The value of lands is affected by railroads in the same ratio as their products. For instance, lands lying upon a navigable water-course, or in the immediate vicinity of a market, may be worth, for the culture of wheat, $100. Let the average crop be estimated at 22 bushels to the acre, valued at $33, and the cost of cultivation at $15, this would leave $18 per acre as the net profit. This quantity of wheat (two-thirds of a ton) could be transported 330 miles at a cost of 10 cents per mile, or $3 30, which would leave $14 70 as the net profit of land at that distance from a market, when connected with it by a railroad. The value of the land, therefore, admitting the quality to be the same in both cases, would bear the same ratio to the assumed value of $100, as the value of its products, $14 70, does to $18, or $82 per acre; which is an actual creation of value to that amount, assuming the correctness of the premises. The same calculation may, of course, be applied with equal force to any other kind and species of property. The illustration given establishes a principle entirely correct in itself, but of course liable to be modified to meet the facts of each case. Vast bodies of the finest land in the United States, and lying within 200 miles of navigable water-courses, are unsaleable, and nearly, if not quite, valueless for the culture of wheat or corn for exportation, from the cost of transportation, which in many instances far exceeds the estimate in the above table. Under such circumstances products are often fed out to live stock, and converted into higher values which will bear transportation, when the former will not. In this manner, lands are turned into account, where their immediate products would otherwise be valueless. But in such cases, the profit per acre is often very small; as, in the districts best adapted to the culture of corn, it is considered more profitable to sell it for 25 cents per bushel than to feed it out to animals. It will be seen that at this price, thrice its value is eaten up by the cost of transportation of 165 miles.

In this manner, railroads in this country actually add to the immediate means of our people, by the saving effected in the expenses of transportation, to a much greater extent than cost. We are, therefore, in no danger from embarrassment on account of the construction of lines called for by the business wants of the community, as these add much more to our active capital than they absorb. Only a very few years are required to enable a railroad to repay its cost of construction in the manner stated.

Railroads in the United States exert a much greater influence upon the value of property, than in other countries. Take England for example. There a railroad may be built without necessarily increasing the value of property or the profits of a particular interest. Every farmer in England lives in sight of a market. Large cities are to be found in every part of the island, which consume the products of the different portions of it almost on the spot where they are raised. Railroads are not needed to transport these products hundreds and thousands of miles to market; consequently they may be of no advantage to the farmer living upon their lines. So with many branches of manufactures. These establishments may be situated immediately upon tide-water, and as the fabrics are mostly exported, they would not be thrown upon railroads in any event. Such works may exist in that

country without exerting any perceptible influence in adding to the value of the property of a community. The cases of the two countries would be parallel, were the farmer in the neighborhood of Liverpool compelled to send everything he could raise to London for a market, or were their manufacturing establishments so far from the consumers of their goods, that their value would be sunk before these could be reached. We have in this country what is equivalent to manufacturing establishments in Great Britain, in good order and well stocked for business, a fertile soil, that will produce bountifully for years without rotation or dressing. All that the farmer has to do is to cast his seed on the soil and to reap an abundant crop. The only thing wanting to our highest prosperity is markets, or their equivalents, railroads, which give access to them.

