Of greater importance was the consolidation of large numbers of small lines into the extensive systems which are now familiar. The first roads covered such short distances that numerous bothersome transfers of passengers, freight and baggage from the end of one line to the beginning of the next were necessary on every considerable journey. No fewer than five companies, for example, divided the three hundred miles between Albany and Buffalo, no one of them operating more than seventy-six miles. In 1853, these five with five others were consolidated into the New York Central Railroad. Sixteen years later, in 1869, the Central combined with the Hudson River, and soon afterwards procured substantial control of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, the Rock Island, and the Chicago and Northwestern. As the result of this process a single group of men directed the interests of a system of railroads from New York through Chicago to Omaha. The Pennsylvania Railroad began with a short line from Philadelphia to the Susquehanna River, picked up smaller roads here and there--eventually one hundred and thirty-eight of them, representing two hundred and fifty-six separate corporations--reached out through the Middle West to Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis, and in 1871 controlled over three thousand miles of track, with an annual income of over forty million dollars. In the eighties a railroad war in northern New England started the consolidation of the Boston and Maine system. The beneficial results of the growth of the transportation facilities of the nation were immediate and revolutionary. The fact that average freight rates were cut in halves between 1867 and 1890 helped make possible the economic readjustments after the Civil War to a degree that is not likely to be overestimated. Not only did railway construction supply work for large numbers of laborers and help bring about an ever greater westward migration, but it opened a market for the huge agricultural surplus of the Middle West. Without the market in the cities of the populous Atlantic Coast and Europe, the expansion of the West would have been impossible. Moreover, the railways brought coal, ore, cotton, wool and other raw materials to the Northeast, and thus enabled that section to develop its manufacturing interests. [Illustration: Map of the United States showing railroads in 1890]