WHEN RAILROADS 
 WERE NEW 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES FREDERICK CARTER 1 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 BY 
 
 LOGAN G. McPHERSON 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS 
 
 1909 
 
HE 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909, 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 Published March, 1909 
 
 THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS 
 RAH WAY, N. J. 
 
TO 
 O A. D. SMITH 
 
 5 BEST OF ENGINEERS AND MOST FAITHFUL OF FRIENDS, 
 
 IN MEMORY OF THE GOOD OLD DAYS WHEN 
 J WE RAILROADED TOGETHER ON THE 
 
 O NEBRASKA DIVISION, THIS 
 
 O VOLUME IS INSCRIBED 
 
 or 
 O 
 
PREFACE 
 
 CONCERNING certain aspects of the railroad, such as 
 its finance, both high and ordinary, its construction 
 and operation from a technical viewpoint, its moral 
 turpitude and its predilection for manslaughter, whole 
 libraries have been published. The fact that more 
 libraries are constantly being added indicates a sus- 
 tained interest in the subject which is not at all sur- 
 prising, considering how intimately the railroad enters 
 into the life of everybody, from the hosts who look 
 directly to it for their bread, to the farmer and the 
 manufacturer whose products it takes to market, the 
 baby who depends upon it to bring the daily supply 
 for his bottle, and the millionaire who expects it to 
 furnish him an income. 
 
 What is surprising is that the general reader might 
 search in vain throughout the wilderness of words for 
 any satisfactory account of how the railroad came to 
 America; of how Smith and Jones and Robinson 
 quarreled first about what a railroad was, then about 
 its desirability, then about how to build and run it; 
 how they struggled with poverty, ignorance, and other 
 inevitable obstacles, blundered and struggled on again 
 until they had at last developed a method of transpor- 
 tation that, measured by its influence in accelerating 
 the march of Progress, is the greatest achievement in 
 the annals of the race. 
 
 Such human-interest stories of the railroad as have 
 been preserved are but disjointed fragments consti- 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 tuting a delirium of contradictions. It seems as if 
 every statement ever made about the history of the 
 railroad by any one has been disputed by some one 
 else. For example, the honor of inventing the link 
 motion of the locomotive is claimed for three different 
 men. The invention of the four-wheeled truck is also 
 claimed for three men. One of them obtained a pat- 
 ent for the device, then spent a fortune trying to pro- 
 tect it only to find out that he was not entitled to it. 
 
 The man who made the first trip on a locomotive 
 in America gives a date for the event that contem- 
 poraneous data proves to be wrong. 
 
 The management of the greatest locomotive works 
 in the world asserts that the first engine built by their 
 founder ran only on fair days at the outset of its 
 career, being replaced by horses on rainy days by its 
 proud but prudent owners. On the other hand, the 
 engineer who claims to have had charge of this first 
 locomotive declares he ran it every day, rain or shine. 
 
 Dates that vary a whole year are given for so re- 
 cent an event as the running of the first through pas- 
 senger train over the Canadian Pacific Railway. 
 
 A former auditor of the Lake Shore in attempting 
 to give the date of the Ashtabula wreck, in a historical 
 paper presumably prepared with care, errs regarding 
 the day of the month, the month, and the year. Yet 
 auditors are popularly supposed to be the most dis- 
 tressingly accurate of men. Even this was outdone 
 by a minister, who achieved the truly remarkable feat 
 of writing a book about the same wreck without dis- 
 closing the date thereof or the number killed and in- 
 jured therein. 
 
 In this volume an attempt has been made to gather 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 the floating fragments of railroad history having a 
 human interest into a coherent narrative of the work- 
 a-day trials and triumphs of the pioneers in the plan- 
 ning and the building of the railroad that would be 
 neither a dry historical treatise nor a collection of 
 anecdotes. It is not designed to be comprehensive 
 in the sense of including details of all the early rail- 
 roads, or even of all the important ones that have sur- 
 vived; for such a work would be as wearisome as it 
 would be profitless. It is hoped, however, that it is 
 sufficiently comprehensive to present a homely picture 
 of the development of the railroad in America under 
 various representative types of conditions. 
 
 Much of the material was published in a series of 
 articles in the Railroad Man's Magazine by the Frank 
 A. Munsey Company, New York, through whose 
 courtesy it is reproduced here. 
 
 C. F. C. 
 
 NEW YOBK, March 2, 1908. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION . . . xiii 
 
 I. THE DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA ...... 1 
 
 II. AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD . . . ' . > . . . 33 
 
 III. EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE .. w . ..... 75 
 
 IV. PENNSYLVANIA AND THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD . . .111 
 V. GENESIS or THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM ... . . . 150 
 
 VI. INCUBATOR RAILROADS . . ..... , . . 186 
 
 VII. THE FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 226 
 
 VIII. THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL ..'..... 259 
 
 IX. ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD . . . . . . , 284 
 
 INDEX 313 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHILDHOOD OF RAPID TRANSIT, 1835-1836. THE NEW YORK CENTRAL 
 ON THE MOHAWK. SHOWING THE ERIE CANAL NEAR LITTLE 
 FALLS frontispiece 
 
 THE " STOURBRIDGE LION," THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE THAT EVER TURNED 
 
 A WHEEL ON AMERICAN SOIL 20 
 
 THE " BEST FRIEND OF CHARLESTON," THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE BUILT 
 IN AMERICA, DRAWN TO THE SAME SCALE AS THE LARGEST EVER 
 BUILT, A MALLET ARTICULATED COMPOUND ENGINE WEIGHING 
 410,000 POUNDS 24 
 
 THE " WEST POINT," THE SECOND LOCOMOTIVE BUILT IN AMERICA . . 26 
 
 THE " TOM THUMB," PETER COOPER'S WORKING MODEL OF A LOCO- 
 MOTIVE 46 
 
 THE " YORK," BUILT BY PHINEAS DAVIS, WHICH WON THE PRIZE 
 OF $4,000 OFFERED BY THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD IN 
 
 1831 FOR THE BEST LOCOMOTIVE 49 
 
 TYPE OF PASSENGER CAR USED ON THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO IN 1829 . 52 
 
 TYPE OF " BURDEN," OR FREIGHT CAR USED ON THE BALTIMORE AND 
 
 OHIO IN 1832 52 
 
 THE FIRST " CAMEL," BUILT BY ROSS WlNANS, A TYPE OF LOCOMOTIVE 
 THAT PLAYED A CONSPICUOUS PART IN THE EARLY SUCCESS OF THE 
 BALTIMORE AND OHIO 61 
 
 " OLD IRONSIDES/' THE FAMOUS FIRST LOCOMOTIVE BUILT BY M. W. 
 BALDWIN, FOUNDER OF THE GREATEST LOCOMOTIVE WORKS IN THE 
 WORLD 116 
 
 THE " WASHINGTON/' NORRIS' FAMOUS ENGINE, WHICH IN 1836 
 CREATED A TREMENDOUS SENSATION BY SHOWING THAT LOCOMOTIVES 
 
 COULD RUN UP GRADE 128 
 
 THE " JOHN BULL," BUILT IN 1831, AND COACHES, BUILT IN 1836 . . 140 
 
 By courtesy of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
 
 xi 
 
xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE " DE WITT CLINTON " AND TRAIN, THE FIRST TRAIN IN THE STATE 
 or NEW YORK. OPERATED IN 1831 BETWEEN ALBANY AND 
 
 SCHENECTADY '. . . 151 
 
 From a photograph at the World's Columbian Exposition in 
 
 1893. By courtesy of the New York Central Railroad 
 THE " PIONEER," A SECOND-HAND BARGAIN PURCHASED ON CREDIT 
 IN 1848 BY A COMPANY THAT AFTERWARD BECAME PART OF THE 
 CHICAGO AND NORTHWESTERN RAILWAY. IT WAS THE FIRST TO 
 
 RUN WEST OF CHICAGO 199 
 
 THE " SANDUSKY," THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE WITH A WHISTLE, WHICH 
 
 FIXED THE GAUGE FOR EARLY OHIO RAILROADS 221 
 
 THE ROYAL GORGE, FOR POSSESSION OF WHICH THE Rio GRANDE WAR 
 
 WAS WAGED 274 
 
 By courtesy of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad 
 DRIVING THE LAST SPIKE ON THE CANADIAN PACIFIC AT CRAIGEL- 
 
 LACHIE, B. C., AT 9 :30 A.M., NOVEMBER 7, 1885 . , . .284 
 By courtesy of the Canadian Pacific Railway 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 BY LOGAN G. McPHERSON 
 
 Author of "The Working of the Railroads"; Lecturer on Trans- 
 portation at Johns Hopkins University 
 
 OF the mechanical phases of the early railroads 
 there is record sufficient to picture to the mind the 
 first embankments, with the crude rails laid on stone 
 sills, the queer looking locomotives with their per- 
 pendicular boilers ; and of the financial phase we may 
 also learn, if we choose to dig into scattered and 
 buried archives, something of the millions and mil- 
 lions of dollars that were lost in experiments when a 
 railroad was completed only to be constructed anew; 
 and of the following decades when the American peo- 
 ple with belligerent haste built railroads that, though 
 serving the main purpose of developing the country, 
 nearly always swamped the fortunes of their pro- 
 jectors. 
 
 Of the human element, the record is little enough. 
 The building of a railroad at this present day is an 
 achievement, notwithstanding that there are bases for 
 estimating the cost of construction and equipment 
 which will be of tested design, and the traffic that 
 will come to it may be fairly well predicted. Eighty 
 years ago there was no such guide. The struggles 
 of the men who built the first railroads were as those 
 of Titans, and the detail of their struggles is even 
 now almost lost in Titanic mists. The incidents that 
 Mr. Carter has collected and here clearly set forth 
 
 xiii 
 
xiv INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 have for me now all the fascination that a book of 
 adventure had in my boyhood. 
 
 Then, again, while engineers know well enough the 
 steps through which rails were wrought to their pres- 
 ent strength, and locomotives to their present power, 
 there is little of the record of that impact of mind 
 upon mind and of mind upon environment which has 
 wrought the custom and usage of a new factor in the 
 social organism. Of the beginnings of much of this 
 Mr. Carter here tells us, and it is to be hoped that 
 he will find more to tell us hereafter. 
 
 ' When Railroads Were New " certainly will ap- 
 peal to railroad men, and ought to be welcomed by the 
 " reading public." Because of the information not 
 heretofore collected, and the information not hereto- 
 fore presented, as well as because of the way it is pre- 
 sented, the book certainly deserves to reach the shelves 
 of the public libraries, and of the schools and colleges. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 
 
 ONE of the cardinal grievances of the Israelites 
 in bondage was that they were obliged to make 
 bricks without straw. Yet brickmaking as then prac- 
 tised was a craft demanding only rudimentary intelli- 
 gence and skill. A limitless supply of raw material 
 free of cost was right at hand, while the finished prod- 
 uct which fulfilled the requirements of that primitive 
 day was so hopelessly inferior that it could not have 
 been redeemed even by the addition of straw. 
 
 If those discontented bondmen could make so small 
 a matter the subject of a protest which has passed 
 into a proverb for later generations, what would they 
 have done if they had been called upon in the second 
 quarter of the nineteenth century to lay the founda- 
 tions of the great railroad systems of the United 
 States without the technical training needed to solve 
 the profound engineering problems involved, without 
 material to work with or money or credit to buy it, 
 and even without a remote conception of what a rail- 
 road should be ? 
 
 It was under precisely these conditions that the first 
 railroads were built in America. Our grandfathers 
 tried to borrow a few ideas from the English at first, 
 but the attempts were so discouraging that they were 
 quickly discontinued. Of the first four locomotives 
 imported from England only one ever made so much 
 
2 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 as a trial trip, which was never repeated; the others 
 were so lightly esteemed that they were never per- 
 mitted to turn a wheel, but soon disappeared so utterly 
 that no man knows what became of them. 
 
 The Baltimore and Ohio, the first important rail- 
 road, which cost $31,000,000 by the time the rails 
 reached the Ohio River, was begun by the people of 
 Baltimore when all the earthly possessions of the 
 entire city were worth barely $25,000,000. The pro- 
 moters of the enterprise were so ignorant of the nature 
 of their undertaking that they had to appoint a com- 
 mittee to go and find out what a railroad was before 
 beginning operations. 
 
 In spite of all these difficulties those sturdy pioneers 
 wrought cheerfully on, the only complaint they ever 
 uttered being on account of their inability to build 
 more railroads. Their disappointment in this respect 
 was providential for their descendants; for if all the 
 railroads ever projected had been built there would 
 have been no room on this continent for anything 
 else. 
 
 It would be difficult, indeed, to overestimate the 
 transcendent importance of the part the railroad has 
 played in making the Nation what it is to-day. Per- 
 haps it would be within bounds to say that without 
 railroads to bind the States into one homogeneous 
 whole, the Nation never could have attained its pres- 
 ent size and importance. But however exalted a place 
 in the march of progress be accorded the railroad, no 
 achievement that can be attributed to it is nearly as 
 wonderful as the fact that the railroad itself was 
 evolved from such seemingly impossible conditions. 
 
 Difficult as it is to realize, it is only eighty years 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 3 
 
 since the charter for the first railroad in America was 
 drafted. Only fifty-six years had then elapsed since 
 Watt had patented his steam engine, and only forty 
 years since the astounded legislature of Pennsylvania 
 had silently ignored the request of Oliver Evans for 
 a patent on a steam wagon, as the hallucination of a 
 disordered mind. Progress in engine building had 
 been so slow that twenty-seven years before that pio- 
 neer railroad company was organized the Philadelphia 
 waterworks were operated by a wooden boiler supply- 
 ing steam at two and a half pounds pressure to an 
 engine built chiefly of wood with a copper cylinder as 
 large as a good-sized modern boiler. 
 
 In a nation of magnificent distances the need of 
 transportation became urgent at an early period. But 
 attempts to supply the need were resisted, as a matter 
 of course, by that considerable part of every commu- 
 nity which is forever under arms, ready at a moment's 
 notice to defend established conditions against the 
 encroachments of progress. Even a stage coach on a 
 moderately good road was too advanced for the reac- 
 tionaries. One of them took his indignant pen in hand 
 to write to an Albany paper in 1823 that he had lately 
 noticed with surprise the reckless speed with which a 
 journey was made in a stage from Utica to Albany 
 and return, the distance of two hundred miles being 
 covered in seventeen hours and twenty-eight minutes. 
 This was so remarkable a feat that it attracted the 
 attention of seven citizens of Buffalo, who attempted 
 to beat the record and succeeded in covering eighty 
 miles in six hours and twenty-six and a half minutes. 
 
 " Why the necessity for this waste of horse flesh? " 
 demands the letter writer. " Of traveling nearly 
 
4 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 thirteen miles an hour on a party of pleasure and at 
 every moment in danger of running afoul of other car- 
 riages on the road? " 
 
 Despite all protests, means of communication were 
 steadily improved until in 1811 there were 37,000 
 miles of post roads in the United States, including 
 the great National turnpike, begun in 1806 and 
 built from Cumberland, Md., to Steubenville, O., 
 at a cost of $1,800,000, and afterward extended to 
 Indianapolis. States followed the example of the 
 National Government by appropriating money for 
 highways, while turnpike and plank road corporations 
 were financed by private capital. In time it became 
 possible to travel from Boston to New York, a dis- 
 tance of 270 miles, in twenty-five and a half hours; 
 and from Baltimore to Louisville by stage and steam- 
 boat in six days and eight hours, including twenty 
 hours' detention at various places. 
 
 But a freight tariff based on a rate of a hundred 
 dollars a ton between Albany and Buffalo was not cal- 
 culated to foster trade. When the necessities of traf- 
 fic became so urgent that they could no longer be dis- 
 regarded the people at last turned their attention to 
 the building of canals as a source of relief. Wash- 
 ington, while surveying in his younger days, had be- 
 come deeply impressed with the possibilities of a sys- 
 tem of canals and turnpikes to connect the waters of 
 the Potomac with those of the Ohio, and the scheme 
 was always a favorite with him. General Philip 
 Schuyler, of Albany, who went to England in 1761 to 
 settle the accounts of General John Bradstreet, was 
 greatly impressed by the Bridgewater Canal, then just 
 opened. On his return to America he was the first to 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 5 
 
 propose a canal to connect Lake Champlain with the 
 Hudson. In 1762 some citizens of Pennsylvania 
 applied to the legislature for a charter for the Schuyl- 
 kill and Susquehanna Canal to connect the rivers of 
 those names. This canal, four miles long, finished 
 and operated in 1794, was the first projected and the 
 first chartered, while the South Hadley and Mon- 
 tague Canal, five miles long, around the rapids of the 
 Connecticut River at South Hadley, Mass., opened 
 in 1792, was the first operated in the United States. 
 
 After a conference with Washington on the subject 
 of canals, Elkanah Watson made some explorations 
 in 1788 which convinced him that a water route by 
 way of the Mohawk River and a canal to Lake Onta- 
 rio was feasible. By four years of hard work Wat- 
 son, Schuyler, and a few other enthusiasts wrought 
 public opinion up to a point which enabled them to 
 secure from the New York legislature charters for 
 two canals. From one of these schemes the Erie 
 Canal was ultimately evolved. 
 
 The sentiment in favor of canals thus started spread 
 gradually until the astonishing results accomplished 
 by the Erie Canal fanned it into a furore. Imme- 
 diately all sorts of possible and impossible canal 
 projects were advanced, with the result that by Jan- 
 uary 1, 1835, forty-eight canals aggregating 2,617 
 miles were in use. At the climax of the canal period 
 five thousand miles of these artificial waterways cost- 
 ing $150,000,000 were in operation. Public opinion, 
 which had so reluctantly taken this step in advance, 
 now assumed that the last word had been spoken on 
 the subject of transportation; that the canal was the 
 apotheosis of engineering skill. 
 
6 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 The little band of advanced thinkers which accepted 
 the wonders of the canal with mental reservations, and 
 which had heard with eager interest of Richard Tre- 
 vithick's experiments with a steam locomotive on a 
 tram road near Merthyr-Tydvil, in Wales, in 1804; 
 of Blackett's locomotive, modeled after Trevithick's 
 nine years later; of Chapman's endless chain locomo- 
 tive, brought out about the same time, which saw 
 eighty years' continuous service before it earned hon- 
 orable retirement to a museum hall, and of Stephen- 
 son's locomotive, " My Lord," which drew nine loaded 
 wagons up a twelve-foot grade on the Killingworth 
 Colliery road in 1814, therefore had not only to over- 
 come the inertia of blind opposition to all progress, 
 but also to pry popular prejudice out of a settled con- 
 viction in favor of artificial waterways. 
 
 Even this task was trifling compared with the Her- 
 culean labor of converting the numerous class which 
 simply knew that railroads could not be built nor oper- 
 ated if they were built, and who were, therefore, not 
 open to conviction. These men were the fathers of 
 the statesmen whose witticisms, inspired by S. F. B. 
 Morse's request for government aid to demonstrate 
 the worth of that fantastic absurdity, the electric tele- 
 graph, are embalmed in the Congressional Record, 
 and of the Chicago bankers who told the promoter 
 who appeared before them with a proposal to estab- 
 lish one of Morse's patent telegraphs connecting that 
 thriving town with the East, intimating that in time 
 it might do a business amounting to as much as a 
 hundred dollars a day, that he was crazy, and ordered 
 him out of the room. Doubtless the ancestors of the 
 influential capitalists who thirty-five years later jeered 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 7 
 
 at Alexander Graham Bell's attempts to finance a 
 scheme " to talk through a wire," and the heroes of 
 many other exploits of a similar character were also 
 represented. 
 
 Colonel John Stevens, of Hoboken, wore his life 
 out in futile attempts to convince his contemporaries 
 that railroads were the only satisfactory solution of 
 the transportation problem. Colonel Stevens, with 
 a grasp of the question wonderfully clear for that day, 
 worked out a plan for a railroad with wooden rails 
 supported on piles from Albany to Lake Erie, which 
 he urged the National Government to take up. In 
 1812 Stevens published a pamphlet entitled " Docu- 
 ments Tending to Prove the Superior Advantages of 
 Railways and Steam Carriages over Canal Naviga- 
 tion." He could see nothing to hinder steam car- 
 riages from attaining a velocity of a hundred miles an 
 hour, but thought that in practice it might not be 
 convenient to exceed twenty to thirty miles an hour. 
 But Chancellor Livingston and Gouverneur Morris 
 demonstrated conclusively that a railroad under any 
 circumstances was impossible. 
 
 About the same time Oliver Evans, of Pennsyl- 
 vania, " The Watt of America," inventor of the high- 
 pressure steam engine, made this remarkable pre- 
 diction : 
 
 " The time will come when people will travel in stages 
 moved by steam engines from one city to another, almost as 
 fast as birds can fly, fifteen or twenty miles an hour. Pass- 
 ing through the air with such velocity will be the most ex- 
 hilarating exercise. To accomplish this two sets of railways 
 will be laid, so nearly level as not to deviate more than two 
 degrees from the horizontal, made of wood or iron, on smooth 
 
8 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 paths of broken stone or gravel, with a rail to guide the car- 
 riages so they may pass each other in different directions, 
 and they will travel by night as well as by day. Passengers 
 will sleep in these stages as comfortably as they now do in 
 steam stage boats. Twenty miles an hour is about thirty- 
 two feet a second, and the resistance of the air about one 
 pound to the square foot; but the body of the carriages 
 will be shaped like a swift swimming fish to pass easily 
 through the air. The United States will be the first nation 
 to make the discovery, and her wealth and power will rise to 
 an unparalleled height." 
 
 Henry Meigs, a member of the New York legisla- 
 ture in 1817, a young man of fine talents, lost his in- 
 fluence, ruined his prospects, and came to be regarded 
 as a proper subject for a strait- jacket because he 
 expressed his belief that steam carriages would be 
 operated successfully on land. 
 
 The most embarrassing feature of the situation was 
 that these prominent citizens who knew railroads were 
 but the impracticable dream of irresponsible vision- 
 aries, were the owners of what little capital there was 
 in the country, and railroad building is distinctly an 
 enterprise requiring funds. The character and extent 
 of this opposition, which by no means was confined to 
 Massachusetts, are admirably set forth in this extract 
 from a speech by Henry Williams, a director of the 
 Boston and Worcester Railroad, at the celebration 
 in Worcester of the opening of the road July 6, 1835: 
 
 "A few years ago this project started. It had many 
 warm and high-spirited friends and advocates; also many 
 strong and powerful enemies. Strange as it may seem, these 
 enemies were to be found principally among the rich and 
 powerful the very class of men who possessed the most 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 9 
 
 ample means, and so might have been expected to be first and 
 foremost in advocating and prosecuting an important, a 
 noble public enterprise. True, there were honorable excep- 
 tions ; but it cannot be denied that very many great men, 
 very many rich men, refused all participation, scoffed at our 
 project, pointed at some of us the finger of scorn and bandied 
 such epithets as ' hare-brained enthusiasts,' ' visionaries,' who 
 ' almost deserve to be sent to the mad-house.' 
 
 " All this was said nay more ; for when the first spade 
 was stuck in the ground the directors were called ' fools,' 
 ' idiots,' and ' knaves.' They were declared guilty of a high 
 crime in commencing a work which must inevitably result in 
 as total a loss as if the money expended were shoveled into the 
 bottomless pit. 
 
 " All this was said and much more. Measures were 
 actually taken to arrest work and cause an abandonment of 
 the enterprise. But, thanks to the true friends of the proj- 
 ect, they stood firm and, with warm hearts and just confidence 
 in those who were chosen to prosecute the work, manfully and 
 successfully resisted all attempts to crush the noble project. 
 
 " The road had a sorry beginning. At first some of our 
 prominent men were willing to advance a few dollars to make 
 examinations and surveys ; but when called upon to take and 
 pay for the stock for which they had subscribed, they flinched 
 and vociferously cried out that it was madness to go on ; that 
 the road would cost three times the amount of the estimates, 
 and that even if it should be built it would be next to worth- 
 less and could never pay half of one per cent on the cost. 
 
 " Here we are, my friends, in the hall of the heart of the 
 Commonwealth. We came by railroad all the way from 
 Boston, forty-two miles, in less than three hours. The road 
 is finished, but who accomplished the work? Has it been 
 done by the rich men, the great men of the times? By our 
 quarter, half, and whole million men? No, sir! It has been 
 accomplished by the bone and sinew of the community; by 
 
10 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 the middling interest people, by that class of men who have 
 warm hearts, clear heads, and who possess almost a monopoly 
 of generous public spirit." 
 
 Still another part of the opposition to the railroad 
 was made up of a class which was unable to help, hut 
 which was able to hinder materially by playing upon 
 unreasoning prejudice. Of this type was the Eng- 
 lishman who in 1830 assumed that the railroad advo- 
 cates planned to dispense entirely with horses and 
 drivers. He figured that earning power valued at a 
 hundred million pounds a year would be thus utterly 
 destroyed. What was to hecome of all the people 
 thus deprived of a livelihood? 
 
