The figures relating to the Delaware and Maryland Railway and to the Baltimore and Port Deposit road, are not included in this table. They were chiefly Pennsylvania enterprises and the statistics dealing with them are embraced in the records of Pennsylvania.

APPENDIX B

The following tables-relating to the ninety-five railways listed in Appendix A-are designed to throw some light on the relationship between the physical growth, capitalization, actual construction cost and net earnings of the American railroad system during the first thirty years of its existence. The figures used are also extracted from Poor's

"History."

A study of the numerical statements here given shows a number of interesting conditions. The "total cost,' as set forth for each year summarized, embraces the total cost of both construction and equipment for all railways in the state under consideration up to the year named. The "total capital" or "total liabilities" similarly represents the entire capital or liabilities of all the roads of the state up to the year in question. It will be observed that, as a general rule, the debts and construction expenditures of early American railways were substantially equal. In other words, their physical valuations, or costs of reproduction, were about equal to their liabilities. They had about a dollar's worth of tangible physical property for every dollar of indebtedness. The total capital or liabilities of all the railroads in the eleven states here reviewed was, in 1859, $506,486,841. At the same date the amount which had been expended in building and equipping those same roads was $484,991,861. More than 95.7 per cent. of the liabilities of those early roads was represented and balanced by physical property.

This favorable showing, moreover, was made in spite of the fact that in Pennsylvania and New York the aggregate liabilities of the railways in those states then exceeded their cost by about $23,000,000. In those two commonwealths, at the time, capital stock for some new enterprises had been issued, as usual, in advance of actual construction. If New York and Pennsylvania be omitted from the tabulation it will be found that in six of the nine remaining states-New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland-the physical cost of the railways exceeded their liabilities in 1859, and if the figures for all nine states be combined it will be seen that $213,724,163 had been expended in railway construction and equipment, whereas the aggregate railroad liabilities or capital of the same nine states amounted to only $211,613,127.

It often happened, of necessity, that the railroad liabilities in some states exceeded the total amount expended for construction up to the same year, since building could not commence until the roads were au

thorized to borrow in order to undertake projected work. Perhaps the most noticeable instance of this sort is to be found in the Maryland conditions between 1835 and 1850. Between those years the tangible property of the new Maryland roads lagged behind their liabilities by millions of dollars, but by 1855 additional construction had almost balanced the account, and in 1859 the amount expended in the creation of physical property had passed the debt figures.

The inclusion of figures showing net earnings for each year named, and of others indicating the total mileage existing in each year named, will enable the student to calculate average costs per mile of equipped railway and the average percentage of net earnings. The tables follow: