ecisely in the
position of men who had obtained a certain strategic advantage in
supplying a necessary service to their fellow-countrymen. Their
terminals, rights of way, and machinery could not be duplicated except
at an increased cost, and their owners were in a position necessarily to
benefit from the growth of the country in industry and population. No
doubt their economic position was in certain respects precarious. They
did not escape the necessity, to which other American business
enterprises had to submit, of fighting for a sufficient share of the
spoils. But in making the fight, they had acquired certain advantages
which, if they were intelligently used, would necessarily result in
victory; and as we all know, these advantages have proved to be
sufficient. The railroads have been the greatest single source of large
American fortunes, and the men who control the large railroad systems
are the most powerful and conspicuous American industrial leaders.

Important, however, as has been the direct effect of big railroad
systems on the industrial economy of the country, their indirect effects
have probably been even more important. In one way or another, they have
been the most effective of all agencies working for the larger
organization of American industries. Probably such an organization was
bound to have come in any event, because the standard economic needs of
millions of thrifty democrats could in the long run be most cheaply
satisfied by means of well-situated and fully equipped industrial plants
of the largest size; but the railroad both hastened this result and
determined its peculiar character. The population of the United States
is so scattered, its distances so huge, and its variations in
topographical level so great, that its industries would necessarily have
remained very local in character, as long as its system of
transportation depended chiefly upon waterways and highways. Some kind
of quick transportation across country was, consequently, an
indispensable condition of the national organization of American
industry and commerce. The railroad not only supplied this need, but
coming as it did pretty much at the beginning of our industrial
development, it largely modified and determined the character thereof.
By considerably increasing the area within which the products of any one
locality could be profitably sold, it worked naturally in favor of the
concentration of a few large factories in peculiarly