r of employes per mile, to the much shorter haul, to the
higher price of their fuel, to the superiority of their roadbed and the
greater security of their passengers. Moreover, whether the railroads of
a country are profitable or not cannot be ascertained by merely
comparing miles of road with square miles of territory and number of
inhabitants. British India has a population of 275,000,000 and only
about 16,000 miles of railroad, and yet her roads are scarcely as
profitable as our own. China has 3,000,000 and Asia has about 4,000,000
people to every mile of railroad, but so far their railroads have proved
no bonanza. The question is not how many people there are to each mile
of railroad, but rather to what extent the railroad is used by the
people. The amount of freight carried annually by the railways of the
United States is about 680,000,000 tons, or 85,000,000,000 ton miles,
and the number of passengers carried is about 535,000,000, representing
an aggregate of travel of nearly 13,000,000,000 miles. This shows an
average of 1,300 tons of freight carried one mile, and 200 miles
traveled annually for each inhabitant of the nation, and a greater use
of railway facilities than that of any other country in the world. The
income of the railroads per capita is $17 in the United States, $11 in
the United Kingdom, $5 in Germany, $4 in France, and still less in
Italy, Austria and Russia. The average freight haul is 63 miles in
Europe and 120 miles in the United States; the average passenger haul 15
miles in Europe and 24 miles in the United States. It has already been
shown that the average earnings per train mile are also larger here than
there. Roell's Encyclopedia of Railroads for 1892 shows that in France
the average rate for all traffic for the year 1888 was for passengers
1.45 cents per mile, and for freight 1.14 cents per ton per kilometer,
and that the nation had also received by way of free or reduced rates on
Government business during that year benefits to the amount of
$59,000,000. Large reductions have been made during the past year in
passenger rates.

The General indulges in making the stereotyped railroad charge that "the
legislatures of several of the States have enacted laws to effect a
reduction of rates, the literal obedience to some of which would amount
to the practical confiscation of railway property."

The General or any of his friends cannot name a road that was ever
confiscated by legislation, or e