AMERICAN RAILWAYS.

West Coast Times, Issue 1342, 11 January 1870, Page 3

AMERICAN RAILWAYS.

(From the Economist.')

According to the New York Commercial Chronicle there will be at least 50,000 miles of railroad in the United States by the end of the current year, an addition 6f no less than 7800 miles to the length of road in use when the year began. The work of railroad construction is in truth now proceeding with astonishing rapidity. On the average, each State of the Union has in progress at least seven or eight enterprises, ,and it would be safe to estimate that the number of separate lines in course of construction throughout the Union is no less than 300. "Many of these," it is added, " are hundreds of miles in length, and probably the average length is not less than fifty miles. This calculation gives a total of 15,000 miles as the length of railroad now in progress, and which will be completed within the next three years." We do not quite like this mode of reckoning, which is very rough, and would have preferred to see a list of the railways being made, wiih notes of the advance made in each case, and an exact statement of the lengih ; but we arc disposed to trust our contemporary as not likely to be wide of the of the mark Even if the figures should be exaggerated a little, the scale of railway construction is still without parallel, and the fact is all important to the development of American industry. If it be the case that the amount of capital and labor b ing put into railwaj's is one of the causes of spasms in the j American money market, the temporary inconvenience will undoubtedly be largely compensated by the remarkable profitableness of Mich wo r ks in a country situated like America. Eailway construction may, ot course, be overdone, but considering the interruption of the war and the extensive tracts which immigration and the natural growth of the population settles anuually, it is difficult to set a limit to the demand. If the Americans would only contrive to urovide .some sort of lethal security for investors in railway property, there are few kinds of enterprise which would ! be more attractive to foreign capitalists thnn that of building the ironways of the Union. The follow ng is the detailed statement which our contemporary gives of the' number of railways under construction in each State — Maine is now building eight railroads; New Hampshire, four; Vermont, six ; Massachusetts, five ; Rhode Island (?) ; Connecticut, seven ; New York, eleven; New Jers-ey, seven; Pennsylvania, thirty-two ; Delaware, five ; Maryland, seven ; West Viruinin, one, the Chesapeake and Ohio, and probably others ; Ohio, at. least a dozen ; Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, each about the same number ; Wisconsin, five ; Minnesota, seven ; loiva and Missouri, each a dozen ! Nebraske, two or three ; Kansas, nine ; Arkansas, three ; Texas, three or four ; Louisiana, four ; Mississippi, three ; Alabama, six; and in the Sou! hern Atlantic States there are at least twenty great works on which progipss is being made with unparalleled rapidity."