.T34 . HE PACIFIC RAILROADS AND THE DIS- APPEARANCE OF THE FRONTIER IN AMERICA BY FREDERIC L. PAXSON Reprinted from the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1907, Volume I, pages 105-122 WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1909 Class. Book. 'In. ''Occasional trips to Santa I'e ;;ave way al)out ISiTi to fairly rcKular traflic. Con- Kress in IHiTi authorized tlie constiuction i«f a wagon load for its use. (II. 11. J'.an- croft. Worlth ("onR., 1st sess., S. Doc. 1, p. 79, and p. 48. Insert '• d." See also Secretary Katon's Report, 182i», 21st Cong., 1st sess., S. Doc. 1, p. 30.) •• .Tosiah Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, or the .Tournal of a Santa Fe Trader, 2 vols., New V()rl«. 1845. is the classic account of tlie Santa Fe traffic. The book, often reprinted, is in Thwaites, Karly Western Trav.'ls, XIX, .\X. PACIFIC EAILROADS AND DISAPPEARANCE OF FRONTIER. 109 but the pressure of population along the easiest channels of communi- cation had developed the prominence of the Missouri bend, between Independence and Council Bluffs, as the chief eastern point of de- parture." Hence the two trails from P'ort Leavenworth by the Platte and Arkansas carried most of the Pacific traffic that journeyed over- land. By 1850 the systematic lobbying of Asa Whitney and his allies had educated the public to an acceptance of the railway idea, but the emergence of slavery sectionalism had made a choice among par- ticular routes impossible.* Until after 1853 the only progress made was the survey of five available routes ordered by the army appro- priation bill of that year,'' and until after the elimination of southern influence, in 1861, no further step Avas taken. In all these years, while the old eastern transportation frontier was in process of demolition, the rivalry of New Orleans, Vicksburg, Memphis, Cairo, St. Louis, and Chicago, and their hinterlands kept the western frontier un- broken. In the history of the frontier the Union Pacific Railway marks tlie beginning of the end. Chartered in 1862,'^ reendowed in 1864,'^ started on its race for lands and subsidies in 1866,^ it finally completed a through track across the continent in 1869. The celebration of com- pletion at Promontory Point on May 10, 1869, was not unnoticed even in its own day as a national act.^ The public was generally conscious that a great event had taken place ; cities devoted themselves to open demonstration ; Bret Harte broke into song under its influence.'' But in reality the frontier was not destroyed. From a narrow strip across the plains Indians had been pushed to one side and another and a single track had crossed the mountains, but north and south great areas remained untouched, for the demolition of the frontier had only -just begun.* « For several years Fort Atkinson, at Council Bluffs, was the chief military post on the far western frontier. The erection of Fort Leavenworth, which was more con- veniently situated for policing the trails, lessened its importance. In 1825 there were stationed at Fort Atkinson four companies of the First Infantry and ten of the Sixth. (Report of General Brown to the Secretary of War, 1825, 19th Cong., 1st sess., S. Doc. 1, p. 10. insert "d.") "The genesis of the Pacific railway idea is traced in .T. P. Davis, The Union Pacific Railway, 1-110, and in E. V. Smalley. History of the Northern Pacific Railroad, 1-112. <^ The reports on these surveys fill eleven large volumes. They were published as :VM Cong.. 2d sess., S. Ex. Doc. 78. Cf. Tables of and Annotated Index to the Congressional Series of United States Public Documents. Washington, 1902, 551, note. " 12 United States Statutes at Large, 489. « 13 United States Statutes at Large, 356. f 14 United States Statutes at Large, 79. Davis, Union Pacific Railway, 152 ; J. H. Beadle, The Undeveloped West ; or. Five Years in the Territories, Philadelphia, 1873. 126 ; Sidney Dillon. The Last Spike, In Scribner's Magazine. XII, 25.'?-259 ; Samuel Bowles, The I'acific Railroad Open, in Atlantic Monthly, XXIII, 493-502, 617-625, 753-762; H. H. Bancroft, History of California, VII. 570; Rocky Mountain Directory and Colorado Gazetteer for 1871, 117. * Bret Harte. What the Engines Said, in Poetical Works, 1882, 283. ' F. A. Walker, in North American Review, CXVI, 367. IIU AMERICANS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. The effort that finally destroyed the continental frontier differed from all earlier movements in the same direction in that it was self- conscious, deliberate, and national. " The frontier reached by the Pacific Railroad, surveyed into rectangles, guarded by the United States Army, and recruited by the daily immigrant ship, moves for- ward at a swifter pace and in a different way than the frontier reached by the birch canoe or the pack horse," * The idea of com- munication as a proper public charge was slow in growth. Over the Cumberland road had been fought a great constitutional battle in the twenties.