Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, July 16, 1867

The Effect of the Pacific Railroad.

HAVE any of us sufficiently considered the effect of the completion of the great highway which is to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans? How the great iron link in the course of commerce round the world along the isothermal temperate zone is to effect the future weal of the country? Perhaps one of the most fascinating conjectures of commercial speculation is to fancy the immense trade in teas, silks, spices, and rich fabrics, which now finds its way tediously round Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, brought to our own western coast, and wheeled by the power of steam rapidly across the continent, there to be re-shipped again to Europe. The frugal and industrious five hundred millions of Eastern Asia have many products which the expert two hundred millions of Europe need, and vice versa. The shortest route between these two opposite sides of the earth lies right across our country; and recent indications there is no conceivable limit to the interchange of commodities between these mighty populations. India and China afford a vast market for our precious metals, while we can take in return their tea, rice, and fabrics, the product of cheap labor. We can do the carrying trade for half the other continent, and support a vast one of our own. Evidently, future expansion lies largely in this direction.

Great as are these possibilities, and flattering as are these prospects, they form in reality, only half—the least half—of the current which must pass and re-pass along this great artery of our internal circulation. Nothing in the future seems more certain, than that

the three great cities of this continent are to be New York, San Francisco, and a central city in the Mississippi Valley; but whether Chicago or St. Louis, does not yet appear. The experience of our system of railroads shows that they create their own traffic as fast as they can accommodate it—pouring a vivifying and fertilizing stream of capital and population wherever they traverse. We no longer build roads between centres of population exclusively; they provide for their own support in the ultimate development of the country they drain. In no case is this more conspicuous than in the Great Pacific railway. In half a century the progressive spirit of our people has occupied a territory larger than a European empire. By the completion of the great national highway we shall have opened up a third of the country equal in natural bounty and permanent wealth to the rest.

Of the seventeen hundred and fifty miles between the Missouri river and the Pacific, four hundred are already spanned by the iron rail, and the autumn will see the gap reduced to a thousand miles. On this side the Union Pacific railroad has opened up a continuous line of road from Chicago to three hundred miles westward of Omaha, and will probably reach the great gold fields of Colorado not far from a year hence.

On the other side of the continent the progress is even more surpassing. Certain business men of California, well known for their shrewdness and working power, have sagaciously organized and secured the valuable franchises of the western half of the road, have seized the most available route across the mountains, and are pushing forward the work with an unflagging energy, characteristic of the new States. The Central Pacific railroad of California is, in reality, by far the most important, as it is the most remunerative, link of the great road, since it is, so to speak, the pipe of the funnel, the solitary strand across which the whole volume of traffic must pass on such terms as its corporations and stockholders choose to decide. It also controls the great and immensely lucrative traffic between the coast and the two hundred thousand square miles of adjacent mining territory, capable of sustaining fifty or sixty millions of people; and which will be actually settled by a million within a year after the completion of the road! The wagon freight between California and one portion of Nevada, one way only, amounted in a single year to $13,000,000—enough to keep an ordinary railroad busy. What then must be the value of an expanded traffic reaching eastward to Salt Lake, northward and southward for two hundred and fifty miles? It will be entirely safe to estimate it at not less than twenty-five millions a year in gold! Truly no more wonderful prospect of legitimate wealth ever offered itself to human foresight! The vision is dazzling in its magnificence, and it is morally certain that whatever other enterprises may arise, this must retain all the business it can do at rates which will be satisfactory to its customers and its projectors. In other words, the Central Pacific must prove a success.

Eight thousand men, of whom four thousand are the cheaper Chinese laborers, are employed on the other end of the line. A hundred miles, the most costly and difficult portion of the road, are already built, and in working order. Six thousand of the seven thousand feet of ascent in climbing the western side of the Sierra Nevada range, has been safely and easily overcome, with no heavier grades than we use in crossing the Alleghanies. Nine hundred only of the sixteen hundred feet of heavy tunneling through the crest of the mountains remain, and the track is nearly graded for twenty-eight miles east of the summit; so that by autumn, at farthest, the locomotive will be rushing down into the great interior plains, along the Humboldt river, where progress is easy. Three hundred miles of iron are purchased, and everything is ready for a lavish energy as soon as the mountains are crossed. No better road in the country has been built, and it quite befits its great mission in its appointments. What, then, is the secret of this marvellous activity on the part of the Californians? First, the infallible profits to accrue from the road itself as a permanent investment. Second, the increased value it will add to every mine and every acre in the immense tract which shall feel its influence. Third, the great impetus it will give to mining interests, by lessening the cost of extracting and reducing the precious ores one half, while the saving in time and labor will increase the working power twofold. In a word, the Pacific Railroad is to quadruple the productive capacity of the territories, while it doubles the value of land and improvements and renders civilized settlements practicable.

What wonder that this young State on the Pacific, with so much already invested at home and in adjacent territory, finds means to seize and finish a full half of the gigantic work? What better proof could be asked for rapidly accumulating wealth and future prospects? By the munificence of Congress in granting ten millions of acres of valuable land, and its bonds proportioned to the length of the road; by the largesses of her own capitalists, and such other private capital as must find its way into the Company's bonds, the success and early completion of the road is placed beyond conjecture. Its net earnings as far as completed in 1866 (varying from forty-two to ninety-five miles) was no less than $650,000, in gold; or more than enough to meet the annual interest to be provided for when one hundred and fifty-six miles shall have been built and equipped! This, in a season of expensive and exceptional outlays, over the most difficult part of the road of up-hill grades! So far as human sagacity can discern, no more beneficent project to the country has been undertaken, and none more profitable to those whose means are employed in carrying it out.—Methodist.