 Another Englishman, a scientist, was much exer- 
 cised over the doom of America after this unfortunate 
 country had fed to its locomotives the last pound of 
 its limited supply of coal. 
 
 Still another summed up the horrors and dangers of 
 railroad travel thus : 
 
 " Reader, how would you like to be put in a box like a 
 coach or a sedan and dropped out of the window of the fifth 
 or sixth flat of a house? Sixty-six miles an hour is the 
 highest velocity attained by falling bodies in one hundred 
 feet, and forty-four miles an hour in falling sixty-four feet. 
 Even supposing that means were found to abate one-half of 
 the violent shock in stopping, enough remains to terrify con- 
 siderate men from risking their persons in such species of 
 conveyance. Till we have bones of brass or iron, or better 
 methods of protecting them than we have now, it is pre- 
 posterous to talk of traveling fifty or sixty miles an hour as 
 a practicable thing." 
 
 Most remarkable of all was the discovery, also by 
 an English genius, of a new disease superinduced by 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 11 
 
 rapid travel on the railroad. He declared that it was 
 a notorious fact that the brains of business men were 
 so addled by the swiftness of the journey from Man- 
 chester to Liverpool or London, that they often for- 
 got what they went for, and had to write home to find 
 out. One elderly gentleman became so impregnated 
 with velocity, as the result of a prolonged debauch in 
 railroad rides, that he dashed head foremost into an 
 iron post and shivered it into pieces, according to 
 this veracious authority. 
 
 All these remarkable stories were duly brought 
 across the ocean, to be gravely discussed, embellished, 
 and reconstructed to give them a local atmosphere, 
 and fed to the credulous to rouse their apprehensions 
 and their antipathies. In 1836 the people of New- 
 ington, Conn., drew up a remonstrance addressed to 
 the directors of a railroad that had been surveyed 
 through the town, setting forth that they were a 
 peaceable, orderly people, and that they did not want 
 their quiet disturbed by steam cars and the influx of 
 strangers. Dorchester, Mass., in town meeting as- 
 sembled in 1842, instructed its representatives in the 
 legislature to " use their utmost endeavors to prevent, 
 if possible, so great a calamity to our town as must 
 be the location of any railroad through it." A com- 
 mittee of Congress, in a report dated February 21, 
 1829, expressed the conviction that clauses in charters 
 prohibiting any one but the owners of a railroad from 
 using it " seem to render it obnoxious to the charge 
 of a close monopoly." 
 
 But once a great idea has germinated it will grow 
 in spite of all the powers of darkness. The theory of 
 the railroad was so sound that it won its way irresist- 
 
12 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 ibly. When at last the Stockton and Darlington 
 Railroad of England, which had been authorized by 
 Parliament in 1821 after desperate opposition, was 
 opened for traffic in 1825, the more reckless enthu- 
 siasts on this side of the Atlantic jumped at the con- 
 clusion that a new era of transportation had dawned. 
 Almost simultaneously advanced thinkers in widely 
 separated parts of the country, each in his own way, 
 set about the development of the American railroad. 
 
 One of the first Americans to form a definite con- 
 viction that the railroad was to supply the transpor- 
 tation of the future was Horatio Allen, the son of a 
 professor of mathematics at Union College, Schenec- 
 tady, who had adopted engineering as a profession. 
 At the age of twenty-three Allen secured an appoint- 
 ment as resident engineer on the summit level of the 
 Delaware and Hudson Canal just about the time 
 the Stockton and Darlington Railroad was opened. 
 Young Allen was clever, energetic, and ambitious. 
 He won the friendship of his chief, J. B. Jervis, and 
 he had the best possible opportunity for advancement 
 in the science of canal building, then the most highly 
 esteemed form of internal improvement. 
 
 But he was shrewd enough to realize that his 
 chances of a career lay not on the canal but on the 
 dawning railroad. So he resigned his position in 1827 
 and prepared to go to England to study railroad 
 building at first hand. His late employers had such 
 confidence in Allen that they commissioned him to 
 buy the iron for a railroad they were building from 
 Honesdale, the terminus of the canal, to the coal 
 mines at Carbondale, and four locomotives to operate 
 it. As compensation they agreed to pay his expenses 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 13 
 
 for three months, but not to exceed nine hundred dol- 
 lars, while he was studying railroads. 
 
 About the time that Allen gave up his position to 
 go to England, the first railroad in the United States 
 was completed. It was built by Gridley Bryant, 
 from the granite quarries near Quincy, Mass., to tide- 
 water on the Neponset River, a distance of three miles. 
 It was used solely to haul granite from the quarry to 
 a point from which it could be conveyed by water to 
 Boston. The granite for the Bunker Hill monument 
 was transported over this first railroad. The gauge 
 was five feet. The rails were pine timbers six by 
 twelve inches, on top of which was an oak scantling 
 two by four inches, faced with bar iron five-sixteenths 
 of an inch thick and two and a half inches wide. The 
 ties were of stone twelve inches square and eight feet 
 long, laid on a foundation of broken stone three feet 
 deep. Such substantial construction was expensive, 
 costing $11,250 a mile, but it reduced the cost of 
 transportation to one-sixth of what it had been. Be- 
 ing down-grade all the way, two horses could haul 
 forty tons at a speed of four and a half miles an hour. 
 
 The Quincy Railroad, although it was never oper- 
 ated with anything but horses, and carried no traffic 
 but stone, was regarded as one of the wonders of the 
 age. Visitors came long distances to see it in opera- 
 tion. So great was the rush to see the railroad, in 
 fact, that a thrifty citizen opened a tavern near where 
 the highway from Boston to Quincy crossed it and 
 did a thriving business catering to the sightseers. 
 Daniel Webster drove over one day after attending 
 a funeral in the vicinity, and after a critical examina- 
 tion hazarded the opinion that railroads would bear 
 
14 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 some study. But not until years afterward did the 
 great lawyer and statesman concede that the railroad 
 was a success. For a long time he inclined to the 
 belief that it could not be operated with locomo- 
 tives. He thought, for one thing, that the frost on 
 the rails in winter would be an insuperable obstacle. 
 
 Shortly after the Quincy Railroad was finished the 
 Mauch Chunk Railroad, the second in America, was 
 thrown open to traffic and public admiration. Busi- 
 ness on this line was also confined to a single com- 
 modity, coal, moving in one direction. The Mauch 
 Chunk Railroad extended from the Lehigh River to 
 the Summit Mines near Carbondale, nine miles dis- 
 tant and at an elevation of nine hundred and thirty- 
 six feet above the river. From the river bank there 
 was an inclined plane two thousand one hundred feet 
 long, having a rise of two hundred and twenty-five 
 feet. The entire nine miles was built in two months 
 and three days at a cost of twenty-seven thousand 
 dollars. The ties were of wood spaced four feet 
 apart. The rails were of wood held in place by 
 wooden keys or wedges and faced with iron a quarter 
 of an inch thick and an inch and a quarter wide. Cars 
 carrying a ton and a half of coal were taken down in 
 " brigades " of six to ten, in charge of two men, to 
 the top of the plane in thirty minutes. The cars were 
 lowered down the plane one at a time, the descent 
 requiring three-quarters of a minute. On the return 
 trip one horse hauled three empty cars, making the 
 journey in two hours. 
 
 These two railroads, such as they were, served as 
 models for the construction of the first railroad de- 
 signed for a general transportation business. The 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 15 
 
 first act of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Com- 
 pany after organizing was to send Philip E. Thomas, 
 Alexander Brown, and Thomas Ellicott to study 
 these lines for ideas to be applied in building their 
 own road. 
 
 Allen sailed from New York in January, 1828. 
 Being provided with letters of introduction, he was 
 able to begin his investigations without delay under 
 the most favorable conditions. The state of the art 
 of railroad building cannot be described better than 
 by quoting the following letter to the board of direct- 
 ors of the Charleston and Hamburg Railroad. The 
 letter is of peculiar interest because it was a link in a 
 chain of circumstances which influenced the Charles- 
 ton and Hamburg to become the first railroad com- 
 pany in the world to adopt the locomotive as a motive 
 power: 
 
 " I have now the pleasure of communicating the results of 
 some observations which I have been able to make since I last 
 wrote you. With the exception of one or two small roads at 
 some of the coal mines near this place the railroad at Leeds 
 is the first of much importance visited after leaving Liver- 
 pool. 
 
 " This railroad, three and a half miles long, extends to a 
 mine. It was constructed about fifteen years since. The 
 rails are of cast iron in lengths of three feet, and mostly in 
 bad order. Most of this road descends a little from the mine 
 and about the middle the line has a self-acting plane three 
 hundred yards in length. They use a locomotive from each 
 end of the plane, which have been in use seven or eight years, 
 and I think them preferable to animal power. These engines 
 are not of the approved kind. They, however, travel with 
 their train, consisting of fifteen or twenty cars weighing 
 
16 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 nearly four tons each, at the rate of two and a half or three 
 miles an hour. I rode up and down the line on one of them, 
 and find that they are easily managed and that their direction 
 can be sooner changed than the time required to move horses 
 for that purpose. 
 
 " The next railroad of importance that I visited was the 
 Stockton and Darlington. This was the first experiment to 
 apply railroads to the purposes of promiscuous traffic, and 
 was opened about two years since. The whole extent of this 
 road, including some branches, is about thirty miles; and 
 although the general object was to open communication from 
 navigation at Stockton with an extensive coal region, was 
 also designed for a general trade with the interior. This 
 road is a single track, and although the passings are two to 
 three in the mile, the detention to trade is not very great. 
 
 " They use both horses and locomotive steam engines upon 
 the road and I had a fair opportunity to test their relative 
 utility. The result is much in favor of the locomotive, as a 
 reference with which I was favored to the accounts of the 
 company fully testifies. The locomotives on this road are 
 used only in the coal trade, and run a distance of twenty 
 miles from Stockton. The greater part of this distance 
 descends towards Stockton, varying from one-sixteenth to 
 one-third of an inch per yard ; no part ascends in that direc- 
 tion and only about two miles is level. They use four loco- 
 motive engines on this road which lead from twenty to 
 twenty-eight cars in train weighing each 5,300 pounds in- 
 dependent of the car itself, and travel from four to seven 
 miles an hour. Three of these engines are of Losh and 
 Stephenson's construction, as they are called here, and one of 
 them of Hackworth's. 
 
 " I rode up and down on these different engines a distance 
 of thirty or forty miles. Losh and Stephenson's engines 
 usually carry twenty cars, Hackworth's twenty-four and 
 sometimes twenty-eight with which it is capable of travel- 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 17 
 
 ing six to seven miles an hour. The others travel five or six, 
 which is as great a speed as I think prudent to move at when 
 loaded. Hackworth's engine is capable of ten or twelve 
 miles an hour when light. In returning with empty cars I 
 found the greatest ascents required the whole power of the 
 engines and reduced the speed nearly one-half. This road is 
 of wrought iron rails in lengths of fifteen feet which weigh 
 twenty-eight pounds to the yard. 
 
 " From this railroad I proceeded to Newcastle-on-Tyne. 
 This place, with the neighboring coal mines upon the Tyne, is 
 the birthplace and cradle of railroads and locomotive steam 
 engines. It was in this vicinity railroads were first in- 
 troduced and it was at Killingworth, about five miles from 
 the city of Newcastle, that the steam locomotive was first 
 used to advantage. 
 
 " Killingworth is the residence of Wood, the author of the 
 treatise on railroads. Letters which the politeness of 
 Stephenson furnished me previous to my leaving Liverpool 
 introduced me to Wood, who treated me with the greatest 
 cordiality and very kindly answered all inquiries that 
 curiosity and invention could suggest on the subject of rail- 
 roads and locomotive steam engines. The Killingworth rail- 
 road extends from a colliery of that name to the River Tyne, 
 a distance of five miles. It was on this road that the plate 
 rail was used at a very early period. The present road has 
 been laid about twenty-two years and is yet in pretty good 
 order. The rails are of cast iron with the exception of a 
 small portion which was laid of wrought iron by way of 
 experiment about eight or nine years since. They have used 
 locomotive steam engines here about five years. It was here 
 Losh and Stephenson made their experiments on locomotives 
 and here Wood made most of the experiments recorded in his 
 work on railroads, which, I am happy to find, is considered as 
 good an authority in this country as with us. Wood is now 
 preparing a second edition of this work, which will comprise 
 
18 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 a great number of very interesting experiments and facts 
 which his continued attention to the subject has developed. 
 
 " I saw these locomotives at work upon this road. They 
 performed much the same as those upon the Stockton and 
 Darlington and are of much the same construction as the 
 three on that road. I have the particular dimensions of 
 these engines as well as those upon the Stockton and Darling- 
 ton road. 
 
 " My next object was to visit the railroads in the vicinity 
 of Killingworth, and they are as common here as coal mines, 
 which are to be seen in every direction. The most interesting 
 of these to visit are the Springville and the Helton roads. 
 The Springville road is a recent work, and in very fine order. 
 The rails are of wrought iron, which is now altogether used in 
 place of cast iron. They use only one locomotive upon this 
 road, which performs much the same as those described. The 
 Helton road have laid by their locomotive engines on account 
 of the line of road being unfavorable for them. 
 
 " At North Shields I saw a railroad which was laid about 
 twenty years ago and in very bad order, though still used. 
 
 " Previous to parting with Mr. Wood he gave me letters to 
 Buchanan and Granger of Edinburgh, my next object being 
 to examine the railroads of Scotland. These gentlemen con- 
 struct engines and Granger is superintendent of most of the 
 railroads now constructing in that quarter. They are con- 
 structing a railroad from Edinburgh to the Dalkeith col- 
 lieries, a distance of six or seven miles. This will be an ex- 
 pensive work in tunneling, cuttings, and embankments. 
 
 " After spending a short time in Edinburgh I went in 
 company with Mr. Granger to Glasgow, where he is superin- 
 tending several railroads and had the pleasure of traveling 
 with him over the whole line of the Kirkintilloch railroad. 
 The road commences at a canal about nine miles from Glas- 
 gow and extends into the coal region about eleven miles. 
 Seven miles of this road have been in use eighteen months ; the 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 19 
 
 rest is just opened. They use animal power only on this 
 road, but they are constructing one from Glasgow to connect 
 with the farther end of this, eight miles in length, upon which 
 they intend using steam locomotives. This is heavy work; 
 part of the cuttings and embankments being forty to fifty 
 feet in depth. 
 
 " These railroads, together with those described in my last, 
 comprise all the railroads of importance in the Kingdom. 
 Several others are projected, and some minor ones are in 
 progress. Upon the whole the subject appears to be quite 
 as popular here as with us, notwithstanding they understand 
 so much better than we do the expense of constructing rail- 
 roads." 
 
 More than a year before the famous Rainhill trial 
 of October 14, 1829, which was to determine the fate 
 of the locomotive and immortalize the name of Ste- 
 phenson, this young American engineer, then but 
 twenty-six years old, executed his commission for the 
 Delaware and Hudson Canal Company by ordering 
 the first four locomotives ever seen in the United 
 States. Three of these were from the works of Fos- 
 ter, Rastrick & Co., of Stourbridge, the fourth was 
 built by Stephenson. The first of these locomotives 
 arrived in New York in January, 1829 ; the last one in 
 September of the same year. One of these locomo- 
 tives was blocked up so the wheels cleared the ground, 
 there being no track available, and fired up for the 
 edification of the " gentlemen of science and particular 
 intelligence," who, according to the New York En- 
 quirer ', " unanimously attended." 
 
 The Delaware and Hudson Company having fin- 
 ished its railroad from the canal terminus at Hones- 
 dale to the mines at Carbondale sixteen and a half 
 
20 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 miles distant, early in 1829, one of these locomotives, 
 the " Stourbridge Lion," was selected for trial. It 
 was shipped from the foot of Beach Street up the 
 Hudson to Rondout, and thence by canal to Hones- 
 dale. Allen, being at leisure at the time, volunteered 
 to set it up and make the trial trip. 
 
 The Stourbridge Lion was so named because the 
 painter who put the finishing touches on it detected in 
 the rounded boiler head a far-fetched resemblance to 
 the King of Beasts, and so painted in glaring red a 
 lion's head thereon. The locomotive had four wheels 
 coupled, all drivers, and two vertical cylinders of 
 thirty-six inches stroke at the back end of the hori- 
 zontal boiler. Motion was communicated to the 
 drivers by two grasshopper beams. The wheels were 
 of oak with iron tires. 
 
 Crowds as eagerly curious as those in New York 
 flocked to see the locomotive, and the day of the trial 
 trip, Saturday, August 8, 1829, was observed as a 
 holiday. A cannon had been borrowed by the citizens 
 of Honesdale to add noise to the celebration. It burst 
 after a few rounds had been fired, shattering the arm 
 of Alva Adams, one of the men who were handling it. 
 
 In after years Allen was very fond of telling the 
 story of that first trip of a locomotive on American 
 soil. Here is the story as he related it on one occa- 
 sion: 
 
 " When was it ? Where was it ? And who awakened its 
 energies and directed its movements? It was in the year 
 1829 on August 9 * on the banks of the Lackawaxen, at the 
 
 * Mr. Allen seems to have been mistaken about the date, which was 
 really August 8. He realized the untrustworthiness of his memory, for he 
 often deplored his failure to keep a diary in his younger days. 
 
THE "STOURBRIDGE LION," 
 The first locomotive that ever turned a wheel on American soil. 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 21 
 
 commencement of the railroad connecting the canal of the 
 Delaware and Hudson Canal Company with the coal mines, 
 and he who addresses you was the only person on that loco- 
 motive. The circumstances which led to my being alone on 
 the engine were these : 
 
 " The road had been built in the summer ; the structure was 
 of hemlock timber with rails of large dimensions notched on 
 caps placed far apart. The timber had cracked and warped 
 from exposure to the sun. 
 
 " After about three hundred feet of straight line the road 
 crossed Lackawaxen Creek on trestlework about thirty feet 
 high, and with a curve of about three hundred and fifty to 
 four hundred feet radius. The impression was very genera] 
 that the iron monster would break down the road, or that it 
 would leave the track at the curve and plunge into the creek. 
 My reply to such apprehensions was that it was too late to con- 
 sider the probability of such occurrences ; that there was no 
 other course but to have a trial made of the strange animal 
 which had been brought there at great expense; but that it 
 was not necessary that more than one should be involved in 
 its fate; that I would like the first ride alone, and the time 
 would come when I should look back to the incident with great 
 interest. 
 
 " As I placed my hand on the throttle valve handle I was 
 undecided whether I should move slowly or with a fair degree 
 of speed, but holding that the road would prove safe, and 
 preferring, if we did go down, to go handsomely, and without 
 any evidence of timidity, I started with considerable velocity, 
 passed the curves over the creek safely, and was soon out of 
 hearing of the cheers of the vast assemblage present. At the 
 end of two or three miles I reversed the valve and returned 
 without accident to the place of starting, having made the 
 first locomotive trip on the western hemisphere." 
 
 Allen played a conspicuous part in the development 
 of the railroad, first as chief engineer of the Charles- 
 
22 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 ton and Hamburg, and afterwards as constructing 
 engineer and president of the Erie; but in all the 
 eighty-seven years of his busy life he never again 
 officiated as a locomotive engineer. 
 
 This trial convinced Allen and the directors that 
 the road was not suitable for locomotives, so the Stour- 
 bridge Lion was run off the rails near the canal dock, 
 where it was permitted to stand, an object of dread 
 to all the children in the neighborhood, who made long 
 detours to avoid passing near the monster. When 
 winter came a rough board shed was built over it, but 
 curious hands soon tore down planks enough to give 
 an unobstructed view. There the Stourbridge Lion 
 stood for fourteen years. By that time so many parts 
 had been broken off and carried away that it was 
 useless as a locomotive. Then the boiler was taken 
 to the Carbondale shops of the company to supply 
 steam for a stationary engine until it was worn out, 
 when it was consigned to the ignominious oblivion of 
 the scrap heap. 
 
 The wheels of the other three locomotives of that 
 first consignment were destined never to rest on a rail. 
 They were scored for some time in the warehouse of 
 Abeel & Dunscombe, on the East Side in New 
 York. Their ultimate fate is one of the mysteries 
 which will never be solved. 
 
 Soon after this trip on the Stourbridge Lion, Allen 
 went to Charleston to take up the duties of chief engi- 
 neer of the Charleston and Hamburg Railroad, char- 
 tered by the South Carolina legislature May 12, 1828, 
 a little more than a year after the Baltimore and Ohio 
 was organized, to build from Charleston to the Savan- 
 nah River, one hundred and thirty-six miles away. 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 23 
 
 One of his first acts in his official capacity was to 
 attend a meeting of the board of directors on Jan- 
 uary 14, 1830, five days after his appointment, at 
 which he recommended that the locomotive be adopted 
 as the sole motive power, saying " there was no reason 
 to expect any material improvement in the breed of 
 horses, but the man was not living who knew what the 
 breed of locomotives was to place at command." The 
 directors were in a position to appreciate the force of 
 the argument, for they had experimented with sailing 
 cars and found them wanting. 
 
 It is curious how remarkably persistent has been 
 the attempt to utilize the sail as a motive power on 
 land. It was first tried in Holland in 1620, where 
 cars containing twenty-eight passengers covered forty- 
 two miles on the smooth, hard beach in two hours. As 
 late as 1878 a Western genius went through the 
 threadbare process of discovering that sailing cars 
 could not be operated successfully'. 
 
 Having convinced themselves that the wind was 
 unsatisfactory for the movement of trains, the direct- 
 ors of the Charleston and Hamburg Railroad had 
 offered a prize of five hundred dollars for the 
 best horse-power motor. The prize was won by C. E. 
 Detmold with an endless chain platform mounted on 
 the car, by means of which one horse was able to pro- 
 pel a car carrying twelve passengers at the rate of 
 twelve miles an hour. 
 
 Without leaving their seats the directors unani- 
 mously voted to adopt the recommendations of their 
 chief engineer, thus earning the distinction of being 
 the first railroad company in the world to declare for 
 steam. Allen also recommended that a gauge of five 
 
24 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 feet be adopted. He afterwards tried to get the Erie 
 to adopt that gauge. Probably there are few rail- 
 road officials to-day who do not regret that Allen's 
 recommendations were not followed. The addition 
 of three and a half inches to the width of the track 
 would be a material advantage now. Only a year ago 
 James J. Hill gave out a statement for publication, 
 in which he deplored the error of judgment that pre- 
 vented the adoption of a broader gauge for the rail- 
 roads. The enormous cost would render a change at 
 this late day impossible. 
 
 Having determined to use steam, the directors of 
 the Charleston and Hamburg Railroad lost no time 
 in authorizing the construction of the first loco- 
 motive ever built in America for regular service. 
 It was a fearful and wonderful contrivance, 
 designed by E. L. Miller, of Charleston. The 
 vertical boiler looked something like an overgrown 
 porter bottle of the old style. The fire-box had 
 " teats " radiating from its outer wall to afford 
 additional heating surface. The smoke escaped 
 through openings in the sides into an outer jacket 
 encasing the boiler. The four wheels had iron hubs 
 and tires and wooden spokes and felloes. The two 
 cylinders, six inches in diameter by sixteen inches 
 stroke, placed in front of the boiler, worked cranks 
 inside the frame. The engine, which was christened 
 the "Best Friend of Charleston," was built at the 
 West Point Foundry in New York. 
 
 Upon arriving in Charleston it was set up by Julius 
 D. Petsch, foreman of Dotterer & Easton's machine 
 shop, assisted by Nicholas W. Darrell. On November 
 2, 1830, the trial trip was made with Darrell as engi- 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 25 
 
 neer. The wheels proved to be so weak that one of 
 them sprung out of shape and threw the engine into 
 the ditch on the return trip. A second trip was made 
 on December 14, and a third on the following day, 
 when the Best Friend proved to possess power dou- 
 ble the contract requirements. It was able to make 
 sixteen to twenty-one miles an hour with forty or fifty 
 passengers in four or five cars, and to attain a speed 
 of thirty-five miles an hour without cars. 
 
 Darrell was so delighted with his experience that 
 he gave up his job as machinist to become the first 
 regular locomotive engineer in America. The Best 
 Friend came very near killing him a few months 
 later. Not liking the noise of steam escaping from 
 the safety valve, the negro fireman fastened it shut. 
 Some accounts say that he " sat " on the valve. If 
 true this statement would seem to indicate that the 
 fireman must have been a combination of a salamander 
 and a remarkably gifted acrobat. Be that as it may, 
 the boiler exploded, scalding Darrell severely and in- 
 juring the fireman so that he died two days later. 
 After that exhibition of its untrustworthiness and de- 
 structive powers the locomotive was regarded with 
 suspicion. For a long time a " barrier car " piled 
 high with cotton bales was interposed between the 
 locomotive and the train to protect passengers from 
 possible explosions. 
 
