"Narrow-Gauge" Collapse.
Many of my readers remember with what hopes the narrow-gauge railroads were built. They would be much less expensive than the standard gauge. Less land would be required, the ties would be shorter and lighter, cars would be smaller and lighter, engines would not be so heavy and would consume less coal, freight charges would therefore be less, fares would be less, and dividends would be greater. These arguments, and others like them, led to the building in all the world of nearly 165,000 miles of narrow-gauge railroads.
And now almost all of this enormous amount of work must be done over, and most of the narrow-gauge roads must be transformed, at vast cost, into standard gauge. Many of them have already been so converted. The cost in Japan alone of changing 5000 miles of narrow gauge into standard gauge is estimated at $150,000,000.
For all the arguments in favor of narrow-gauge roads have been proved fallacious. They wear out rapidly, travel upon them is a torture to the flesh, freights are disappointingly high, and returns to investors are disappointingly low. In Argentina, for example, the net earnings of the narrow-gauge roads are only about half as much upon the capital invested as the earnings of the far more heavily capitalized standard-gauge roads.
So we have come to speak of "narrow-gauge" men; men, that is, whose lives are not built upon broad and substantial lines. A crank is a narrow-gauge man; and one-ideaed men, men of small outlook and feeble imagination, of little culture, of restricted sympathies—all these are narrow-gauge men.
And they are all failures. They do not pay. They are not expensive luxuries, for they are anything but luxuries, though they are indeed expensive. And unfortunately it is not so easy to convert them into broad gauge as it is to convert the railroad.
But the broad-gauge men—how we all delight in them! They are men of liberal minds, of wide experience, the co-operative instinct. They do not form little cliques and parties by themselves on the "holier than thou" principle. They work with others and get work out of others. They take broad views. They understand many things. They believe in the world and the people in it. They are countrywide and cosmopolitan. They carry heavy substantial rolling-stock that lasts for many years. They pay back dividends in the confidence and esteem of the people.
It is easier—at the start—to be narrow gauge than broad gauge; but it is harder in the end.