movement, Chaps. I-III, VIII-IX.

CHAPTER XX

INTERNAL TRANSPORTATION AND
COMMUNICATION SINCE 1860

Rapid Development After 1860. The history of the United States for decades after the Civil War might almost be written in terms of railroads. Our industrial and agricultura development was dependent upon internal transportation, of which the major part was furnished by the railroad. The very settlement of large parts of the west was promoted by the railroads, built in many instances through unoccupied regions with the settlers following in their wake. In 1860 the railroad mileage amounted to 30,625, most of which had been constructed in the prosperous years preceding the panic of 1857. The effect of the Civil War upon the railroads was both disastrous and stimulating. While the rolling stock and other equipment in the south either depreciated or was destroyed, the war spurred the north on to fresh construction. It was during the midst of the conflict and partially as a war measure that the first transcontinental railroad was commenced. Most of the construction of the decade. however, came after 1865, the mileage amounting in 1870 to 52,922.

In the succeeding decades the increase was rapid and, except in periods of acute depression, continuous. Thirty-three thousand miles were built between the years 1867 and 1873, before the first great spurt had played itself out and the panic had halted further construction. The panic of 1873 was itself chiefly attributable to overbuilding and overcapitalization of railroads. The period from 1860 to 1875 witnessed the extension not only of the first transcontinental lines, but also of five great railroads from the Atlantic seaboard to Chicago-the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Erie, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Grand Trunk. After the recovery from the crisis, the country entered into another phenomenal period of railroad growth.

The mileage of 1880, amounting to 93,261, grew to 167,191 in 1890-an increase of over 70,000 miles in a decade. The panic of 1893 again hampered construction, but it picked up in the prosperous years after 1898, and for twelve years thereafter new mileage averaged five thousand a year (2 per cent annual increase). Railroad miles in operation amounted in 1900 to 198,964; in 1910 to 249,992; and in 1920 to 253,152. This growth had far exceeded that of population; since the Civil War the population has trebled, while railroad mileage has grown eightfold. In 1860 there was one mile of road to every 1,087 people; in 1880 one mile to every 571, and in 1920 one mile to every 417. The United States boasted in 1914 of more mileage than all of Europe, and more than one-third of the entire world. MILES OF RAILROAD IN OPERATION, 1850-19191

On the other hand, by 1914 the country seemed to have approached a point of saturation in railroad building. While the 1 Statistical Abstract, 1878, p. 151, and Statistical Abstract, 1921, p. 875.

average of construction was over 3,000 miles a year between 1910 and 1913, it declined rapidly thereafter until in 1920 only 314 miles were built. Between 1916 and 1920 more mileage was abandoned than built, leaving the total at the end of the period less than at the beginning. Many causes have contributed: (1) the competition of gasoline motor traffic, (2) economies of war time, (3) low railroad profits and the precarious financial condition of many of the roads, which have suffered in the adjustments to higher costs, (4) the approach to the saturation point. During the past half dozen years the weak roads have exerted all their efforts to keep alive while the prosperous companies have improved their equipment rather than lengthened their lines.

The economic significance of railroads is far wider than merely transportation. It is impossible to gauge the social significance of facilities which have tended to break down rural isolation and link up the benefits of city and country. In our financial system railroad securities are the most important single group and form an integral part of the activities of the investment market and the credit world. In 1921 the railroads were capitalized (par value of stocks and bonds) at $21,891,450,785 and valued in 1920 by the Interstate Commerce Commission at $18,900,000,000. It can be reasonably deduced from available figures that capital tied up in rail transportation before the war was probably about one-tenth of the total wealth of the nation, estimated in 1912 at $187,739,071,090. In 1910 the railroads furnished employment to 1,700,000 persons, 16.4 per cent of those gainfully employed.

The Transcontinental Roads.-The demand for a transcontinental railroad, insistent ever since the discovery of gold in California in 1849, had led Congress in 1853 to provide for a survey of possible lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific. The exigencies of the Civil War, political and military as well as economic, led eventually to the construction of the first line. The Union Pacific Railroad Company was created by Congress in 1862 for the purpose of building a road from Nebraska west to California; and the Central Pacific, under the leadership of

Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, and other famous railroad men, was organized to build from the Pacific coast eastward to meet the Union Pacific. Both railroads were granted subsidies of $16,000 a mile for construction on the level country, $48,000 a mile through the mountain ranges and $32,000 for the sections between the ranges, the government taking a second lien on the property. Land grants of alternate sections contiguous to the railroads were offered in addition. Stimulated by these substantial aids and urged on by the great popular interest, both roads built frantically toward one another in the hope of obtaining as much of the subsidy as possible. Neither expense, hostile Indians, nor the severity of the mountain winters was permitted to hold up the work. Twenty thousand men were laying two miles of track a day in the concluding weeks of an effort which brought the two roads together at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869, three years after the work had commenced and much sooner than the most sanguine had expected.

Hardly less romantic in its conception, but less successful in its immediate realization, was the effort to construct the Northern Pacific. Chartered by Congress in 1864 and subsidized with land grants as large as a European country, it was finally commenced in 1867 through the financing of Jay Cooke & Company. Five hundred miles had been built when the road was thrown into a receivership by the failure of Jay Cooke. Eventually aggressive construction was resumed and, largely through the genius of Henry Villard, backed by German capital, was completed in 1883. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé obtained from the national government in 1863 a grant of 6,400 acres for every mile built; but construction did not begin until 1869, and had proceeded no farther than the eastern boundary of Colorado when building was stopped by the panic of 1873. Construction was resumed in 1880, following in general the old Santa Fé Trail, and in 1864 the tracks reached the Pacific coast. In 1878 James J. Hill, a man who later developed into one of the greatest of railway executives, but at that time an unknown storekeeper in St. Paul, interested influential Canadians in a bankrupt