Railroad Bonds [pp. 465-466]

RAILROAD BONDS.
465
furnaces, squeezers, and muck rolls of the rolling-mills. There is a third division of forges which use either trip or steam-hammers for turning bloomed and
rolled iron into various shapes for mechanical purposes-engine cranks and
shafts, car axles, &c.
Rolling-mills (commonly with nail factories attached) are divided into rail.
road and merchant mills. The principal railroad mills in the United States
are in the following table, with their make in 1856:
Bay State, Boston....................................... 17,871
Rensselaer, Troy....................................... 13,5612
Trenton, New Jersey...............................about 13,000
Phoenix, Pennsylvania................................... 18,592
Pottsville "................................. 3,021
La,ekawana "................................... 11,388
Rough and Ready,,Danville, Pennsylvania................. 5,259
Montour, "............. 17,538
Safe Harbor, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania............... 7,347
Mt. Savage, Maryland................................... 7,159
Cambria, Pennsylvania................................... 7,533
Brady's Bend, Western Pennsylvania....................... 13,206
Washington, Wheeling, Virginia... 2,355
MeNickle, Covington, Kentucky.......................... 1,976
Railroad Mill, Cleveland, Ohio............................, 800
Newburg Mill, "............................ 000
Wyandotte, near Detroit................................. 6,000
147,507
The Fairmount, at Phliladeiphia, has been recently adapted to rolling railroad iron; and the Palo Alto, at Pottsville, rolled about 1,000 tons in 1856. The
Newburg mill commenced making rails late in 1857. Most of these mills are
now stopped, and a number to be erected in the West, at Indianapolis, Chicago,
St Louis, &c., will be obliged to wait for better times. The Webtern mills
chiefly reroll old rails. The extension of this business in tile past four years
can be seen from the following figures:
1. R. Iron made. Imported. Consumed.
1853....................... 105,000 tons 298,995 403,995
1854....................... 121,000 288,266 409,866
1855....................... 134,000 127,915 261,915
1856....................... 147,507 155,995 303,502
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.
RAILROAD BONDS.
THAT the construction of railroads has been pushed to an inordinate extent
in the United States admits of no doubt, nor that railroads have been made an
instrument for the improvement of other property, and the furthering of other
interests, with very little regard to the interests of the roads themselves. In
order to judge of the mania which has prevailed, we mnay cite the number of
miles, and the cost, in operation at several periods:
Miles. Cost Miles. Cost.
1830........ 41 $1,640,000 1850........ 7,355 $259,200,000
1840........ 2,167 86,680,000 1857........ 26,107 921,117,101
Thus in the last ten years there has been spent in railways $6,l,900,000. Of
this amount in the year 1857 there were built only 1,700 miles, against an
average of 2,350 miles per annum for the preceding six years. This enormous