 Meanwhile, on January 15, 1831, with the aid of the 
 Best Friend, the first regular passenger service on 
 an American railroad was instituted. On that first 
 trip was a passenger who was to exert a unique influ- 
 ence in shaping the destinies of the Erie, as will appear 
 later. 
 
26 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 Studying the performances of this first American- 
 built locomotive, Allen came to the conclusion that a 
 radical change would have to be made in the design 
 if results were to be obtained. This conclusion led 
 the young engineer to take another first step in the 
 history of the railroad which was to be of far-reaching 
 importance. Like other early railroads, the Charles- 
 ton and Hamburg had wooden rails, in this instance 
 six by twelve inches, on which was spiked strap iron 
 half an inch thick by two and a half inches wide. On 
 account of the weakness of the structure, Allen, in a 
 report dated May 16, 1831, recommended that the 
 load on each wheel be limited to a ton and a half. To 
 allow locomotives of effective size to be built, he rec- 
 ommended engines with six or eight wheels. 
 
 Receiving the sanction of the directors, Allen ac- 
 cordingly designed a locomotive with a single pair of 
 drivers and with a four-wheeled truck under the front 
 end. The merits of the four-wheeled truck were so 
 obvious that it was universally adopted. Without it 
 the railroad could not have been developed. 
 
 This first locomotive with a four-wheeled truck and 
 the second to be built in America, called the " West 
 Point," was also built at the West Point Foundry, and 
 put in service March 5, 1831, when it proved its effi- 
 ciency by drawing four cars containing one hundred 
 and seventeen passengers, of whom fifty were ladies, 
 a distance of two and three-fourths miles in eleven 
 minutes. 
 
 On October 1, 1834, a patent on the four-wheeled 
 truck was granted to Ross Winans, of Baltimore, one 
 of the very earliest mechanical geniuses of the rail- 
 road, who had shown that the flange of a car wheel 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 27 
 
 should be placed on the inside instead of the outside, 
 as was the practice at first, and that the journal 
 should be placed outside. Winans was one of the 
 most successful of the early locomotive builders. He 
 made a great fortune in constructing the first rail- 
 road in Russia. It cost twenty years of litigation and 
 two hundred thousand dollars to establish the fact 
 that he was not the first to invent and use the four- 
 wheeled truck. The testimony of Allen and his assist- 
 ant was the deciding factor that turned the verdict 
 against Winans. 
 
 While South Carolina was busy with her first rail- 
 road, Massachusetts was also laying the foundations 
 of a transportation system. In 1829, when the pop- 
 ulation of Boston was sixty thousand and of Lowell 
 six thousand, fifteen thousand tons of freight and 
 thirty-seven thousand passengers were transported 
 annually between these two points. One might take 
 a boat on the Middlesex Canal, which covered the 
 most of the distance of twenty-three and a half miles 
 in seven hours at a cost of seventy-five cents. The 
 traveler could walk the rest of the way into Boston, 
 or, if he was extravagant, could ride uptown in an 
 omnibus for another shilling. If he was in a great 
 hurry, and money was no object, he could cover the 
 distance in a stage coach in three hours for a fare of 
 a dollar and a quarter. Some one proposed a rail- 
 road as an improvement even on the swift stage coach. 
 Thereupon the State appropriated two hundred and 
 fifty dollars to make a survey, as the result of which 
 the engineers reported that the road would cost one 
 hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars. 
 
 The canal company was by no means disposed to 
 
28 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 give up its traffic without a fight. It set up the claim 
 that its charter gave it a monopoly of the transporta- 
 tion business between Boston and Lowell. The legis- 
 lature eventually refused to recognize the claim, but 
 the canal people, aided by a considerable faction which 
 disapproved of such perilous innovations as railroads, 
 fought off the charter for two sessions. 
 
 Construction was finally begun November 2, 1831, 
 and the road was opened for traffic June 26, 1835. 
 It had cost many times the original estimate, but the 
 directors consoled themselves with the reflection that it 
 was so well built that it would last forever. As a mat- 
 ter of fact it was too well built. It had monster gran- 
 ite ties embedded in broken stone, which simply served 
 as anvils on which even the light equipment of those 
 early days quickly pounded the flimsy wooden rails 
 and thin iron straps to pieces, so that it soon had to be 
 rebuilt. However, even with all this heavy expendi- 
 ture the road was one of the most profitable of its 
 length in the United States. For a quarter of a 
 century it paid dividends at the rate of six and three- 
 quarters per cent per annum. 
 
 The year the road was opened the directors indulged 
 in the luxury of two locomotives imported from Eng- 
 land. In common with several other boards of direct- 
 ors the Massachusetts men made the mistake of 
 thinking that locomotives could only be built in the 
 land of their origin, and that only an Englishman 
 could run them. The first locomotive arrived some 
 weeks before its engineer; and the directors, being 
 somewhat eager to try their purchase, had it set up by 
 native talent, none of whom had ever seen a locomo- 
 tive, or even a picture of one. They had to rely solely 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 29 
 
 upon their own common sense in putting the parts to- 
 gether. When the belated engineer arrived he was 
 alone. He was quite sure a mere Yankee could not 
 run the other engine, but he was willing to send to 
 England for a friend to take the position. But the 
 directors were too impatient. They thought the Eng- 
 lishman might coach an American so he could worry 
 along somehow. 
 
 The American proved an exceedingly dull pupil. 
 At least his engine was continually out of order. The 
 English engineer would tinker it up again, always 
 taking care to bring out his own superior skill and 
 the Yankee's lack of it, until the latter became sus- 
 picious. He hid himself in the engine house and 
 watched one night. The next night one of the direct- 
 ors kept the vigil with the Yankee engineer. The 
 English engineer was caught red-handed in the act of 
 disabling the locomotive in order to discredit the 
 American. No more imported engineers were ever 
 employed on the Boston and Lowell. 
 
 The Boston and Providence Railroad, construction 
 on which was begun in December, 1832, was opened 
 a few days after the Boston and Lowell, and the Bos- 
 ton and Worcester, forty-two miles long, in the fol- 
 lowing month. In 1839 this road was extended to the 
 Connecticut River, sixty-two miles from Boston. 
 
 One of the early railroads that was little heard of 
 because the builders chanced to have the money to 
 carry out their project, and chose to keep the stock 
 in their own possession, was the Paterson and Hud- 
 son River, incorporated January 21, 1831, to build 
 from Paterson to Weehawken, now a part of the 
 Erie. In the American Railroad Journal of June 
 
30 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 23, 1832, is a description of a trip which the editor, 
 D. K. Minor, made on this road, which is of peculiar 
 interest for the light it sheds on the popular idea of 
 what constituted a satisfactory railroad in 1832. Said 
 the editor: 
 
 " Seeing a communication a day or two since in the New 
 York American from which we learned that a portion of the 
 Paterson and Hudson River Railroad was completed, and 
 that elegant cars were provided for the accommodation of 
 passengers, we determined at once to avail ourselves of the 
 first leisure day to have a ride on the railroad. 
 
 " We left Wall Street at 7 :30 and crossed to Hoboken at 
 8 A.M., where we took a seat in an excellent coach with good 
 horses belonging to Kinnely, Rodgers & Roy, whose coaches 
 leave regularly four times, viz. : 8 and 10 and 2 and 4, for 
 Aquackanonk, where the line of the railroad is intersected and 
 the passengers are relieved from the inconvenient small 
 coaches and dusty roads by taking seats in splendid and 
 convenient cars which will with ease accommodate twenty 
 persons inside and from six to twelve on the top, to each of 
 which is attached a fleet horse managed by a careful driver. 
 
 " The distance from the Aquackanonk terminus of the rail- 
 road to the brick meeting house at Paterson is four and three- 
 fourths miles, and consists of one level and two inclined 
 planes. From Aquackanonk the ascent is gradual for about 
 three miles, passing over one or two embankments and 
 through cuts of rock from ten to twenty feet deep and about 
 one hundred and fifty yards in length. On passing the sum- 
 mit level the descent is at an average of about twenty-one feet 
 to the mile until reaching the depot at Paterson. 
 
 " The time required to perform the distance of four and 
 three-fourths miles varies from twenty to twenty-five minutes 
 according to circumstances. We were in going out twenty- 
 three and in returning twenty minutes, and it is scarcely 
 
DAWN OF THE RAILROAD ERA 31 
 
 possible for those who have not had an opportunity to 
 participate in the pleasure of an excursion upon a railroad to 
 imagine the delightful sensation which it produces. 
 
 " The passenger is scarcely aware of movement except by 
 the rapidity with which he passes objects. He feels in 
 perfect safety, although at times his elevation above sur- 
 rounding fields may be fifteen or twenty feet. There is not 
 the least danger to be apprehended from a deviation from the 
 rails as the depth of the flange on the wheels and the weight 
 of the cars render it impossible for one or two horses to move 
 it sideways, whilst the guard an apparatus for removing 
 obstructions prevents anything over half an inch in diameter 
 from interfering with the wheels. For persons fond of in- 
 haling the cool breezes or enjoying the green fields and the 
 beautiful flowers of the country we cannot imagine a more 
 delightful excursion at so little cost, both in time and money, 
 than a trip to Paterson ; which may be performed out and 
 home again in one day with ample time to visit the curi- 
 osities of that interesting and growing town." 
 
 But American railroad builders progressed so rap- 
 idly beyond the stage at which " fleet horses " guided by 
 " careful drivers " hauling " splendid and convenient 
 cars " containing a score of passengers over pine rails 
 at the rate of twelve miles an hour, satisfied their 
 conceptions of what a first-class transportation sys- 
 tem should be, that in 1840, or a dozen years after the 
 first crude experiment was tried, they led the world, 
 as they have done ever since. M. Thiers, the great 
 historian and statesman, then prime minister of 
 France, recognized American supremacy in railroad 
 building in that year by sending Michel Chevalier, a 
 distinguished engineer, to study our methods, for the 
 benefit of French roads. 
 
 The circumstances under which the evolution of 
 
32 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 the great trunk lines was accomplished varied greatly. 
 Each set of conditions produced a distinct type of 
 development. To present the story of the early 
 struggles of representative systems having the strong- 
 est individuality will be the aim of the ensuing 
 chapters. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 
 
 WHEN the rising tide of trade and emigration, 
 which had been held back by the Alleghanies 
 as by a great dam, burst around their flanks in 1825 
 by way of the Erie Canal and the Lakes, the little 
 stream of traffic which had trickled over their sum- 
 mits along the national turnpike from Baltimore 
 to Cincinnati subsided. In this phenomenon the 
 shrewder business men of Baltimore saw foreshad- 
 owed the doom of their city's prosperity. 
 
 With such a tremendous advantage as a water 
 route to the heart of the growing West, New York 
 would monopolize the commerce of the country, 
 while Baltimore and Philadelphia would be dwarfed 
 to the proportions of mere local trading centers. 
 
 Something must be done promptly to counteract 
 New York's advantage. The era of furious and 
 losing canal speculation which raged from 1810 to 
 1840 was then at its height. Under such circum- 
 stances, the logical thing to do appeared to be to 
 hasten the building of the Chesapeake and Ohio 
 Canal, which had been one of Washington's dreams. 
 
 But when a board of government engineers, headed 
 by the renowned General Simon Bernard, who had 
 been aide-de-camp to Napoleon, and who, as a briga- 
 dier-general in the United States Engineer Corps, 
 had planned an elaborate system of sea-coast defenses, 
 
34 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 and had built Fortress Monroe, reported in 1826 that 
 the proposed canal, 241 miles long, would have 
 ascents and descents aggregating 3,185 feet; that to 
 make these 398 locks would be required ; that the total 
 cost would be $22,375,427, and that when it was built 
 the water supply, which would have to come from 
 mountain streams, would be uncertain, the majority 
 realized at last that Baltimore's imperiled commer- 
 cial prestige could never be retained by a canal. Yet 
 no one had an alternative to offer. 
 
 One morning, when Philip E. Thomas, a Quaker 
 merchant and philanthropist, and one of the most 
 highly esteemed citizens of Baltimore, reached his 
 desk in the Mechanics' Bank, of which he was presi- 
 dent, he found a letter from his brother Evan, who 
 was then in London on business. 
 
 He read the letter through twice, mused a while 
 over it, read it a third time, then, calling a messenger, 
 sent for his friend George Brown, one of the directors 
 of the bank. 
 
 " George," said the banker when his friend ap- 
 peared, " I have a letter from brother Evan which, 
 I think, will interest thee. It tells of a plan to build 
 a road from Liverpool to Manchester over which car- 
 riages will be drawn upon iron rails. Some say this 
 will afford a cheaper and quicker way of hauling 
 goods than even a canal." 
 
 " Why, I have a letter from my brother Tom tell- 
 ing about the same thing." 
 
 " I have been thinking, George, that perhaps one 
 of these railroads across the mountains to the West 
 might be the means of maintaining the prosperity of 
 our city." 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 35 
 
 " The very thing I have been thinking of all morn- 
 ing." 
 
 " Let us get together this evening and talk it 
 over." 
 
 " Agreed. Let us ask a few of our friends to meet 
 us." 
 
 " Very good. Now, thee has a large house. Sup- 
 pose we meet at thy house at seven o'clock this even- 
 ing? " 
 
 So it came about that twenty-five of the most in- 
 fluential men in Baltimore, including Charles Carroll, 
 of Carrollton, one of the signers of the Declaration 
 of Independence, met in George Brown's house, Mon- 
 day evening, February 12, 1827, to discuss the feasi- 
 bility of a railroad from Baltimore to the West. At 
 that time there was no such thing in existence as a 
 railroad for transporting passengers and merchandise 
 between distant points. 
 
 There were a few so-called railroads in England, 
 crude and inadequate affairs for moving coal and the 
 like from the mines to the nearest available water 
 transportation. Stephenson had made his first ex- 
 periments on the Stockton and Darlington, but they 
 were not regarded as demonstrating conclusively the 
 advantage of the locomotive over other motive power. 
 
 The construction of the Manchester and Liverpool 
 Railway had been begun after a fierce contest in Par- 
 liament. In America, there was a railway at Quincy, 
 Mass., three miles long, from a granite quarry to the 
 Neponset River, on which horses were used. 
 
 The only other railway on this side of the Atlantic 
 was from the coal mines at Mauch Chunk, Pa., to the 
 Lehigh River, nine miles away. Empty cars were 
 
36 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 hauled up the mountains by mules. The mules were 
 then placed on platforms on the loaded cars, and rode 
 to the bottom of the inclined plane, down which the 
 cars were carried by gravity. 
 
 It is recorded that the mules had such a keen appre- 
 ciation of the superiority of the railroad as a means 
 of transportation that they could not be induced to 
 walk down the mountain. 
 
 With such a scarcity of material, it did not take 
 long for Messrs. Thomas and Brown to tell their 
 neighbors all they knew about railroads, but so great 
 was the need of some effective form of communica- 
 tion with the region beyond the mountains, and so 
 convincingly were their views presented, that a com- 
 mittee of nine was appointed to investigate the whole 
 subject and report to the others one week later. 
 
 When the meeting was called to order, February 
 19, the committee had ready a report of thirty-four 
 printed pages, showing a comprehension of the useful- 
 ness of a railroad which under the circumstances was 
 amazing. It reads as if it had been penned by a 
 railroad promoter in the year of grace 1908. 
 
 The report called attention to the fact that the dis- 
 trict mainly dependent on the proposed route across 
 the mountains for the conveyance of its surplus prod- 
 uce already contained nearly two million inhabitants, 
 or one-fifth of the population of the United States, 
 while the population dependent on the Erie Canal was 
 not more than one million ; yet the traffic on the canal 
 had grown from three hundred and forty thousand 
 seven hundred and sixty-one dollars in 1824, the year 
 of its opening, to seven hundred and sixty-five thou- 
 sand dollars in 1826. 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 37 
 
 There was a great variety of articles produced in 
 the country which from lack of means of transporta- 
 tion were then of little value, but which would become 
 a source of wealth if a railroad were built. 
 
 For example, a barrel of flour was worth five dol- 
 lars in Baltimore; in Wheeling, a barrel of flour for 
 shipment to Baltimore could be sold for only one dol- 
 lar, because it would cost four dollars to haul it across 
 the mountains in wagons, whereas if a railroad were 
 built the flour could be transported at a cost of one 
 dollar. Thus the railroad would raise the value of 
 flour in Wheeling from one dollar to four dollars a 
 barrel. 
 
 But speaking of prophetic foresight, how is this 
 passage from a report penned at a time when the 
 world had not yet seen a real railroad in operation? 
 
 " To convince any one that there is no probability that the 
 trade herein estimated will be likely hereafter to decline, it 
 will only be necessary to observe that the population on which 
 the calculations are founded is rapidly increasing and that it 
 must for several generations continue to increase. The coun- 
 try around Chesapeake Bay was first settled by Europeans in 
 1632, and in 1800 the white population had barely reached 
 the Ohio River ; that is to say, in one hundred and sixty years 
 it had advanced westward about four hundred miles, or at the 
 rate of two and one-half miles a year. 
 
 " There is now a dense population extending as far west 
 as the junction of the Osage with the Missouri River, which 
 is about nine hundred miles west of the Ohio River at Wheel- 
 ing. The white population has within the last thirty years 
 traveled more than thirty miles in each year, and is at this 
 time advancing with as great, if not greater, impetus than at 
 any former period, and according to all probability, if not 
 
58 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 checked by some unforeseen circumstance, it will within the 
 next thirty years reach the Rocky Mountains, or even the 
 Pacific Ocean. 
 
 " We have, therefore, no reason to look for any falling 
 off in this trade, but, on the contrary, for an increase to an 
 extent of which no estimate could now be formed." 
 
 This first formal report on a railroad project ever 
 made in America was so alluring and so convincing 
 that the project was unanimously approved, and 
 J. V. L. McMahon, a young lawyer only twenty- 
 seven years old, was appointed to draw up a charter 
 forthwith. 
 
 When the pioneer railroad builders reassembled to 
 pass upon the document the young lawyer had not 
 read half through its twenty-three sections when the 
 venerable Robert Oliver, astonishment and disap- 
 proval stamped on every feature, arose and exclaimed: 
 
 "Stop, man; you're asking for more than the 
 Lord's Prayer! " 
 
 "But it's all necessary; and besides, the more we 
 ask for the more we'll get," was the smiling reply. 
 
 " Right, man; go ahead," said Oliver, resuming his 
 seat. 
 
 That first railroad charter ever drawn in America 
 was so skilfully framed that it has served as a model 
 for every similar document drawn since then. 
 
 Events moved swiftly. Sixteen days after that 
 first meeting in George Brown's house, the act of in- 
 corporation of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the 
 first organized in America, was passed by the Mary- 
 land legislature, and, April 24, 1827, the company 
 was organized, with P. E. Thomas, the man who 
 originated the idea, as president, a post which he 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 39 
 
 filled for ten years, and his old friend and business 
 associate, George Brown, as treasurer. 
 
 Everybody in Maryland was full of enthusiasm 
 over the proposed railroad, as was shown when the 
 books were opened to receive subscriptions for stock. 
 The capital was fixed at three million dollars, of 
 which five hundred thousand dollars was to be fur- 
 nished by the State of Maryland and five hundred 
 thousand dollars by the city of Baltimore. Fifteen 
 thousand shares were allotted to the public. 
 
 When the books were closed, at the end of twelve 
 days, it was found that the entire allotment had 
 been subscribed three times over by twenty-two thou- 
 sand individuals in Baltimore alone. Frederick and 
 Hagerstown, also, showed a proportionate oversub- 
 scription. 
 
 Parties of engineers were put into the field as soon 
 as they could be organized. Then, having arranged 
 to build a railroad, a committee of directors was sent 
 to try to get some idea of what a railroad was by in- 
 specting the nine miles of gravity road at Mauch 
 Chunk and the three miles of horse road at the granite 
 quarries at Quincy. 
 
 Not being much enlightened by their investiga- 
 tion, they recommended that a committee of engi- 
 neers be sent to England to pick up a few pointers 
 from Stephenson's Manchester and Liverpool proj- 
 ect. This was done forthwith. 
 
 It was not until the 5th of April, 1828, that the 
 engineers were ready to make their report. On the 
 4th of July, 1828, there was the most imposing pro- 
 cession Baltimore had ever seen on Independence 
 Day. 
 
40 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 A great throng assembled on the outskirts of the 
 city, where, after music, oratory and prayer, Charles 
 Carroll, of Carrollton, then ninety years old, laid the 
 corner-stone of the railroad. When he had relin- 
 quished the trowel he turned to President Thomas 
 and said: 
 
 " I consider this among the most important acts of 
 my life, second only to the signing of the Declaration 
 of Independence, if even it be second to that." 
 
 The venerable man was made much of in Balti- 
 more. He was never permitted to forget that he 
 had signed the Declaration of Independence. Noth- 
 ing of importance could take place without his pres- 
 ence. 
 
 He had been made a member of the board of direct- 
 ors of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and he was 
 always present at the experiments by which the pro- 
 moters sought to solve the mystery of building and 
 operating a railroad. 
 
 Ross Winans, publisher of the Baltimore Gazette 
 and a director of the road, built a model of a car, 
 which he placed on a few feet of tiny iron rails in an 
 upper room of the Exchange Building. To show 
 how easy it was to pull a heavy load in a carriage run- 
 ning on iron rails, one end of a cord was attached to 
 the car, while the other, dangling in the rotunda, after 
 being passed over a pulley, had a small weight on it. 
 
 The venerable Charles Carroll was invited to get 
 into the car, whereupon the small weight was released 
 and promptly drew him up to the end of the track, 
 to the delight of the board of directors, who stood 
 about as pleased as children with a new toy. 
 
 On opening bids for the construction of the first 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 41 
 
 twelve miles, on the llth of August, it was found 
 that the first section would cost seventeen thousand 
 dollars a mile. The method of construction that was 
 followed would seem strange now. 
 
 After the ground was leveled off, two holes, twenty 
 inches wide, two feet long, and two feet deep, were 
 dug four feet apart. These were filled with broken 
 stone of a size to pass through a ring two and a half 
 inches in diameter. 
 
 Then a trench six inches deep from one hole to the 
 other was dug and filled with broken stone, and on 
 this a cedar sleeper seven feet long was adjusted with 
 a spirit-level. Notches were cut in these sleepers, 
 into which, after they had been tested with the spirit- 
 level, yellow pine stringers, or rails, twelve to twenty- 
 four feet long and six inches square, were carefully 
 fitted and fastened with wedges. 
 
 The outer edges of these rails were beveled to make 
 room for the flanges of the wheels, for it was intended 
 that the car-wheels should have flanges on the out- 
 side. When a thin strap of iron had been nailed to 
 the wooden sleeper with wrought-iron nails four 
 inches long the track was complete. 
 
 After several miles had been finished in this way, 
 slabs of granite were substituted for the cedar 
 sleepers. 
 
 The railroad project steadily grew in popularity. 
 People gave the necessary right of way, and the priv- 
 ilege of using quarries to get the needed stone free 
 of charge, and two acres for a station-site were do- 
 nated at Ellicott's Mills, thirteen miles from Balti- 
 more. 
 
 So keen was the public interest that when the rails 
 
42 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 were laid to Vinegar Hill, seven miles from Balti- 
 more, a couple of rude horse-cars were put on to 
 gratify the intensely curious with a ride on the rail- 
 road. 
 
 But even with the free right of way and oversub- 
 scriptions of stock by an eager public, it didn't take 
 those pioneers long to discover that they had sadly 
 underestimated the cost of building a railroad. 
 Scarcely had ground been broken before arrange- 
 ments were made to increase the capital stock. 
 
 One million five hundred thousand dollars was allot- 
 ted to the public, while the indefatigable McMahon, 
 first of railroad lawyers and second in ability to none 
 who have come after him, induced the State of Mary- 
 land to take five hundred thousand dollars more. An 
 effort to get a donation of one million dollars from 
 the United States Government would have succeeded 
 but for the opposition of the canal lobby. 
 
 Twenty-five miles of grading had been finished 
 when work stopped for the season in the fall of 1829. 
 One day in May, 1830, the Baltimore Gazette an- 
 nounced that a " brigade of cars " would run three 
 times a day on the new railroad from Baltimore to 
 Ellicott's Mills, thirteen miles away, every week-day, 
 beginning Monday, May 24. 
 
 The first " brigade," on that Monday morning, 
 started off at nine o'clock, with all the ceremony be- 
 fitting so important an event. The brigade was 
 operated by one horse. The mayor of Baltimore, 
 members of the city council, officers of the road, news- 
 paper representatives, and, of course, Charles Car- 
 roll, of Carrollton, were passengers in the splendid 
 car " Pioneer." 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 43 
 
 Next morning the papers declared that this first 
 brigade of cars on the new railroad had at times 
 attained the " extraordinary rate of fifteen miles an 
 hour." Another brigade of three cars, with eighty 
 passengers on board, made the trip at an average 
 speed of eight miles an hour. 
 
