Excerpt from American Railroads and British Investors The favourable reception accorded to my recent work on American Railroads has induced its London Publishers to suggest to me that I should write another volume of less formidable dimensions, - an abbreviated popular edition, as it were. I have the more readily accepted this proposal, because the scope of the larger book precluded me from entering as fully as was, perhaps, desirable into various matters which are always of great importance, but which recently have been forced still more into the foreground by one or two sensational events. Thus the present book is not precisely a condensed edition of its more bulky predecessor. It deals with railroad conditions and investments in general, whereas the chief object of my earlier effort was to desscribe the history and position of the various companies in particular; and it discusses at length various matters which received only superficial treatment in my other book. The principal of the sensational events to which I have just alluded is, of course, the Reading collapse. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.