At the close of the war these tides rose to flood. The railroads no longer struggled. There was a steady flow of traffic over their rails, and they were able because of it to engage capital to stretch their rails a little farther west. After they had moved another stretch, the tides of emigration still flowed. That process might have gone ahead in orderly fashion until the Pacific had been reached, if the scheme had not been upset.
They built too many railroads, they overworked their idea. In the broad reaches of the Middle West, lines of steel crumbled into rust, and cross-roads dreamed vainly that they would become villages. Many a struggling village failed to become the city that her enthusiastic residents had fancied. They had the big boom in Kansas, and the bigger collapse that followed. After that, folk stayed East for a while, and the business of making traffic in that territory became an advanced science.
There was another factor in the situation. You will remember that the Summer of ’69 saw the first continuous railroad across the American continent—the combination of Central Pacific and Union Pacific. The huge success of that railroad was inspiration for others. In the generation of men that followed the rails that reached from Atlantic to Pacific were multiplied. After that there was a new problem for the owners of the transcontinental railroads. Their statistical charts of originating traffic showed great black masses at either end of the line—where connections were made with the great traffic-bringers from the East, and where the rails ran upon the docks of the Pacific shore. Between those two points was a thin black line, like spider-thread. To make that line black and firm at all points, to bring masses of new traffic at intermediate points, was the demand that the railroad-owner made of his traffic-manager.
It is being done to-day. It has taken time, money and almost incredible patience; but it is being done. This is a broad land, and there is still much to be done. In Montana, there is a single county with an area exceeding that of Maryland and a population less than that of the smallest ward of Baltimore; and near-by there is another county, as large as Delaware and Connecticut combined, with mere handful of residents. These are typical. There are great open stretches to the southwest; and the Santa Fe, working hand in hand with the Harriman lines, is busy populating and developing these. In the North Country, James J. Hill’s railroads and the new outstretched arm of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul are doing much to exploit the unfarmed lands of Montana, and the intensive possibilities of Washington for fruit-raising, market-gardening and the like. Up and down the Pacific coast, the railroads are uniting in similar campaigns of development.
Hill began the campaign in Montana. He is a dreamer and a far-seer. When he began making presents of blooded bulls to the farmers out along the Great Northern, folk laughed at him, some of his directors thought that he had gone crazy. They thought differently when they knew the results, when they got the traffic reports of the cattle business that was growing along the line.
That thing was typical. The railroad—Hill’s railroad and all the other big transcontinentals—lent itself to the fine development of all the traffic that might possibly be obtained within its territory. Heretofore it had roughly combed traffic possibilities, now it began to screen them with a fine mesh screen. The emigrant bureau did its part of the work; the railroad went further and set itself to develop every inch of available land along its lines. Attractive excursions brought settlers to the new country, the railroad was of practical assistance in finding locations for them. Everything is being brought toward the development of those great new States of the West: cross-roads are beginning to become villages; villages, cities. A little time before his death, Mr. Harriman announced that there would be four great cities spread across the American continent—New York, Chicago, Salt Lake, and San Francisco. He then took it upon his own rather roomy shoulders to make Salt Lake City worthy of a place in the file.
From this activity in the West, the Eastern railroads have stolen a lesson. Originally built in many cases to serve the needs of the farmers of some particular locality, they have become merged and welded in a way that has caused them to serve the industrial interests of the country more particularly than the agricultural. One of the valuable old properties of the Pennsylvania Railroad in New Jersey rejoices in the name of Freehold and Jamesburg Agricultural Railroad.
When, after the serious slump in traffic that followed the panic in 1907, the railroads of the East found themselves, for the first time in a decade, with more facilities than freight, they began to cultivate more carefully the traffic branch of transportation science. They took quite readily to the lesson that the transcontinentals gave them. Then they proceeded to put it into effect in practical fashion.
For some years past the problem of the unimportant branches has been a serious one with the big Eastern systems. These branches, many of them once profitable feeders, have been allowed to deteriorate and retrograde, while main-line traffic developed and increased under active conditions of competition. The little towns along the branches seemed to retrograde too; while the busy cities of the country, strung along the main lines of the railroad, absorbed new growth and new energy. Sometimes the branch lines were paralleled by interurban electric railroads, which were able to operate at far less cost than steam railroads, and consequently to charge lower rates of fare; and their slight passenger traffic continued to grow lighter. The freight traffic had long since dwindled to slim proportions; the branch lines were almost entirely agricultural railroads; and the farmers of the East were discouraged and disheartened.
The new movement began in Western New York, which is fairly gridironed with a network of these unprofitable branch railroads. It was started even before the panic of 1907. New York State, with its great resources and its fat treasury, has long been engaged in the development of scientific farming—which means farming for the largest profit that can be brought from the soil. It has a great agricultural school as a part of Cornell University, and an interesting experimental school along similar lines at Geneva. These schools have done a great work. They have educated young men to be modern farmers, in every sense of that phrase; and they have sent leaflets to every corner of the Empire State. But even these methods were not far-reaching enough. It is not every farmer’s boy in these days who can afford to go down to Ithaca for a college education in the tilling of the soil; few of the older men care to mingle with the boys at such an institution. Even the pamphlets sent out from Geneva were not sufficient.