 At a public demonstration of the prodigies that 
 could be performed by the wonderful new railroad, 
 an exhibition brigade of eight cars was loaded with 
 two hundred barrels, or thirty tons, of flour. One 
 horse drew the brigade a distance of six and one-half 
 miles in forty-six minutes outward bound. On the 
 return from Ellicott's Mills the thirteen miles were 
 covered in fifty-four minutes, and the demonstration 
 was voted a " triumphant success." 
 
 In their inmost hearts the officers and directors of 
 the road began to have a pretty clearly defined fear 
 that the demonstration was not a success. The sus- 
 picion began to dawn upon them that " brigades " of 
 cars drawn by horses would never make the road 
 profitable. 
 
 They were continually experimenting with new 
 forms of motive power. Evan Thomas, brother of 
 the president, who had written the momentous letter 
 from London, out of which grew the idea of the road, 
 placed an overgrown clothes-basket on a platform 
 with four small wheels, rigged a mast with a square 
 sail, and found he had a vehicle which would travel 
 beautifully before the wind. 
 
 Baron Krudener, the Russian envoy, came up from 
 Washington and had a ride in the sailing car which 
 sent him into such raptures that he begged a model 
 to send to the Czar. It was given to him, and this 
 
44 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 model, being duly forwarded to Russia, suggested a 
 train of thought which led to the building of the rail- 
 road from St. Petersburg to Moscow, just as the 
 inventor's letter to his brother had inspired the idea 
 of building a great railroad in America. 
 
 But as the sailing car could only be used when the 
 wind was abaft the beam, it very soon became clear 
 that sails could not be adopted for motive power on 
 a railway. 
 
 Then another inventive genius came forward with 
 a horse-power of the treadmill pattern, such as is used 
 to-day in some places for sawing wood. This looked 
 promising. The directors, as usual, invited some 
 newspaper men to go with them on the trial trip, for 
 they realized the value of publicity. 
 
 They got on famously for a few miles, until they 
 came to a cow on the track. The cow declined to 
 yield the road to such an outrageous contrivance as 
 the horse-power motor, and as there were no effective 
 brakes, the train ran into the cow and spilled the out- 
 fit into the ditch. No physical injuries were sus- 
 tained, but the incident was made the subject of such 
 atrocious puns in regard to the " cowing " of the edit- 
 ors that the horse-motor was laughed out of court. 
 
 Locomotives such as Stephenson was building for 
 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in England 
 were suggested, but the word came that Stephenson 
 had said that a locomotive could not run on curves 
 of a radius of less than nine hundred feet, and there 
 would have to be curves of four hundred feet radius 
 or less in order to get around Point of Rocks. 
 
 The locomotive idea was abandoned, and the direct- 
 ors were on the point of giving up the project in 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 45 
 
 despair, when aid came from a most unexpected 
 quarter. 
 
 Peter Cooper, of New York, afterward famous as 
 a philanthropist, had been induced to buy a tract of 
 three thousand acres of land as a speculation on the 
 outskirts of Baltimore, along the line of the railroad, 
 in company with two other men. Having been called 
 upon for frequent remittances to pay taxes and other 
 charges he became suspicious and went to Baltimore 
 to investigate. 
 
 He found that he had been sending money down to 
 support his partners ; that, not to put too fine a point 
 upon it, he was being swindled. So he bought the 
 interest of the other two. His speculation was sure 
 to result in a loss unless the railroad were a success; 
 he therefore interested himself in the troubles of the 
 directors. 
 
 He told them he thought he could knock together 
 a locomotive that would get around the sharp curves 
 all right. He owned a foundry, was handy with 
 tools, and had a knack at contriving. 
 
 Going back to New York, he bought an engine with 
 a cylinder three and one-quarter by fourteen and one- 
 half inches, and returning to Baltimore, got some iron 
 and built a boiler about as large as a good-sized wash- 
 boiler. He wanted some iron pipes for boiler-flues, 
 but none were obtainable, so he used old musket bar- 
 rels for the purpose. 
 
 The first American locomotive was built in a car- 
 riage maker's shop. However, as it was not in- 
 tended for actual service, but only as a working model 
 to show the directors what could be done, first honors 
 properly belong to the Best Friend of Charleston, 
 
46 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 which was built for regular daily operation, although 
 it did not make its initial trip until sixty-six days after 
 Cooper's locomotive appeared, as recounted in the 
 preceding chapter. Cooper's working model was so 
 insignificant in appearance that he christened it the 
 " Tom Thumb." 
 
 Steam was raised for the first time one Saturday 
 night. Everything seemed to be in order, so the 
 directors were invited to take their first ride on the 
 following Monday morning. When Monday morn- 
 ing came Mr. Cooper found, to his great chagrin, that 
 a thief had hacked off all the copper parts to be sold 
 for junk. It took a week to repair the damage. 
 
 On Saturday, August 28, 1830, with six men on 
 the engine, which was no bigger than a hand-car of 
 to-day, and thirty-six men on a car attached, the first 
 trip by an American-built locomotive was made. The 
 run to Ellicott's Mills, thirteen miles, up an average 
 grade of eighteen feet to the mile, required one hour 
 and twelve minutes; the return was made in fifty- 
 seven minutes. In some places a speed of eighteen 
 miles an hour was reached. 
 
 Some members of the party took out their note- 
 books and wrote sentences therein, just to prove that 
 it was possible to do so while traveling at such tre- 
 mendous speed. Ross Winans, one of the directors, 
 estimated the weight of the passengers and the 
 amount of coal and water used. The showing made 
 by the Tom Thumb was unequaled by any English 
 locomotive for four years thereafter. 
 
 It may not be amiss at this point to emphasize the 
 fact that American railways were developed entirely 
 independent of the English by calling attention to 
 

AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 47 
 
 the prior invention by Cooper of two fundamental 
 features of all locomotives the multitubular boiler 
 and the artificial draft. 
 
 Cooper's boiler tubes made of musket barrels have 
 already been mentioned. The air-blast by which a 
 forced draft was secured was obtained by a bellows 
 worked by a belt from the axle of the engine. Ste- 
 phenson hit upon the correct principle by accident. 
 
 The exhaust from his first locomotives frightened 
 horses. When he was building the " Rocket " he was 
 notified by the police that if he kept on frightening 
 horses with his noisy engines he would be arrested. 
 He turned the exhaust into the smoke-stack to muffle 
 the noise, and found, to his joy, that he had thereby 
 provided a forced draft. 
 
 Cooper, however, eclipsed Stephenson on every 
 other point. At the famous October trials, in which 
 Stephenson won the prize of five hundred pounds 
 offered for the best locomotive, his Rocket, which had 
 two cylinders, eight by fifteen inches, developing a 
 trifle less than six horse-power, pulled seventeen tons 
 on a level track twelve and one-half miles an hour. 
 
 Cooper's Tom Thumb, with only one cylinder, 
 three and one-fourth by fourteen and one-half inches, 
 developing 1.43 horse-power, pulled four and one- 
 half tons up an eighteen-foot grade at twelve miles 
 an hour. In other words, Cooper's locomotive devel- 
 oped more than three times as much power as Ste- 
 phenson's in proportion to the cylinder capacity. 
 
 Yet the Tom Thumb was destined to suffer humil- 
 iation in the very hour of its triumph. On the return 
 from Ellicott's Mills the locomotive was met at the 
 Relay House, half-way to Baltimore, by a car to 
 
48 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 which was hitched the finest horse that Stockton & 
 Stokes, the stage-line owners, possessed. It was a 
 fine, clean-limbed young gray. 
 
 The stage proprietors had come out to race with 
 the locomotive. Engine and horse got away with an 
 even start, with steam hissing from every joint of the 
 roughly built locomotive. Soon the locomotive began 
 to pull away from the gray. The passengers yelled 
 and the driver plied his whip, but the horse lost 
 steadily. 
 
 Just as the driver was about to pull up and 
 acknowledge himself beaten, the belt which worked 
 the blower on the Tom Thumb slipped. Without a 
 forced draft, the steam began to go down at once. 
 Mr. Cooper lacerated his hands in an effort to work 
 the blower, but he couldn't do it. 
 
 The horse soon forged ahead, and won the race by a 
 considerable margin. This historic race was run just 
 seventeen days before the opening of the Manchester 
 and Liverpool Railway, in England. 
 
 In spite of this defeat, the locomotive test was such 
 an unqualified success that the drooping spirits of the 
 directors were revived and the confidence of the public 
 was restored. Railroad stock was once more salable, 
 and Peter Cooper was assured of an ultimate profit 
 on his land speculation. 
 
 Convinced by the performances of the Tom Thumb 
 that steam would solve the problem of the railroad, 
 the directors of the Baltimore and Ohio offered a prize 
 of four thousand dollars for the most approved loco- 
 motive delivered to them before June 1, 1831, and 
 three thousand five hundred dollars for the next best. 
 
 It was specified that the locomotives must burn 
 
1 
 
 
 ? 
 
 1 
 
 3* 
 
 K* 
 
 s 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 49 
 
 coal, carry not more than one hundred pounds of 
 steam, weigh not more than three and a half tons, be 
 able to haul fifteen tons fifteen miles an hour on the 
 level, and do all this for thirty days on trial before 
 acceptance. 
 
 The only locomotive delivered which met these re- 
 quirements was the " York," built by Phineas Davis. 
 The York was mounted on springs, the first locomo- 
 tive ever so equipped. 
 
 This at once suggested an idea to the observant 
 Ross Winans. Cars up to that time had been built 
 without springs. He had one provided with springs, 
 and found that the capacity of the car was increased, 
 while it was easier to haul. 
 
 Winans also soon afterward invented an anti- 
 friction journal and conical wheel, with the flange 
 inside, which reduced the friction from one-two-hun- 
 dred-and-fortieth part of the weight to one-four- 
 hundredth. 
 
 After a controversy which nearly rent Baltimore 
 asunder the railroad was granted the right to lay 
 tracks through the streets to the water's edge, and on 
 to Jones's Falls, where the city donated two squares 
 for terminals. 
 
 In this year the company had its first experience 
 with dishonest contractors. One of them ran away 
 without paying his men. They testified to their re- 
 sentment of this sort of treatment by a determined 
 attempt to destroy the road. Not until the militia 
 had been called out and some sixty of the leaders in 
 the disturbance had been placed in jail was the riot 
 quelled. A swindler took advantage of the noto- 
 riety this episode created by advertising in Boston 
 
50 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 for laborers for the Baltimore and Ohio. After col- 
 lecting money to pay passage to Baltimore for sev- 
 eral scores of men he disappeared. 
 
 When on April 1, 1832, the track was completed 
 to Point of Rocks, on the Potomac, seventy-two miles 
 from Baltimore, the traffic on the railroad experi- 
 enced its first real boom. 
 
 Farmers found that they could make money by 
 shipping every species of agricultural products over 
 the railroad to Baltimore, while such articles as lime, 
 paving-stone, timber, and the like, hitherto valueless, 
 began to be worth money when transportation became 
 available. Plaster of Paris, coal, brick, and many 
 other articles were shipped into the interior, where 
 they had been unknown until the advent of the rail- 
 road. 
 
 The operation of the first seventy -two miles of the 
 Baltimore and Ohio settled for all time the question 
 of the suitability of the railroad as a mode of trans- 
 portation. 
 
 In the first two and a half years that the road was 
 open to traffic three hundred thousand passengers 
 were carried without a single accident to life or limb. 
 
 Up to that time the railroad had been regarded as 
 an improved form of toll-road, as was indicated by 
 an act of the legislature by which the Baltimore and 
 Ohio was permitted to charge tolls not to exceed one 
 cent per ton per mile and three cents per ton per 
 mile for transportation on west-bound freight, and 
 not more than three cents per ton per mile in tolls 
 and three cents transportation on east-bound freight. 
 
 Perhaps it may be worthy of record that the first 
 drunken man in history to go to sleep on a railroad 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 51 
 
 track was run over and killed near Ellicott's Mills in 
 November, 1832. 
 
 Just when prospects for the road began to look 
 really bright the Court of Appeals dealt the enter- 
 prise a severe blow in the form of a decision in favor 
 of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which disputed 
 the right to occupy the narrow valley of the Potomac. 
 
 The canal company graciously offered to let the 
 railroad devote its resources to the completion of the 
 canal if all idea of extending the road were aban- 
 doned. This generous compromise was refused, and 
 work on the road came to a standstill until the legis- 
 lature interfered and compelled a compromise by 
 which the railroad was to take two thousand five hun- 
 dred shares of canal stock. 
 
 Joint construction of canal and railroad was to 
 begin after May 10, 1833. The railroad had to build 
 a fence between road and canal, to prevent the tow- 
 horses from being frightened by the trains. As a 
 further concession to the delicate sensibilities of the 
 canal horses, the railroad was directed to haul its 
 trains by horses through the passes where canal and 
 road lay side by side. 
 
 But the fence acted as a dam which caught the 
 floods sweeping down the mountainsides, and the Bal- 
 timore and Ohio management had begun to realize 
 that a railroad could not be operated with horses. So 
 there was still further delay until the repeal of the 
 obnoxious law could be secured. 
 
 Meanwhile the stockholders began to clamor for 
 dividends. The reply of the board of directors was 
 a demand for more money to extend the road to Har- 
 per's Ferry, where connection could be made with the 
 
52 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 Winchester and Potomac, a road thirty miles long. 
 The payment of subscriptions by the State of Mary- 
 land and the city of Baltimore provided funds for 
 this purpose, and the extension was completed Decem- 
 ber 1, 1834. The business of the road received an 
 immediate stimulus, notwithstanding an era of hard 
 times had caused a decline in business throughout the 
 country. 
 
 While the extension was being built the indefat- 
 igable Winans had constructed a car mounted on four- 
 wheeled trucks to carry sixty passengers. This was 
 the progenitor of the modern passenger-coach. Soon 
 afterward special cars were provided for baggage, 
 which hitherto had been carried in racks on the top of 
 the coaches. 
 
 The evolution of the car was comparatively more 
 rapid than the development of the locomotive. The 
 first cars on the Baltimore and Ohio were like market 
 carts on flanged wheels. The next were like a stage 
 coach with the old-time leathern braces and C springs, 
 with a capacity of nine passengers inside and outside. 
 For some time these were the fashion. They were 
 gaudily painted and decorated and in winter were 
 lined with green baize curtains, while the seats were 
 arranged around the sides instead of crosswise. 
 Whenever Richard Imlay, the leading coach builder 
 of Baltimore, achieved a new triumph in railroad 
 cars, it was exhibited in Monument Square for the 
 admiration of the public. 
 
 Winans' first eight-wheeled car was named the 
 " Columbus." It was merely a large box with seats 
 on top, as well as inside, reached by a ladder at one 
 corner. The Columbus was followed by some ex- 
 
TYPE OF PASSENGER CAR USED ON THE BALTIMORE AND 
 
 OHIO IN 1829 
 
 
 - 
 
 * * 
 
 TYPE OF "BURDEN" OR FREIGHT CAR USED ON THE 
 BALTIMORE AND OHIO IN 1832. 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 53 
 
 traordinary freaks which were nicknamed the " Sea 
 Serpent," the "Dromedary," and the like. Still, 
 each had some redeeming feature which was preserved 
 in its successor. Then came the " Winchester," and 
 finally the " Washington," which approximated the 
 passenger coach of to-day. When the designs for the 
 eight-wheeled cars were submitted to the board of 
 directors there was a long discussion before they 
 could decide whether to have an aisle down the center 
 of the car or to have a narrow ledge on the outside, 
 in the English style, for the conductor. The advo- 
 cates of the center aisle finally carried the day, and 
 the American type of car, which has only recently 
 been discovered by the English railroads, was given 
 to the world. 
 
 John Elgar had meanwhile invented switches, turn- 
 tables, chilled-steel bearings, and other devices. Up 
 to July, 1834, the company had but three locomotives, 
 and many cars, especially freight, were still drawn by 
 horses. By the time Harper's Ferry was reached five 
 more locomotives had been received and eight more 
 were under contract. 
 
 While the main line was creeping slowly and pain- 
 fully westward, a branch line under the name of the 
 Baltimore and Washington Railroad was under con- 
 struction to the National Capital. Like the parent 
 company, the Baltimore and Washington Railroad 
 was the idea of Philip E. Thomas. It was his per- 
 sonal energy and perseverance that led the fierce fight 
 through three sessions of the Maryland legislature, 
 which finally ended in the rout of a strong lobby led 
 by the Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore 
 Turnpike Company. The advent of the railroad 
 
54 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 meant the death of the turnpike. It was a struggle 
 for survival which was won, as generally happens, by 
 the fittest. The act incorporating the railroad be- 
 came a law March 9, 1833. The struggle for aid from 
 the National Government was less successful, for the 
 canal lobby at Washington was powerful enough to 
 defeat in the House the bill which had already passed 
 the Senate appropriating three hundred and fifty 
 thousand dollars to help the railroad out. 
 
 Work was begun at once on the Patapsco Bridge, 
 plans for which had already been prepared by the 
 chief engineer, B. H. Latrobe. This bridge of eight 
 arches of fifty-eight feet span each was the largest 
 in the United States in its day, and was regarded as a 
 very remarkable engineering feat. 
 
 On this Washington branch even more than the 
 average amount of trouble was encountered. One of 
 the most annoying difficulties was that of obtaining 
 sober, law-abiding labor. By attempting to enforce 
 reasonable discipline, the deputy superintendents of 
 construction incurred the hatred of the more turbulent 
 spirits. 
 
 The principal cause of the trouble was whisky, 
 then cheap and abundant. Caspar Wever, the first 
 superintendent of construction, in his annual reports 
 urged, and so far as lay in his power compelled, total 
 abstinence by all employees of the company. Still, 
 riot and disorder as the result of drunkenness in- 
 creased so much that after 1829 Wever, with the 
 knowledge and approval of President Thomas, re- 
 fused to sign any contracts for masonry or " gradua- 
 tion," as grading was called for many years, that did 
 not contain a clause prohibiting the use of intoxicat- 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 55 
 
 ing liquors on the work. Thus it may be seen that 
 the fight of the railroad against intemperance, which 
 has attracted so much attention in recent years, is as 
 old as the railroad itself. But the company found 
 itself unable to enforce the prohibition clause in its 
 contracts. 
 
 On November 12, 1834, Contractor John Gorman, 
 John Watson, his superintendent, and several others 
 were attacked in a shanty by a number of laborers 
 and beaten into insensibility. The following night 
 the shanty door was battered down and Watson and 
 William Mercer were dragged out and shot to death. 
 John Gallon was also shot and left for dead, but ulti- 
 mately recovered, and several others of the office 
 force and foremen were badly hurt. 
 
 A general riot followed this outrage, in which a 
 great many heads were broken. All the stores in the 
 vicinity were looted. Next day the militia, under 
 Lieutenant Colonel Campbell, was rushed to the 
 scene. Four hundred men were placed under arrest. 
 At the preliminary examination, December 9, all but 
 ten were discharged from custody. Of the ten one 
 was found guilty of murder in the first degree; the 
 others were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced 
 to the penitentiary for various terms. 
 
 Next March the trouble broke out anew in a gen- 
 eral strike. Men were readily secured to take the 
 places of the strikers, but the attempt to set them to 
 work was the signal for a general riot. Once more 
 the militia came to the rescue and drove away the 
 rioters. 
 
 The branch was completed and thrown open to 
 traffic with an excursion to Washington, August 25, 
 
56 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 1835. Seventeen cars, each containing fifty invited 
 guests, drawn by the locomotives " George Washing- 
 ton," " John Adams," " Thomas Jefferson," and 
 " James Madison," left Baltimore at 9 o'clock in the 
 morning. At Bladensburg a trainload of public 
 functionaries and other invited guests from Wash- 
 ington was met. All hands alighted while the mayor 
 of Washington and the president of the company 
 exchanged felicitations. Proceeding to Washington, 
 the visitors were received with salvos of artillery and 
 cheers from what seemed to be the entire population 
 of the Capital and the surrounding country. After 
 listening to some long speeches the guests were taken 
 to some of the principal points of interest. The re- 
 turn trip to Baltimore was accomplished in two hours 
 and twenty minutes. 
 
 It was this branch of the Baltimore and Ohio which 
 achieved the distinction of initiating the modern sys- 
 tem of mail transportation. Under a contract signed 
 in January, 1838, the Baltimore and Washington and 
 the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore began 
 carrying the mails between Washington and Phila- 
 delphia. 
 
 An epoch-making feat in fast news carrying was 
 accomplished on the Baltimore and Washington 
 branch in 1838, which attracted a great deal of atten- 
 tion. In December of that year Conductor Wilde, 
 the oldest and most reliable man on the road, was 
 commissioned by the board of directors to secure 
 copies of the President's message at the earliest pos- 
 sible moment and deliver them in Baltimore as 
 quickly as possible. Careful preparations had been 
 made long in advance for the exploit, which was ex- 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 57 
 
 pected to do much to advertise the railroad as a means 
 of quick communication. 
 
 On reaching the station Wilde found the locomo- 
 tive " William Cooke " waiting for him, with steam 
 roaring from her safety valve. The instant his foot 
 touched the step the engineer opened the throttle, and 
 at 1:18 P.M. the William Cooke started out to make 
 a famous record. One hour and thirteen minutes 
 later the locomotive came to a halt at the Baltimore 
 station. Wilde sprang to the platform and handed a 
 packet to a waiting messenger from the Philadelphia, 
 Wilmington and Baltimore, and another to a repre- 
 sentative of the Baltimore and Susquehanna. Both 
 locomotives pulled out simultaneously, the one for 
 Philadelphia reaching that point at 6:07 P.M. The 
 message was delivered in New York at 11:15 P.M., 
 or ten hours for a run of 225 miles. Limited trains 
 now cover that route in five hours ; but this is no such 
 feat as covering the crazy track by the crude locomo- 
 tives of that early day in ten hours. The steamer John 
 W. Richmond was waiting at New York, chartered 
 by the Boston Globe, to take copies of the message 
 to that city. The copies sent over the Baltimore and 
 Susquehanna reached York, Pa., from which point 
 they were rushed forward to Harrisburg, Pa., by 
 pony express in two hours and twenty-eight minutes 
 from the time of leaving Baltimore. 
 
 Reconnaissances by the engineers showed that the 
 mountains could be passed by locomotives to Wheeling 
 and Pittsburg, so the board of directors in 1837 rec- 
 ommended the extension of the line to Cumberland, 
 at a cost of four million six hundred thousand dollars. 
 The State came to the rescue with a subscription of 
 
58 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 three million dollars, and Baltimore took a like 
 amount. But the money was not available. 
 
 Trouble now began to thicken for the enterprise 
 which had started out so brilliantly a decade before. 
 The directors were destined to learn from bitter ex- 
 perience what so many boards have learned over again 
 since that building a railroad on paper is a vastly 
 different matter from its construction on the ground. 
 
 When Louis McLane succeeded P. E. Thomas as 
 president, in April, 1837, he found that the cost of 
 construction had exceeded the capital paid in by the 
 tidy sum of two hundred and three thousand dollars, 
 which had been raised by notes. There was not a 
 dollar in the treasury to meet these notes. 
 
 Money was urgently needed to rebuild the crude 
 and inadequate experimental road that had been con- 
 structed in the beginning to meet the necessities of the 
 growing traffic. There was no school but experience 
 in which to learn the science of railroad-building. 
 
 There had been many mistaken economies in con- 
 struction, and many inadequate estimates of cost of 
 building through unfavorable territory. New roll- 
 ing-stock was also needed. Moreover, the time limit 
 on their franchises for the extension was about to 
 expire. 
 
 The company's credit was not good, and the State 
 bonds, with which the State's subscription of three 
 million dollars had been paid, could not be sold in 
 Europe because of the glut of American securities, 
 and also because of certain repudiation acts by sev- 
 eral States, including Maryland. 
 
 Confronted with the necessity of extending the road 
 in the face of these overwhelming difficulties, the ex- 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 59 
 
 pedient was adopted of paying bills for right of way, 
 labor, and so on in certificates for from one dollar to 
 one hundred dollars, redeemable in Baltimore city 
 six per cent stock at par, to the amount of three 
 million dollars, which the city had subscribed toward 
 the extension. But Baltimore city stock was unsala- 
 ble, so the working men into whose hands these certifi- 
 cates found their way lost heavily, but the road was 
 put through to Cumberland, one hundred and sev- 
 enty-eight miles from Baltimore, on the 5th of No- 
 vember, 1842. 
 
 The effect of the extension was manifested in an 
 increase of earnings from three hundred and ninety- 
 one thousand and seventy dollars the year before 
 reaching Cumberland to five hundred and seventy- 
 five thousand two hundred and thirty-five dollars the 
 year afterward, and to six hundred and fifty-eight 
 thousand six hundred and nineteen dollars in 1844, 
 notwithstanding a reduction in passenger rates en- 
 forced by the completion of the Pennsylvania lines. 
 
 President McLane went to Europe in 1844 to try 
 to raise the money for extending the road to the 
 Ohio River. He failed in this, but he brought home 
 many valuable ideas on improved methods of organi- 
 zation, division of labor, more adequate accounta- 
 bility, better forms of tickets, and checks on conduct- 
 ors and agents, which he at once put into use. 
 
