The process of building up the leading systems was in the beginning a process of combining the local roads into important trunk lines.

Such combinations were enormously profitable, because the business of the consolidated roads increased in a much larger proportion than did the cost of financing end operating the larger mileage; and after the combinations were made the owners of the consolidated road were precisely in the position of men who had obtained a certain strategic advantage in supplying a necessary service to their fellow-countrymen.

Their terminals, rights of way, and machinery could not be duplicated except at an increased cost, and their owners were in a position necessarily to benefit from the growth of the country in industry and population.

No doubt their economic position was in certain respects precarious.

They did not escape the necessity, to which other American business enterprises had to submit, of fighting for a sufficient share of the spoils.