The Central In 1846

TUe Michigan Central was finished to Kalamazoo early in 1846. The correspondence of the Chicago News Record contains some interesting historica! f acts f rom which the following are extracted: Up to this time the Michigan Central railroad belonged to the state of Michigan and was a part of the vast system of internal improvements conceived by the early legislators of the state, for the purpose of making the wilderness as accessible as the flourishing cities of a long-settled country, and which brought the state to a'verge of bankrupcy. Owing to the pending financial crisis eastern capitalists were interested in a plan to purchase the road from the state, and the ternas of sale required that the state should complete the road through to Lake Michigan. The price to be paid for the line was $2,000,000. From Kalamazoo westward the road was rapidly constructed, and vast tracts of rich lands, heretofore inaccessible, were opened up. Before the advent of this new commercial artery the duets of the soil in this región had practieally no outlet. There was, of course, an outlet by meansof ox-teams and flat-boats and some old residents still live to relate how they transported their grain and other producta forty and fifty miles over almost impassable roads, consuming nearly a week for the round trip and returning with wagons loaded with the necessaries and comforts of life for themselves and their neighbors. Before the railroad came Kalamazoo river had been used as a commercial highway, flatboats being loaded and poled down the river to Saugatuek and Lake Michigan, the cargoes to be thence carried in ships around the chain of great lakes to eastern markets. As a comparison between those "good old days" and the present time it is noted that a single train will now carry more grain than was then raised heie in a year, while the present passenger trafile of a single week almost equals the entire population of the state of Michigan in 1S46. The total receipts of the Michigan Central railroad in December. 1844 were Wit $S,641.23 and in December', 1S45, $17,127.64. The total earnings of the road for the year ending May 1, 1848, were $36,49S, and the road then owned a little more than 140 miles of track. In 1892 the road earned $15,908,292.87. Today the road has 9,500 employees, who receive in wage3 $",- 200,000 annually. It has 1,840 miles cf track, including the main line and branches, touching almost every principal town in the state. The roadbed and equipment of the road are now among the finest in the world.