Railways And Civilisation.

It is as true to-day as it always has been, that there is plenty of room at the top for development in any direction. The writer's own business, and the activities of all those with whom he is acquainted are capable of indefinite expansion, and every railway system in the world, strictly speaking, is far away from being fully developed.

Railways are only 100 years old. Yet from the moment the first train ran on the little Liverpool-Manchester line no other branch of human activities was more powerfully pushed forward and developed than the “iron tracks,” and it would be only right to say that this moment marked the start of real civilisation. Railways proved to be the dominant factors in industrial development of each and every country in the world. Where there are transport facilities there must be development. Every plan, every scheme of national economic and industrial development, must start with transport and end with transport.