may certainly go on. If the whole shall be taken, the fund created by the five dollar advances will be used to begin the work; and as it progresses, additional calls will be made until it is finished. It is believed it can be completed in about three years. Up to its completion, the shareholders will have lost the use of their money, from the times of the respective advances. The questions occur, ``What will the road be worth when completed?'' ``How will it pay for the use of the money---how return the principal?'' Many who have already subscribed, and who therefore, if they deceive others also deceive themselves, are satisfied that the road can be built for something less than seven hundred thousand dollars. No actual survey has been made; but a good engineer, well acquainted with the route, and the subject, estimates it at this. Now, if the nett income shall be seven or eight---say eight---per cent per annum upon this sum, in the aggregate $56,000, the stock will be very good; and the shareholder who does not wish to have money out at eight per cent. interest, can readily sell at par, or above it, and so have a return of his principal.
But will the road nett $56,000 a year? Will it make repairs, bear expenses, and still leave this much? These are questions which no one can, beforehand, answer with precise accuracy. The more difficult it is to make a road at first, the more difficult it is to keep [it] in repair, and vice versa; so that the expenses and cost of repairs of railroads, have been found very nearly uniform at about ten per cent. per annum on the capital expended in building them. This, on our road, would be $70,000 a year. Now, if we can insure a gross income of the $56,000 and the $70,000 together; that is, $126,000---all is safe.
This gross income must, of course, depend upon the amount of business done upon the road. We suppose it is quite fair to assume that all the transportation now done, directly and indirectly, between Saint Louis and Springfield, together with its increase, will be done upon the road when completed. We learn it as an unquestionable fact, that the merchants of Springfield now pay, annually, for carrying goods from Saint Louis to Springfield, something more than $22,000. This being so, how much does the country produce, that pays for these goods, cost in carriage from Springfield to Saint Louis? Certainly more, in the same proportion as the produce weighs more than the goods. But what is this proportion? One of our largest dealers, who has, at our request, made an estimate, and has taken some pains to be accurate, assures us that the average of country produce is five times as heavy as the average of the articles in his business, in proportion to value. His business, too, is exclusively