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In the following pages is presented a number of the more timely papers and addresses of the year 1909 on the present railway situation, together with chapters from two books of current interest on the same subject. As the object of the compilation has been to present in permanent and accessible form information in regard to American railways worthy of more than the ephemeral life of newspaper or pamphlet publication, it has been thought well to accompany the messages of today with a brief glance at the conditions on this continent before the days of railways. Happily for this purpose the first two chapters of Messrs. Cleveland and Powell's "Railroad Promotion and Capitalization in the United States," fresh from the press, afforded the very background needed, and the first report of the engineer of the Pennsylvania Railroad provided the glasses through which the reader can look forward from the small beginnings to what is now known as the greatest railway system on the globe.

After this study of conditions as they were, and of the opportunities that invited the railway pioneers of 1848, it is instructive to read the utterances of the latest of our empire builders, whose foresight and indomitable will anticipated the development of our Pacific Northwest with railway facilities that already lag behind the necessities of its amazing growth.

Of the other addresses and papers it is unnecessary to say more than that they reflect the prevailing sentiments of all thoughtful railway officials respecting conditions of the gravest import to the great industry upon which the entire fabric of our national prosperity and well-being depends. Only the shallowest student of our social, economic and political system can view the persistent attacks upon the American system of transportation without serious alarm for the results. This alarm is the prevailing note of these papers and it comes from men who are at the helm and who see the financial breakers upon which the fierce blasts of political exigency are driving the railways.

The papers by Sir George S. Gibbs and Mr. A. M. Acworth, the leading authorities on British railways, discuss the alternative to wisely regulated railways—nationalization of railways. With a continuance of unwise and burdensome regulation of railways, which strips responsibility of all discretion, nationalization is inevitable.

The Bureau's statistics of American railways for the year ending June 30, 1909, is included in The Railway Library because it affords the latest data not only as to the railways of the United States but for the world.

Acknowledgments are made to the authors and publishers of the various papers, and especially to the publishers of the two works from which important chapters have been extracted by their courteous permission, as well as that of their authors.

If this publication fulfils the purpose of its compilation, it will be succeeded by annual volumes of like character under the same title.

S. T.

Chicago, June 1, 1910.