whatever common sense he perchance possessed before; otherwise why
does he not follow the same correct business-rules, when managing
the property of others, as when he accumulated his own? A man who
should show as much carelessness and ignorance, when operating for
himself, as railway-directors do when operating for others, would be
considered as a fit subject for an insane asylum.

When railroads are built where they are needed, at the time they are
wanted, in a country able to support them, by permanent investors,
and not by speculators, and are well made by good engineers, and
well managed by competent men, whose interest is really connected
with the success of the enterprise, then they will pay, and be
railroads indeed. But so long as money is obtained on false pretences,
to be played for by State and Wall Street gamblers on the one hand,
and ravenous contractors on the other hand, they will be what they
are,--worthless monuments of extravagance and folly.

"Experience keeps a dear school," says poor Richard, "but fools will
learn in no other."

Let not the reader think for a single moment that we have no
appreciation of the labors of a De Witt Clinton, or of a Livingston,
--that we at all underrate the services of the Eastern capitalists
who render available the public-land grants of the West, whether to
build ship-canals or railroads. We have the highest respect for that
talent without which our Western lands would still be left to the
buffalo and the deer, and the gold and silver of Europe would remain
on the other side of the Atlantic. These capitalists are the
mainsprings of the system; but we should no more apply their energy
and skill to the detailed operation of so mechanical a structure as
a railroad, than we should attach the mainspring of a watch to the
hands directly, without the intermediate connecting chains and wheels.

Not less incompetent for the construction of railways, than are the
directors for the management of the completed roads, are at least
one half of the so-called engineers in America. Obliged to complete
no course of education, to pass no examination, they are at once let
loose upon the country whenever they feel like it, to build what go
by the names of railroads and bridges, but are in reality traps in
which to lose both life and money. Indeed, any man (in the United
States) who has carried a rod or chain is called an engineer; while
the correct definition is, a man who has, firs