^ Subsequent national aid^ had been granted for im- provement schemes through the several States involved. But in the I*acific railways Congress now dealt directly and immediately with the object before it.'' The financial settlement with the Pacific rail- ways is so recent that the land grants are still in politics, but in 18()2 10 sections of land and a loan of $10,000 in United States bonds per mile of track did not tempt capital into the forlorn scheme. Con- struction could not be financed until the act of 18()4 had doubled the 10 sections into 20 and allowed the railway company to insert its own first mortgage, to the amount of the government subsidy, ahead of the federal bonds as a lien upon the property. With even this, re- sponsible builders required so large a margin of profit that the con- struction of the road became a matter of noisome public scandal.'' And in our own day a changed financial condition has made it diflicult to understand the reasonableness of the original terms. While the Union Pacific was under construction Congress pro- vided the legal equipment for the annihilation of the entire frontier. The charter acts of the Northern Pacific, the Atlantic and Pacific, the Texas Pacific, and the Southern Pacific at once opened the way for some five new continental lines and closed the period of direct federal aid to railway construction. The Northern Pacific received its charter on the same day that the Union Pacific received its doiible subsidy in 1804." It was authorized to join the waters of Lake Supe- rior and Puget Sound, and to receive for its services 20 sections of l^ublic land in the States through which it ran and 40 in the Terri- tories. No bonds were granted it, the Union Pacific experiment re- maining the first and the last in this direction. « F. J. Turner, in American Historical Association Report. 189,S, 20fi. "J. S. Young, A Political and Constitutional Study of the Cumberland Road, Chicago, 1902. •^ J. B. Sanborn, Congressional Grants of Land in Aid of Railways, In University of Wisconsin Bulletins, No. .SO. Is a comprehensive study of these grants. The Illinois ("entral grant of 1850, which started the policy of land grants for railways, is thor- oughly treated by W. K. Aclterman, Historical Sketch of the Illinois Central Railroad. Chicago. 1890. ■* The Contract and Finance Company, which operated for the Central Pacific, escaped public notice, but the CrMlt Moblller of the Union Pacific played a large part in the cam- paign of 1872. (J. B. Crawford. Credit Moblller of America : R. Hazard. CrMlt Moblller of America. Providence, 1881 ; J. F. Rhodes. History of the United States, VII. 1-18.) < 13 United States Statutes at Large, 365. PACIFIC RAILROADS AND DISAPPEARANCE OF FRONTIER. Ill In the sumer of 1866 " a third continental route was provided for in the South along the line of the thirty-fifth parallel survey. The Atlantic and Pacific was to build from Springfield, Mo., by way of Albuquerque, N. Mex., to the Pacific, and to connect near the eastern line of California with the Southern Pacific of California. Its subsidy of public lands was like that of the Northern Pacific. The Texas Pacific was chartered March 3, 1871, as -the last of the land-grant railroads. It was to build from the eastern border of _^ Texas to San Diego, Cal., and was promised the usual grant of 20 or ^^ 40 sections. But since there were no public lands of the United States in Texas its eastern divisions received no aid from this source, while its more vigorous rival, the Southern Pacific, prevented its line from passing beyond El Paso. As usual, the Southern Pacific of California had been authorized to meet the new road near the Colorado River and had received a 20-section grant. It did better than its federal charter anticipated and organized subsidiary corporations in Arizona and New Mexico, w^hich built rapidly and met the Texas Pacific at the Rio Grande. To these deliberate acts in aid of the Pacific railways others in the form of local grants were made between 1862 and 1871, so that by the latter date all of the grants had been made, and all that the com- panies could ask for the future was lenient treatment.'' For the first time the Federal Government had taken an active initiative in provid- ing for the destruction of a frontier. It resolved in 1871 to treat no longer with Indian tribes as independent nations,*" and used the Regidar Army so vigorously that by 1880 " the majority of the waste- ful and hostile occupants of millions of acres of valuable agricultural, pasture, and mineral lands [had] been forced upon reservations under the supervision of the Government * * * and the vast sec- tion over which the wild and irresponsible tribes once wandered [were] redeemed from idle waste to become a home for millions of progressive people." <* The new Pacific railroads began to build just as the Union Pacific was completed and opened to traffic. In competition with more promising enterprises in the East, they were slow in arousing popular interest. There was little belief in a continental business large enough to maintain four systems, and a general confidence in the desert character of the semiarid plains. Their first period of construc- tion ended abruptly in 1873, when panic brought most transportation ° 14 United States Statutes at Large, 292. "G. W. Julian, Our Land-Grant Railways in Congress, in International Review, XIV, 198-212. "■ This determination was reached in a proviso in the Indian appropriation bill of March 3. 