TRANSPORTATION. Railways.—The first steam railway in Austria, the Kaiser Ferdinand Nord bahn, 8 miles long, was opened in November, 1837, although a horse railway—the first ever built in Europe—had existed since 1825. The first line was built by a private company, and it was not till 1841 that the Government began to construct railways on its own account. In the meantime, the great prosperity of the country in the early forties, with its consequent abundance of idle capital seeking investment, stimulated the construction of many private lines, and sent up the prices of railway shares on the exchanges. The poor crops of 1845, however, and the com mercial panic of 1846 which followed, made short work of this optimism, and prices tumbled, bringing ruin to many and leaving the railways in a pitiful plight. It was under these circum stances that the Government determined upon the policy of nationalizing the railways, and appropriated over $10,000,000—soon increased to $25,000,000—for buying up the shares of private railway companies; and in less than a year (September, 1847) the Government owned a controlling interest in four of the largest railways of the country—the Hungarian, the Lombardo - Venetian, the Gloggnitz, and the Oedenburg railways. The financial straits in which these railways found themselves forced the Government to pursue to an end the policy it had once begun, and to buy out the roads entirely. By September, 1854, the Government found itself in possession of 1100 miles of rail ways, or practically the entire mileage of Aus tria. In the following year, however, the Gov ernment suddenly reversed its policy, and began to dispose of its acquired lines, and by 1858 the total length of the State lines dwindled down to some 8 miles. This radical change in the rail way policy of the Austrian Government, while partly due to official mismanagement under State control, was mainly caused by the fact that the Government needed a large amount of ready cash. in order to effect a change in its
monetary standard. The following decade was marked by feverish activity in construction, due largely to indiscriminate grants of subventions by the Government to private companies. From 1860 to 1870 the length of private lines in creased from 1815 miles to 3300 miles, while the proportion of subsidized roads increased from 20 per cent. at the close of the fifties to 75 per cent. in 1866. In 1S73 the Austrian Gov ernment, partly influenced by the great drain upon its finances caused by the granting of sub ventions, and partly stimulated by the success of State railway ownership in Germany and in France, made an attempt to return to its for mer policy. As an initial step in that direction, a law Was passed in 1877 conferring on the Government the right to take over, with a few exceptions, all the lines which had been receiv ing a subvention from the Government, or whose payment of interest had been guaranteed by it. The total amount paid out by the Government in the form of subventions and guarantees up to 1876 was about $49,000,000. Since 1877 the State has steadily increased its railways, both by construction and by purohase, so that at the close of 1898 it owned and controlled over 56 per cent. of the total railway mileage of Austria.
The experience of Hungary with its railways has been, in the main, the same as that of Aus tria, with the difference that the Hungarian Government. since the dusglcich of 1867, has pur sued the policy of State ownership and control with greater energy. The first steam railway in Hungary was opened in July, 1846, a line 21 miles long, from Budapest to Waitzen. At the end of 1899 the total length of the railway lines of Hungary was about 10,500 miles, of which nearly 83 per cent. was owned or controlled by the Government. The foregoing table illustrates the growth of railway lines in Austria and Hun gary during the last half century.