And," continued Senator Hanway, quoting from one of his Senate speeches, lifting his voice the while, and falling into a fine declamatory pose, "he who safeguards the railroads, safeguards his country.

Patriotism cannot count the debt the nation owes the railroads.
Had it not been for the knitting together of the country by the railroads, bringing into closer touch with one another the West and the East, the South and the North--the wiping out of sectionalism--the annihilation of special interests by making all interests general--all done by the railroads, sir!--this country, broken across the knee of mountain ranges and sawed into regions by great rivers, would ere this have been frittered into fragments; and where we have now the glorious United States--a free and unified people--Europe, who envies as well as fears us, would be gratified by the spectacle of four and perhaps a half dozen different and differing countries, each alien and, doubtless, each hostile to the others." Senator Hanway had reached the door.

"And that this condition of disseverment does not exist," cried he, as he bowed with final grace to Mr.Gwynn, who approved stonily, "is due to you, sir; and to gentlemen like you; and to those railways which, like the Anaconda Airline, form the ties that bind us safe against such dismembering possibilities and give us, for war or for peace, absolute coherency as a commonwealth.".