STEPS OF PROGRESS
yen. Thus the working expenses represented forty-nine per cent of the earnings, and the net profits averaged a little over seven and a half per cent of the invested capital.
The Government has in hand a programme involving the construction of 1,230 miles of new railways, and private companies — which number 103 in all — have obtained charters for building 961 miles, the former work involving an outlay of 114,500,000 yen, and the latter an outlay of 60,000,000. Thus the roads actually in operation and those immediately projected total 5,830 miles, and the capital involved will aggregate 431,500,000 yen.
The programme of railway construction, as originally planned and subsequently carried out in great part, had for its basis a grand trunk line extending the whole length of the main island from Aomori on the north to Shimonoseki on the south, a distance of 1,153 miles; and a continuation of the same line throughout the length of the southern island of Kiushiu from Moji on the north — which lies on the opposite side of the strait from Shimonoseki — to Kagoshima on the south, a distance of 232¾ miles, as well as a line from Moji to Nagasaki, a distance of 163½ miles. Of this main road, the State undertook to build the central section (376 miles), between Tōkyō and Kobe (viâ Kyōtō); the Japan Railway Company undertook the portion (457 miles) northward of Tōkyō to Awomori; the Sanyo
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