I don't think David made *that* mistake, if only because 43M is a lot more
than the population of the U.S. at the time, and most of them were never
in New York state anyway.

A mental calculation says that's about 120,000 or 130,000 per day on
average, which was a lot of moving around in those days.

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On Wed, 14 Jul 1999, Shirley wrote:

> Transit agencies count each passenger boarding, so the figure represents that.
> It doesn't mean that 43M+ individuals rode their conveyances.  That's why the
> figure appears so misleading.
>
> David Minor wrote:
> >
> > York Staters,
> >
> > According to French's Gazetteer of 1860 in the fiscal year ending
> > September 30, 1858, New York State trains had carried 43,786,579
> > passengers. If I'm reading the report correctly, that's a lot of
> > people. Does anyone else have any thoughts on the accuracy of that
> > count?
>