date marks an era second in importance only to the discovery of movable types.

$5. The railway system of the United States dates. from 1830. The honor of seniority is claimed by the Boston and Lowell railroad, also by the Baltimore and Ohio. The whistle of the locomotive was first heard in Illinois eight years later, at the insignificant town of Meredosia. The state was then in the twentieth year of its age. The track-laying on that pioneer line began May 9, 1838. The first locomotive arrived in September, and on the eighth of November eight miles of that long since abandoned and almost forgotten Northern Cross railroad was in operation. That was the first railroad of the Mississippi Valley.

6. At the time Illinois entered the field of railway construction there was in the entire country 1,913 miles of railway in operation. At the beginning of 1873 there were 67,104 miles of road in actual use. The increase for the latter year was 6,427 miles, or about the same as the total mileage of road in Illinois. It was not until ten years after the pioneer railroad of the state had been built that railway operations fairly began here. Until 1848 the total extent of railroads in the state was only twenty-two miles. Since then the growth has been steady, and reasonably proportioned to the needs of the people. The total cost of the railroads of the country is estimated at $3,159,423,057, and the net earnings at 5.20 per cent. of the cost. The cost of the British railroads was $2,763,400,535, and the earnings are 4.65 per cent. The per cent. of net earnings to cost in Illinois is 6.2.

§ 7. Railway construction has been in part the result of private enterprise and in part of public gifts

of one kind or another. In the list of public donations should be included individual aid afforded without any expectation of direct return. The amount of aid afforded by personal contributions cannot be stated, even approximately. Neither can the aid afforded by states, counties, cities and towns be given. We only know that quite a large per centage of the actual cost of building railroads was borne by the public. It is equally true that as a rule the original builders did not realized upon their investments, and through mortgage foreclosures, or sales at a great reduction, the property has generally passed into other hands. The Chicago and Alton railroad, for example, now one of the most profitable lines in the country, was projected by a New York banker, who sunk over a million dollars in the enterprise, and finally went into bankruptcy. The experience of Mr. Dwight was that of a great many others, although usually on a smaller scale. The actual cost of the railroads of the country to their present owners was vastly less than the actual cost of construction. Consequently the average net earnings of the roads are very considerably greater then appears upon the surface.

$8. Congress has issued bonds in aid of six railroad enterprises, viz.: the Union Pacific; the Central Pacific; the Kansas Pacific; the Central Branch Union Pacific; the Western Pacific, and the Sioux City and Pacific. The principal on these bonds foots up $64,623,512, all bearing interest at six per cent., payable semi-annually. The acts authorizing these bonds were passed in July, 1862, and July, 1864. The principal will fall due thirty years from the date of issue. In theory these

bonds are a loan of the national credit to the companies named, but in reality they are a donation.

§ 9. The chief aid extended to railway projects by the General Government was in the nature of gifts from the public domain. The past tense is used because while many land grant bills were introduced in the forty-second congress, and will doubtless be revived in the forty-third, popular sentiment is so strongly and unitedly against railway subsidies of every kind that it is safe to predict that no such measure will hereafter become a law. The land grant policy, so far as concerns railroads, dates back to 1850, and in this respect, also, Illinois was the pioneer state. As the honor of projecting a railroad across the continent to the Pacific fairly belongs to Hon. SIDNEY BREESE, Chief Justice of Illinois, and formerly member of the United States senate from this state, so Hon. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS might justly be called the Father of Subsidy. On the twentieth of September, 1850, congress granted 2,595,053.00 acres to the Illinois Central, and the Mobile and Chicago railroads, practically one enterprise. The method adopted and ever since adhered to was to grant the odd sections. The appreciation of the even sections in consequence of the facilities for communication afforded by the roads was such that the price was raised from $1.25 to $2.50 per acre.1 No other railway enterprise in Illinois has ever been aided by congress.

§ 10. The legal mode of operation has been always to vest the title to the land in the state. Usually, the state legislature has unconditionally turned the

1 See Poor's Railroad Manual, 1873–74, 696.

grant over to the railroad, or railroads. Illinois exacted of the Illinois Central payment into the state. treasury of seven per cent. of its gross earnings, at the same time exempting the property of the road from ordinary taxation. This contract has since been hedged about by special constitutional enactment, and from it there could be no deviation through legislative action. The annual revenue of the state from this source is about half a million, and steadily increasing.

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§11. In estimating the grants of public land in aid of railroad projects, a distinction must be made between the amount granted and the amount certified. In Illinois, the whole grant has been certified; but this is not true in any other state. The total number of acres granted to aid works of improvement, is 198,165,794 67, or about 300,000 square miles.1 This area is greater than that of the six New England states, with New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and New Jersey combined. It includes 4,405,986 acres granted in aid of canals, also, 3,857,213,27 acres recently donated in aid of wagon roads. Deducting the grants made but not certified, and the quantity is still enormous. "The amount," says Poor, "yet to be made in the several states will probably reach 35,000,000 or 40,000,000 of acres. In Iowa, for example, the grants made call for 7,207,837,98 acres. Of these, 3,511,149,60 acres have been certified, there not having been an amount of government lands of odd sections within the limits of the grants at the time they were made equalling the nominal

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'Poor's Manual, 700.

amounts of the same." The same authority estimates the total extent of railroads constructed and to be constructed on the strength of these land grants at 15,000 miles of line.

12. The states which have thus been made the agents of the General Government in carrying out the subsidy policy are Iowa, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Wisconsin, Mississippi, California, Oregon and Louisiana. From the standpoint of aggregate grants, certified and uncertified, Minnesota is the first in the list, and Kansas second.

$13. There has been an appalling amount of corruption in connection with the subsidy policy, and it is a matter of rejoicing that both political parties are agreed in its abolition. It is none the less true that the rapidity with which the development of the remote West has been pushed must be attributed, very largely, if not mainly, to the land grant policy. In justice to the Illinois Central company and its management it should be added, that its land department has from first to last been conducted honestly, and in a way calculated to increase the productive wealth of the state.

§ 14. If we were to go back a generation or so we should find society divided into two classes on the railroad question. The more conservative looked upon the locomotive as a desolating Vandal. Others, again, were completely carried away. The speed would soon be quickened to at least one hundred miles an hour, and transportation rates would be so very low that everybody would get rich. Experience has taught both