A striking characteristic of American transportation history, emphasized by the foregoing account of land grants and subsidies, is its essentially speculative character. Railroads were more often constructed in advance of population and settlement than to accommodate traffic already in existence. Speculation, as will appear in another volume, has permeated all of our railroad finance. In the early days the most extravagant visions of development were indulged in on all sides. In the words of a Wisconsin legislative committee in 1854 protesting against the passage of further laws for the encouragement of railroad construction: "In imagination every acre of land from Walker's Point to Snake Hollow has been plowed, sowed, fenced, and is bearing forty bushels of wheat.--Such estimates are quite delusive.--It takes money to make railroads. It takes money to make the mare go; much more the iron horse." True indeed, then and now! But a review of our transportation history makes it plain that without this national note of optimism and adventure, the vast capital creation in railroads of the present time could never have been called into being. Public aid and private enterprise and sagacity were alike needed to accomplish the great work in hand. * * * * * The dominating events in our later economic history, so far as railroads are concerned, have been the period of severe distress and prostration following the panic of 1893; a subsequent revival of prosperity, with unprecedented demands for transportation during the ten years thereafter until 1907; and a movement toward consolidation of the railroad net into great territorial systems, notably during the two years after 1898, as a result of which competition was practically eliminated from all railroad business. The long decline in freight rates was succeeded after 1900 by a steady rise of charges; the phenomenal prosperity and consolidations led to wild speculative outbreaks on the stock exchanges, especially in 1901 and 1906; and the spread of industrial consolidation enormously emphasized the evils and abuses of personal discrimination and favoritism. As a result of these influences there arose in turn, after 1900, an irresistible demand for greater governmental supervision, both of rates and of finance. Taken all in all, these later years have witnessed both a public and private interest in railroads, greater perhaps than at any earlier period of our history. But these later events, aside from being set in their proper relation to the whole in this preliminary general survey, require detailed analysis each one by itself. Where not considered within these covers, they will be treated in a second volume dealing primarily with matters of finance and corporate organization. NOTE