 In 1846 it became absolutely necessary to recon- 
 struct the entire eighty-one miles of road from Bal- 
 timore to Harper's Ferry and lay the new edge-rail 
 in place of the antiquated plate-rail, money or no 
 money. This was accomplished by selling bonds at 
 ten per cent discount. 
 
60 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 Construction to the Ohio River was delayed for 
 seven years. In 1848, Thomas Swann, a brilliant 
 financier and an administrator of rare executive 
 ability and indefatigable energy, was elected presi- 
 dent. In his first speech he wrought the board of 
 directors up to such a pitch that George Brown 
 jumped up in great excitement and said: 
 
 " Mr. President, I move that the chief engineer be 
 instructed to put the entire line to the Ohio River 
 under contract as speedily as possible." 
 
 Swann's first coup was to dispose of one million 
 dollars of the unsalable State bonds to Baring Broth- 
 ers, the great London bankers. This at once pro- 
 vided both funds and prestige, which made possible 
 the building of the remaining two hundred miles 
 through the mountains to Wheeling, on the Ohio. 
 
 The line was located through the roughest region 
 yet traversed by any internal improvement in Amer- 
 ica. Even engineers were astonished. Between 
 Cumberland and Wheeling there were eleven tunnels 
 with a total length of 11,156 feet, and 113 bridges 
 with a total length of 7,003 feet, including the Monon- 
 gahela viaduct, 650 feet long, then the longest iron 
 bridge in America. 
 
 President Swann declared after the road was 
 opened that " if the people of Baltimore had known 
 at the commencement of the work west of Cumber- 
 land what the difficulties to be encountered really 
 were we would have been locked up as lunatics." 
 Even Swann himself must have had his misgivings, 
 for he once confessed in a speech that when the open- 
 ing of the section from Cumberland to Piedmont 
 was celebrated in 1851 with a formidable excursion 
 
THE FIRST "CAMEL" BUILT BY ROSS WINANS, 
 
 A type of locomotives that played a conspicuous part in the early success 
 of the Baltimore and Ohio. 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 61 
 
 to which all the dignitaries of Baltimore and the State 
 of Maryland were invited, he took care to stand near 
 an open car door, where escape to the woods would be 
 easy, while Chief Engineer Latrobe rode on the en- 
 gine, where the smoke would hide his mortification 
 in case the locomotive should prove to be incapable 
 of climbing the grade of one hundred and sixteen 
 feet to the mile. 
 
 Fortunately the precautions of the president and 
 chief engineer proved to be unnecessary, for loco- 
 motive No. 71, built by Ross Winans, the indefati- 
 gable inventor and locomotive builder, took four 
 heavily laden coaches and five cars of rails to the top 
 of the hill without difficulty, a feat which was ac- 
 knowledged by the enthusiastic cheers of the party. 
 Without Winans the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 
 could hardly have been built; for it was his fertility 
 in resource which supplied the motive power to meet 
 peculiarly difficult conditions. As the head of the 
 great shops at Mount Clare, near Baltimore, he in- 
 troduced many details that helped to make the early 
 locomotive efficient, and finally evolved an entirely 
 new type that enabled the heavy mountain grades to 
 be overcome. This was the " Camel,'' so-called be- 
 cause the cab was perched upon the top of the boiler 
 like the ungainly hump on the animal after which it 
 was named. The entire weight of the Camel was 
 carried on four pairs of drivers, so that every pound 
 of weight was available for tractive force. The 
 Camel was inconceivably ugly, but it did wonderful 
 service on the sharp curves and steep grades of the 
 Alleghanies. For years it was the favorite type of 
 engine on the Baltimore and Ohio, one hundred and 
 
62 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 nineteen being built, and its performances were not 
 surpassed by the locomotives of any other builder. 
 
 The most remarkable performance credited to the 
 Camel was achieved on the temporary track over the 
 mountain while the Kingwood tunnel was building. 
 This temporary track had a grade of five hundred 
 and thirty feet to the mile. It was so steep that 
 sometimes when the rails were slippery with frost the 
 Camel, after getting part way up, would slip, and 
 then, with locked wheels, would slide all the way 
 down to the bottom of the grade. Only one car 
 could be taken up at a time, yet by this laborious 
 method material was conveyed over the mountain for 
 the extension of the line without waiting for the tun- 
 nel to be completed, in order to get the road into 
 Wheeling on schedule time. 
 
 Chief Engineer B. H. Latrobe had promised in 
 1851 to have trains running into Wheeling by Jan- 
 uary 1, 1853. The last rail was laid on December 
 24, 1852, and on January 1, 1853, the first train 
 rolled into Wheeling. The veteran chief engineer 
 declared that he was prouder of this than he was of 
 his triumphs over the difficulties in the mountains. 
 
 Of course the completion of the road to the Ohio 
 had to be celebrated with something more than the 
 customary splendor. Accordingly the legislatures of 
 Maryland and Virginia, led by their respective Gov- 
 ernors and supported by the city officials of Balti- 
 more, the directors of the road, and all the citizens 
 sufficiently distinguished to secure invitations, mak- 
 ing a grand total of something more than four hun- 
 dred persons, left Baltimore Monday, January 10, 
 1853, for Wheeling in two trains. Dinner was 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 63 
 
 served by a Baltimore caterer en route in two new 
 cars, in which temporary board tables had been laid 
 lengthwise of the cars. This, the first appearance 
 of the dining car on any road, was duly appreciated 
 by the dignitaries in whose honor it was devised. 
 
 The party arrived at Fairmount, seventy-seven 
 miles east of Wheeling, at 9 o'clock Tuesday morn- 
 ing. Near this point a broken axle delayed the spe- 
 cial trains so long that Board Tree Tunnel, near 
 Wheeling, was not reached until dusk. As the tun- 
 nel was not completed, trains were run over the sum- 
 mit on a switchback railroad two miles and a quarter 
 long and having grades of 293 to 340 feet to the 
 mile. Ten extra engines were waiting at the eastern 
 end of the switchback, for one engine could take but 
 two cars over the mountain. The darkness, the noise 
 of so many snorting locomotives, and the frail look- 
 ing railroad clinging to the steep mountainside and 
 spanning awe-inspiring gorges, was too much for the 
 nerves of men unused to railroad travel. A large 
 portion of the guests got out and stumbled on foot 
 through the darkness over the mountain rather than 
 trust their lives in such unfamiliar conveyances. 
 
 Just how the " appalling enterprise of transport- 
 ing five hundred human beings fastened up in rail- 
 road cars right over the summits of Old Alleghany " 
 impressed those pioneer passengers is vividly set 
 forth in the following account penned by a newspaper 
 correspondent accompanying the party: 
 
 " It was a day and especially a night of great excite- 
 ment and interest, more particularly as connected with the 
 passing of Pettibone Mountain. Here the great tunnel is 
 
64 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 being cut through the deep bowels of one of the most romantic 
 of mountains. It will be, inclusive of cuts, from seven- 
 eighths to a mile long. The tunnel not being finished the 
 mountain is scaled to the very summit in despite of its 
 rugged frowning sides, by means of a track laid over it. 
 This feature of the road is stupendous in its conception and 
 wonderful in its execution. The summit is gained by a 
 series of counter Y movements. Of course the grades are 
 steep and require great locomotive power, one of the largest 
 class of engines ever yet operated on any railroad being 
 required to carry up two cars. 
 
 " But the scene was grand. We were composed of ten 
 caravans, each attached to one of the most powerful engines. 
 I was in the third ; and night was settling down on the broad 
 landscape as we began the ascent. Before us were two 
 parties slowly climbing their zigzag way far above us upon 
 different elevations and their panting iron horses, as if angry 
 with their loads, spit out volumes of black smoke and sparks 
 against the blackened sky as from the crater of a de.ep 
 volcano. 
 
 " The summit gained we halted a short time, which gave 
 us an opportunity to survey the picture. What a magnificent 
 scene ! Around and beneath us were the stupendous hills, far 
 as the lurid shadows of evening could be pierced, while far 
 down the mountainside from terrace upon terrace the upheav- 
 ing locomotives glowed; and then away in the deep valleys 
 hundreds of torches gleamed from the hands of workmen 
 leaving their allotted task in the depths of the tunnel below. 
 We now descended the western slope, which is more precipitous 
 than the eastern. Below us gleamed the serpentine way and 
 in our turn we looked up to those behind us. It seemed as if 
 the children of Babel were winding down from the huge 
 mountain pile. The locomotive screamed, to us an unmean- 
 ing sound, while the deep dells below threw it back in echoing 
 mockery. But skilful were our pilots, as we seemed to swim 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 65 
 
 along the mountainside, and in a few hours we were landed 
 without a scratch on a solid rail below. 
 
 " Many of our party were in an ecstasy of delight and 
 enjoyment; but others, more fearful, walked the crooked way, 
 while some who remained on the cars trembled like the aspen 
 leaf." 
 
 As it was midnight and rain was falling in tor- 
 rents when the jaded excursionists, with nerves 
 shaken by their terrifying passage of the mountain, 
 arrived at the end of their journey, the triumphal 
 march, banquet, and oratory which the citizens of 
 Wheeling had planned for their guests had all to be 
 postponed until next day. 
 
 Regular train service between Chesapeake Bay 
 and the Ohio River was established at last. The rail- 
 road that had been begun and operated with horses 
 less than a quarter of a century before by men who 
 had no conception of what a railroad should be now 
 owned 139 locomotives, 96 passenger cars, and 2,567 
 freight cars. 
 
 But if the originators of the Baltimore and Ohio 
 Railroad had no idea of what a railroad should be, 
 events abundantly confirmed their estimate of its 
 value in developing traffic, as a few samples will show. 
 
 Before 1842 the rich coal deposits of western Mary- 
 land were worked only at Frostburg, a hamlet where 
 a few hundred bushels of coal were dug and floated 
 down the Potomac to Alexandria in flatboats. Boat 
 and cargo were sold, and the crew walked home. 
 
 In 1843, the first year after the railroad reached 
 Cumberland, 4,964 tons of coal were shipped by rail. 
 In 1850 the amount had increased to 132,534 tons. 
 Three hundred and fifty-three tons of grain were 
 
66 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 shipped over the road in 1832; in 1852, 5,000 tons 
 were transported. 
 
 But Wheeling was not a satisfactory terminus. In 
 order to get the benefit of Western traffic, it was nec- 
 essary to strike the Ohio River farther down. The 
 Northwestern Virginia Railroad was chartered in 
 1851, to build from Graf ton, on the Baltimore and 
 Ohio Railroad, to Parkersburg, on the Ohio River. 
 
 Mr. Swann was president of the company, and its 
 bonds were guaranteed by the Baltimore and Ohio 
 and the city of Baltimore. May 1, 1857, the line was 
 completed, and the Baltimore and Ohio assumed man- 
 agement of one hundred and three miles of the best- 
 constructed railroad in the country up to that time. 
 
 The maximum grades were fifty-two feet to the 
 mile, and the sharpest curves were of one thousand 
 feet radius. There were twenty-three tunnels on the 
 line, the longest being two thousand seven hundred 
 feet. 
 
 The simultaneous opening, on June 1, of this line 
 from Baltimore to the Ohio at Parkersburg, of the 
 Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad from a point nearly 
 opposite Parkersburg to Cincinnati, and of the Ohio 
 and Mississippi from Cincinnati to St. Louis, com- 
 pleted a through line by which a passenger could go 
 from New York to St. Louis by changing cars not 
 more than five times and making two short steamboat 
 voyages and two ferry trips. 
 
 To continue his westward journey from Parkers- 
 burg the traveler on the Baltimore and Ohio embarked 
 on a steamboat which struggled twelve miles up the 
 yellow current of the Ohio to Marietta. From this 
 point the Marietta and Cincinnati, organized August 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 67 
 
 18, 1847, at Chillicothe, the original capital of Ohio, 
 and built by donations from towns and counties aggre- 
 gating two million and fifty thousand dollars, ex- 
 tended one hundred and ninety-six miles to Cincin- 
 nati. 
 
 The first road projected between Cincinnati and St. 
 Louis was chartered in 1832. Though some sub- 
 scriptions were paid in, no work was done. The 
 country was so new and so poor that so great an 
 undertaking was absurdly impracticable. Sixteen 
 years later the project was revived by a new com- 
 pany under the name of the Ohio and Mississippi 
 Railroad. Preliminary surveys were begun November 
 1, 1848. The first section of twenty-six miles from 
 Cincinnati to Cochraii was opened April 2, 1854. A 
 connection with the Cincinnati and Indianapolis Rail- 
 road at the latter point gave the road a considerable 
 traffic at once. Before the end of the year the rails 
 had been extended to Seymour, Ind., eighty-seven 
 miles from Cincinnati. 
 
 Ground was broken on the western end of the road 
 February 9, 1852. Page & Bacon, of St. Louis, 
 the contractors, found themselves unable to sell the 
 securities of the road as they had anticipated, so they 
 were obliged to carry on the work solely on their own 
 resources. In 1854 the contractors on the eastern end 
 failed, and Page & Bacon assumed the contract. 
 The burden of building the entire road swamped the 
 plucky contractors and forced them to suspend in 
 January, 1855. The Ohio and Mississippi became a 
 jest and a by- word. 
 
 But with a courage and energy that have not been 
 surpassed in the history of the railroad, H. D. Bacon 
 
68 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 contrived to raise a half -million dollars and completed 
 the western division to Vincennes. Then the road 
 was sold under foreclosure proceedings and bought 
 in by Page & Bacon, who held $2,700,000 of its 
 securities. Then a syndicate of New York capitalists, 
 headed by W. H. Aspinwall, bought out the plucky 
 contractors, and finished the road. When the last 
 spike was driven it was found that the road had cost 
 twenty million dollars instead of six millions, the orig- 
 inal estimate. This was not due to high finance or 
 faulty construction that had to be replaced; but was 
 simply the result of inexperience in railroad building. 
 The Ohio and Mississippi, like the Erie, was of six 
 feet gauge. 
 
 Such an event as the completion of a through route 
 from New York and Baltimore to St. Louis was con- 
 sidered worthy of a great National celebration, which 
 was accordingly carried out with a pomp and circum- 
 stance that are recorded in history as " The Great 
 Railway Celebrations of 1857." With the exception 
 of that on the completion of the first transcontinental 
 railroad, the celebrations of 1857 constitute the great- 
 est event of the kind in the history of the Nation. 
 
 The initiative was taken by the Ohio and Miss- 
 issippi in an invitation dated April 8, 1857, which was 
 sent to President Buchanan, the members of his cab- 
 inet, foreign ministers, and a large number of other 
 prominent men East and West. 
 
 An interesting side light on the great number and 
 small size of railroads in the '50's is found in the fact 
 that to afford guests a choice of routes between New 
 York and St. Louis the passes accompanying the in- 
 vitations were indorsed by forty-two railroads. 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 69 
 
 The forthcoming celebration at once became the 
 talk of the country. Every one who had any real or 
 imaginary influence brought it to bear on the railroad 
 officials to elicit one of the coveted invitations. 
 
 The Ohio and Mississippi Railroad Company in- 
 vited seven hundred guests from the East and nine 
 hundred from the West. Among them were George 
 Bancroft, W. W. Corcoran, Stephen A. Douglas, 
 Henry Ward Beecher, and Nathaniel P. Willis. 
 Washington Irving was cheated out of the trip by 
 some perverse fate which sent his invitation astray 
 and delayed it until the festivities were over. The 
 Baltimore and Ohio invited four hundred and fifty 
 guests, including State officers and the judiciary of 
 Maryland and Virginia, members of the diplomatic 
 corps, and newspaper correspondents. 
 
 Most of the Eastern guests made their way West 
 at their own convenience. The only regular party 
 from the East was organized by the Baltimore and 
 Ohio. Leaving Baltimore at 6 o'clock on the morn- 
 ing of Monday, June 1, 1857, by special train, the 
 run of two hundred and seventy-nine miles to Graf ton 
 was made in fifteen hours. Here the party spent the 
 night. At Parkersburg, which was reached in the 
 forenoon of the next day, the party, now increased to 
 six hundred souls, embarked on the steamboats Albe- 
 marle and John Buck, which were lashed together, 
 for the voyage of twelve miles against the turbulent 
 yellow current of the Ohio. 
 
 Booming cannon, cheering crowds, and braying 
 bands greeted the guests at Marietta. Governor 
 Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, and a dozen others made 
 speeches. Then everybody was ferried across the 
 
70 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 Muskingum River to reach the trains of the Marietta 
 and Cincinnati Railroad. 
 
 The second night was spent at Chillicothe. By the 
 time the old Ohio capital was reached the host of vis- 
 itors had been swelled to a thousand persons. As the 
 hotel accommodations were totally inadequate, most 
 of the visitors had to be billeted at the homes of pri- 
 vate citizens. 
 
 Upon reaching Cincinnati the steadily growing 
 party of excursionists found that they formed a part 
 of a host of twenty thousand people, a tremendous 
 crowd for a new country so sparsely populated, which 
 had gathered to take part in a program of oratory, 
 feasting, and noise such as the West had never known 
 before. As at Chillicothe the guests had to be enter- 
 tained at private homes. 
 
 The city was fairly hidden under a lavish display 
 of flags, banners, and mottoes, of which the following 
 is a sample: 
 
 A LOCOMOTIVE IS THE ONLY GOOD MOTIVE 
 
 FOR 
 RIDING A MAN ON A RAIL. 
 
 The day, which was observed as a universal holiday 
 such as Cincinnati had never known before, and such 
 as she probably has never seen since, was brought to 
 a close by an exhibition of the new steam fire engines, 
 an innovation of which the young city was justifiably 
 proud. 
 
 Some fifteen hundred guests, as many as could be 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 71 
 
 crowded on the special trains, continued the triumphal 
 progress to St. Louis, Thursday, June 4. Precau- 
 tions as elaborate as usually attend the travels of 
 royalty in Europe had been taken to insure the safety 
 and promote the comfort of the guests. Flagmen 
 were posted on every mile of the track, and extra loco- 
 motives with steam up were disposed at strategic 
 points to take the place of those drawing the special 
 trains if they broke down. 
 
 But in spite of all precautions the locomotives obsti- 
 nately refused to break down where they could be re- 
 placed conveniently, but took particular pains to get 
 into as many difficulties as possible between stations. 
 Consequently there were several long waits in the 
 woods, necessitated by a pump that persisted in going 
 wrong at the most inopportune times, a hot driving 
 box, or something of that sort. These unforeseen 
 delays troubled the excursionists not at all, for there 
 were plenty of aspiring orators on board fairly burst- 
 ing with burning rhetoric. The average American 
 of half a century ago doted on oratory. Whenever 
 the trains came to a stop the passengers ranged them- 
 selves around the nearest stump, upon which long- 
 winded speakers would hold forth until the whistle 
 choked them off in the middle of a period as it sum- 
 moned them to the train again. 
 
 The pumps, the hot boxes, and the orators com- 
 bined delayed the special trains so much that the east- 
 ern bank of the Mississippi was not reached until 
 after midnight. 
 
 The visitors alighted in the glare of hundreds of 
 pine torches to an accompaniment of booming cannon, 
 and hurried to four brilliantly illuminated steamboats 
 
72 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 that had been moored to the Illinois shore for their 
 sleeping quarters. 
 
 Next morning there was a procession several miles 
 long to the St. Louis Fair Grounds, where the entire 
 day was devoted to speechmaking, with the exception 
 of a brief respite for dinner. An evening of fire- 
 works and serenades brought the first of the great 
 railway celebrations to a close. 
 
 The second celebration was held to give the East an 
 opportunity to repay the hospitality of the West. 
 The guests left St. Louis Wednesday, July 15, and 
 after the usual program of feasting and oratory and 
 fireworks, arrived at Baltimore Saturday, July 18. 
 After being photographed at the " Daguerrean 
 Establishment " of Henry Pollock, the procession of 
 one hundred and ten carriages proceeded to Mary- 
 land Institute, where they found the chief feature of 
 the second railroad celebration a banquet at which a 
 thousand men sat down. As a gauge of pioneer ap- 
 petites and a memento of the disastrous results of the 
 first desultory struggles with bill-of-fare French in 
 America, the menu of this famous dinner deserves re- 
 cording. Here it is exactly as printed: 
 
 SOUPS. 
 
 Green turtle Soup a la Julienne 
 
 FISH. 
 
 Boiled Salmon, Lobster sauce Boiled Sheepshead, White sauce 
 
 Striped Bass, baked, Genoise sauce 
 
 Chesapeake Bay Mackerel, a la Maitre d'Hotel 
 
 RELISHES. 
 
 Worcestershire sauce French Mustard Assorted pickles 
 
 Apple sauce Currant Jelly Cucumbers 
 
 Olives Anchovies 
 
AMERICA'S PIONEER RAILROAD 73 
 
 BOILED 
 Ham Lamb Spring Chicken 
 
 ENTREES. 
 
 Filets de Boeuf, Madeira wine sauce Petits Pates a la Reine 
 Mountain Oysters, Sauce Royale Sweetbreads larded, Gardinere sauce 
 Filets of veal Perageaux Galantine de Poulets 
 
 Vol au Vent a la Financier Young Chickens Maryland style 
 
 Lamb Chops, Soubaise sauce Timbale de maraconi, Milanaise 
 
 MARYLAND COURSE 
 
 Roast Saddle of Mountain Mutton, Currant Jelly 
 
 Soft Crabs fried, Butter and parsley sauce 
 Soft Crabs Broiled Hard Crabs Deviled 
 
 Summer Ducks with olives Green Goose, apple sauce 
 
 Roast Ham, Champagne sauce 
 
 VEGETABLES. 
 
 Stewed tomatoes Green corn Boiled beets 
 
 Baked Tomatoes String beans Cymlings 
 
 Green Peas Boiled Potatoes 
 
 COLD DISHES 
 
 Ham on a Pedestal, decorated with Jelly Boeuf Sale en Presse 
 
 Boned Turkey on a Socle, French Style Pate of Liver Jelly 
 
 Salade de poulets Historee Lobster Salad, Mayonnaise 
 
 Buffalo Tongues garnished with jelly Aspic d'Huitres 
 
 Crab Salad, Baltimore fashion 
 
 DESSERT 
 
 Nougat Basket Madeira Wine Bisquit Glacee au Cream Caisse 
 
 Punch Cakes Vanilla Ice Cream Almond Ice Cream 
 
 Strawberry Ice Cream Orange Ice Cream Raspberry Ice Cream 
 
 Pineapple Ice Cream Charlotte Russe Maraschino 
 
 Plombiere Charlotte Russe (Lemon) Fancy Cakes 
 
 Bisquit Glacee au Chorolade 
 
 FRUITS 
 
 Watermelons Apples Oranges Pears 
 
 Pineapples Bananas Apricots Raspberries 
 
 Responses to ten set toasts and to five volunteer 
 toasts and two extra speeches furnished an intellectual 
 
74 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 feast that rivaled in quantity the prodigal dinner that 
 had preceded it. A trip to Washington, where Pres- 
 ident Buchanan made a speech, and an excursion to 
 Norfolk, during which less distinguished orators held 
 forth on the boat throughout the voyage, ended the 
 second celebration, and established trade relations be- 
 tween Baltimore and the West that put new life into 
 the through rail route of which the Baltimore and 
 Ohio was the first and the most important link. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 
 
 THE first bride who ever made a honeymoon trip 
 on a railroad in America did more by that act 
 to expedite the building of the world's first trunk line 
 than the ablest statesmen, engineers, and financiers of 
 the Empire State had been able to accomplish by their 
 united efforts in half a dozen years. 
 
 Indeed, it is within bounds to go much further than 
 this and say that the inspiration drawn from this 
 bride's delight over her novel ride pushed the hands 
 of progress ahead ten years on the dial of history. 
 
 The bride who achieved so much was Mrs. Henry 
 L. Pierson, of Ramapo, N. Y. Mr. and Mrs. Pier- 
 son were in Charleston, S. C., early in January, 
 1831, on their wedding tour. When Mrs. Pierson 
 heard that a steam locomotive was to make its first 
 trip with a trainload of passengers over the South 
 Carolina Railroad from Charleston to Hamburg, six 
 miles away, on January 15, she was eager to take the 
 ride; and her husband, like a dutiful bridegroom, 
 agreed. 
 
 That was the first regular train that ever carried 
 passengers in the United States. It was then less 
 than eighteen months from the time when the first 
 successful locomotive had made its trial trip. 
 
 The locomotive which drew the first regular passen- 
 ger train in America and the first bridal couple to 
 
 75 
 
76 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 take a railroad journey was the Best Friend of 
 Charleston, which has been described in a previous 
 chapter. 
 
 The two cars were crazy contraptions on four 
 wheels, resembling stagecoach bodies as much as they 
 did anything else. The train contrived to get over 
 the entire system of six miles and back again at a 
 fairly satisfactory speed. 
 