1871. (16 U. S. Stat, at L., 566.) •* Record of Engagements with Hostile Indians within the Military Division of the Missouri, from 1868 to 1882, Lieut. Gen. P. H. Sheridan, commanding, Chicago. 1882, 119. 112 AMERICAN msrnUICAI. A68l»ClATl()N. projects to an inglorious end and forbade revival for at least five years. Jay Cooke, whose Philadelphia house had done much to establish public credit during the war and had created a market of small buyers for investment securities on the strength of United States bonds, popularized the Northern Pacific in 18()9 and 1870." Within two years he is said to have raised thirty millions for the construction of the road, making its building a financial possibility. And although he may have distorted the isotherm several degrees in order to picture his farming lands as semitroi)ical in their luxuriance,'' he established Duluth and Tacoma, gave St. Paul her opportunity, and had run the main line of track through Fargo, on the Red, to Bis- marck, on the Missouri, more than 850 miles from Lake Superior, when his failure, in 1878, brought expansion to an end. For the Northwest the construction of the Northern Pacific was of fundamental importance. The railway frontier of 18(55) left Minne- sota, Dakota, and much of Wisconsin beyond its reach. The poten- tial grain fields of the Red River region Avere virgin forest, and on the main line of the new road, for 2,000 miles, no trace of settled habitation existed. From the summer of 1870 activity around the head of Lake Superior dates. The Lake Superior and Mississippi Railway was started to connect St. Paul and the lake at a point at which '' a few papers signed in Philadelphia have made a great north- Avestern port and market possible — nay inevitable." '' At Thom])son's Junction on this road the Northern Pacific made a connection, securing its entrance into Duluth by buying a half inter- est in the tracks it used and building its own line west across the Mis- sissippi River at Brainerd.'' The statute of 18(54 made Lake Superior the eastern terminus, but the logic of trade brought to St. Paul in later years the terminus in fact. The panic of 1873 caught the Northern Pacific at Bismarck, with nearly 800 unprofitable miles of track extending in advance of the railroad frontier. The Atlantic and Pacific and Texas and Pacific Avere less seriously overbuilt, but not less eflectively checked. The former, starting from Springfield, had constructed across southwest- ein Missouri to A^inita,<^ in Indian Territory, Avhere it arriA'ed in the fall of 1871.^ It had meauAvhile consolidated with the old South- " E. V. ObprhoUzor, .Tay Cooke, Financior of the Civil War, II, 74-.'i77 ; Smalloy, Northern raciric. 1.S4-177. » Snth a cliaiKe was made by Gen. W. H. Hazen, writing from Fort Buford, at the junction of the Missouri and Yellowstone, in the North American Review (CXX, 21), under the title " The great middle region of the United States and Us limited space of arable land." "• .1. T. Trowbridge, A Week at Duluth, in Atlantic Monthly, May, 1870, 605. '' Smalloy, Northern Facific, 187. .'{81. ' Beadle, who visited A'inita and the Indian country In 1872, Ijas a picturesque descrip- tion of this " thirty-flfth parallel route." J. H. Beadle, Undeveloped West, 351. /Poor, Manual of the Railroads of the United States, 1875-76, 741. # PACIFIC RAILROADS AND DISAPPEARANCE OE FRONTIER. 113 west Branch, of Missouri (recently renamed the South Pacific), so that from Springfield it could now get into St. Louis over its own tracks for most of the way. It had also, in 1872, leased for a long term the Pacific of Missouri, with its dependencies. But the panic forced it into default, the lease was canceled, and the Atlantic and Pacific itself emerged from the receiver's hand as the St. Louis and San Francisco." Vinita was and remained its terminus for several years, and the completion of the road as a part of the Pacific system was in a different direction and under a still different conti;ol. The Texas Pacific represented Texas corporations already existing when it received its land grant in 1871. It shortly consolidated local lines in northeast Texas, changed its name to Texas and Pacific,^ and began construction from Texarkana and Shreveport to Dallas and Fort Worth, on its road to El Paso. At the former points it caught its eastern termini, as did the Atlantic and Pacific at Springfield, Mo. The St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern ran from Texarkana