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760 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Mar. 9
fate of cities and of States under modern systems of railway
improvements depends upon combining such organizations,
as will throw through the control and power of unit-lines,
into their borders the business of other great centres, and re-
gions of trade and production, the Baltimore and Ohio Com-
pany has continuously pursued these vital objects, and its com-
binations now reach, under direct and closely co-operative
management, the most important centres of business in the
south, in the southwest, in the west, and the northwest.
It has in Maryland, but 137 8-10 miles of its main stem, and
including the Washington Branch, the Metropolitan Branch,
and the Washington county Branch, (which is a leased line,)
the Frederick Branch, and its smaller extensions, it has but
245 miles in Maryland, whilst in the District of Columbia, in
Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois, it has 1,250 miles of important lines, the operating
of which is most essential to the continued prosperity and
progress of the City of Baltimore. Its surplus earnings, in-
stead of being divided among the Stockholders, have been in-
vested in connecting lines largely for the benefit of the State,
and our chief commercial city. Certainly the usefulness ;
the effectiveness: and the vast jesults of this system are re-
cognised as of immense importance to our commonwealth,
and the opulence and population of the State have been thus
enormously increased. It has made investments in Ocean
Steamships, for the purpose of organizing a system of ocean
transportation without which no modern city can be great.
It has gone into these investments when it was impossible to
induce cepitalists to inaugurate the enterprise with the expec-
tation of losses, but with the certainly not unworthy object
of securing great beneficial results. It thus made large
loesca, but it has the satisfaction to gee established extensive
and first class lines of steamships between Baltimore and
leading European and other foreign ports. It has built hotels
on its road because it could induce no individual enterprise
to provide the needed accommodations for the public, and to
make our State and our line attractive in this particular, and
such expenditures whilst resulting in direct pecuniary losses
yet have largely aided the general interests.
After pressing for years upon private enterprise the build-
ing of elevators and tendering land without cost to parties
to erect such structures, it finally built elevators, which are
tending to make the great port of Maryland a leading one
for the export of grain on the Atlantic. It has built steam-
ship piers at large cost in deep water for the purpose of offer-
ing the most economical facilities for the interchange of bu-
siness at our port between all parts of this country and Eu-
rope, the West Indies and South America, and it furnishes
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