way, at its average rate last year, will move the one-ton load 27.2 miles. For the cost of a two-cent postage-stamp it will move a ton about two and a quarter miles. For the cost of ten pounds of ten-penny nails it will move a ton 44 miles; for the price of a No. 2 Ames shovel, 166 miles; for the money it takes to buy a good milk-pail, 138 miles; and for the price of an ordinary lantern-globe, 16 miles.
In prosperous times the railroad returns very promptly to the community a large proportion of all the money it collects, in paying for labor and material. About 30,000 men are employed on the Northern Pacific, at an annual payroll expense for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1911, of about $23,000,000. Materials costing almost $15,500,000 were purchased during the same year. Transactions are large, and it takes a great many passengers and a great many tons of freight to pay the bills. For example, coal burned by the Northern Pacific during the year ending June 30, 1911, cost $6,858,764, and would have kept warm, during the same period, 800,000 persons,—more
