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Show A WORK THAT SHOULD BE DONE. The Monroe doctrine is liable at any time to involve the United States in a war with two or three great European powers. The preliminaries , of such a war would cost $100,01)0,000. The very first act of Congress after the declaration of war against Spain was to appropriate $50,000,000 for the President to use as he pleased in preparation for the contest. In that light it would be economy for our Government to guarantee to any American com- fifll pany, bonds to the amount of $25,000 per mile -H to build a railroad from the southern shore of HI tho Caribbean sea to Buenos Ayres with a branch flH to Rio de Janeiro. Such a road, built and owned 'H by Americans, would be a full guarantee against H trouble on account of the Monroe doctrine It Hj would be a good deal more than that. Before H it could be completed it would be tapped by a H road from Peru and another from Chili. That fll would mean that the men of the United States B would dominate the trade of South America H What that would be can be estimated when we Q reflect that it, in area, is more than double that H of the United States, including Alaska, and has H more than 50,0,00,000 of people. The railroad k would open a land where all the thousands of H Americans who might want to try a new field H could find ample room, and where nature has H supplied every natural resource out of which for- jH tunes are made. It may be asked where, in a H buiness way, the United States would get off? H That must be judged in tho light of. the world's H experience. When California was settled by the H men of the United States it was isolated from H the east by a stretch of nearly 2,000 miles of wil- "J derness. Year after year a trans-continental road f S was talked about and dreamed about. At last rffak when a great war was imminent, as a means to H link the west to the east, the Government voted H a mighty land subsidy and guaranteed the pay- H ment of the interest and principal on bonds H enough to build tho road. Then It consented TM that the bonds should be second bonds, that the M companies might sell first-mortgage bonds in ad- H dition. Still the shrewdest financiers east and H west declared that the scheme was altogether H chimerical. One most famous New York banker M said that were it possible to build the road H which he believed was impossible, still were it H finished and in full working order, it would not, M HI i ' ip'fi in fiftv years, have traffic enough to pay for run- Hi ' 'Sill ' uing one trnin a weQ- B s iasil That was less than fifty years ago. Now H Sill there are six of theee lines, and all are doing iB 'l pretty well But for thirty years, though the first I ill1 through road saved the Government millions an- flUJ' nually in transportation, made impossible a M t ' riff dozen Indian wars that would havo been had it B , not been built and added billions of property to B lM lllG assets of tno Government, still through all B Wml those' years every small politician, every petty B j, rj larceny newspaper critic in the land pointed B' IJi ' out the crime of the Government in assessing B I the people to make the road possible. But when B JI tne uon(ls fell duo they were promptly paid, in- B wf terest and principal and the Government was B Jttjfl not out a Penny, and because of the road it was B ilff'! able to sell the lands adjacent to those given B ' j4 j away for vastly more than the whole would have B 't$ilt ' i brought without the road. B &H Russia has built a railroad from the Baltic B I l u ' to the Pacific. It is just about as long as this B yfmi South American road would be. It runs for B ;mjSj 1 thousands of miles through bleak Siberia. She B j"vh expected to run it at a loss for years, but the B k'jjlj ' year after its completion she could not handle K mm the local trafllc offered. H1 'mm i England is building, north and south, a con- B 'iiiOT ' tinental road through Africa and expects H P' through it that the property values of her em- B pire will be doubled in the next half century. H There is no empire-builder to compare with the B locomotive. |
