Perhaps the railroads are not to be blamed for this decrease in
productivity--a passing phase of our agricultural life, as recent crop
reports show. They are very loudly blamed that they do not carry these
products fast enough or cheaply enough, though, according to a recent
authority, their rates are less on the average than the cost of the French
water traffic.
Nevertheless, their wheels alone have made possible that phenomenal
draining of the riches of the land to the coasts and other shores,
assisting the waters that carry a half-billion tons of soil into the gulf
every year. Perhaps this hurried, panting development has been for the
good of all time, but until recently there has been little or no thought
of that "all time" (as we observed in the policies of land parcelling).
Practically the whole western country has tied itself to a wheel, and so
whatever its happiness and welfare may be, come of or with the wheel. This
territory is capable of self-support; it has still its independent spirit,
bred of the pioneer who lived before the day of wheels; it is responsive
to appeals that stop its restless movement--as the wheel of Ixion when
Orpheus played; but none the less is it an eager, restless, unquiet life,
driven as a wheel, driven by the same hand that urged it into the valley.
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