-----+----------+----------+-------------------------------------------- Date.| Latitude.|Longitude.| Approximate location by towns. -----+----------+----------+-------------------------------------------- 1840 |40° 50′ N.|76° 10′ W.|Twenty miles west of Mauch Chunk, Pa. 1850 |41° 30′ N.|77° 27′ W.|Twenty-five miles northwest of Williamsport, | | | Lycoming County, Pa. 1860 |40° 40′ N.|82° 30′ W.|Ten miles south of Mansfield, O. 1870 |41° 10′ N.|84° 35′ W.|Paulding, Paulding County, O. 1880 |41° 05′ N.|86° 50′ W.|Thirty miles northwest of Logansport, Ind. 1888 |39° 50′ N.|88° 40′ W.|Pontiac, Ill., about ninety miles S. S. W. | | | of Chicago. -----+----------+----------+-------------------------------------------- The remarkable movement of the centre of mileage from 1850 to 1860 is easily understood when one turns to the maps of those dates (page 430) and locates the fields of activity. The wonderful increase in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa gave the Western impulse, while the growth in Tennessee and the States south of it furnishes the principal explanation of the southerly motion. Although the study of this period is the most interesting of the series, in the space passed over, yet each period has its points of special interest, which the reader will easily solve by referring to the proper maps on pages 430 to 433. _Railway Systems._--The consolidation of separate lines under central controlling interests has resulted in several "systems" of great extent. Five such are mapped on pages 434 and 435. The roads controlled by them are printed in broad lines, while all others are printed in narrow lines. It needs but a glance to see whether any of them has so far absorbed the roads of a given region as to be able to control rates. The systems selected are believed to be representative ones, and the mapping of a dozen others would not tell the story any more plainly. TRUNK LINES COMPARED. _Compared by Mileage._--At present there are twenty-four corporations reporting over one thousand miles of line each. A comparison of these roads by mileage is profitless, as it furnishes no just clew to their importance in point of business transacted. Several of the shorter of these twenty-four lines largely exceed some of the longer ones in the volume of business transacted. As an example of the little value of comparison by mileage, the New York Central & Hudson River Road, with but 1,421 miles of line, reports $63,132,920 receipts, while the Union Pacific, with 6,288 miles, reports but $19,898,817. Two of the twenty-four roads, viz., the Southern Pacific Railroad (5,931 miles) and the Richmond, West Point & Terminal Railroad (6,869 miles) report neither gross or net earnings. The remaining twenty-two report both, and these reports furnish a satisfactory basis for study. [Illustration: Railway Mileage of the United States. Compared with Area, 1888.