quality:correction
Shipping freight and passengers, and the overall significance of the railroads

For example, before the railroads were built in the West, if a farmer were to ship a load of corn only 200 miles to Chicago, the cost of shipping it there by wagon would exceed the price for which the corn could be sold. So, under such circumstances, farming could not be done at a profit. Mining and other economic activity in the West were similarly inhibited because of the high cost of wagon transportation. One Congressman referring to the West, bluntly stated that “All that land wasn’t worth ten cents until the railroads came.”