Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: RAILROAD AS THE MASTER?MAN AS THE SERVANT. [January 1st, 1898.] BACK in the first decades of this century the building of great works of internal communication, of common paths of trade and commerce to be open to the use of all men alike was undertaken under the guiding hand of the national government. The building of roads to promote the interchange of the products of men’s labor and so weld together the people of the east and west with bands of common interest was judged to be a function rightly falling to the national government, and so we had extensive plans of internal improvement mapped out by the United States Government, we had some great post roads built, we had many other roads and many canals contemplated. The national government was fairly started on the course of supplying our people with ways and means of communication, national roads and waterways that would be open to all men on like terms without preference or prejudice. The opening of these channels of communication on other terms was not dreamed of, the possibility of the ways of communication ever being opened to use on other terms than those of exact equality would have been scouted. But unfortunately the policy of national construction and ownership of the means of internal communication thus so happily and naturally inaugurated was made a party question. So when there came an overturn of parties there came a relaxation in this policy. The national government ceased to push the contemplated works of internal development. And as the nation dropped these works the States took them up. Thus State construction and ownership of the ways and means of communication came to supplant national ownership. We had an era of the building of State roads, of turnpikes and canals. While this construction was under…
