ithin the time limit,
to their destination. I started for Washington within five minutes, by
the quickest possible route, preparing the papers on the train. I had to
change cars five times between Cairo and Washington, and seven times
more between Washington and Memphis. All that will presently be changed.
In our conference the other day with the railroad men, I suggested
something to the car builder, George M. Pullman, which will some day
bear fruit. At present every railroad runs its own sleeping cars and
runs them at a loss. Some of them have quit running them because they
lost money. The trouble is that the passenger must get up in the middle
of the night and transfer from one sleeping car to another. Therefore he
takes no sleeping car. I have suggested to the car builder, Pullman,
that he shall take the sleeping car service into his own hands and run
his cars through from every western to every eastern city without
change, he paying the railroads for hauling his cars and he collecting
the revenue that men will be willing to pay for the comfort of through
transportation.

"Now, all this is merely a beginning. The railroads of this country,
together with the new ones now building, will presently be consolidated
into great systems. Transportation, both as to freight and as to
passengers, is now done at retail, and the cost is enormous. It will,
after a while, be done at wholesale, and at a proportionate reduction in
cost.

"Now the thought that is in my mind is this: We have got to build this
great nation anew upon lines marked out by the events of the last few
years. The war has been costly--enormously costly. It has saddled the
country with a debt of about three billions of dollars, besides the
incalculable waste. But it has awakened a great national self
consciousness which will speedily pay off the debt, and, incidentally,
develop the resources of the country in a way never dreamed of before.
Those resources, so far as they are undeveloped, or only partially
developed, lie mainly in the West and South. It is our duty to develop
them.

"The government is building a railroad to the Pacific coast. That, when
it is done, will annex a vast and singularly fruitful country to the
Union. The fertility of the soil there, and the favorable climatic
conditions, promise results that must presently astonish mankind. But in
the meanwhile it is our part of the nation-building work to develop the
resources of what we now call