But it is in the further development of the world's railways that we
must mainly look in the future, as in the past, for the support of our
trade. In India the railway between Calcutta and Bombay was only
completed in 1870, and at the present time, with a population of
250,000,000, it has less than 10,000 miles of railway, while the
United States, with only 50,000,000, possesses more than 100,000
miles. In other words, the United States have fifty times as many
miles of railway in relation to the population as India. Even Russia
in Europe has 14,000 miles, or, in relation to its population, nearly
five times as great a mileage as our Indian Empire; and the existing
Indian railways are so successful pecuniarily, and give such promise
of contributing to the wealth of the Indian people--or perhaps it
would be more just to say, of rescuing them from their present state
of poverty and depression--that it should be the aim of those who are
responsible for the well-being of our great dependency to give to its
railways the utmost and most rapid development.
As to the United States themselves, I look upon their railways as a
little more than the main arteries from which an indefinitely large
circulating system will branch out. Besides these countries I need
only allude to the Dominion of Canada, whose vast territory bids fair
to rival that of the United States in agricultural importance, to our
Australian colonies, to Brazil, and other countries in which railways
are still comparatively in their infancy, to show that, quite apart
from the renewal of existing lines, the world's manufacture of rails
has an enormous future before it.