to St. Louis, while from Shreveport, down the Red River to New Or- leans, the New Orleans Pacific finally undertook the construction of the lines. This borderland of Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas thus became a center of railway development; in the grazing country be- hind it the meat-packing industries shortly found their sources of supply, and in our own day the State of Oklahoma is its concrete memorial. The failure of Jay Cooke & Co. in the autumn of 1873 started the general financial panic of that year and deferred for several years the extinction of the frontier.'' It would have been remarkable had the waste and speculation of the civil war period and its enthusiasm for economic development escaped the retribution that economic law brings upon inflation. The Granger activities of the years immedi- ately following the panic foreshadowed a period when the frontier demand for raihvays at any cost should give way to an agricultural insistence upon regulation of railways as the primary need. But as 3'et the frontier remained substantially intact,*^ and until its railway system should be completed the Granger demand could not be trans- lated into federal activity. For nearly six years after 1873 the Pacific railways, like the other industrial establishments of the United States, remained nearly stationary. In 1879 the United States emerged from the confusion of the crisis of 1873. Resumption marked the readjustment of national cur- "Poor, Manual, 187:1-74, 520; 1877-78, 826. ".A^ct of May 2. 1872, 27 United States Statutes at Large, 59; Poor, Manual, 1871-72, 548; 187G-77, 70:! ; 1877-78, .'{45. "^ E. W. Martin, History of the Grange Movement, 1874, 184 ; Snialley, Northern Pacific, inn. " E. E. Sparks, National Development (Vol. XXIH in Hart's American Nation), 21-23, describes the distribution of populatiou in this region. 5SS33— VOL 1—08 8 114 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. rency, reconstruction was over, and the railways entered upon the last five years of the culminating period in the history of the fron- tier. When the five years had ended five new continental routes were available for transportation and the frontier had departed from the United States. Although it had no continental franchise of its own. the Southern Pacific led in the completion of these new routes and acquired an interest in three eastern termini as a result. The Northern Pacific in the same years completed its own main line, while the Burlington- Kio (irrande combination introduced at once a rival to the Union Pacific and an additional continental route. The Texas and Pacific had only started its progress across Texas when checked by the panic in the vicinity of Dallas. "\Mien it revived it consolidated with the New Orleans Pacific to get its entry into New Orleans," and then proceeded to push its track across the State, aided by a state land grant from Texas, toward Sierra Blanca and El Paso. Beyond Texas it never built. Corporations of New ^Mexico, Arizona, and California, all bearing the same name of Southern Pacific, constructed the line across the Colorado River and along the (iila through the lands ac(|uired by the (iadsden purchase in 1853. '^ Trains Avere running over its tracks to St. Louis by Jan- uary, 1882, and to New Orleans in the following October. In the course of this Southern Pacific construction connection had been made with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe at Deming, N. ]\Iex.. in March, 1881. But lack of harmony between the roads thus meet- ing seems to have minimized the im])ortance of the through route thus formed.'" The owners of the Southern Pacific opened an additional line through southern Texas in the beginning of 1883.'* The Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio, of Texas, was the earliest road char- " Poor, Manual, 18S4, S."(2. The New Orleans Pacific was the assifmoe of the Now Orleans, Baton KouRe and VlcksburK. to which a land grant had been made in 1871. Congress annulled a portion of the grant In 1887. Sanborn, Congressional Grants of Land in Aid of Railways, 125. '"The Soiitliern I'acific seized the Fort Yuma crossing of the Colorado River in spite of federal and Texas and Pacific protests. (4.5th Cong., 2d sess., II. lOx. Doc. 3."?.) It later induced the Texas and Pacific to transfer to it the land grants west of El Paso pertaining to the latter road, and insisted before Congress upon its right to receive the lands although the grants were voidable, if not void, l)ecause of the failure of the Texas and Pacific to build witliln the time limit prescribed. (48tb Cong.. 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 27.) Congressional committees reported adversely to this claim of the Southern Pacific. (4Hth Cong., 1st sess., II. Uep. G2 ; see also the reports to the House In 1S77, 44th Cong.. 2d sess., II. Rep. \'M). parts 1 and 2, and also 4Sd Cong., 2d sess., H. .Mis. Docs. and SO.) On February 2."), ISH.'j, Congress declared the whole Texas Pacific land gmnt forfeited. (Sanborn, Congressional Grants of Land In Aid of Railways, 125; 23 U. S. Stat. L., :?.'