GIPE-PUNE-OIIOI2 - DSpace@GIPE

THE RAILWAY INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE OF INDIA 213
In comparison with Italy India's position is not so
unfavourable. In 1870 Italy had 26,800,000 inhabitants
and 5,820 km of railways, i.e., 2·1 km' per 10,000.
We get the following equation:
'I~aly (1870) 2·.1 = 1·1 India (1925) 1'9.
In 1870 Italy18 was thus but a step ahead of India
in 1925. One might remark that in 1868-69 ·ltaly was
in the same condition as India in 1925.
Altogether, then, India in 1925 does not belong to
the •• recent" epoch of moaern· transportation technique
as embodied in railway industrialism so far, at any rate,
as the economic history of Italy, France and Germany
is concemed. In order to discover the Indian conditions
of 1925 in these three countries one will have to
rummage the railway statistics of the world J?revious to
1870.
As in the other items of the industrial revolution, in
railway industry and commerce also Great Britain is the
pioneer. The first railroads of the world were constructed
in England in 1825, in the U.S.A. in 1827 and in France
in 1828. Germany was ten years, Russia thirteen years,
and Italy fourteen years behind the British Isles in the
first construction of railroads as a new transport agency.
Down to 1850 the railway origins of ttirteen pioneering
countries are indicated below in the chronological order:
18 'The Italian figures presented, hltre are slightly different from those
given in Compendia Statisti"o 1930 (published by the Istituto Centrale di
Statistica. Ron:.e\ p. 221. But in the interest of uniformity thc; figures of
the Railway Year.Beok (London) are being used in connection with economic
history.