. American railway transportation . public domain, and where the mineral wealth of theCordilleras was causing cities and States to be establishedon the great Rocky Mountain plateau. Capitalists, confi-dent of the growth of the country, and assisted by gener-ous aid from the United States and from the local govern-ments and individuals of the sections to be served, con-structed railroads for the purpose of creating the trafficupon which the earnings of the roads must depend. Inmany cases the railroads built during the twenty yearsfollowing the civil war were pioneers entering unsettledregions b
. American railway transportation . public domain, and where the mineral wealth of theCordilleras was causing cities and States to be establishedon the great Rocky Mountain plateau. Capitalists, confi-dent of the growth of the country, and assisted by gener-ous aid from the United States and from the local govern-ments and individuals of the sections to be served, con-structed railroads for the purpose of creating the trafficupon which the earnings of the roads must depend. Inmany cases the railroads built during the twenty yearsfollowing the civil war were pioneers entering unsettledregions beyond the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers andopening the highways by which immigration was ablerapidly to occupy the prairies and mountain valleys of ourgreat West. Since 1890 railroad construction has not been rapidin this country, the increase for the decade ending in1900 being something less than 30,000 miles. It seemsthat by 1890 the most urgent needs for railways had beenmet, that the country had been so well covered with the. GROWTH OF THE AMERICAN RAILWAY NET 29 railroad net that only minor extensions were , the financial depression which began in 1893and lasted for nearly five years compelled the railwaycompanies to practise rigid economies and caused themto extend their systems slowly. During the five yearsfrom 1894 to 1898 inclusive the annual constructionaveraged less than 2,000 miles, the yearly increase beingonly a little more than one per cent. With the returnof prosperous times in 1898 the rate of increase roseagain, so that there are now being about 5,000 miles, ormore than two per cent, added each year to the railroadnet of the United States. The railway systems of the United States now com-prise over 230,000 miles of line. In 1906, when therewere 222,000 miles in the United States, the railways ofthe entire world were 562,000 miles long. Somewhat overtwo-fifths of the railway mileage of the world was in theUnited States. The mileage in the Un
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjec, booksubjectrailroads
