Identifier: storyofamericand01west (find matches)
Title: The story of American democracy, political and industrial
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: West, Willis M. (Willis Mason), b. 1857
Subjects:
Publisher: Boston, New York (etc.) Allyn and Bacon
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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Whites. These renters have been growing rapidly into owners. The Negros wholesome ambition to own a farm promises to be a chief source of industrial and social salvation to his race and to the whole South. Railway extension had been checked during the four years of war, but the last five years of the sixties almost Railway doubled the mileage of the country. The new growth lines were located mainly in the Northwestern States and Territories; and they were busied at first only THE RAILWAY 583 in carrying settlers to the moving frontier, and then soon in bringing back farm produce. From 1873 to 1878, construction was checked again by one of the periodic business panics. Then by 1880, another almost fabulous burst raised the mileage to 92,000, and the next ten years nearly doubled this, — to 164,000 miles. Since 1890, expansion has been less rapid; but the next twenty years (to 1910)raised the total to 237,000 miles. Since 1880 America has had a larger ratio of railway mileage to population than
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The Biggest Electric Locomotive. The railroads have kept pace with other industries in material development. The electric locomotive here pictured is one of forty-two that haul passengers and freight over the great Continental Divide, in Montana. It weighs 282 tons, and can haul 3200 tons (six and a half million pounds) up a one per cent grade at 16 miles an hour; or, geared for higher speed, it can pull a passenger train of 800 tons on a level at a mile a minute. any other country. Railroads represent one seventh the total wealth of the Nation, and employ more than a million men. The eighties witnessed also a transformation in the old railroads. Heavier steel rails, thanks to the Bessemer invention, replaced iron. This made possible the use of heavier locomotives and of steel cars of greater size; and these called in turn for straightening curves, cutting downgrades, and bettering roadbeds. Such changes fixed a 584 A BUSINESS AGE, 1876-1914 large amount of capital, but they greatly reduced the

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