 All the passengers were highly pleased with their 
 strange experience. The bride was in a transport of 
 delight. She could talk of nothing else. When she 
 returned to Ramapo she gave her brother-in-law, 
 Eleazer Lord, and her father-in-law, Jeremiah Pier- 
 son, such glowing accounts of her railroad trip that 
 they were fired with enthusiasm. The bridegroom had 
 already become almost as ardent an advocate of rail- 
 roads as his bride. 
 
 Jeremiah Pierson, the father of the bridegroom, 
 was one of the nation's first captains of industry. He 
 owned several thousand acres of land around Ram- 
 apo, on which he conducted tanneries, a cotton-mill, 
 iron-works, and a nail factory. His son-in-law, 
 Eleazer Lord, was one of the leading merchants, finan- 
 ciers, and public men of New York City. 
 
 For half a dozen years the two had been deeply in- 
 terested in Governor De Witt Clinton's ideas for the 
 development of southern New York by means of a 
 State highway or canal or other method of communi- 
 cation, but politicians in central New York, where the 
 Erie Canal had been in operation from 1825, by meth- 
 ods not unknown even among politicians of to-day, 
 turned all the efforts of the Governor and his public- 
 spirited supporters into a farce. 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 77 
 
 Later, Mr. Lord and his father-in-law had been 
 greatly interested in the possibilities of a railroad as 
 the best form for Governor Clinton's proposed high- 
 way to take. But their original idea of a railroad was 
 an affair of inclined planes and horse-power. 
 
 Of course, they had heard all about the experiments 
 with locomotives and the building of the South Caro- 
 lina Railroad, the first in the world projected from 
 the outset to be operated by steam locomotives, and 
 they had been deeply interested in William C. Red- 
 field's famous pamphlet, so widely circulated in 1829, 
 proposing a steam railroad from the ocean to the 
 Mississippi; but the idea of a steam road through 
 southern New York was not clearly developed in their 
 minds until the bride's glowing accounts of her expe- 
 rience fired their imaginations. 
 
 Young Mrs. Pierson gave it as her opinion that if 
 a steam railroad were built it would be possible to 
 go from New York to Buffalo in twenty-four hours. 
 At first, the men folks were inclined to smile at this, 
 but they were thoroughly impressed with the value of 
 the locomotive as described by this ardent advocate. 
 
 Mrs. Pierson's girlish enthusiasm was the determin- 
 ing factor which crystallized the ideas of those men 
 and led them to take the steps which finally resulted 
 in the building of what is now known as the Erie 
 Railway, which, by uniting the ocean with the Great 
 Lakes, became the world's first trunk line. 
 
 No railroad has had a more romantic history than 
 this one, which had its inception in so romantic an in- 
 cident. It required twenty years of toil and anxiety, 
 sacrifice and discouragement, to get the line through, 
 but it was accomplished at last, and the bridegroom 
 
78 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 and bride who had made the memorable first wedding 
 journey by rail were again passengers on a trip which 
 will live in history as long as railroads exist. 
 
 This time the bride was a handsome woman of mid- 
 dle age, but she was just as proud of her husband as 
 she was on that first trip, for he was vice-president of 
 the road, the longest continuous line in the world, and 
 the trains did move at a speed that would have carried 
 them from New York to Buffalo in twenty-four 
 hours, just as she had prophesied two decades before 
 that they would. 
 
 Mr. Lord at once began corresponding with the 
 most influential citizens of southern New York on the 
 subject of building a steam railroad from the ocean to 
 the Lakes. The idea was well received everywhere ; so 
 well, in fact, that a public meeting in furtherance of 
 Mr. Lord's railroad scheme was held at Monticello, 
 July 29, 1831 ; another at Jamestown, September 20, 
 and a third at Angelica, October 25. Finally, a great 
 central convention was called to meet at Oswego, De^ 
 cember 20, 1831. 
 
 People were inclined to believe that so vast an 
 enterprise as the building of five hundred miles of 
 railroad was too much for one company to under- 
 take. It was pretty generally believed that two com- 
 panies would be required one to build from New 
 York to Oswego, the other from Oswego to Lake 
 Erie. 
 
 A convention at Binghamton, December 15, had 
 formally approved the two-company plan, and public 
 opinion had pretty definitely decided that two com- 
 panies were necessary. 
 
 But while the Oswego convention was in session a 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 79 
 
 citizen rushed breathlessly in, interrupting a delegate 
 who was delivering an address, and in the most ortho- 
 dox style known to melodrama handed the president 
 a letter. It was from Eleazer Lord, briefly but em- 
 phatically declaring that the undertaking could be 
 carried to success only by a single corporation. 
 
 His reasoning was so cogent that the convention 
 without much ado decided in favor of one corpora- 
 tion, and nothing further was heard of the two-com- 
 pany proposition. 
 
 Public opinion was so pronounced in favor of the 
 railroad that the politicians from the canal counties 
 could make no headway against it. A charter drafted 
 by John Duer, of New York, was granted the New 
 York and Erie Railroad, April 24, 1832. 
 
 But the fine Italian hand of the politicians who 
 could not prevent the granting of the charter was 
 clearly to be seen in the document itself. That in- 
 strument provided that the entire capital stock of ten 
 million dollars must be subscribed and five per cent 
 of the amount paid in before the company could in- 
 corporate. 
 
 The canal counties had served public notice that the 
 projectors of this great public work would have to 
 combat all the pettifogging intrigues of which small 
 politicians were capable before they could even begin 
 their titanic contest with nature. 
 
 The little band of enthusiasts led by Eleazer Lord 
 were undertaking the most stupendous task that had 
 been set before the nation up to that time. The coun- 
 try was poor in resources; the region through which 
 the road was to run was a wilderness except for a few 
 scattering villages. 
 
80 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 Missouri was the only State west of the Mississippi. 
 Chicago was a village clustered around Fort Dear- 
 born. Railroad building was an unknown science 
 three-quarters of a century ago. The building of five 
 hundred miles of road then was a far more stupendous 
 task than the building of ten thousand miles would be 
 to-day. 
 
 Seeing the hopelessness of complying with the terms 
 of the charter, the incorporators contrived to bring 
 enough pressure to bear on the legislature to have 
 the amount of subscription required before organiza- 
 tion reduced to one million dollars. 
 
 Finally, on August 9, 1833, the New York and 
 Erie Railroad Company was organized, with Mr. 
 Lord as president. The next month the board of 
 directors issued an address asking for donations of 
 right of way and additional donations of land. 
 
 As no survey had been made, and no one had any 
 idea where the road would be located, this address 
 failed to bring out either donations or subscriptions 
 of stock, but there was a great deal of harsh talk 
 about land-speculation schemes. 
 
 In desperation, a convention was held, November 
 20, 1833, in New York City, to ask for State aid. 
 The aid was not forthcoming. Next year the com- 
 pany took the little money received for stock from 
 the incorporators and started the surveys. The east- 
 ern end of the line began in a marsh on the banks of 
 the Hudson, twenty-four miles north of New York 
 City. 
 
 Considering that the fundamental purpose of the 
 road was to secure the trade of the interior to New 
 York, this did not make any new friends for the road. 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 81 
 
 The western end of the road was to be Dunkirk, a 
 village of four hundred inhabitants, on the shores of 
 Lake Erie. 
 
 The talk about land speculation and the failure to 
 make satisfactory progress created such strong oppo- 
 sition to his policy that Mr. Lord resigned as presi- 
 dent at the January meeting in 1835, and J. G. King 
 'was elected to succeed him. King, by superhuman 
 exertions, was able to make an actual beginning. 
 
 He went to Deposit, some one hundred and sev- 
 enty-seven miles from New York, where at sunrise 
 on a clear, frosty morning, November 7, 1835, on the 
 eastern bank of the Delaware River, he made a little 
 speech to a party of thirty men, in which he expressed 
 the conviction that the railroad for which he was 
 about to break ground might in a few years earn as 
 much as two hundred thousand dollars a year from 
 freight. 
 
 This roseate prophecy being received with incre- 
 dulity, Mr. King hastened to modify it by saying the 
 earnings might amount to so vast a sum " at least 
 eventually." Then he shoveled a wheelbarrow-load 
 of dirt, which another member of the party wheeled 
 away and dumped, and the great work was begun. 
 
 But it was only begun. No progress was made 
 that year, nor did it look as if any further progress 
 ever would be made. The great fire in New York, 
 December 16, 1835, ruined many of the stockholders, 
 and the panic of 1836-1837 bankrupted many more. 
 
 Once more the company resolved to appeal to the 
 legislature for aid as a last desperate expedient. The 
 sum required was fixed at three million dollars. 
 
 Although the request was supported by huge peti- 
 
82 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 tions from New York, Brooklyn, and every county 
 in the southern tier, the opposition was bitter. How- 
 ever, public opinion was too strong to be ignored, so 
 the opposition went through the form of yielding to 
 popular clamor by presenting a bill to advance two 
 million dollars when the company had expended four 
 million six hundred and seventy-four thousand five 
 hundred and eighteen dollars. 
 
 This was a safe move, because the company had not 
 a dollar in the treasury, and no means of getting one. 
 Subsequently the conditions were modified and the 
 credit of the State to the amount of three million dol- 
 lars was loaned. Ultimately the amount was given 
 outright. 
 
 In December, 1836, the board issued a call for a 
 payment of two dollars and a half a share. Less than 
 half the stockholders responded. Then a public meet- 
 ing was held, at which a committee of thirty-nine was 
 appointed to receive subscriptions. The committee 
 opened its books and sat down to wait for the public 
 to step up and subscribe. The public didn't step. 
 
 By 1838 President King had had enough of the 
 effort to materialize a railroad out of the circumam- 
 bient atmosphere, and the board of directors again 
 turned to Eleazer Lord, who had a new plan to offer. 
 It was to let contracts for the first ten miles from 
 Piermont, the terminus of the road on the Hudson, 
 twenty-four miles above New York, and solicit sub- 
 scriptions in the city to pay for that amount of work, 
 and to solicit subscriptions from Rockland and 
 Orange counties to pay for the next thirty-six miles, 
 to Goshen. Middletown was to be asked to pay for 
 nine miles between that point and Goshen. 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 83 
 
 Before this plan could be put in operation, the com- 
 pany had a very narrow escape from an untimely end. 
 People were getting so impatient to see some progress 
 made that the legislature of 1838-1839 was swamped 
 with petitions for the immediate construction of the 
 road by the State. 
 
 February 14, 1839, a bill authorizing the surrender 
 by the New York and Erie Railroad Company of 
 all its rights, titles, franchises, and property to the 
 State was defeated in the Senate by the narrow mar- 
 gin of one vote. 
 
 The Assembly succeeded in passing a similar bill, 
 but it was defeated in the Senate, seventeen to twenty- 
 four. The Governor stood ready to sign the bill if it 
 had been adopted by the legislature. 
 
 In the spring of 1839 grading was begun under 
 Lord's newest plan. October 4, 1839, Lord was 
 again made president, and H. L. Pierson, who with 
 his bride had taken that historic ride on the first pas- 
 senger train, was made a director. Mr. Lord con- 
 tinued to keep things moving in his second admin- 
 istration so effectively that on Wednesday, June 30, 
 1841, the first trainload of passengers that ever trav- 
 eled over the Erie Railroad was taken to Ramapo, 
 where the party was entertained by the venerable Jer- 
 emiah Pierson, the father-in-law of the bride who 
 made the memorable trip ten years before, who was 
 one of the directors of the road. Three months later 
 the line was opened for traffic to Goshen, forty-six 
 miles from Piermont. 
 
 Slowly, very slowly, the rails crept westward. Not 
 until December 27, 1848, more than seven years after 
 reaching Goshen, did the first train enter Bingham- 
 
84 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 ton, one hundred and fifty-six miles beyond. In all 
 those seven years the Erie Company was experienc- 
 ing a continuous succession of perplexities, annoy- 
 ances, difficulties, and dangers that in number and 
 variety have probably never been equaled in the his- 
 tory of any other commercial enterprise in this 
 country. 
 
 The financing of the work was one prolonged vex- 
 ation. Times innumerable it seemed as if the whole 
 enterprise must fail for want of funds, but at the last 
 minute of the eleventh hour some way out would be 
 found. 
 
 Then, too, the company had to learn the science of 
 railroading as it went along. There was no telegraph 
 in those days to facilitate the movement of trains. 
 The only reliance was a time card and a set of rules. 
 
 Locomotives and rolling stock were small and crude. 
 Officials and employees had everything to learn, since 
 railroads were new, and every point learned was paid 
 for in experience at a good round figure. The living 
 instrumentalities through which the evolution of the 
 railroad was achieved were very much in earnest, as 
 they had need to be. They were too busy with the 
 problems of each day as they arose to glut their vanity 
 with profitless reflections upon the magnificence of the 
 task upon which they were engaged, or to enjoy the 
 humor of the expedients which led to their solution. 
 Posterity gets all the laughs as well as the benefits. 
 
 An interesting example of the quaint devices by 
 which important ends were attained is afforded by the 
 origin of the bell cord, the forerunner of the air whis- 
 tle, now in universal use on American roads for sig- 
 naling the engineer from the train. A means of com- 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 85 
 
 munication between the engine and the train has 
 always been considered indispensable in America. In 
 Europe the lack of such means of communication has 
 been the fruitful source of accidents and crimes. 
 
 The bell cord was the invention of Conductor 
 Henry Ayers, of the Erie Railroad. In the spring 
 of 1842, soon after the line had been opened to 
 Goshen, forty-six miles from the Hudson River, there 
 were no cabs on the engines, no caboose for the train- 
 men, no way of getting over the cars, and no means 
 of communicating with the engineer. There were no 
 such things as telegraphic train orders, no block sig- 
 nals, no printed time cards, no anything but a few 
 vague rules for the movement of trains. The engi- 
 neer was an autocrat, who ran the train to suit him- 
 self. The conductor was merely a humble collector 
 of fares. 
 
 Conductor Ayers, who afterwards for many years 
 was one of the most popular men of his calling in 
 the country, was assigned to a train whose destinies 
 were ruled by Engineer Jacob Hamel, a German of 
 a very grave turn of mind, fully alive to the dignity 
 of his position, who looked upon the genial conductor 
 with dark suspicion. When Ayers suggested that 
 there should be some means of signaling the engineer 
 so he could notify him when to stop to let off passen- 
 gers, suspicion became a certainty that the conductor 
 was seeking to usurp the prerogatives of the engi- 
 neer. Hamel decided to teach the impertinent col- 
 lector of small change his place. 
 
 One day Ayers procured a stout cord, which he ran 
 from the rear car of the train to the framework of the 
 cabless engine. He tied a stick of wood on the end 
 
86 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 of the cord, and told Hamel that when he saw the 
 stick jerk up and down he was to stop. Hamel lis- 
 tened in contemptuous silence, and as soon as the con- 
 ductor's back was turned threw away the stick and tied 
 the cord to the frame of the engine. Next day the 
 performance was repeated. 
 
 On the third day Ayers rigged up his cord and his 
 stick of wood before starting from Piermont, the east- 
 ern terminus, and told Jacob that if he threw that 
 stick away he would thrash him until he would be 
 glad to leave it alone. 
 
 When they reached Goshen the stick was gone, as 
 usual, and the end of the cord was trailing in the dirt. 
 Ayers walked up to the engine, and without saying a 
 word yanked Hamel off the engine and sailed in to 
 thrash him. This proved to be no easy task, for 
 Hamel had all the dogged tenacity of his race. But 
 one represented Prerogative, while the other cham- 
 pioned Progress, and Progress won at last, as it 
 usually does. 
 
 That hard-won victory settled for all time the 
 question of who should run a train. Also it showed 
 the way to a most useful improvement. Once the 
 idea was hit upon it did not take long to replace the 
 stick of wood with a gong. In a very short time 
 the bell cord was in universal use on passenger trains. 
 
 To Conductor Ayers is also due the credit of intro- 
 ducing another new idea, which, if not so useful in the 
 operation of trains, was at least gratefully appreci- 
 ated by a numerous and influential class of patrons: 
 the custom of allowing ministers of the Gospel half 
 rates. 
 
 Early in the spring of 1843 the Rev. Dr. Robert 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 87 
 
 McCartee, pastor of the Presbyterian Church at 
 Goshen, was a passenger on Conductor Ayers's train. 
 On account of a very heavy rain the track was in such 
 bad condition that the train was delayed for hours. 
 The passengers, following a custom that has been pre- 
 served in all the vigor of its early days, heaped male- 
 dictions upon the management. Some of the more 
 spirited ones drew up a set of resolutions denouncing 
 the company for the high-handed invasion of their 
 rights, as manifested in the delay, in scathing terms. 
 These resolutions were passed along to be signed by 
 all the passengers. When Dr. McCartee was asked 
 for his signature, he said he would be happy to give it 
 if the phraseology was changed slightly. Upon being 
 requested to name the changes he wished, he wrote 
 the following: 
 
 " Whereas, the recent rain has fallen at a time ill-suited to 
 our pleasure and convenience and without consultation with 
 us ; and 
 
 " Whereas, Jack Frost who has been imprisoned in the 
 ground some months, having become tired of his bondage, is 
 trying to break loose ; therefore be it 
 
 " RESOLVED, that we would be glad to have it otherwise." 
 
 When the good Dr. McCartee arose and in his best 
 parliamentary voice read his proposed amendment, 
 there was a hearty laugh, and nothing more was heard 
 about censuring the management. 
 
 Conductor Ayers was so delighted with this turn 
 of affairs that thereafter he would never accept a fare 
 from Dr. McCartee. Not being selfish, the Doctor 
 suggested a few weeks later that the courtesy be ex- 
 tended to all ministers. The company thought the 
 
88 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 idea a good one, and for a few months no minister 
 paid for riding over the Erie. Then an order was 
 issued that ministers were to be charged half fare. 
 That order established a precedent which was uni- 
 versally followed until the new rate law put an end 
 to the practice. 
 
 The modest but invaluable ticket punch was also 
 evolved on the Erie. When the first section of the 
 road was opened in 1841 there were no ticket agents. 
 Each conductor was given a tin box when he started 
 out for the day, which contained a supply of tickets 
 and ten dollars in change. The passenger on paying 
 the conductor his fare received a ticket, which he sur- 
 rendered on the boat during his voyage of twenty- 
 four miles down the Hudson from Piermont to New 
 York. These tickets were heavy cards bearing the 
 signature of the general ticket agent. These were 
 taken up and used over and over again until they 
 became soiled. 
 
 Travelers soon found a way to beat the company. 
 They would buy a through ticket which they would 
 show according to custom. At the last station before 
 reaching their destination they would purchase a 
 ticket from that station to destination. This latter 
 ticket would be surrendered and the through ticket 
 kept to be used over again. The process would be 
 repeated on the return trip. The passenger would 
 then be in possession of through transportation, which 
 enabled him to ride as often as he liked by merely 
 paying for a few miles at each end of his trip. 
 
 It was some time before this fraud was discovered. 
 Then a system of lead pencil marks was instituted, 
 but pencil marks were easy to erase. The only sort 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 89 
 
 of mark that could not be erased was one that muti- 
 lated the ticket. This led to the development of the 
 punch. 
 
 Another interesting innovation which originated 
 on the Erie was intended for the laudable purpose of 
 protecting passengers from the dust which has always 
 been one of ihe afflictions associated with railroad 
 travel. A funnel with its mouth pointed in the di- 
 rection the train was moving was placed on the roof 
 of the car, through which, when the train was in mo- 
 tion, a current of air was forced into a chamber where 
 sprays of water operated by a pump driven from an 
 axle washed the dust out and delivered the air sweet- 
 ened and purified to the occupants of the car. A 
 small stove was provided to heat the wash water in 
 winter. Several cars were so equipped, and they 
 seem to have satisfied the demands of the day, for 
 David Stevenson, F.R.S.E., of England, who made 
 a tour of inspection of American railroads in 1857, 
 recommended their adoption by English railroads. 
 But the combined ventilator and washery did not 
 stand the test of time; and in later years passengers 
 on the Erie, in common with the patrons of other 
 roads, were obliged to be content with unlaundered 
 air. 
 
 While it was learning the rudiments of railroad- 
 ing the company acquired some interesting side-lights 
 on human nature, also at war prices. People of a 
 certain type were eager to have the railroad built, but 
 they never permitted this eagerness to blind them to 
 the immediate interests of their own pockets. 
 
 One of the natives near Goshen had bought a tract 
 of land along the right-of-way, expecting to make 
 
90 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 a fortune out of it when the road was in operation. 
 The fortune manifested no indications of appearing 
 until the native observed that the railroad had estab- 
 lished a water-tank opposite his land, which was sup- 
 plied by a wooden pump which required a man to 
 operate. 
 
 Thereupon the native scooped out a big hole on 
 top of a hill near by, lined it with clay to make it 
 waterproof, and dug some shallow trenches from 
 higher ground to the basin, which was soon filled by 
 the rains. 
 
 Then the native went to New York and told the 
 officers of the road that he had a valuable spring 
 which would afford a much more satisfactory supply 
 of water than the pump. He would sell this spring 
 for two thousand five hundred dollars if the bargain 
 was closed at once. 
 
 Commissioners were sent to examine the spring and 
 close the deal. The two thousand five hundred dol- 
 lars were paid over, and the company spent two thou- 
 sand five hundred dollars more laying pipes from the 
 " spring " to the track. Of course, the water all ran 
 out in a short time, and no more took its place. Then 
 the railroad company found that the land was mort- 
 gaged, and that if they did not get their pipe up in a 
 hurry it would be lost, too. 
 
 A neighbor of this same native had a mill run by 
 water-power, which had been standing idle for a cou- 
 ple of years. The railroad skirted the edge of the 
 mill-pond. One day a train got tired of pounding 
 along over the rough track and plunged off into the 
 mill-pond. 
 
 The company asked the owner to let the water off, 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 91 
 
 so that it could recover its rolling stock. But the 
 mill man suddenly became very busy, started up his 
 mill, and declared he couldn't think of shutting down 
 unless he was paid six hundred dollars to compensate 
 him for lost time. Not seeing any other solution of 
 the difficulty, the railroad company paid the six hun- 
 dred dollars. 
 
 Going down the Shawangunk Mountains into the 
 Neversink Valley there was a rocky ledge through 
 which a way had to be blasted. The German owner 
 of the rocks, when approached by the right-of-way 
 agents, gave some sort of non-committal reply which 
 was interpreted as consent. But when the workmen 
 began operations on the rocks the owner stopped 
 them and would not let them do a stroke until he had 
 been paid a hundred dollars an acre for two acres of 
 rock that was not worth ten cents a square mile. All 
 along the line owners suddenly appeared for land that 
 had been regarded as utterly worthless who had to be 
 paid extravagant sums for right-of-way through 
 their property. Fancy prices were also extorted for 
 ties, fuel, and bridge timbers for the railroad. 
 
 Retribution overtook the greedy ones at last. The 
 Irish laborers employed on the grade overran the 
 country, digging potatoes, robbing hen-roosts and 
 orchards, and helping themselves to whatever else 
 took their fancy. 
 
 The company had its full share of trouble with 
 these same Irishmen. Some were from Cork, some 
 were from Tipper ary, some from the north of Ire- 
 land, called the " Far-downers," while all were pug- 
 nacious to the last degree. There were frequent fac- 
 tional riots, in one of which three men were killed. 
 
92 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 According to popular report, a good many others 
 were killed and their bodies buried in the fills as the 
 easiest way to dispose of them and the chance of trou- 
 blesome official investigations. On several occasions 
 the militia had to be called out to suppress disturb- 
 ances. Prevention by a general disarmament and 
 the confiscation of whisky was ultimately found to be 
 the most effective way of dealing with the turbulent 
 ones. 
 
 Still, there were a few incidents of a more agree- 
 able nature. In 1841, G. W. Scranton, of Oxford, 
 N. J., attracted by the rich deposits of iron and coal 
 in the Luzerne Valley, Pennsylvania, bought a tract 
 of land there and established iron-works, where he 
 was joined later by S. T. Scranton. They had a hard 
 struggle to keep going for five years. 
 
 Then W. E. Dodge, a director in the Erie, who 
 knew the Scrantons, conceived the idea of having the 
 Scrantons make rails for the road. The company 
 was having great difficulty in getting rails from Eng- 
 land, and the cost was excessive. 
 
 A contract was made with the Scrantons to fur- 
 nish twelve thousand tons of rails at forty-six dollars 
 a ton, which was about half the cost of the English 
 rails. Dodge and others advanced the money to pur- 
 chase the necessary machinery, and the rails were 
 ready for delivery in the spring of 1847. This Erie 
 contract laid the foundations of the city of Scranton. 
 
 To get the rails where they were needed it was 
 necessary to haul them by team through the wilder- 
 ness to the Delaware and Hudson Canal, at Archbold, 
 thence by canal-boat to Carbondale, thence by a 
 gravity railroad to Honesdale, thence by canal-boat, 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 93 
 
 again, to Cuddebackville, and finally by team once 
 more over the Shawangunk Mountains on the west- 
 ern extension, a distance of sixty miles. 
 