The actual increase in the value of lands, due to the construction of railroads, is controlled by so many circumstances, that an accurate estimate can only be approximated, and must in most cases fall far short of the fact. Not only are cultivated lands, and city and village lots, lying immediately upon the route affected, but the real estate in cities, hundreds and thousands of miles distant. The railroads of Ohio exert as much influence in advancing the prices of real property in the city of New York, as do the roads lying within that State. This fact will show how very imperfect every estimate must be. But taking only the farming lands of the particular district traversed by a railroad, where the influence of such a work can be more directly seen, there is no doubt that in such case the increased value is many times greater than the cost of the road. It is estimated by the intelligent president of the Nashville and Chattanooga railroad, that the increased value of a belt of land ten miles wide, lying upon each side of its line, is equal to at least $7 50 per acre, or $96,000 for every mile of road, which will cost only about $20,000 per mile. That work has already created a value in its influence upon real property alone, equal to about five times its cost. What is true of the Nashville and Chattanooga road, is equally so, probably, of the average of roads throughout the country. It is believed that the construction of the three thousand miles of railroad of Ohio will add to the value of the landed property in the State at least five times the cost of the roads, assuming this to be $60,000,000. In addition to the very rapid advance in the price of farming lands, the roads of Ohio are stimulating the growth of her cities with extraordinary rapidity, so that there is much greater probability that the above estimate will be exceeded, than not reached, by the actual fact. We are not left to estimate in this matter. In the case of the State of Massachusetts, what is conjecture in regard to the new States, has with her become a matter of history. The valuation of that State went up, from 1840 to 1850, from $290,000,000 to $580,000,000-an immense increase, and by far the greater part of it due to the numerous railroads she has constructed. This increase is in a much greater ratio to the cost of her roads, than has been estimated of those of Ohio.

We have considered the effect of railroads in increasing the value of property in reference only to lands devoted to agriculture; but such results do not by any means give the most forcible illustration of their An acre of farming land can at most be made to yield only a small annual income. An acre of coal or iron lands, on the other hand,

use.

may produce a thousand-fold more in value than the former. These deposites may be entirely valueless without a railroad. With one, every ton of ore they contain is worth one, two, three, or four dollars, as the case may be. Take for example the coal-fields of Pennsylvania. The value of the coal sent yearly from them, in all the agencies it is called upon to perform, is beyond all calculation. Upon this article are based our manufacturing establishments, and our government and merchant steamships, representing values in their various relations and ramifications, equal to thousands of millions of dollars. Without coal it is impossible to conceive the spectacle that we should have presented as a people, so entirely different would it have been from our present condition. Neither our commercial nor our manufacturing, nor, consequently, our agricultural interests, could have borne any relation whatever to their present enormous magnitude. Yet all this result has been achieved by a few railroads and canals in Pennsylvania, which have not cost over $50,000,000. With these works, coal can be brought into the New York market for about $3 50 per ton; without them, it could not have been made available either for ordinary fuel or as a motive power. So small, comparatively, are the agencies by which such immense results have been effected, that the former are pletely lost sight of in the magnitude of the latter.

What is true of the Pennsylvania coal-fields, is equally true of all others to a greater or less extent. The coal-fields of Alabama may be made to bear the same relation to the Gulf of Mexico and to the manufactures of the southern States, as have those of Pennsylvania to the North. The Gulf of Mexico is to become the seat of a greater commerce thin the world ever yet saw upon any sea; and this commerce, and all the vast interests with which it will be connected, will to a very great extent owe its development and magnitude to the coal-fields that slope toward the gulf.

INCOME OF OUR RAILROADS.

Having shown the influence of our railroads in creating values, which greatly exceed their aggregate cost, the next point to be considered is the income of these works.

As both the income of our roads and the influence which they exert, in increasing values, must bear a close relation to each other, the facts that have already been established in reference to the latter necessarily involve the idea of a large business upon our roads. The value of lands depends upon their capacity to yield a very large surplus for transportation.

There is no other country in the world where an equal amount of labor produces an equal bulk of freight for railroad transportation. One reason is, that the great mass of our products is of a coarse, bulky character, of very low comparative value, and consisting chiefly of the products of the soil and forest. We manufacture very few high-priced goods, labor being more profitably employed upon what are at present more appropriate objects of industry. The great bulk of the articles carried upon railroads is grains, cotton, sugar, coal, iron, live stock, and articles of a similar character. The difference between the value

of a pound of raw and manufactured cotton is measured frequently by dollars, yet both may pay the same amount of freight. Wheat, corn, cattle, and lumber, all pay a very large sum for transportation in proportion to their values.