?7.) "•Poor, Manual. 1884, 887; Commercial and Financial Chronicle, March 12, 1881. 270. ''Through trains to New Orleans were running by Fel)ruary 1. (Commercial and Finan- cial Chronicle, September 8, 1883, 265 ; Railroad Gazette, January 9, 1883, 51, and l"eb ruary 2, 1883, 83, 84.) PACIFIC RAILROADS AND DISAPPEARANCE OF FRONTIER. 115 tered in the State." Around this as a nucleus other lines were assem- bled,'' and double construction was begun from San Antonio west, and from El Paso, or more accurately Sierra Blanca, east. Between El Paso and Sierra Blanca, a distance of about 90 miles, this new line and the Texas Pacific used the same track. In later years the Texas Pacific was drawn away from the Southern Pacific by its St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern connection at Texarkana into the Mis- souri Pacific System, and the combination route through San Antonio and Houston became the main line of the Southern Pacific. A third connection of the Southern Pacific across Texas was op- erated before the end of 1883, over its Mojave extension in California and the Atlantic and Pacific from the Needles to Albuquerque. The old Atlantic and Pacific, chartered with land grant in 1866, had built to Vinita by 1871, and had stopped there. It had defaulted after the panic, gone into receivership, and emerged as the St. Louis and San Francisco. But even after its emergence it refrained from construc- tion much beyond its Vinita terminus.f' Meanwhile the Atchison, To- peka and Santa Fe had reached Albuquerque, X. Mex. This road, building up the Arkansas through Kansas, possessed a land grant as far as the Colorado state line.'' Entering Colorado, it had passed by Las Animas and thrown a branch along the old Santa Fe trail to Santa Fe and Albuquerque. At this last point it came to an agree- ment with the St. Louis and San Francisco by which the two roads should build jointly from Albuquerque, under the Atlantic and Pa- cific franchise, into California, and rapid construction Had commenced in the period of revival.^ The Southern Pacific of California had not, however, relished a rival in its State, while the Atlantic and Pa- cific charter privilege extended to the Pacific. Long before the new road, advancing from Albuquerque, reached its Colorado crossing at the Needles a Mojave branch of the Southern Pacific was waiting at that point, ready by its presence to force the invading road to make terms Avith it for admittance. And thus upon the completion of the Colorado and Rio Grande bridges the Southern Pacific obtained its third entry into the East. Pullman cars Avere running into St. Louis on October 21, 1883.^ The names of Billings and A'illard are most closely connected with the renascence of the Northern Pacific. This line, with its generous " It was organized in 1850 as the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado. (H. H. Ban- croft, Works. XVI, .570.) "Commercial and Financial Chronicle, August 2.5, 188.S, 200. •■Railroad Gazette, May 11, 1883, 301; Commercial and Financial Chronicle, May 26, 1883. 588. " Its 10-section land grant was liased upon a grant My Congress to the State of Kansas, March 3, 1863. (Report of the Commissioner of Railroads, 1S82, 208; 1883, 130.) It reached Albuquerque in April. 1880, and Deming in March, 1881. ' Report of the Auditor of Railroad Accounts, 1880, 52. ' Commercial and Financial Chronicle. October 20, 1883, 423 ; II. H. Bancroft, Cali- fornia, VII, 613; Railroad Gazette, October 26, 1883, 711. 116 AMERICAN llItSTUlilCAL ASSUCIATI02v. land enver, had competed with the Union Pacific for the traffic of that point in " Smalloy, Northern raciflc, 229; Report of the Commissioner of Kailroads, 1883, 1S5-144. "11. Villard. Memoirs of Henry Villard, .lournalist and I'inaucier, 1S:{5-1900, II, 284- 289; Smalloy. Northern Pacific, 2.'5H. •■Villard. Memoirs, II, 297; Smalloy. 2(1'.» ; Ilonry ("lews. Twenty-eight Years of Wall Streel, 209-214. " Tho Nation. Scptoinlier l.!, iss:?, 21.'">, 21S. Tlio ceioliration was on September S, and was graced hy an oration by W. M. Kvarls. (Villard, II, .fll.) Villard was somewhat distrusted, I'oor remarking tliat much of tlie popular reluctance to buy railroad stocks was due to his "visionary schemes of immense magnitude." (Railroad Manual, 18S4, introd. III. See also Railroad (Jazctte, September 14, 188.'5, (!0(> ; Commercial and Finan- cial Chronicle. Sfpfembor 29. 188:5, Xn ; Engineering News. September 1.", 1883, 439; J. W. Johnston, Railway Land Grants, In North American Review, CXL, 280-289.) PACIFIC RAILROADS AND DISAPPEARANCE OF FRONTIER. 