The Railway Problem: Address of Mr. Franklin B. Gowen, on the Position Which the City of Philadelphia Should Occupy to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to Its Transportation Lines, and to the Railway Problem of the Day (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Railway Problem: Address of Mr. Franklin B. Gowen, on the Position Which the City of Philadelphia Should Occupy to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to Its Transportation Lines, and to the Railway Problem of the Day

The State of Pennsylvania is a great empire. It has an area equal to that of England and Wales together. It has coal fields within its borders of very nearly twice the extent Of all that England and Wales put together 0 tain. It has iron wealth and iron resources double, aye, treble those of all England and Wales together. It has forests which are to-day almost as productive as they were. Fifty years ago. It has broad areas of farm land, the richest that ever God's sun shone upon. Over and be yond all this, it has a great population of God-fearing, law-abiding citizens, a population collected in the New World, and embracing all the great races of the Old World. The Saxon and the. Celt, the Teuton and the Gaul, have here united to mingle their blood and to produce one common stock that may be looked upon with pride as the best specimen Of the best type of that distinctive American race which is to' become the glory Of the Western Hemi sphere. [applause] I can say, truly, that. The City of Philadelphia. Has neglected its State; that while the wealth, the ability, and the enterprise Of this City have been directed beyond the State to secure the commerce of the West, the city of New York has come in through the Side door, and taken away from us the great and growing commerce of Pennsylvania. It is not alone the commerce of the West that has built up New York as against the City of Philadelphia, but. While we have been struggling to secure the evanescent. Glory of western commerce, New York City has been built up by the products of the State of Pennsylvania, which her own City has neglected. It was not SO fifty rears ago. The wise men who lived in this City in those early days projected a system Of railway communication intended to place the City of Philadelphia in connectionwith almost every developed portion of the Common wealth. The great Pennsylvania Railroad was projected to the West to connect Pittsburgh with Philadelphia; the Reading Railroad was projected to connect the Schuylkill coal fields with the City Of Philadelphia; the Sunbury and Erie Railway was surveyed in early times for the purpose of connecting the great Lakes and the commerce of those Lakes with the City of Philadelphia, so that the State Of Pennsylvania Should have its port upon the Atlantic and its port upon the Lakes. The North Penn sylvania Railroad was projected for the purpose Of reach ing northward through the mineral lands of the Lehigh V alley up to the coal fields Of the Lehigh and the Wyo ming regions.

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