the American people; for beyond
the horizon of the twentieth century lie consequences as yet undreamed
of in our poor philosophy. Statisticians attempt to record its
achievements in terms of miles of railways built, factories opened, men
and women employed, fortunes made, wages paid, cities founded, rivers
spanned, boxes, bales, and tons produced. Historians apply standards of
comparison with the past. Against the slow and leisurely stagecoach,
they set the swift express, rushing from New York to San Francisco in
less time than Washington consumed in his triumphal tour from Mt. Vernon
to New York for his first inaugural. Against the lazy sailing vessel
drifting before a genial breeze, they place the turbine steamer crossing
the Atlantic in five days or the still swifter airplane, in fifteen
hours. For the old workshop where a master and a dozen workmen and
apprentices wrought by hand, they offer the giant factory where ten
thousand persons attend the whirling wheels driven by steam. They write
of the "romance of invention" and the "captains of industry."

[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N.Y._

A CORNER IN THE BETHLEHEM STEEL WORKS]

=The Service of the Railway.=--All this is fitting in its way. Figures
and contrasts cannot, however, tell the whole story. Take, for example,
the extension of railways. It is easy to relate that there were 30,000
miles in 1860; 166,000 in 1890; and 242,000 in 1910. It is easy to show
upon the map how a few straggling lines became a perfect mesh of closely
knitted railways; or how, like the tentacles of a great monster, the few
roads ending in the Mississippi Valley in 1860 were extended and
multiplied until they tapped every wheat field, mine, and forest beyond
the valley. All this, eloquent of enterprise as it truly is, does not
reveal the significance of railways for American life. It does not
indicate how railways made a continental market for American goods; nor
how they standardized the whole country, giving to cities on the
advancing frontier the leading features of cities in the old East; nor
how they carried to the pioneer the comforts of civilization; nor yet
how in the West they were the forerunners of civilization, the makers of
homesteads, the builders of states.

=Government Aid for Railways.=--Still the story is not ended. The
significant relation between railways and politics must not be
overlooked. The bounty of a lavish government, for example, made