117 June, 1882." West of Denver the narrow gauge of the Denver and Rio Grande had been advancing since 1870. Gen. William J. Palmer and a group of Philadelphia capitalists had, in 1870, secured a Colorado charter for their Denver and Rio Grande. Started in 1871, it had reached its new settlement and health resort at Colorado Springs that autumn, and had continued south in later years. Like other roads, it had progressed slowly in panic years. In 1876 it had been met at Pueblo by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. From Pueblo it contested successfully witli its rival for the grand canyon of the Arkansas,'' and built up that valley, through the Gunnison country, and across the old Ute Reserve to Grand Junction. From the Utah state line it had been continued to Ogden by the Denver and Rio Grande Western, an allied corpora- tion. A through service to Ogden, inaugurated in the summer of 1883,^ brought to the Union Pacific for the first time, and for its whole business, a competition which it tried to offset by hurrying its own branches from Ogden, the Utah Northern and the Oregon Short Line, north into the field of the Northern Pacific. The continental frontier, upon which the first inroad had been made in 1869, was thus completely destroyed in 1881. Along six different lines between New Orleans and St. Paul it had been made possible to cross the sometime American desert to the Pacific States.'' No longer could any portion of the Republic be considered beyond the reach of colonization. Instead of a waste that forbade national unity and compelled a rudimentary civilization in its presence, a thousand plains stations beckoned for colonists and through lines bound the nation into an economic and political unit. That which General Sheridan had foreseen in 1882 was now a fact. He had written : "As the railroads overtook the successive lines of isolated frontier posts and settlements spread out over country no longer re- quiring military protection, the army vacated its temporary shelters and marched on into remote regions beyond, there to repeat and con- tinue its pioneer work. In rear of the advancing line of troops the primitive ' dugouts ' and cabins of the frontiersmen were steadily replaced by the tasteful houses, thrifty farms, neat villages, and busy towns of a people who knew how^ best to employ the vast resources of the great West. The civilization from the Atlantic is now reach- ing out toward that rapidly approaching it from the direction of the Pacific, the long intervening strip of territory, extending from the British possessions to Old Mexico, yearlj'^ growing narrower; finally « Poor, Manual, 1883, G94. Toor, Manual. 1881, 790; 188.% 889; J. C. Smiley, History of Denver, GOT. *• Railroad Gazette, August 3, 188."?, 510 ; H. H. Bancroft, Utah, 759 ; Poor, Manual, 1884, 872. •'Of. H. R. Meyer, The Settlements with Pacific Railways, in guarterly .Tournal of Economics, XIII, 427-444. 118 AMERICAN HISTORTCAL ASSOCIATION. the dividing lines will entirely disappear and the niinglinff settle- ments absorb the remnants of the once powerful Indian nations who, fifteen years ago. vainly attempted to forbid the destined progress of the age."° Within two j'ears after this utterance the frontier had finally disappeared, and with it had ended what Professor Turner has called '' the first period of American history." The significance of the frontier in American history has been con- sidered at length in recent years. After 1885 the historical i)r()blem is the significance of the disappearance of the frontier. In the change of epochs ])roblems change as well. National organization replaces sectional; state activities tend to give way to federal; corporate or- ganization succeeds individualistic; jiul)lic regidation supersedes ])ri- vate inilialive; and the imperative neetl for the creation of material equipment is transnnited into an e(|ual necessity for the control of the activities to which the former need gave birth. " Ket-oril of Knga},'ements witli Ilostili" Indians within the Military Division of the Missouri, from 1S6H to 1S82, Lleiit. Cmi. P. H. Slicridan, .•..muiauding, Chicago, issii, liio. DISCUSSION OF DOCTOR PAXSON'S PAPER." By B. H. Meyer. The paper on the Pacific Raih-oads and the Disappearance of the Frontier describes the primary waves of a movement, the secondary and tertiary waves of which are still in progress, emanating from the advancing railway systems like waves from a moving steamship. It is well known that analogies do not walk on all fours. However, I desire to suggest an analogy in the hope that it may clarify and emphasize what I have in mind. The institutions of this country, taken collectively, may be represented by a cable system, each cable having as many separate wires as there are distinct institutions. These cables, like our institutions, extend through many States, the most of them from ocean to ocean and from Gulf to Lakes. For reasons which are generally recognized and which need not be recited here, state lines are convenient if not necessary boundaries of terri- torial units for investigation. I should like to see a great series of monographs, each covering one institution in one State, correspond- ing to one strand in the cable, for every