In the United States three new methods of transportation made their appearance at almost the same time - the steamboat, the canal boat, and the rail car.

The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad.

The construction of extensive railways, however, and particularly the consolidation of small, experimental lines into large systems, dates from the days of the discovery of gold in California.

Many of the railroad evils were inherent in the situation; they were explained by the fact that both managers and public were dealing with a new agency whose laws they did not completely understand.

The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion as was the ship.

The public conviction that a railroad linking the West and the East was an absolute necessity became so pronounced after the gold discoveries of ’49 that Congress passed an act in 1853 providing for a survey of several lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

The financial history of the Baltimore and Ohio since the close of the nineteenth century is interesting chiefly in connection with changes in the control of the property.

Consequently many large railroad systems of heavy capitalization bid fair to run into difficulties on the first serious falling off in general business.

When the scheme for the construction of a railroad from Baltimore to the waters of the Ohio River first began to take form, the United States had barely emerged from the Revolutionary period.

In the decade before the Civil War various north and south lines of railway were projected and some of these were assisted by grants of land from the Federal Government.