How to balance fares and service is an imprecise political calculation that reflects the priorities of lawmakers who cast votes on the budgets that finance railroads.

Financed American Railroads In its 151-year history, Morgan Grenfell has financed American railroads, raised money for the French Government after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 and became the first merchant bank to win the Queen's Award for export achievement, for having managed more than 25 percent of Government export credit guarantees.

Banks financed railroads, mills, and housing for the booming economy and burgeoning population.

Later, J. Pierpont Morgan's J.P. Morgan & Co. would finance railroads and other industrial companies throughout the United States.

Invariably, the result was oversubscribed bond issues that financed railroads that were either never built or that were ceded to foreign commercial control.

After the armistice in late 1918, the Corporation assisted in the transition to peacetime by financing railroads under government control, and making loans to American exporters and agricultural cooperative marketing associations.