State in the Union, which could be turned over to the national historian of our economic and other institutions. With such a huge^ collection of state sections of wires and cables before him, the national historian would become the grand chief cable-splicer, and he could present to all the world the completed institutional cable system as it has developed and exists throughout the length and breadth of the United States. Unless a great army of state historians will prosecute its work diligently, we shall never have a complete national history. Railway history illustrates this point. In a general way it is known, for instance, that the inhabitants of certain cities opposed the physical union of continuous lines of railway, during early epochs of railway development, with sledge hammers, pitchforks, scythes, and similar weapons. The grotesque features of this type of mob opposition have been described for a few localities, but anything like a complete description of the events has not come to my notice, although many " Remarks made after the reading of three papers in American economic history, by the chairman of the railroad commission of Wisconsin. 119 120 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. States doubtless furnish ample material for a chapter on this subject. The historian of our political institutions would doubtless not con- sider it beneath his dignity to devote a chapter to violence :it the polls, like lassoing voters of certain persuasions on election day in western New York during Monroe's administration, but to the his- torian of our railways the facts referred to are equally interesting, ahhough neither nuiy be of much fundjpnental importance. During territorial days and the days of early statehood in AVis- consin numerous localities on Lake jNIichigan and on the Mississipj)i Kivcr vied with one another to become the termini of the proposed Milwaukee and Mississip])i Railway, which was to constitute the first link in the great transcontinental chain. Milwaukee, the present metropolis of this State, was tlien rebuked for arrogantly assuming leadership when such important places as Belmont and Mineral Point, not to speak of Kenosha, Racine, Sheboygan, on Lake Miciii- gan, Prairie du Chien, Potosi, and Snake Hollow, on the Mississippi River, had equal claim, in the oj^inion of the editors of those places, to the distinction of being leading towns in Wisconsin. The ambi- tion of those days was not always limited by the facts of geogra])hy and actual possibilities of innnediate development. A primitive editor of Fond du Lac held out to his readers the vision of teas and spices coming directly from China and Japan, which he regarded as a i)art of the West, over the transcontinental railway, which he desired to have constructed along the northern i-oute. The real rivalry among our southern, middle, and northern transcontinental railways of to-day was then a theoretical rivalry of subjective possibilities of competing localities interested in their respective routes. Horace Greeley entered into the discussion of the relative merits of these routes, and in one editorial he strikes the climax of his argument by practically ignoring all others except the fact that the circumference of the earth in the higher latitudes is much smaller than at the equator and southern latitudes, and that therefore any man with the sense of a schoolboy might know that the northern route was the most desirable one. Incidentally it should be observed that this early dream of the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railway being a link in a transcontinental chain is being realized to-day in the Pacific coast extension of the St. Paul S3^stem, of which the old Milwaukee and Mississi[)pi has long been a part. During the present month of December the track has been marching westward at the rate of 2 miles and over per day. Secondary waves of frontier life are accom- panying this march. While the frontier has gone, it is still here. The i)rimary frontier has disappeared. The secondary frontier is^ the wave of conquest of our national resources on whose crest the frontiersman, of a diUVrent type, perhaps, but still a frontiersman, reigns supreme. That frontier still exists if we may rely upon the DISCUSSION OF DOCTOR PAXSON 's PAPER. 