to the progress of inventions and the reduced cost of steel and all appliances necessary to the railways.
The large importance of the railways shows itself in an influence on general business prosperity, and as a place for large investments of a rapidly growing capital. The building of railways, however, has been going on, at some times with greater speed than at others. Instead of 33,908 miles of railways at the close of our war, we have now (1884) over 120,000 miles. How the additional mileage has been built year by year, with two distinct eras of increased building—one from 1869 to 1873, and another from 1879 to 1884—may be seen by the shorter lines of the subjoined chart, No. VI.
That speculation has been excited at different times by the opening up of our Western country, there can be no doubt. And if a comparison be made with Chart No. XVII (Book IV, Chap. III), which gives the total grain-crops of the United States, it will be seen that since 1879, although our population has increased from 12-½ per cent to 14 per cent, our grain-crops only 5 per cent, yet our railway mileage has increased 40 per cent.
The extent to which the United States has carried railway-building, as compared with European countries, although we have a very much greater area, is distinctly shown by Chart No. VII. This application of one form of improvement to oppose the law of diminishing returns in the United States has produced extraordinary results, especially when we consider that we are probably not yet using all our best lands, or, in other words, that we have not yet felt the law of diminishing returns in some large districts.
Chart VI.
Miles of Railroad in Operation on the 1st January in each Year, and the