“Our American railroads were, not a very long time since, owned largely outside the United States, but during the world’s panic that occurred in 1893, our British, German and Dutch friends discovered the necessity of selling something, and the only things in their strong boxes that they could sell without too much sacrifice were their American securities. They dumped them on the American market; and, notwithstanding the financial strain and the depression from which we were suffering, our American financiers mustered pluck, courage and money enough to buy them. They were bought at bargain prices. The advance in them has been stupendous, but it is worth a great deal to feel that we are not only blessed with the most improved and cheapest transportation in the world, but that our railroads are owned by our own people. The value of the railroads of the United States amounts to over one-fifth of the total wealth of the country.” Another master in transportation,[61] in a public address delivered in 1902, gave yet further details in the vivid story of the extension of the iron trails of America: “While the railroads may have to answer for many mistakes of judgment or of intent,” said he, “on the whole the result has been to create the most effective, useful, and by far the cheapest system of land transportation in the world. In England the average amount paid by the shipper for moving a ton of freight one hundred miles is two dollars and thirty-five cents; in France, two dollars and ten cents; in Austria, a dollar and ninety cents; in Germany, where most of the railroads are owned and operated by the government, a dollar and eighty-four cents; in Russia, also under government ownership, where the shipments are carried under conditions more nearly similar to our own than any other country as respects long haul, a dollar and seventy cents. In the United States the average cost is seventy-three cents, or less than forty per cent. of the average cost in Europe.” From the above comparisons this captain of transportation concludes that the railroad industries of this country are in a flourishing condition and that they should not be interfered with. Yet he concludes his comment with words that contain a corollary inconsistent with his earlier attitude, as we may later have occasion to note. He says: “For the first time in the history of this country thousands of our farmers are seeking homes in the Canadian Northwest, owing to the cheap lands offered in that country, and to the difficulty of securing such lands in the United Slates.” Earlier in the same address there is this epigrammatic statement: “Land without population is a wilderness; population without land is a mob.” If our Western Americans are leaving the flag of a republican government to seek land elsewhere, is not the inference fair that they do so because they have become a population without land? If this be true, assuredly it is the work of the iron trails.