A high-speed electric locomotive on the Pennsylvania bringing a through train out of the tunnel underneath the Hudson River and into the New York City terminal 434 High-speed, direct-current locomotive built by the Westinghouse Company for the terminal service of the Pennsylvania Railroad, in New York 434 Two triple-phase locomotives of the Great Northern Railway helping a double-header steam train up the grade into the Cascade Tunnel 435 The outer shell of the New Haven's freight locomotive removed, showing the working parts of the machine 435 _The railroad is a monster. His feet are dipped into the navigable seas, and his many arms reach into the uplands. His fingers clutch the treasures of the hills--coal, iron, timber--all the wealth of Mother Earth. His busy hands touch the broad prairies of corn, wheat, fruits--the yearly produce of the land. With ceaseless activity he brings the raw material that it may be made into the finished. He centralizes industry. He fills the ships that sail the seas. He brings the remote town in quick touch with the busy city. He stimulates life. He makes life._ _His arms stretch through the towns and over the land. His steel muscles reach across great rivers and deep valleys, his tireless hands have long since burrowed their way through God's eternal hills. He is here, there, everywhere. His great life is part and parcel of the great life of the nation._ _He reaches an arm into an unknown country, and it is known! Great tracts of land that were untraversed become farms; hillsides yield up their mineral treasure; a busy town springs into life where there was no habitation of man a little time before, and the town becomes a city. Commerce is born. The railroad bids death and stagnation begone. It creates. It reaches forth with its life, and life is born._ _The railroad is life itself!_ THE MODERN RAILROAD CHAPTER I THE RAILROADS AND THEIR BEGINNINGS TWO GREAT GROUPS OF RAILROADS; EAST TO WEST, AND NORTH TO SOUTH--SOME OF THE GIANT ROADS--CANALS--DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY'S NATURAL RESOURCES--RAILROAD PROJECTS--LOCOMOTIVES IMPORTED--FIRST LOCOMOTIVE OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURE--OPPOSITION OF CANAL-OWNERS TO RAILROADS-- DEVELOPMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA'S ANTHRACITE MINES--THE MERGING OF SMALL LINES INTO SYSTEMS. Fifteen or twenty great railroad systems are the overland carriers of the United States. Measured by corporations, known by a vast variety of differing names, there are many, many more than these. But this great number is reduced, through common ownership or through a common purpose in operation, to less than a score of transportation organisms, each with its own field, its own purposes, and its own ambitions.