The first ten years of the Southern Railway system under the Morgan control were practically years of rebuilding and construction. While after ten years of work the main system still radiated through most of the territory already occupied in a crude way in 1894, yet it had acquired a large number of feeders and smaller railroads in other sections. The Mobile and Ohio, operating with its branches about one thousand miles from Mobile to St. Louis, Missouri; the Georgia Southern and Florida, furnishing an important connection from the main system to various points in the State of Florida; the Alabama Great Southern, operating in and near the Birmingham district of Alabama--all these properties were molded into the system during these years. The system was then rounded out toward the North and consolidated through joint control, with the Louisville and Nashville, of the Chicago, Indianapolis and Louisville Railroad, which operated lines northward into Ohio and Illinois and on to Chicago. Thus, with the lines of the Queen and Crescent route running southward from Cincinnati to New Orleans, the system secured a direct through line from its various southern points to the shores of the Great Lakes. In addition to these developments, the management of the Southern Railway system arranged direct connection with Washington through the joint acquisition with other lines of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac; it made traffic arrangements with the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore and Ohio systems to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York; and it also developed close alliances with the coastwise steamships plying northward from various Southern points. In the reorganization of 1894 the Central of Georgia Railway system was cut off and separately reorganized, although it remained under the control of Morgan for a number of years. Finally in 1907 Morgan sold his Georgia properties to Charles W. Morse. They subsequently passed to Edward H. Harriman, who afterwards merged them into the Illinois Central system, under which control they have since remained. As compared with the old Richmond Terminal aggregation with its broken-down rails and roadbed, poor equipment, and miserable service, the modern Southern Railway system shows startling changes. The Southern States have grown enormously in population and wealth during the last generation; the industrial activities of the South at the present time are elements of large importance to the country as a whole. Cities have vastly increased in population; new towns and manufacturing districts have been built up; and at the present there is scarcely a mile of unprofitable railroad in the entire 9000 miles under operation. In recent years large soft coal deposits have been discovered and developed on many of the branch lines, and today the coal tonnage of the Southern Railway is exceeding the relatively unstable lumber tonnage of two or three decades ago. CHAPTER XI. THE LIFE WORK OF EDWARD H. HARRIMAN