121 accounts of the men who are sharing that life. Those of our honored members who come from the ancient East, which once was the United States, and which for some years thereafter continued to play a pre- dominating role in our national life, may not appreciate that this great AVest is only beginning to shake off the spray of the Atlantic. The vast empire ^vest of the Mississippi River has not yet been " scratched," and even here in old Wisconsin we are only beginning to lay our permanent foundations. The rivalry of cities, territorial groups, and transportation routes suggested in these remarks repre- sents cable sections Avhich are waiting for the state historian, who in turn must dedicate them to the national historian, provided he him- self does not act as chief cable-splicer. Historical accounts of events like these would be as fascinating as the greatest novel. Another illustration is found in the rivalry between different means of transportation. The introduction of the Conestoga wagon was opposed by the owners of pack horses. Both of these interests united with the interests represented by plank roads, turnpikes, and canals in opposition to the railway. More or less of this rivalry has con- tinued into our own times. Probably every State in the Union has material for a chapter upon this subject, yet in scarcely half a dozen of them has it been collected and wrought into a complete and accu- rate history. This is an important history — important not only be- cause of the knowledge which it affords regarding our industrial development, but also because of the bearing of this history upon con- temporary movements. The revival of our inland waterways has already been made a national issue. Before we enter upon a scheme of internal improvements, involving hundreds of millions of dollars, we should most assuredly inform ourselves wath respect to the hniita- tions and possibilities of that scheme. The past throws valuable side- lights upon this subject, both in the United States and in Europe. A mere sentimental appeal to waterways as a regulator of railway rates that would justify undertakings of greatest magnitude is nonsense. Waterways never have regulated railway rates. They have influenced them, sometimes to the extent of demoralization; but to influence is not to regulate. At no time in the history of internal improvements in the United States has it been more vital to obtain a technical basis for our projects than at present. First of all, engineers of highest attainment and absolute integrity must tell us whether a certain project is possible from an engineering standpoint, and as accurately as possible what it w'ill cost to complete it. Next, we must have a careful survey of the commerce of the country with a view of deter- mining how^ much it may reasonably be expected to gain from the con- templated improvement. Finally, having these facts before us, the people of this country may be left to decide for themselves whether they desire to have a certain improvement undertaken or not. Simply 122 AMERICAN HTSTORTCAL ASSOCIATION. to proclaim that we want certain improvements, irrespective of the considerations named, is like wishing to ride in a Pullman coach to a distant planet. I am firmly convinced tliat this country has never faced a more critical situation with respect to internal improvements than that which is impending. It is to be hoped that State and na- tional historians will unite in bringing to the citizens of this country the true and complete facts of history. Prophetic vision must be utilized not only in arousing enthusiasm for a scheme, but also in putting into proper perspective its limitations. All of us could, no doubt, add many illustrations of special studies which must be undertaken l)efore our national economic history, at least, can be made complete, and of which the three papers before us are excellent illustrations. I desire, therefore, to repeat that we need special intensive study — monographs, more monographs, and many more monographs — sections of cables for our chief cable-splicers. The monographs suggested all have more or less of a practical bear- ing, but it should be needless to state that all historical research, whether practical or not, is here referred to. Those special studies which partake of a more practical nature constitute the ground upon which the academic man meets the executive, judicial, administrative, or legislative man. T assume that the aim of our efforts is to learn to know the real world of the j)ast and of the present in order that we may intelligently guide, in so far as guidance is possible, the future. We must look to the academic man and the scholarly pub- licists not connected with universities, like those represented in the membership of this association, to gather the many threads of the various phases of our national life and focus them upon a specific problem of to-day. Only in this way may we hope to act correctly regarding current questions. " The point of departure as well as the aim of our science is man " was the keynote of Roscher's first course of lectures at the University of Leipzig. Eoscher's words are still the best touchstone of economic study. In order to vitalize our study and make it real the academic man and the man of affairs must act in closest cooperation with each other lest there be reared two independent structures, the one that of the academic man. separate and apart from the real world in which we live, and therefore lack- ing vitality and intrinsic worth, and the other that of the imm of affairs, unsymmetricnl. crude, and ill-adjusted because it lacks the touch of the hand of full knowledge. I * .^ -w--^ 7c:.^;>e