ade operation at the earliest possible
moment and with the smallest possible investment of capital the very
essence of American railway building in new territory. Actual earnings
are expected to furnish capital, or a basis for credit, with which to
make good early engineering defects. All this, of course, is but
another way of saying that the criterion of engineering efficiency is
not "perfection," but "good enough." This distinction has placed a
large measure of genuine efficiency to the credit of American
engineers, and it explains why Americans have done many things that
others were unwilling to undertake. It is a great thing to build a fine
railroad in Patagonia, but I am sure we all rejoice that the first
Pacific railroad did not have its terminus in the Nevada sagebrush. The
standard of technical perfection set by the Italian engineer did not
fit the facts. It is not the failure to attain his standard but the
failure to measure up to a well-considered standard of "good enough"
that stands as an indictment against American railway enterprise.

Viewed in historical perspective the business environment of the
pioneer appears to have been dominated by two outstanding facts: one,
seemingly inexhaustible resources; the other, a set of political and
economic doctrines which told him that these resources must be
developed by individual initiative and not by the State. The faster the
resources were developed the more rapidly the nation became
economically independent and economically great, and since they could
not be developed by the State it is not strange that private initiative
was stimulated by offering men great and immediate rewards. These
rewards have encouraged individuals and associations of individuals to
aspire to a quick achievement of great economic power, and their
aspirations have been realized. Such achievements have been a
dominating feature of our business life, and we have regarded them as
an index of national greatness.

Abundance of resources, if it did not make this the best way, at least
made it an obvious way, for the nineteenth century to solve its
business problems. From our vantage point we can see that serious
mistakes were made. When we set the foresight of our fathers against
our own informed and chastened hindsight their methods appear clumsy
and amateurish. But in the main they did solve their problems: they
gave us a settled continent; they gave us transportation and
diversified industry