Temporary Railway Crossing the St. Lawrence on the Ice.
The Manitoba system was extended in 1887 through Dakota and Montana, a distance of 545 miles. A small army of 10,000 men, with about 3,500 teams, commanded by General D. C. Shepard, of St. Paul, a veteran engineer and contractor, did it all between April 2 and October 19. All materials and subsistence had to be hauled to the front, from the base of supplies. The army slept in its own tents, shanties, and cars. The grading was cast up from the side ditches, sometimes by carts, and sometimes by the digging machine.
Everything was done with military organization, except that what was left behind was a railway and not earth-work lines of defence. Assuming that this railway, ready for its equipment, cost $15,100 per mile, or $8,175,000, and if it be true, as statisticians tell us, that every dollar expended in building railways in a new country adds ten to the value of land and other property, then this six months' campaign shows a solid increase of the wealth of our country of over eighty millions of dollars. Had it been necessary for our Government to keep an army of observation of the same size on the Canadian frontier, there would have been a dead loss of over eight millions of dollars, and the only result would have been a slight reduction of the Treasury surplus.
It must be remembered that this railway was built after the American system: when the rails were laid, so as to carry trains, it was not much more than half finished; the track had to be ballasted, the temporary wooden structures replaced by stone and iron, and many buildings and miles of sidings were yet to be constructed. But it began to earn money from the very day the last rail was laid, and out of its earnings, and the credit thereby acquired, it will complete itself.
And this is only one instance out of many. The armies of peace are working all over our country, increasing our wealth, and binding all parts into a common whole. We have here the true answer to the Carlyles and the Ruskins who ask: "What is the use of all this? Is a man any better who goes sixty miles an hour than one who went five miles an hour?" "Were we not happier when our fields were covered with their golden harvests, than now, when our wheat is brought to us from Dakota?"
The grand function of the railway is to change the whole basis of civilization from military to industrial. The talent, the energy, the money, which is expended in maintaining the whole of Europe as an armed camp is here expended in building and maintaining railways, with their army of two millions of men. Without the help of railways the rebellion of the Southern States could never have been put down, and two great standing armies would have been necessary. By the railways, aided by telegraphs, it is easy to extend our Federal system over an entire continent, and thus dispense forever with standing armies.
The moral effect of this upon Europe is great, but its physical effect is still greater. American railways have nearly abolished landlordism in Ireland, and they will one day abolish it in England, and over the continent of Europe. So long as Europe was dependent for food upon its own fields, the owner of those fields could fix his own rental. This he can no longer do, owing to the cheapness of transportation from Australia and from the prairies of America, due to the inventions of Watt, the Stephensons, Bessemer, and Holley.
With the wealth of the landlord his political power will pass away. The government of European countries will pass out of the hands of the great landowners, but not into those of the rabble, as is feared. It will pass into the same hands that govern America to-day—the territorial democracy, the owners of small farms, and the manufacturers and merchants. When this comes to pass, attempts will be made to settle international disputes by arbitration instead of war, following the example of the Geneva arbitration between the two greatest industrial nations of the world. Whether our Federal system will ever extend to the rest of the world, no one knows, but we do know that without railways it would be impossible.
When we consider the effects of all these wonderful changes upon the sum of human happiness, we must admit that the engineer should justly take rank with statesmen and soldiers, and that no greater benefactors to the human race can be named than the Stephensons and their American disciples—Allen, Rogers, Jervis, Winans, Latrobe, and Holley.