Again, for the want of domestic markets, the transportation of many of our important products involves a through transportation. Take, for instance, a cotton-producing State like Mississippi. Nearly the whole industry of this State is engaged in the cultivation of this article. Of the immense amount produced no part is consumed or used within the State. The entire staple goes abroad; but as the aggregate industry of the people is confined to the production of one staple, it follows that all articles entering into consumption must be imported; so that, over the channels through which the cotton of this State is sent to market, an equal value or tonnage must be imported, as the case may be. This necessity, both of an inward and outward movement, equal to the whole bulk of the surplus agricultural product, is peculiar to the United States, and is one of the reasons of the large receipts of our roads. While this is the case, it is equally true that newly settled sections of country will often supply a larger amount of traffic than an older one. There can be no doubt that an equal amount of labor would produce four times as much corn and wheat in Illinois as in Massachusetts; consequently, a man living in the former would contribute four times as much business to a railroad as one in the latter. In clearing the soil, it often happens that the transportation of lumber supplies a larger traffic for two or three years than agricultural products for an equal length of time.

It is, therefore, a great mistake to suppose that, because a country is new, it cannot yield a large traffic to a railroad. In the southern and western States only one year is frequently required to prepare the soil for crops, which may be renewed, the same in kind, for a long series of years. The amount raised, and consequently the surplus, is much larger in the more recent than in the longer settled portions of the country. In the more recent, too-the number of inhabitants being the same in both cases-the amount sent to distant markets is greater from the fact that there is no diversity of pursuits, which in older communities supply from a limited circle nearly all the prime necessaries of life that enter into consumption. In newly settled districts, all these are often imported from distant markets at a very heavy cost of transportation.

The general views above stated, in reference to the earnings of the railroads in the United States, are fully borne out by the result. Investments in these works have probably yielded a better return, independently of the incidental advantages connected with them, than the ordinary rates of interest prevailing throughout the country. Such is the case with the roads of Massachusetts, the State in which these works have been carried to the greatest extent, and have cost the most per mile, and amongst which are embraced a number of expensive and unproductive lines.

The following statement, compiled from official returns, shows the cost, expenses, and income of all the railroads of this State for four years previous to January 1, 1852:

The above table includes several expensive works opened too recently for the development of a large business, and of course presents a much more unfavorable view of the productiveness of these works than would be shown by an average for a longer period.

The most productive railroads in Massachusetts are those connecting, the manufacturing and commercial towns, while the most unproductive are those depending upon the agricultural interests for support. The agriculture of this State supplies nothing for export; on the contrary, there is hardly a town that does not depend upon other and distant portions of the country for many of the more important articles of food. The small surplus raised is wanted for consumption in the immediate neighborhood of production. Where there are no manufacturing establishments upon a route, the movement of property upon New England roads is limited, and hence the comparative unproductiveness of what may be termed agricultural lines. In the eastern States other sources of business make up for the lack of agricultural products for transportation, and the aggregate investment is productive. In the southern and western States the soil supplies a very large surplus for exportation, affording often, per mile, a greater bulk for transportation than is supplied to eastern roads, either from agriculture, manufacture, or commerce. The cost of the former, however, will not, on the average, equal one-half that of the latter; and as the rates of charges are pretty uniform upon all, and if anything higher upon the southern and western than upon the eastern roads, the revenues of the former must of course be very much greater than the latter. Such is the fact. The greater income of the one results, both from a larger traffic, which the western country in particular is adapted to supply, and from the higher rates of charges in proportion to the cost of the respective lines of the two different sections of the country. Numerous illustrations of this fact might be readily given. The earnings of the Cleveland and Columbus road have been greater than those of the Hudson river since the opening of their respective lines, though the former is only 135 miles long and cost $3,000,000, while the latter is 144 miles and cost $10,000,000. Railroads in the newly settled portions of the country, as a general rule, command a much larger traffic, and of course yield a better return upon their cost, than those of the older States. Assuming the revenues per mile of the roads of the two divisions of the country to be equal, their net income will be in the ratio of their cost, which may be stated at two to one in favor of western and southern roads.