 By the time the road had reached Binghamton, two 
 hundred and sixteen miles from New York, the Erie 
 company seemed to be at its last gasp. Every dollar 
 of the three million that by superhuman exertion had 
 been raised for construction was gone, and there 
 seemed no way to raise more. 
 
 At the last moment Alexander S. Diven, of Elmira, 
 came to the rescue with a device which has since be- 
 come the standard method of railroad-building. This 
 was a construction syndicate, the first ever organized. 
 An agreement was made by which the Diven syndi- 
 cate was to do the grading, furnish all material except 
 the rails, and lay the track from Binghamton to Corn- 
 ing, a distance of seventy-six miles, taking in payment 
 four million dollars in second-mortgage bonds. 
 
 This saved the situation and aroused new interest in 
 the road. It made fortunes for the members of the 
 syndicate, but it increased the heavy burden of debt 
 on the company and helped to make trouble for the 
 future. 
 
 In 1849 the company tried the interesting experi- 
 ment of building iron bridges. Three of them, the 
 first structures of the kind ever built for a railroad, 
 were erected during that year. An eastbound stock 
 train was crossing one of the iron bridges near Mast 
 Hope July 31, 1849, when the engineer heard a loud 
 cracking. Instantly divining the reason, he jerked 
 the throttle wide open and succeeded in getting the 
 engine across in safety. So narrow was his escape 
 that even the tender of the locomotive followed the 
 
94 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 train into the creek along with the wrecked bridge. 
 A brakeman and two stockmen lost their lives. 
 
 This accident caused the company to lose faith in 
 iron bridges. Thereafter all bridges were built of 
 wood, including the famous structure over the chasm 
 of the Genesee River at Portage. This chasm was 
 two hundred and fifty feet deep and nine hundred feet 
 wide. A congress of engineers being assembled to 
 devise means of crossing it, a wooden bridge in spans 
 of fifty feet was decided upon. 
 
 It required two years' time and an outlay of one 
 hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars to build. 
 When it was opened August 9, 1852, sixteen million 
 feet of timber, the product of three hundred acres of 
 pine forest, had gone into the structure. The science 
 of iron bridge building was making progress; and 
 when the great wooden structure burned in 1875 it 
 was replaced in forty-seven days with a modern steel 
 bridge. 
 
 The road was completed to Corning on December 
 31, 1849. By this time business throughout the 
 country was improving, and the prospects of the Erie 
 looked brighter. 
 
 There now remained a gap of one hundred and 
 sixty-nine miles from Corning to Dunkirk, on Lake 
 Erie, the western terminus, to be filled in. But the 
 company having learned how to issue bonds, the rest 
 seemed easy. An issue of three million five hundred 
 thousand dollars of income bonds, bearing seven per 
 cent interest, floated at a heavy discount, followed 
 later on by a second issue of the same amount, paid 
 for the completion of the work, in the spring of 1851. 
 
 The driving of the last spike, which completed the 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 95 
 
 road that linked the ocean with the Lakes, marked an 
 epoch in the history of railroads. The first great 
 trunk line was now ready for traffic. The Pennsyl- 
 vania was then only a local line from Philadelphia to 
 Hollidaysburg, in the foothills of the Alleghanies. 
 
 New York was connected with Buffalo by an ag- 
 gregation of ramshackle roads of assorted gauges. 
 The only other road of importance in the world was 
 the line from St. Petersburg to Moscow, which was 
 opened also in 1851. 
 
 So notable an event called for something unusual 
 in the way of a celebration. Whatever may have 
 been its shortcomings in financial acumen or con- 
 structive genius, and it had many such to answer for, 
 the Erie management was a past master in the art of 
 celebrating. Beginning with the opening of the first 
 section of the line to Ramapo, away back in 1841, 
 every achievement in construction had been celebrated 
 with great eclat. The completion of the line to 
 Goshen, to Port Jervis, to Binghamton, to Elmira, 
 the completion of the Starucca viaduct and of the 
 wooden bridge over the chasm of the Genesee at 
 Portage, had all been celebrated with prodigal pomp. 
 
 When the time came that the world's first long-dis- 
 tance railroad excursion could be made the celebration 
 arranged eclipsed anything of the kind that had been 
 done. The guests included President Fillmore, 
 Secretary of State Daniel Webster, Attorney-Gen- 
 eral John J. Crittenden, Secretary of the Navy W. C. 
 Graham, Postmaster- General W. K. Hall, and some 
 three hundred other distinguished guests, including 
 six candidates for the Presidency, twelve candidates 
 for the Vice-Presidency, United States Senators, 
 
96 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 governors, mayors, capitalists, merchants, and Presi- 
 dent Benjamin Loder and the other officers and 
 directors of the company. 
 
 When President Fillmore, the members of his 
 cabinet, and other distinguished guests came up from 
 Amboy on the steamer Erie in mid-afternoon on May 
 13, 1851, all the shipping in the Harbor was dressed 
 in bunting. Batteries at Forts Hamilton and 
 Diamond and on Governor's Island and Bedloe's Isl- 
 and boomed forth National salutes. Cheers from 
 fifty thousand throats and a salute from pieces used 
 in 1776, fired by veterans of the Revolution, greeted 
 the President and his suite as they disembarked at the 
 Battery. Nine thousand militia were on hand to es- 
 cort the President to the Irving Hotel at Broadway 
 and Twelfth Street. Webster, who was already 
 showing marked indications of his approaching end, 
 went to the Astor House, where he always stopped. 
 An elaborate dinner was the event of the evening. 
 
 According to the program, the boat carrying the 
 guests was to leave for Piermont at 6 A.M. on Wed- 
 nesday, May 14, 1851. There was a pouring rain 
 that morning, but, despite the unearthly hour and the 
 rain, the streets were packed with people to cheer the 
 departing guests. A blundering porter was slow 
 with Webster's baggage, and the boat did not get 
 away until 6.10. 
 
 The famous Dodsworth's Band, which had been en- 
 gaged to accompany the party to Dunkirk, rendered 
 an elaborate program on the way up the river. 
 Another very important member of the party was 
 George Downing, the most famous caterer of his day, 
 who had with him a picked corps of waiters, whose 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 97 
 
 duty it was to see that no one lacked refreshment 
 liquid or solid. 
 
 On arriving at Piermont, at 7.45 A.M., the party 
 was received with the ringing of bells, the booming 
 of cannon, and the cheers of a multitude. The two 
 trains which were to carry the invited guests were 
 decorated with bunting, and there were flags and ban- 
 ners everywhere. 
 
 At eight o'clock the first through train that ever 
 carried passengers from the ocean to the Lakes pulled 
 out of Piermont, and was followed seven minutes 
 later by the second section. President Fillmore was 
 on the first section, and Webster was on the second, 
 seated in a comfortable rocker on a flat car, for the 
 rain had ceased and he wanted to enjoy the scenery 
 to the utmost. 
 
 The only man on either train who was not happy 
 was Gad Lyman, the engineer of the first section. 
 Gad had not got many miles out of Piermont before 
 his engine, a Rogers, No. 100, manifested unmistak- 
 able symptoms of " laying down." Under any condi- 
 tions, this would have been mortifying, but the 
 peculiar circumstances in this case made the conduct 
 of No. 100 doubly humiliating. 
 
 In those days there was a fierce rivalry between the 
 different makers of locomotives, and engineers were 
 not infrequently zealous partisans of the various 
 manufacturers. Some months previous Gad had 
 been given a new Swinburne engine, No. 71, just out 
 of the shop. 
 
 Being partial to Rogers machines, Gad could do 
 nothing with the new Swinburne. On the strength 
 of his reports the 71 was condemned as worthless, and 
 
98 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 Gad was given the new Rogers, with which he de- 
 clared he could pull the Hudson River up by the roots 
 if he wanted to. 
 
 Josh Martin, another engineer, was a warm per- 
 sonal friend of Swinburne, the maker of the 71. Josh 
 asked for the 71 after it had been condemned, and 
 after much solicitation was given profane permission 
 to take the old thing and go to blazes with it. 
 
 On this memorable day, after Gad's vaunted No. 
 100 had laid down on a little hill, a messenger was sent 
 to a siding near by for a plebeian gravel-train engine 
 to help him into Port Jervis, w r here he arrived an hour 
 late and inexpressibly crestfallen to find Josh Martin 
 waiting with the 71 to take his train. 
 
 Swinburne, the locomotive-builder, who was on the 
 train, hurried forward and climbed on the 71. Josh 
 slapped him on the back and exclaimed: 
 
 " Swinburne, I am going to make you to-day or 
 break my neck! " 
 
 Josh didn't break his neck, but every one on board 
 the train was fully persuaded his own neck would be 
 broken, for Josh covered the thirty-four miles from 
 Port Jervis to Narrowsburg with the heavy train in 
 thirty-five minutes. Such a record as that had never 
 been approached in the history of railroading. 
 
 Swinburne was in raptures, the officers of the road 
 were astounded, and some of the distinguished pas- 
 sengers were so nervous that they insisted on getting 
 off and walking. By the time they had covered the 
 eighty-eight miles from Port Jervis to Deposit, Josh 
 had made up the hour Gad had lost. 
 
 At every station along the route there were cheer- 
 ing crowds, booming cannon, waving banners, and 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 99 
 
 oratory. Wherever the trains stopped long enough, 
 some of the distinguished guests would make brief 
 speeches. As the observation platform, since found 
 so convenient in National campaigns, had not then 
 been thought of, the orators held forth from flat cars 
 attached to the rear of the trains for the purpose. 
 One of these flat cars was also occupied by the rail- 
 road official who had been designated to receive flags. 
 By a singular coincidence the ladies at every one of 
 the more than sixty stations between Piermont and 
 Dunkirk had conceived the idea that it would be as 
 original as it was appropriate to present a flag 
 wrought by their own fair hands to the railroad com- 
 pany when the first train passed through to Lake 
 Erie. As it would have consumed altogether too 
 much time to make a stop for each of these flag pres- 
 entations, the engineer merely slowed down at three- 
 fourths .of the stations enough to allow the flag officer 
 to scoop up the banner in his arms much like the 
 hands on the old-fashioned Marsh Harvesters gath- 
 ered up armfuls of grain for binding. At the end 
 of the journey the Erie Railroad had a collection of 
 flags that would have done credit to a victorious army. 
 
 The party reached Elmira, two hundred and 
 seventy-four miles from New York, where the night 
 was to be passed, at 7 P.M. As the President alighted 
 a national salute was fired. There was an imposing 
 procession to escort the President to one hotel and 
 Webster to another; two banquets were served, with 
 Downing, the caterer, and his staff helping the hotel 
 men. 
 
 All night long the streets were filled with enthusias- 
 tic crowds. Hospitality was unbounded, and many 
 
100 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 citizens on all other occasions staid and sober men 
 grew hilarious as the night wore on. Elmira has 
 never had another such night as that which marked 
 the opening of the Erie from the ocean to the Lakes. 
 
 At 6.30 A.M., on Thursday, May 15, the special 
 trains left Elmira for Dunkirk, where they arrived 
 at 4.30 P.M. 
 
 The scenes of the day before were repeated at every 
 station along the way. H. G. Brooks, an engineer, 
 ran his locomotive out several miles to meet the trains, 
 which had been consolidated for entering Dunkirk, 
 and escorted them to the station under a canopy made 
 of the intertwined flags of the United States, Eng- 
 land, and France. 
 
 There was a procession, led by Dodsworth's Band, 
 to the scene of a barbecue for which the whole country 
 had been preparing for weeks. 
 
 There were two oxen barbecued, ten sheep, and a 
 hundred fowls ; bread in loaves ten feet long and two 
 feet wide, barrels of cider, tanks of coffee, unlimited 
 quantities of ham, corned beef, tongue and sausage, 
 pork and beans in vessels holding fifty gallons each, 
 and vast quantities of clam chowder. 
 
 President Fillmore manifested deep interest in the 
 pork and beans, while Webster was attracted by the 
 clam chowder. He was something of a specialist in 
 making clam chowder himself, he said. He strongly 
 recommended the addition of a little port wine to give 
 the chowder the proper bouquet. After several din- 
 ners in as many different places, accompanied by 
 much speech-making, the celebration was at an end. 
 
 The first trunk line, an unbroken road five hundred 
 miles long, from tide-water to the inland seas, was 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 101 
 
 now open for traffic, but that was about all that could 
 be said. It began nowhere, ended nowhere, had no 
 connections, and could have none. The track was un- 
 ballasted, and the rolling-stock was in such bad condi- 
 tion that the insecurity of travel over the road was 
 notorious. In two months there were sixteen serious 
 accidents on one division alone. 
 
 Part of these anomalous conditions was due to 
 peculiar ideas of what a railroad should be that seem 
 strange enough now but were not considered peculiar 
 in those early days. The road was built to secure for 
 New York City the trade of the southern part of the 
 State. To make sure that none of this trade should 
 go to Boston or Philadelphia or any other places 
 which were casting covetous eyes in that direction, the 
 Erie was prohibited, under penalty of forfeiture of its 
 charter, from making any connections with any other 
 road. 
 
 Even if connections had been desired, there could 
 have been no direct interchange of traffic, because the 
 Erie was built on a six-foot gauge, while all the other 
 roads were adopting the standard English gauge of 
 four feet eight and one-half inches. 
 
 When the railroad had reached Middletown, the 
 chief engineer at that time, Major T. S. Brown, after 
 a trip to Europe to study the best railroad practice 
 there, urged a change of gauge to four feet eight and 
 one-half inches. He said the gauge of the fifty-four 
 miles of track then in operation could be changed then 
 at a cost of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, 
 but his recommendations were not approved. 
 
 When the Erie was confronted, forty years later, 
 with the alternative of changing its gauge or going 
 
102 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 out of business, the change was made at a cost of 
 twenty-five million dollars. 
 
 In this connection it is interesting to note that the 
 problem of gauge was not finally settled by the rail- 
 roads of the United States until 1886. Between 
 May 22 and June 2 of that year upwards of twelve 
 thousand miles of railroad in the South were changed 
 from wide to standard gauge. The Louisville and 
 Nashville, by using a force of 8,763 men, was able to 
 change the gauge of 1,806 miles of main-line and 
 sidings in a single day. 
 
 Notwithstanding the road was built to benefit New 
 York, its terminus was twenty-four miles away from 
 the city, and the company had refused an opportunity 
 to gain an entrance over the Harlem Railroad. It 
 didn't take long for some shrewd Jerseymen who were 
 not in the Erie directorate to see that the natural 
 terminus of the road was at a point in Jersey City 
 opposite New York, and but a very little longer for 
 them to preempt the only practicable route by which 
 the Erie could reach that point. This was from Suf- 
 fern through the Paramus Valley to Jersey City via 
 Paterson. 
 
 The Paterson and Hudson Railroad, from Jersey 
 City to Paterson, and the Ramapo and Paterson Rail- 
 road, from Paterson to Suffern, were duly chartered. 
 The former was opened in 1836, the latter in 1848. 
 The Erie might refuse to connect with other roads. 
 But no legislative fiat could prevent a passenger on 
 the Erie from leaving it for another road that stood 
 ready to save him twenty miles of travel and an hour 
 and a half of time. The Erie tried every device of 
 discrimination in rates and increased speed of its 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 103 
 
 boats and trains, but utterly failed to convince the 
 traveling public that the longest way round was the 
 shortest road home. On February 10, 1851, the Erie 
 capitulated on terms dictated by the shrewd Jersey- 
 men, taking a perpetual lease of the short cut to the 
 Metropolis. 
 
 This alarmed the people of Piermont, who peti- 
 tioned the legislature to come to the rescue of their 
 town with a law compelling the Erie to continue to 
 run its trains to that out-of-the-way terminus. But 
 the legislature, like the railroad, gave up the attempt 
 to prescribe routes of travel by statute and left Pier- 
 mont to oblivion. 
 
 An event of far greater historical importance in 
 the same year was the discovery that trains could be 
 moved by telegraph. Although seven years had 
 elapsed since Morse had sent his first telegraph mes- 
 sage from Washington to Baltimore, capitalists were 
 still scornfully skeptical of the investment value of 
 his wonderful invention, and other folk were more or 
 less incredulous of its practical utility. Such oc- 
 casional messages as were sent began with " Dear 
 Sir," and closed with " Yours respectfully." 
 
 No one dreamed of using the telegraph to regulate 
 the movements of trains. The time card was the sole 
 reliance of railroad men for getting over the road. 
 The custom, still in vogue, of giving east- and north- 
 bound trains the right of way over trains of the same 
 class moving in the opposite direction had been es- 
 tablished. If an east-bound train did not reach its 
 meeting point on time the west-bound train, according 
 to the rules, had to wait one hour and then proceed 
 under a flag until the opposing train was met. A 
 
104 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 flagman would be sent ahead on foot. Twenty 
 minutes later the train would follow, moving about as 
 fast as a man could walk. Under this interesting ar- 
 rangement, when a train which had the right of way 
 was several hours late, the opposing train had to flag 
 over the entire division at a snail's pace. 
 
 On September 22, 1851, Superintendent Charles 
 Minot was on Conductor Stewart's train west bound. 
 They were to meet the east-bound express at Turner's. 
 As the express did not show up Minot told the 
 operator to ask if it had arrived at Goshen fourteen 
 miles west. On receiving a negative answer he wrote 
 the first telegraphic train order ever penned. It read 
 as follows: 
 
 " To Operator at Goshen: 
 
 " Hold east-bound train till further orders. 
 
 " CHARLES MINOT, Superintendent." 
 
 Then he wrote an order which he handed to Con- 
 ductor Stewart, reading as follows: 
 
 " To Conductor Stewart: 
 
 " Run to Goshen regardless of opposing train. 
 
 " CHARLES MINOT, Superintendent" 
 
 When Conductor Stewart showed this order to 
 Engineer Isaac Lewis that worthy read it twice with 
 rising amazement and indignation. Then he handed 
 it back to the conductor with lip curved with scorn. 
 
 "Do I look like a d - fool?" snorted Lewis. 
 " I'll run this train according to time card rules, and 
 no other way." 
 
 Upon hearing of this Superintendent Minot used 
 all his powers of persuasion to induce Lewis to pull 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 105 
 
 out ; but the engineer refused in most emphatic terms. 
 He wasn't prepared to cross the Jordan that morning, 
 so he proposed to abide by the rules in such cases made 
 and provided. No other course being open Minot 
 ordered the obstinate engineer down and took charge 
 of the engine himself. Lewis took refuge in the last 
 seat of the rear car, where he would have some show 
 for his life when the inevitable collision occurred, 
 while the superintendent ran the train to Goshen. 
 Finding by further use of the telegraph that the op- 
 posing train had not reached Middletown he ran to 
 that point by repeating his orders and kept on in the 
 same way until he reached Port Jervis, saving two 
 hours' time for the west-bound train. 
 
 The account of the superintendent's reprehensible 
 conduct when related by Engineer Lewis caused a 
 great commotion among the other engineers. In 
 solemn conclave they agreed that they would not run 
 trains on any such crazy system. But Minot issued 
 an order that the movements of trains on the Erie 
 Railroad would thenceforth be controlled by tele- 
 graph, and they were. 
 
 When the Erie was at last in operation from Jersey 
 City to Dunkirk it had cost $43,333 a mile exclusive 
 of equipment, or six times the original estimate made 
 in 1834, yet it was a railroad more in name than in 
 fact. Motive power and rolling stock were insuf- 
 ficient and dilapidated, while the track demanded an 
 expenditure of large sums before traffic could be 
 handled with profit. 
 
 But in spite of all its drawbacks this first trunk line 
 justified the enthusiasm of the bride which expedited 
 its building, and even justified the reckless language 
 
106 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 of President King, who thought " Eventually it might 
 earn two hundred thousand dollars a year on freight " ; 
 for the receipts on through business in the first six 
 months after the line was opened to Dunkirk were 
 $1,755,285, and the first dividend, 4 per cent, was de- 
 clared for the last six months of 1851. 
 
 The opening of the Erie to Dunkirk and the com- 
 pletion of a through route from New York by way 
 of Albany to Buffalo a few months later, upon the 
 opening of the Hudson River Railroad, completely 
 revolutionized travel between the East and the West. 
 People congratulated one another on the comfort, 
 safety, and cheapness of travel with which, in that 
 progressive age, the great distance between the Miss- 
 issippi and the Atlantic could be " traversed in an 
 almost incredibly short space of time." Before these 
 roads were opened for traffic the journey from St. 
 Louis to New York was a formidable enterprise 
 which nothing but the most urgent necessity could 
 induce any one to undertake. The usual route was 
 by steamboat to Wheeling or Pittsburg, thence by 
 stage through a nightmare of rough roads, sleepless 
 nights, stiffened limbs, and aching heads to Baltimore 
 or Philadelphia, thence to New York. 
 
 But the opening of the Eastern roads and of a road 
 from Cincinnati to Lake Erie reversed the current of 
 travel. Instead of going by way of Baltimore or 
 Philadelphia to New York, nearly all the traffic 
 moved to Cincinnati by boat, from whence New York 
 could be reached by rail by way of Dunkirk or Buf- 
 falo in less than forty-eight hours, and Washington 
 in about fifteen hours more. This was less time than 
 was required to go from Cincinnati to Pittsburg by 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 107 
 
 steamboat. The routes by Wheeling and Pittsburg 
 were practically abandoned, while travel by the new 
 railroads, according to the newspapers of the day, 
 became " almost incredibly great." 
 
 Under the circumstances, then, such superlatives 
 as these from the American Railroad Journal anent 
 the formal opening of the Erie Railroad to Dunkirk 
 seem quite pardonable: 
 
 " The occasion was an era in the history of locomotion. 
 Its influence will at once be felt in every part of the United 
 States. The Erie Railroad is the grand artery between the 
 Atlantic and our inland seas. Its branches compared with 
 other trunk lines would be great works. . . . The New York 
 and Erie Railroad lays high claims to being one of the great- 
 est achievements of human skill and enterprise. In magnitude 
 of undertaking and cost of construction it far exceeds the 
 hitherto greatest work of internal improvement in the United 
 States, the Erie Canal. When we consider its length, which 
 exceeds that of the great railway building by the Russian 
 Government from Moscow to St. Petersburg ; when we reflect 
 upon the extensive tracts of country teeming with rich 
 products it has opened up, it is doubtful whether any similar 
 work exists on the earth to compare with it." 
 
 Yet Dunkirk was scarcely more satisfactory as a 
 western terminus than Piermont as the eastern. The 
 struggle to create a railroad, instead of being at an 
 end, was only begun. 
 
 Although the first public meeting to create the 
 sentiment which ultimately led to the building of the 
 Erie was held at Jamestown in 1831, when the road 
 was finally opened twenty years later, that town was 
 left thirty-four miles from the line. Being deter- 
 mined to have a railroad the people of Jamestown in 
 
108 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 May, 1851, organized the Erie and New York City 
 Railroad to build from Salamanca, named after the 
 Duke of Salamanca, financial adviser to Queen Isa- 
 bella, of Spain, who was instrumental in placing a 
 quantity of bonds in Spain, through Jamestown to the 
 Pennsylvania State line. 
 
 About the same time it occurred to Marvin Kent, a 
 manufacturer of Franklin, Ohio, that the real ter- 
 minus of the Erie should be at St. Louis through a 
 connection with the struggling Ohio and Mississippi, 
 which was also of six feet gauge. Acting on this idea 
 he procured a charter from the Ohio legislature for 
 the Franklin and Warren Railroad to build from 
 Franklin east to the Pennsylvania State line and 
 south to Dayton. A formidable obstacle to the ex- 
 ecution of this project for a through route from New 
 York to St. Louis and the west was the State of 
 Pennsylvania, which interposed between the Franklin 
 and Warren and the Erie and New York City. 
 There was no railroad connection across the State of 
 Pennsylvania between New York and Ohio, and there 
 was no prospect that there ever would be any if the 
 selfish jealousy of Erie, Pittsburg, and Philadelphia 
 could prevent it. These cities had resolved that all 
 the traffic between the East and the West through 
 Pennsylvania should pay tribute to them. 
 
 A combined lobby from these cities controlled the 
 legislature and so effectually prevented all the numer- 
 ous attempts to charter any railroad that threatened 
 their commercial supremacy. But a way out was 
 found even from this hopeless situation. When it 
 was made an object to the Pittsburg and Erie Rail- 
 road that company stretched its privileges to cover the 
 
EARLY DAYS ON THE ERIE 109 
 
 construction of a " branch " across Pennsylvania that 
 would make a connecting link between the New York 
 and Ohio roads then projected. Following the 
 devious ways necessary to legalize its operations, and 
 hindered by the delays required to capitalize it, this 
 " branch " in the course of seven years became first 
 the Meadville Railroad and then the Atlantic and 
 Great Western. The Erie made the surveys for this 
 connection, which would have been so helpful, and 
 promised to finance it; but for several years was too 
 desperately hard up to fulfil that promise. 
 
