From the very first there were some men who felt the importance of the railroads as national lines of communication. The idea was present in the minds of the projectors of the Baltimore & Ohio, of the Erie, and of the Boston & Albany. But it was not until 1850 that it became a controlling one; nor was it universally accepted even then. As late as 1858 we find that there was a violent popular agitation in the State of New York to prohibit the New York Central from carrying freight in competition with the Erie Canal. It was gravely urged that the railroad had no business to compete with the canal; that the latter had a natural right to the through traffic from the West, with which the railroads must not interfere. It is less than thirty years since a convention at Syracuse, representing no small part of the public sentiment of New York, formally recommended "the passage of a law by the next Legislature which shall confine the railroads of this State to the business for which they were originally created." But matters had gone too far for effective action of this kind. Besides the New York Central, the Erie and the Pennsylvania were in condition to handle the through traffic which Western connections were furnishing. These connections themselves were rapidly growing in importance. Prior to 1850 there were very few railroads west of the Alleghanies. In 1857 there were thousands of miles. The policy of land-grants acted as an artificial stimulus to the building of such roads; and a land-grant road, when once built, was almost necessarily dependent on through traffic for its support. It could not be operated locally; it was forced into close traffic arrangements which paved the way for actual consolidation.