world, and are considerably
longer than the railroads of all the countries of Europe combined. The
facts are shown graphically by the following diagram:

Mileage in Europe 155,000
Mileage in U. S. 184,000
Total for the World 434,000

The history of the construction of American railroads covers a period
of seventy years. The greater part of our mileage has been built
since 1870. The following table and diagram illustrate the growth of
our railway net during each decade:

Year | Miles
------|--------
1830 | 23
1840 | 2,800
1850 | 9,000
1860 | 30,600
1870 | 53,000
1880 | 90,300
1890 | 163,600
1898 | 184,000

It will be noted that the decades of most rapid railway development
were the one from 1850 to 1860, following the discovery of gold in
California, and the two between 1870 and 1890. We added 70,000 miles
to our railway net between 1880 and 1890--a record that no other
country has equalled. By 1892 we seem to have met the more urgent
demands for new lines, and we are now annually building less than 2000
miles of new roads. The face value of the capital now invested in
American railroads is $11,000,000,000. The number of persons employed
in the railway service is 850,000.

THE RAILWAY CORPORATION

The agents that do the work of transportation by rail are the railway
corporations. These "artificial persons" are created by the several
States and intrusted with the performance of services of a public
nature. In all the German states and to a large degree in many other
European states, the governments themselves provide the means of
transportation by rail; but in the United States the ownership and
management of the railroads is rightly regarded to be a task of
greater magnitude than the administrative department of our government
is as yet able to cope with.

The growth of the railway corporations of the United States has been
typical of the evolution of industrial organisation in this country.
The early railway corporations were small. The Philadelphia,
Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, for instance, comprised the lines
of four companies. In 1850 the road connecting Albany and Buffalo
included the lines of seven companies. During the last fifty years
most of the small companies have united to form the corporations which
now operate our large railway systems. Though the last statistical
report of the Interstate Commerce C