thirty thousand miles of railroad in the United States in 1860. The Civil War did much to show our people their need of more and better facilities for transportation, and when peace came in 1865, they quickly turned their attention to this problem. The earlier railroads, many of which were short, were joined together to form great railway systems, so that for the first time it became possible to take long journeys without changing cars. New roads were built so rapidly that by 1880 the railway mileage of the country was more than three times as great as it had been when the Civil War began.

across the

The greatest undertaking of the years just after the Civil War was the building of the first railroad across the continent. Ever since the gold seekers rushed to California in 1849 men The first had dreamed of a railroad to join the Pacific Coast to the East. railroad In 1862 Congress encouraged two private companies to under- continent take the gigantic task of building such a road by lending them large sums of money and giving them vast tracts of land along the line of the proposed roadway. The first rails were laid on this road in 1864 and after the war the work progressed more rapidly. One company worked westward up the valley of the Platte River and the other eastward across the Sierra Nevada Mountains. With infinite patience and great skill both com

panies pushed steadily forward across deserts and over the passes of the Rocky Mountains until they met near Ogden, Utah, where the driving of a golden spike in May, 1869, marked the completion of the greatest feat of American engineering in the nineteenth century. In later years other railroads were built across the western mountains until now at least seven lines of steel bind the Far West to the rest of the country.

For some years after the Civil War prices were high, money was plentiful, and men were tempted to engage in all sorts of

The Joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads
This event marked the completion of the first transcontinental railroad system.

1873

this speculation was done with borrowed money, and when the high prices of war times fell, the people found it more and more difficult to pay their debts. The new railroads had been largely built with borrowed money, and at first some of them, especially in the West, did not have income enough to pay the interest on what they owed. Under these circumstances their bonds fell in value, and it became difficult to sell them. The greatest banking house in the country, that of Jay Cooke & Co., held great quantities of such bonds, and when it could not sell them it had to close its doors because it could not pay its debts.

This failure marked the beginning of the disastrous panic of 1873. Soon other banks closed, business houses failed, factories were shut up, and many men were thrown out of work. Railroad building almost ceased during this period of hard times.

As the country recovered from the effects of the panic of 1873 the building of new railroads was resumed, and it has gone steadily forward ever since. Our ninety-three thousand miles Improveof railroad in 1880 had doubled by 1900, and within two decades ments in transporta. about 75,000 additional miles of track had been added to the tion

railroads of the United States. The improvement of railway service has kept pace with the growth in mileage. Parlor, dining, and sleeping cars add to the comfort of travel, and the air-brake and other inventions of George Westinghouse have greatly increased the safety of fast trains. The refrigerator car makes it possible to send vegetables, fruit, meat, and other perishable products long distances to market. The work of the railroads in handling the bulk of the enormous inland commerce of our country is supplemented by coastwise ships which ply from port to port, by vessels which carry vast quantities of ore,