Excerpt from Over-Production and Commercial Distress

Tories. The result must necessarily be the same with regard to any kind of investment that has been fully subject to competition. Steamships might be expected to be, and as a matter of fact have been, so numerous that their owners have found it difficult to obtain profitable employment for them. Hotels and apartment houses have been built in excess of the demands of the public. With regard to rail roads, the case might be expected to be, and in fact has been, somewhat different. So far as an excessive investment in railroads has led to the building of new roads in new terri tories, which were not prepared to support them, the only mis chief has resulted to the persons who have invested in those particular roads, while the railroads previously existing have been benefited through the increased business thereby brought to them, and the people in the newly developed territory have been helped by their new facilities for transportation. If, in deed, the persons who seek to invest their funds in new rail roads, build parallel or competing lines, the same results must be developed as in the case of factories, and the new investor will not only get no profits on his own investment, but will also destroy the profits of investments previously made by others. All this, again, corresponds to what we have seen. Comparatively little mischief to the general prosperity has been caused by the building of such roads as the Northern Pacific, which, though for the time a poor investment for its projectors, brought new business to connecting roads, and gave development and prosperity to an immense territory. On the other hand, the investment of capital in the West Shore Railroad not only proved disastrous to those who built that road, but also destroyed for the time the profits that had before been derived from the millions invested in the New York Cen tral. So also the multiplication of trunk lines across the country, in excess of the needs of business, has led to a com.

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