They were not built, as in most European states,
under national supervision and regulation, or according to a general
plan which prevented unnecessary competition. Their routes and their
methods were due almost entirely to private enterprise and to local
economic necessities. They originated in local lines radiating from
large cities; and only very slowly did their organization come to
correspond with the great national routes of trade. The process of
building up the leading systems was in the beginning a process of
combining the local roads into important trunk lines. Such combinations
were enormously profitable, because the business of the consolidated
roads increased in a much larger proportion than did the cost of
financing end operating the larger mileage; and after the combinations
were made the owners of the consolidated road were precisely in the
position of men who had obtained a certain strategic advantage in
supplying a necessary service to their fellow-countrymen. Their
terminals, rights of way, and machinery could not be duplicated except
at an increased cost, and their owners were in a position necessarily to
benefit from the growth of the country in industry and population.
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