In the United States horse tramways, the predecessors of railways, were in use as early as 1807, when one was put in operation along Beacon Street, in Bos ton, for passenger service. The first railway on which a steam locomotive was utilized was laid in Pennsylvania, from Carbondale to Honesdale, a distance of sixteen miles, built by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Co., in 1829, when a loco motive for use on the road was imported from England. The first railway built in the United States especially for the purpose of steam traffic was the one be gun in South Carolina, in 1830. An other road was built by the Baltimore and Ohio Railway Co., from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills, Md., a distance of fifteen miles, being finished in 1830.
As in England, so in the United States there now began an era of railway con struction which spread all over the coun try, with even more revolutionary effects in this country than in England. Lines were pushed out into howling wilder nesses, not to accommodate an existing population and industry, as was the case in England, but for the definite purpose of developing population and industry in the future. Isolated settlements of pio neers suddenly found themselves facing the possibility of marketing their farm produce in the big communities near the seacoast and along the waterways, and extended their agricultural enterprises accordingly. Land hitherto valueless on account of its distance from civilization suddenly acquired a growing potential value, for railway transportation would bring its products within easy reach of the centers of population. The imagina tion of the more ambitious elements of the people were inflamed with these pros pects, and a general migratory movement of the people began westward, followed by the railroads, sometimes actually pre ceded by them. The coal mines, too, suddenly found the whole populated part of the country thrown open to them as a market, and the coal industry began to experience a tremendous stimulus. With the possibility of receiving coal, small manufactories began springing up all over the Eastern States, along the lines of the newly built railways. It was the beginning of the period of big and intensive enterprise.
Ever farther and farther westward pushed the railways. In 1852 Chicago was reached, and two years later the Mississippi river was in railway com munication with the East. The produce of the big Mississippi Valley, which hitherto must be shipped down the river to New Orleans, now found a quicker channel to the markets of the world directly eastward. It was as though
river steamboats, hitherto the only means of freight transportation on a large scale, had suddenly found it pos sible to sail over land as well as water, regardless of the devious paths of the waterways.
During the ten years ending with 1840 nearly 3,000 miles of tracks were laid. During the ten years following, ending with 1850, over 6,000 miles were laid, and at the end of the ten years following there were over 30,000 miles of track laid in the country.
The Civil War, naturally, checked the further development of railway enter prise for five years, but with the close of hostilities it was continued more ener getically than ever. Railway lines were now pushed out into the great broad, fertile prairies, and where only a few years before buffaloes and Indians had roamed undisturbed, vast grain fields be gan to appear. Man power being in sufficient, machinery was invented to work these broad stretches of rich agri cultural lands, and the reaper and har vester appeared.
On May 10, 1869, the last spike was driven which fastened down to the sleep ers the last rail necessary to complete the railway connection between the Pa cific Coast and the Atlantic Seaboard. Now the rich fruit country W. of the Rockies was thrown open to the East and to Europe. The political significance of this achievement was no less important than its economic aspect, for without railway connection and the tremendous commerce which was to develop between East and West, it is highly improbable that the United States would have re mained united under one Federal Union. A broad wilderness would have separated the two coast regions and divided their political interests, and each would have naturally followed its own course. Without railway communication so broad an area under the jurisdiction of one government would be inconceivable on a democratic basis.
Until 1890 the building of railways in the United States developed at a rate much faster than the rate of increase of the population. The building was being (lone on the prospects for the future. Then, gradually, there came a slowing down. The following table shows the rate of railway construction in the United States by decades: In 1918 the total mileage of railways had reached the total of 253,529, but since then there has been a decrease, rather than an increase, construction having come practically to a standstill since the beginning of the war with Ger many.