Who  indeed  can  add  up  the  enormous  sum-total  of  the
benefits  conferred  on  humanity  by  railway  commimication  ?  A
celebrated  English  statesman  has  said, '  railways  have  rendered
more  services  and  received  less  gratitude  than  any  institution
in  the  land.'  ITieir  great  wealth-creating  power  is  very  in-
adequately realised  by  the  ordinary  public,  which  adapts  itself
so  quickly  and  so  readily  to  every  successfully  improved
appliance,  and  so  rapidly  forgets  past  difficulties,  and  the
means  by  which  they  have  been  removed. This  is  perhaps
more  especially  to  be  remarked  in  the  case  of  steam  locomotion,
seeing  that  many  persons  now  living  could,  if  they  reflected,
correctly  compare  the  old  state  of  things  with  the  new. Speak-
ing of  English  railways,  and  of  some  of  the  ways  in  which  they
advance  the  wealth  and  welfare  of  a  community,  the  author  of
*Our  Iron  Roads  ^  states  in  far  better  words  than  any  the
writer  of  the  present  volume  is  able  to  frame. '  In  their
construction  in  the  United  Kingdom  no  less  a  sum  than
.£831,000,000  of  capital  have  been  authorised  by  Parliament,
and  £746,000,000  have  been  paid  up. It  may  be  true  that
some  of  these  railways  "  do  not  pay,''  in  the  sense  that  they  do
not  give  a  reasonable  dividend,  or  in  some  cases  any  dividend
at  all,  to  the  shareholders  who  have  provided  the  capital,  but
the  poorest  line  that  runs  in  the  poorest  district,  is  of  value  to


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14  PUBLIC  WORKS  OF  INDIA

the  trade,  and  to  the  people  among  whom  it  passes. The  con-
struction of  every  mile  of  railway,  unlike  money  lavished  in
war,  has  at  almost  every  sta^  enriched  somebody,  has  enriched
the  nation  and  the  world. Wealth  employed  on  armies  and
fleets,  or  squandered  in  the  destruction  of  life  and  property,  or
wasted  in  the  luxuries  of  despotic  rulers,  is  unproductive. Not
so  with  railways,  every  pound  of  which  honestly  spent  in  due
time  yields  a  reward. 