Pennsylvania and the New York Central. Of less size, but still ranking as great railroads within this territory, are the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the Erie. Several of the anthracite roads enjoy "through" connections to Chicago and St. Louis, breaking at Buffalo as an interchange point, about halfway between New York and Chicago. There are important roads in the South, extending between Gulf points and New York and taking care of the traffic of the centers of the section, now rapidly increasing in industrial importance.

The Western group of transcontinental routes are giants in point of mileage. The Eastern roads, serving a closely-built country, carry an almost incredible tonnage, but the long, gaunt western lines are reaching into a country that still has its to-morrow. Of these, the so-called Harriman lines the Southern Pacific and the Union Pacific-occupy the center of the country and reach from the Mississippi to the Pacific. One other route, the Sante Fé, shares this territory.

To the north of the Harriman lines, J. J.

Hill has his wonderful group of railroads: the Burlington, the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific, together reaching from Chicago to the north Pacific coast. The other "Grangers" (so called from their original purpose as grain carriers) that occupy the eastern end of this western territory-the St. Paul, the Gould lines, the Northwestern and the Rock Island-are just now showing pertinent interest in reaching the Pacific, with its great Oriental trade in its infancy. As the first two of these are laying rails already over the steep slopes of the Rocky Mountains, it is evident that building railroads in the United States is nowhere near a closed book at the present time.

COMPETITION OF LINES MULTIPLIED

In the East it is different. That great period of railroad construction between 1870-1890, produced too many railroads in some parts of the country. The country went mad in the deluge of construction. New lines were projected and built almost without second thought. Three

and four lines were built where there was hardly business for one. Trunk lines were spanned across a half-dozen states; each planned its feeders by the dozen.

After that came the reaction. Wall Street is the financial backbone of the country, as well as the great scales in which the right and the wrong in railroad management are weighed, sooner or later. Any sins in operation, in construction, in financing, are sure to be detected there. So the extravagance and the flash of railroad construction brought inevitably the present era where there is little new building in the East, where the effort is being successfully made to make all those miles of needless railroad pay their way. At the beginning of the present era some of the weaker railroads were in a woefully bad plight. Their cars were battered, their engines dingy, their rights-of-way merely rusty streaks over shaky bridges and rough ballast. That has all disappeared under good management and real conservatism. The weaker lines, which might only support themselves precariously by a ruinous cutting of rates, have been linked to stronger properties and operation and maintenance brought to a high standard, while the country faces an honest and equitable rate sheet for the first time in its history.

Good management and the steady development of the Eastern territory have been the salvation of that era of overbuilding.

In the West, as has been said, promoters are still building new lines. The managers there are concerned with getting their great main routes through, and the building of feeders in that vast territory has hardly begun. There is still chance for an infinite development of that sort between the Mississippi and the Pacific.

BUILDING IN THE EAST

Still the construction engineer is not yet without employment in the East. The railroads that reach from New York to Chicago are spending almost as much money on construction as in the flash days when the new lines were being extended in all directions. In that great district rebuilding goes steadily ahead. The economies of the first promoters are being corrected at tremendous cost, a cost which becomes as nothing when compared with the operating economies, the increased opportunities for handling traffic which come after it. But of this, more at a later time. We are going to first build a brand new railroad.