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the Texas Pacific, to extend from New Orleans to a union with the Southern Pacific; and the junction also of the Southern Pacific with the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio road to the ports of the Gulf of Mexico. These extensions and consolidations, all accomplished between 1864 and 1883, were the precursors of the greater railroad combinations of the generation immediately following.

The expansion of the great constructive period of railroading, which may be considered to have come to an end by 1870, was reckless and feverish. Capital rushed headlong into this new field of investment, and year after year offered transportation facilities more rapidly than the business of the country warranted. The inevitable result was vicious competition and ultimate ruin. Rate wars were the conspicuous feature of this period, and presently, when energy had wasted itself in this direction, resort was had to combination of rival interests. Consolidation on a small scale had been known in years before, but now measures were taken to bring the entire system into a unity of purpose by closer combinations and "gentlemen's agreements " regarding traffic. These measures had only temporary effect owing to the strong public feeling which developed against what was considered railroad monopoly and extortion and also because of the difficulty of completely reconciling the conflicting corporate interests.

During the last 30 years of the

Nineteenth century and the early years of this, the railroad problem was not one of expansion so much as of economical administration — a better adaptation to the business needs of the generation and a clearer comprehension of the mutual interests of the public. Much of this problem was solved by more intelligent, scientific and experienced attention to the subject by those who made it their profession. The attitude of the public also became an important factor. The feeling against corporate interests, so notable and so powerful in this period, began in the West in the Granger movement in 1870-73, and it is not too much to say that the railroad, as an economic institution, has thereby been materially affected in subsequent years. Drastic legislation touching the railroads was enacted in most of the States. Some of this passed away, but much of it remained and none of it was without lasting influence. The theory of government supervision State or National - sprang up and persisted so that in the end the railroads found it generally impossible to escape from amenability to public authority. In the States, this control was placed in the hands of railroad commissions which exercised their powers more in the interest of the community than of the corporation. In the National government power was vested in the Interstate Commerce Commission, whose decisions in many instances, especially in the tariff rate question in 1911, went a long way

toward a wider and stronger governmental control than could possibly have been anticipated a quarter of a century before.

The condition of the steam railroads

of the country in the first decade of the Twentieth century is shown in the following summary:*

With the close of the Civil War it was natural to expect that our merchant marine would quickly return to the condition of prosperity which it had known before 1860. Shipbuilding had been considerably stimulated by the demands of the war. The merchant marine, ships and sailors, were drawn into the service of National defense, and naturally commerce was destroyed. A great fighting fleet was created and at the end of the war the United States owned 600 war steamships. Engineering skill was not lacking; the shipyards were better equipped than ever before in material, in experience and in workmen; and commerce with the world was revived. But the American merchant marine did not reinstate itself. Foreign trade which had been diverted to foreign bottoms did not return. In 1861 our merchant marine tonnage was 5,539,831; not until 1902 did it reach that

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figure again, that year being 5,797,902 tons, the figures including sail and steam, foreign, coastwise, lake and river, and fisheries. Various explanations of this condition have been offered the protective tariff, internal revenue taxation, manufacturing and railroad demands upon capital, and the competition with a subsidized foreign marine. The question of "free ships"- that is, the admission to American registry of Americanowned iron ships built abroad - and the question of mail subsidy to American ocean steamships were in agitation before the public mind and in Congress in the first years of the new century, and they seem as far from solution now as they were in 1890.

In the meantime the United States did not stand still in ship-building. Although iron ship-building was moribund in 1875, it revived before the end of the century. In 1901 the average output of American ship-yards was 1,491 vessels of 468,831 gross tons. American shipping engaged in foreign trade that year aggregated 879,595 tons. This was in excess of any of the preceding six years, but less than that of 1891, 1892, 1893, and 1894-the last year, with its tonnage of 988,719, leading the decade.

Our domestic shipping outdistanced our merchant marine engaged in foreign trade during this period. In 1906 the number of vessels engaged in water transportation in the United States was 37,321, with a tonnage of 12,893,429, as against 30,485 vessels,

with a tonnage of 8,359,135 in 1889. The shipping of the Great Lakes in 1906 was 2,900 vessels, of 2,392,863 tonnage; of the Atlantic Coast and Gulf of Mexico, coastwise and foreign, 20,032 vessels, of 4,851,421 tonnage; of the Pacific Coast, 2,537 vessels, of 977,687 tonnage; of the Mississippi and its tributaries, 9,622 vessels, of 4,411,967 tonnage.

In 1909 the total tonnage of our merchant marine was 7,388,755, the largest since 1870, and an increase over that year of 3,194,015, or over 40 per cent. Of this gross amount for 1909, the tonnage engaged in foreign trade was 878,523, of which 575,276 was steam; in coasting, 6,451,042, of which 4,151,557 was steam; in fisheries, 59,190. In 1910 there was a still further advance, the gross tonnage of that year being 7,508,082, of which 6,668,963 was coastwise, 782,517 foreign, and 56,602 fisheries. These figures show a growth in our coastwise merchant marine and a decided falling off from 1860 in our tonnage engaged in foreign trade. In 1860 our gross tonnage,, coastwise and foreign, was 5,353,865, of which 2,379,396 (or nearly one-half) was engaged in foreign trade. In 1870 the United States was second in the tonnage of its merchant marine only to Great Britain. During the 40 years following, that relative standing did not change, but in percentage increase the United States, with its 44 per cent. increase, fell be-hind Great Britain with 170 per cent., France with 80 per cent., Norway with

VOL. X-25

100 per cent., Sweden with 200 per cent., Denmark with over 350 per cent., Holland with 160 per cent., and Germany with nearly 355 per cent.

For urban passenger transportation, street car lines were installed in all the cities and large towns of the country after 1860. This service is along the streets by elevated, surface and subway lines. A short elevated railway was built in New York City in 1867, but it did not become the established system of that city before 1872. Subsequently elevated railway lines. were erected in Brooklyn (New York), Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities.

A street railway, with cars drawn by horses, was operated in New York City in 1831-32, but not until 1852 were other lines of this character constructed in the metropolis. Horse-car street railways appeared in Boston in 1856, in Philadelphia in 1857, and within the next 25 years in nearly all the large cities of the country. Street railways operated by underground cable were first built in San Francisco in 1873 and 1876, and afterward (in 1882) in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and many other cities. In 1893 there were over 70 cable street railway lines in the United States, with about 700 miles of trackage. After 1890, by the introduction of electricity as a motor power for street railways, the cable was rapidly displaced. Within seven years its mileage had fallen off more than one-half,

The first electric railroad was built

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