We are not quite done. We have hardly considered the South. It is very much entitled to consideration, with its great growth in the last few years and its wonderful opportunities of the immediate future. But because, like California, it still has its intensive growth in the future rather than in the past, it is not too late to bend it into the economic regional plan.
We left the Californian railroad with an important eastern terminal at El Paso. El Paso is in Texas, even though it is barely in it, and so becomes quite the logical western terminal of the Texas lines, which would exclusively cover in our scheme virtually the entire State east from Beaumont, Shreveport and Texarkana and south from Dallas and Fort Worth. It might even be possible to give the Texas regional system a direct entrance into Kansas City by acquisition of the entire Kansas City Southern, but I would doubt the wisdom of this. It would have the effect of throwing the delicate competitive shading remaining about that very great railroad center considerably out of balance. For if Kansas City by direct line, why not St. Louis or even Chicago?
No, that would hardly do. The Iron Mountain reaching in a splendid strategic position from St. Louis to Texas, shorn of its wretched mésalliance with the Missouri Pacific and given instead the Alton and certain portions of the ’Frisco and Missouri, Kansas, and Texas systems, would make an excellent feeder for the Texas Lines right through to Kansas City, to St. Louis, and Chicago, and still avoid the operation of too many miles or too attenuated a single system under one executive head. Meanwhile the competitive factor in the competitive territory which we have permitted to remain within the land would be appeased by the fact that the Rock Island, the Santa Fé, and the Burlington would also bind the Texas Lines to Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago. Our plan continues to balance, and to balance extremely well.
The Texas Lines would have still another competitive entrance into Chicago. We will take the Illinois Central—deleted, if you will recall, of its rather superfluous line to Omaha—and make it the main-stem and core of a far larger railroad which we may well give the more dignified and embracing title of Mississippi Valley railroad. From New Orleans straight north to Chicago, west to Beaumont, northwest to Shreveport and to Little Rock, possibly east to Mobile, and northeast to Birmingham—here is the making of a really dominating and yet very logical regional railroad. It also might and probably would be both practicable and possible to make it live more closely to its name and give to it the line along the eastern bank of the upper Mississippi, between St. Louis and St. Paul, now operated by the Burlington.
There still remains the southeastern corner of the United States—and right here our problem reaches its final and most perplexing phase. Whether to rearrange it in two or three simon-pure regions or to have two or three competing systems within a comparatively large regional district is a question not easy of correct solution. I believe that the latter is the solution most likely to come, however. The inter-ownership of the Atlantic Coast Line and the Louisville and Nashville railroads is a factor not easily to be ignored. Ranged against this combined system—which in its final entity probably would include the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis and the historic Georgia railroad—is the huge Southern railway, upon which much thought and money has been expended within the last ten or twelve years, and which would meet it at virtually every important competitive point.
Only two other important railroads occupy this southeastern territory, south of Virginia—the Central of Georgia and the Seaboard Air Line. The first of these is the property of the Illinois Central and yet could not logically be made a portion of the Mississippi Valley railroad which we were outlining but a minute ago. The economic thing probably would be to parcel out these two properties, and several smaller ones, between the new Atlantic Coast Line and Southern railway combinations and finally retain for each of these their present valuable entrances into the City of New Orleans.
A great portion of the Seaboard Air Line lies in Florida, but Florida like New England and Texas and California lends herself quite readily to the absolute non-competitive regional plan. A Florida railroad would be touched by the Atlantic Coast Line and the larger Southern railway at Jacksonville, at Pensacola, and at intermediate points.
And finally, Virginia! She too lends herself to the regional plan, with the sole exception of the north and south lines of the Southern and the enlarged Atlantic Coast, the first coming north toward Washington through Charlottesville and the second through Richmond. The rest of the rails in both of the Virginias might very logically be grouped into a single great efficient system which would stretch from tide-water in the neighborhood of Norfolk back over the mountains to the Ohio River, and even beyond it to Columbus, to Cincinnati, and to Lexington. That the chief business of such a railroad would be the transport of coal goes without saying. With its vast combined water terminals in the neighborhood of Hampton Roads, it would be in a dominant position either for the export of its bituminous fuel or for its further shipment, both north and south, by the highly economical water lines along the coast.