BY ARTHUR T. HADLEY. Amount of Capital Invested in Railways--Important Place in the Modern Industrial System--The Duke of Bridgewater's Foresight--The Growth of Half a Century--Early Methods of Business Management--The Tendency toward Consolidation--How the War Developed a National Idea--Its Effect on Railroad Building--Thomson and Scott as Organizers--Vanderbilt's Capacity for Financial Management--Garrett's Development of the Baltimore & Ohio--The Concentration of Immense Power in a Few Men--Making Money out of the Investors--Difficult Positions of Stockholders and Bondholders--How the Finances are Manipulated by the Board of Directors--Temptations to the Misuse of Power--Relations of Railroads to the Public who Use Them--Inequalities in Freight Rates--Undue Advantages for Large Trade Centres--Proposed Remedies--Objections to Government Control--Failure of Grangerism--The Origin of Pools--Their Advantages--Albert Fink's Great Work--Charles Francis Adams and the Massachusetts Commission--Adoption of the Interstate Commerce Law--Important Influence of the Commission--Its Future Functions--Ill-judged State Legislation. The railroads of the world are to-day worth from twenty-five to thirty thousand million dollars. This probably represents one-tenth of the total wealth of civilized nations, and one-quarter, if not one-third, of their invested capital. It is doubtful whether the aggregate plant used in all manufacturing industries can equal it in value. The capital engaged in banking is but a trifle beside it. The world's whole stock of money of every kind--gold, silver, and paper--would purchase only a third of its railroads. Yet these facts by no means measure the whole importance of the railroad in the modern industrial system. The business methods of to-day are in one sense the direct result of improved means of transportation. The railroad enables the large establishment to reach the markets of the world with its products; it enables the large city to receive its food-supplies, if necessary, from a distance of hundreds or thousands of miles. And while it thus favors the concentration of capital, it is in itself an extreme type of this concentration. Almost every distinctive feature of modern business, whether good or bad, finds in railroad history at once its chief cause and its fullest development. [Illustration: George Stephenson.]