 Not until the assistance of James McHenry, an 
 Irishman, who after being brought up in America 
 went to Liverpool and made an immense fortune by 
 creating the first trade in America dairy products, had 
 been secured were the funds to build the Atlantic and 
 Great Western forthcoming. McHenry's indorse- 
 ment was enough to give the road good standing with 
 English investors. Their capital was lavished on the 
 project as foreign money had never before been lav- 
 ished on anything American. Agents were kept in 
 Canada and Ireland to recruit labor, which was sent 
 over by the shipload during the Civil War. 
 
 By virtue of achievements in railroad building then 
 unparalleled the first broad-gauge train from the 
 East was able to enter Cleveland November 3, 1863. 
 On June 20, 1864, a special broad-gauge train ar- 
 rived at Dayton from New York. From Dayton 
 connection was made by the Cincinnati, Hamilton and 
 Dayton by way of Cincinnati, and the Ohio and Miss- 
 issippi with St. Louis, thus opening a broad-gauge 
 route from the ocean to the Mississippi. The Atlantic 
 and Great Western was leased by the Erie January 
 
110 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 1, 1869, and thus became a link in the present main 
 line. 
 
 Before this the Erie had become great enough to 
 rouse the cupidity of rival manipulators, who in their 
 struggle for possession nearly ruined the property. 
 High finance was then a new art and its methods were 
 crude. 
 
 But the Erie survived it all, and half a century 
 after it was ushered into Dunkirk with such elaborate 
 ceremony it had developed into a system of nearly 
 two thousand five hundred miles with annual earnings 
 of more than forty million dollars. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA AND THE PENNSYLVANIA 
 RAILROAD 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA had a hard struggle to be- 
 come reconciled to the railroad. Perhaps it was 
 arrogance born of prosperity, for in early days Phila- 
 delphia was the foremost city of the nation, and the 
 country population was thriving; perhaps it was 
 something deserving a less charitable characterization 
 which inspired the desperate resistance to innovation. 
 
 The fact remains that the opposition to the railroad 
 in the Keystone State was more bitter and prolonged 
 than elsewhere. As a result Pennsylvania paid a 
 higher price than any other commonwealth for having 
 the blessing of rail transportation thrust upon her. 
 
 The plain truth is that the good people of Penn- 
 sylvania were strenuously opposed to anything that 
 smacked of progress. They were entirely content 
 with pack trains winding single-file over the moun- 
 tains between Philadelphia and Pittsburg in charge 
 of men who carried a bag of parched corn and venison 
 for food and slept under trees. When turnpikes were 
 proposed a vigorous protest was raised on the ground 
 that the packers and horse breeders would be ruined. 
 General Alexander Ogle, member of Congress, 
 started a campaign of education which was notable for 
 plain speaking. General Ogle was wont to tell his 
 
 constituents that one w r agon would carry as much salt, 
 
 in 
 
WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 iron and brandy as a whole caravan of half-starved 
 mountain ponies and that " of all people in the world 
 fools have the least sense," a remark which was open 
 to disagreeable inferences. 
 
 At last the advocates of the turnpike had their way 
 and Conestoga wagons supplanted the pack horse. In 
 1786 a fortnightly stage coach made the rounds be- 
 tween Philadelphia and Pittsburg. In 1804 this was 
 increased to a daily service and the wagons began to 
 grow numerous. Taverns sprang up every few miles 
 along the way. Thus a strong vested interest soon 
 grew up which was able to bring a powerful opposi- 
 tion to bear when a few radicals proposed canals as 
 superior to turnpikes. 
 
 The clamor of opposition to progress reached a 
 climax when the extremists attempted to maintain 
 that railroads would be superior even to canals. The 
 popular view was succinctly expressed by an old 
 Pennsylvania Dutchman who was listening to Gen- 
 eral Simon Cameron, who was making a speech at 
 Elizabethtown in favor of the proposed railroad from 
 Philadelphia to Lancaster. The General said he 
 hoped to see the day w r hen he could take breakfast at 
 Harrisburg, go to Philadelphia, transact business, 
 and return to Harrisburg in time for a good night's 
 rest. This was too much for the Dutchman, who 
 called over his shoulder as he turned away in dis- 
 gust: 
 
 " Simon, I always knew you were half cracked, but 
 I never suspected you were such an ass as to talk that 
 way." 
 
 Another vested interest now joined the alliance 
 against the railroad the truck farmers in the out- 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD US 
 
 skirts of Philadelphia. They said if a railroad were 
 built the Lancaster truck farmers could ship their 
 potatoes and cabbages to Philadelphia and thus set 
 up a ruinous competition with the local farmers. In 
 justice to the Philadelphia farmers it must be said 
 that their forebodings proved to be only too well 
 founded. The road to Lancaster was built and the 
 Philadelphia truck business was destroyed so utterly 
 that the farmers had to cut up their truck patches into 
 town lots, any one of which sold for more money than 
 the whole farm could earn in a lifetime. 
 
 John Thomson, who up to that time had always 
 been one of the most respected citizens of Delaware 
 County, built a quarter of a mile of crude wooden rail- 
 road in 1809 and called upon his neighbors to witness 
 that one horse could pull with ease a heavier load on 
 the wooden rails than two horses could drag along the 
 muddy road. 
 
 But the neighbors told John Thomson in plain 
 terms that he was a fool ; whereupon, in extreme dis- 
 gust, he chopped Pennsylvania's first railroad up for 
 firewood and said no more about it. That is, not 
 until his son John Edgar, then a year old, was big 
 enough to talk to. 
 
 Instead of sending the boy to school and giving him 
 a chance to get on in the world, John Thomson kept 
 him at home and filled his young head with fool 
 notions about railroads until he left at the age of 
 nineteen to accept a position as engineer, to assist 
 in laying out and constructing the first impor- 
 tant railroad ever operated in the State of Penn- 
 sylvania. 
 
 He stuck to the job until as chief engineer and 
 
114 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 president he had extended that apology for a railroad 
 across the Alleghanies and then to the Mississippi and 
 the Great Lakes, developed and expanded it into one 
 of the greatest transportation companies in existence, 
 and, dying, left behind him immortal fame as one of 
 the foremost constructive geniuses in the history of 
 the railroad. 
 
 While young Thomson was at home preparing for 
 his life-work, Pennsylvania was learning things, too. 
 Summed up, the lesson was that no community can 
 prosper without adequate facilities for trade. The 
 opening of the Erie Canal and the building of the 
 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad demonstrated in a 
 rather pointed way that transportation was foremost 
 of those facilities. 
 
 Colonel John Stevens, of Hoboken, who wore out 
 his life trying to induce people to build railroads, had 
 applied for a charter to build a railroad from Phila- 
 delphia to Columbia in 1823. Just to humor an old 
 man it was granted, but not a dollar could be raised to 
 build even an experimental mile of road, even though 
 Horace Binney and Stephen Girard, two of the fore- 
 most conservative business men of Philadelphia, per- 
 mitted their names to appear as incorporators. They 
 were willing to lend dignity to the scheme, but lending 
 money was quite a different matter. Other charters 
 were granted in the next few years, but nothing came 
 of them until the Philadelphia, Germantown and 
 Norristown Railroad was authorized by an act of the 
 legislature approved by Governor Wolf February 17, 
 1831. 
 
 With commendable prudence the legislature took 
 care that the incorporators should not get rich too 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 115 
 
 quickly by expressly providing that the dividends 
 should not exceed twelve per cent per annum. In 
 order to keep the profits down to this liberal figure the 
 fare was limited to one cent a mile. All this legisla- 
 tive caution proved to be unnecessary, for it was many 
 years before the road paid any dividends at all, even 
 after the tariff was raised to two cents a mile. The 
 road was opened for traffic June 6, 1832, with " nine 
 splendid cars " according to contemporaneous ac- 
 counts, which were greatly admired by some thousands 
 of spectators. 
 
 The " splendid cars," as a matter of fact, were old 
 Concord stages, provided with flanged wheels to en- 
 able them to stay on the rails and footboards along 
 which the conductors walked to collect fares. Horses 
 furnished the motive power. 
 
 This road is chiefly interesting from the fact that 
 the building of " Old Ironsides," its first locomotive, 
 laid the foundation of the great Baldwin Locomotive 
 Works. Matthew Baldwin, the builder, was a watch- 
 maker by trade. For some unexplained reason a 
 curious affinity existed between watchmakers and loco- 
 motives in early days. Phineas Davis, who built the 
 prize locomotive for the Baltimore and Ohio, was a 
 watchmaker. So were Stacy Costell, who organized 
 the Pennsylvania Locomotive Works in 1831, and 
 Ezekiel Childs, who also tried his hand at the busi- 
 ness. But neither made a success of it. 
 
 Baldwin made himself so famous by building a 
 stationary engine to run his factory for the manufac- 
 ture of calico printing rolls, for the sufficient reason 
 that he had to have an engine and could not get a 
 satisfactory one in any other way, that his friend 
 
116 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 Franklin Peale, the manager of the Philadelphia 
 Museum, asked him to build a working model of a 
 locomotive, which he wanted as a star attraction for 
 his museum. Being finished and placed on exhibi- 
 tion on a circular track April 28, 1831, this model 
 caused a great sensation. 
 
 Among those whose interest was aroused were the 
 directors of the Germantown Railroad, which had 
 then been extended to a point six miles from Phila- 
 delphia. 
 
 They asked Baldwin to build a full-sized locomotive 
 for them. Although he had no patterns, no machine 
 tools, and no experience, and there were but five me- 
 chanics in the city competent to do any part of the 
 work on a locomotive, Baldwin took the job. The 
 cylinders were bored out with a chisel fixed in a stick 
 of wood turned by a crank worked by hand. Six 
 months of hard work were required to finish " Old 
 Ironsides." On November 23, 1832, the engine was 
 placed in service. 
 
 There were no brakes on cars or engine. The only 
 means of stopping was by reversing the engine, a 
 process as laborious as it was uncertain. The rock 
 shaft was placed under the footboard. It was oper- 
 ated by treadles worked by the feet of the engineer 
 which actuated a loose eccentric for each cylinder. 
 To reverse required two distinct operations: first to 
 shut off and then throw the engine out of gear in one 
 direction; next, to throw it into gear in the other 
 direction that is, provided it could be done. But 
 those loose eccentrics were the most nerve-racking 
 devices that ever tried the patience of a long-suffering 
 engineer. They responded to the efforts of the 
 
0? 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 117 
 
 treadles when so disposed; when they took a notion 
 they balked, so the engine could be moved neither for- 
 ward nor backward. They caused the poor builder a 
 great deal of anxiety. 
 
 To make matters worse the engine weighed seven 
 tons instead of the five tons prescribed in the contract. 
 This so displeased the purchasers that they would 
 have rejected the locomotive but for the strenuous 
 efforts of Henry R. Campbell, the chief engineer, a 
 friend of Baldwin, and James Moore, the consulting 
 engineer. The directors finally accepted Old Iron- 
 sides, but would only pay three thousand five hundred 
 dollars for it instead of the four thousand dollars they 
 had agreed to pay. This so disgusted Baldwin that 
 he vowed he would never build another locomotive. 
 But the Fates had decreed otherwise: he never did 
 anything else but build locomotives for the rest of his 
 life. 
 
 When the opening of the Erie Canal had suddenly 
 diverted Philadelphia's trade with the West to New 
 York, the State government undertook what private 
 enterprise would not by creating a Board of Canal 
 Commissioners to construct improved avenues of com- 
 munication with the western part of the State. It 
 was agreed that canals were the best system of trans- 
 portation, but, owing to the mountainous character of 
 the State, railroads might have to be built to fill in the 
 gaps between canals. 
 
 The Board of Canal Commissioners were careful to 
 have it understood, however, that they favored rail- 
 roads only as a last resort. In their annual report 
 published in December, 1831, they stated their posi- 
 tion thus clearly: 
 
118 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 " While the Board avow themselves favorable to railroads 
 where it is impracticable to construct canals, or under some 
 peculiar circumstances, yet they cannot forbear to explain 
 their opinion that the advocates of railroads generally have 
 greatly overrated their commercial value. To counteract 
 the wild speculations of visionary men and to allay the honest 
 fears and prejudices of many of our best citizens who have 
 been induced to believe that railroads are better than canals 
 and consequently, that for the last six years the efforts of 
 our state to achieve a mighty improvement have been mis- 
 directed, the canal commissioners deem it to be their duty to 
 state a few facts which will exhibit the comparative value of 
 the two modes of improvement for the purpose of carrying 
 heavy articles cheaply to market in a distinct point of view." 
 
 After giving estimates of both methods of transpor- 
 tation, in which the canal appeared to much greater 
 advantage than the railroad, the report proceeds : 
 
 " The introduction of locomotives and Winans cars upon 
 railroads where they can be used to advantage will diminish 
 the difference between canals and railroads in the expense of 
 transportation. But the Board believe that notwithstanding 
 all improvements which have been made in railroads and loco- 
 motives it will be found that canals are from two to two and 
 a half times better than railroads for the purposes required 
 of them by Pennsylvania. 
 
 " The Board have been thus explicit with a view to vindi- 
 cating the sound policy of the Commonwealth in the con- 
 struction of canals ; yet they again repeat that their remarks 
 flow from no hostility to railroads, for next to canals they 
 are the best means that have been devised to cheapen trans- 
 portation." 
 
 The Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, eighty- 
 two miles long, was the eastern link in the chain of 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 119 
 
 State works. It was here that the boy Thomson be- 
 gan his railroad career as engineer. 
 
 Work was begun on a twenty-mile section at each 
 end of the line in April, 1829. By the end of the suc- 
 ceeding year these sections were ready for operation 
 with horses as the motive power. April 16, 1834, the 
 locomotive Black Hawk made a trip from end to end 
 of the road, a single track having been completed by 
 that time. 
 
 This was merely an inspection trip, and was not re- 
 garded as the opening of the road. The little party 
 which made that long journey of eighty-two miles can 
 hardly be said to have enjoyed it, for the Black Hawk 
 was as capricious as a coquette. When it felt dis- 
 posed to go, it went; and when it felt the need of a 
 little rest it stopped until the passengers got tired, 
 when they would get out and push the sulky machine 
 along. 
 
 They found consolation in the fact that the manage- 
 ment had taken the precaution to send a horse-car 
 with relays of horses to follow them. Although the 
 Black Hawk did get over the road, the trip was not 
 regarded as a triumph for steam. 
 
 The formal opening of the road was on October 7, 
 1834, after the double track had been completed. 
 Governor Wolf and staff left Harrisburg early Mon- 
 day morning by an express packet on the canal, which 
 whirled them down to Columbia at the rate of four 
 miles an hour. Next morning the journey to Phila- 
 delphia was continued by rail. 
 
 Governor Wolf was idolized by the people because 
 of his advanced stand on the questions of public 
 schools and public improvements, and he may have 
 
120 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 divided honors with the new railroads on that mem- 
 orable day. At all events, there was a holiday all 
 along the line. 
 
 Men left shop and field and office; women their 
 household duties, and children their schools to cheer 
 the train, and there were speeches from the rear plat- 
 form at every stop, just as if it were a twentieth cen- 
 tury political campaign. 
 
 There were two trains into Philadelphia that day, 
 run by rival companies : the Union Line, operated by 
 Peters & Co., and the People's Line, operated by Os- 
 borne, Davis, Kirke & Schofield. The private car- 
 line is by no means a modern innovation; it was orig- 
 inated at the very beginning of railroads in Penn- 
 sylvania. 
 
 The great bugbear of the people three-quarters of a 
 century ago was monopoly, just as it is to-day. It 
 was considered to smack too much of monopoly to 
 have a railroad on which cars and track were both con- 
 trolled by the State or by a corporation. 
 
 The original idea of a railroad in Pennsylvania was 
 a sort of improved turnpike, to be kept up by the 
 State, upon which any one who owned a car and could 
 pay the toll was free to come and go at his own sweet 
 will. 
 
 The results of this method of operation were more 
 amusing to spectators than they were to the man who 
 wanted to get his car over the road. They were still 
 more unsatisfactory when the Board of Canal Com- 
 missioners proposed to introduce locomotives which 
 could be used to haul trains for a fee. 
 
 This revolutionary step roused a new storm of op- 
 position. Town meetings were held at which peti- 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 
 
 tions to the legislature for and against steam were pre- 
 pared. Thaddeus Stevens was the leader of the op- 
 position to steam. 
 
 Stevens held that if authority to purchase locomo- 
 tives and thus place the motive power of the railroad 
 in the hands of the State were granted the Board of 
 Canal Commissioners, its patronage and power would 
 be largely increased and the results would be detri- 
 mental to the interests of the people. 
 
 Under pressure from the prominent men of his 
 party, fortified with a promise that he should have a 
 chance at the patronage and power, Stevens dropped 
 his opposition and an act was passed authorizing the 
 Board of Canal Commissioners to purchase locomo- 
 tives. Under this authority the superintendent was 
 instructed in April to purchase twenty locomotives, 
 to be ready for use for the spring trade of 1835. 
 
 E. F. Gay, the principal engineer, corresponding 
 to a later day superintendent of motive power, re- 
 ported on November 7, 1834, that two locomotives had 
 been received and had been in daily use for some 
 weeks. These were the " Lancaster " and the " Co- 
 lumbia," both built by M. W. Baldwin. 
 
 Each weighed eight tons, and had a four-wheeled 
 truck and a single pair of drivers, which was believed 
 to be the only arrangement that would take the sharp 
 curves. They were capable of hauling forty-eight 
 tons gross, or thirty tons of freight. The running 
 time for seventy-seven miles was eight hours. Fuel, 
 oil, and wages of the engineer and attendants cost 
 $14.60 a trip. 
 
 The Lancaster's performance was so satisfactory 
 that it was regarded as the standard by which to 
 
123 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 gauge other locomotives. It was in continuous serv- 
 ice for sixteen years, when it became too badly worn 
 out to be worth repairing and was consigned to the 
 ignominious oblivion of the scrap-heap. The Colum- 
 bia had met the same fate two years before. 
 
 The Board's experience with English locomotives 
 wasn't so satisfactory. Five of the English locomo- 
 tives were purchased under the act of April, 1834. 
 They couldn't pull their trains, and were forever 
 breaking down. 
 
 Finally, they were sold for scrap-iron, the superin- 
 tendent declaring in his disgust that the State would 
 have saved money by giving the English machines 
 away as soon as they were received. 
 
 When the locomotives were put in service the fun 
 began in earnest. There were several companies, 
 called transporters, engaged in business on the road, 
 each with its own cars. Some made a specialty of 
 passengers, others of freight. 
 
 But the farmer who had a load of potatoes to take 
 to Philadelphia was still as free to come and go on the 
 railroad as the winds, so long as he paid the wheel tolls. 
 There were no turnouts by which one train or car 
 could pass another. 
 
 The first man out at one end of the road was, there- 
 fore, the first to reach the other end. The speed of 
 all users of the road at any given time was, therefore, 
 regulated by the slowest car. 
 
 Any one who has lived in a city where the police 
 have too high a regard for the tender susceptibilities 
 of truck-drivers to enforce the ordinances regarding 
 the use of the streets, and who has been compelled to 
 make a street-car journey at the rate of speed adopted 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 123 
 
 by the coal wagons and drays which hold the track, 
 can fully appreciate the joys of travel on the Phila- 
 delphia and Columbia Railroad in the early days. 
 
 It was the particular delight of a farmer with a pair 
 of crowbaits attached to a dilapidated four-wheeled 
 car, on which a hatful of potatoes bobbed about, to 
 stop every few miles to water his horses with extreme 
 deliberation, get a drink himself, light his pipe, inquire 
 of a neighbor returning on the other track the price of 
 potatoes in Philadelphia, look his car over and whittle 
 a wooden pin to stick in somewhere to keep the crazy 
 thing from falling to pieces, while a trainload of pas- 
 sengers, drawn by a locomotive following him, fretted 
 and fumed and swore, and then grew apoplectic with 
 impotent rage. 
 
 Still, railroad travel even under such conditions had 
 its compensations. There were no stations in those 
 early days. The roadside inns sprinkled all over the 
 country at intervals of a few miles, in response to the 
 requirements of stage-coach travel, took their place. 
 Coaching customs were still kept up. 
 
 As the stage always stopped at every inn, so the 
 trains would come to a halt whenever they passed in 
 sight of one. All hands engineer, firemen, train- 
 men, and passengers would alight and trudge across 
 the field, leaving the train deserted on the main line 
 until the thirst and appetites of all were satisfied. 
 
 Each inn carried the fundamental necessity of life 
 in the thirties, to wit, whisky, of course; but in addi- 
 tion each had its own particular specialty by which 
 its fame was spread among travelers. 
 
 At one place it would be coffee and big, fat dough- 
 nuts; at another, apple-pie with milk; at another, waf- 
 
124 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 fles and fish ; at still another, chicken fricassee or beer 
 and gingerbread, and so on. To any one not dys- 
 peptic nor in haste, therefore, a trip over the Phila- 
 delphia and Columbia Railroad was one prolonged 
 delight. 
 
 This happy-go-lucky method of operating the road 
 at last grew intolerable. The Board of Canal Com- 
 missioners then took the advanced step of prescribing 
 hours when locomotives might use the road. The 
 order was that locomotives might leave the top of the 
 Belmont Plane, which was at the Philadelphia end, 
 only between the hours of 4 and 10 A.M. and 5 and 
 8 P.M., the last to leave carrying a signal to indicate 
 that fact. 
 
 This left a period of seven hours during the day and 
 eight hours at night free for the use of horses. Be- 
 yond this, rules for running were conspicuous by their 
 absence. 
 
 There was a continual conflict between individual 
 transporters who wished to use horses and the Board 
 of Canal Commissioners, who wished to use steam and 
 control the movement of trains. Finally the Board 
 took the bull by the horns and prohibited the use of 
 horses on the railroad after April 1, 1844. 
 
 Meanwhile improvements were being made in 
 methods of railroad operations. A great advance in 
 carrying mail and baggage was made when " Possum 
 Belly " cars were introduced. The " Possum Belly " 
 car had a huge box or cellar beneath the floor of the 
 car into which mail-bags, portmanteaus, and bundles 
 could be thrust. 
 
 Sam Jones, known to the traveling public as " Gru- 
 bey Sam," a deformed negro, the first of his race to be 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 
 
 employed on a railroad in the State, had charge of the 
 " Possum Bellies," and he was fully aware of the 
 dignity and importance of his position. But he was 
 bright, faithful, and alert, so he made more friends 
 than enemies. 
 
 Locomotives necessitate shops; so as soon as the 
 first batch of twenty engines had been ordered a site 
 was chosen for the first railroad shops in Penn- 
 sylvania. The location chosen was in a field midway 
 between Philadelphia and Columbia. One reason for 
 this was that John G. Parke, a wealthy and influential 
 man, was aggrieved because he was unable to collect 
 a claim of $3,273 for damages sustained by reason of 
 the road passing between his house and his barn. 
 
 For political reasons the Board could not afford to 
 incur his enmity, so they accepted his offer of a site, 
 laid out a town, and called it Parkesburg. Work 
 on the first shop was begun December 4, 1833. 
 
 But another important reason for locating the 
 shops in the country was to spare the shopmen the cor- 
 rupting influence of the engineers. In those days 
 enginemen were hard to get, and the Board had to 
 wink at peccadilloes that would not be passed over so 
 lightly now. 
 
 At these shops safety chains were first put on be- 
 tween engine and tender, because an engine while on 
 the road broke away from its tender, spilling the fire- 
 man and engineer to the ground between the rails, 
 where both were torn to pieces. 
 
 The " Grasshopper level," four miles from Lan- 
 caster, was responsible for another important im- 
 provement in locomotives. The place was so called 
 because one summer the grasshoppers were so thick in 
 
126 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 the vicinity that they wore the fence rails smooth pass- 
 ing from field to field in search of food. Also, they 
 were so thick on the rails that the locomotive wheels 
 slipped on their crushed bodies and the trains were 
 stalled. 
 
 Edwin Jeffries, the manager of the Parkesburg 
 shops, sent out men to pour sand on the rails so the 
 locomotives' driving-wheels could take hold. This 
 suggested putting a box of sand on the front end of 
 the locomotive for the convenience of the men. Then 
 the box was placed on top of the boiler, with pipes 
 running from the box to the rails in front of the 
 drivers, and a valve in the pipes which could be 
 operated by the engineer. Thus was evolved the 
 sand-box of to-day, and also that favorite story, ever 
 on its travels, about the grasshoppers stopping the 
 train. 
 
 Jeffries also conceived the idea of putting cabs on 
 the engines, but the men at first refused to ride in 
 them. They were afraid of being trapped in case of 
 an upset, and the fear was not groundless. 
 
 The rails were laid in chairs on stone blocks, and 
 held in place by wedges. Of course, the wedges were 
 forever working loose and permitting the rails to 
 spread. Derailments were of frequent occurrence, 
 particularly in bucking snow. 
 
 In spring when the frost was coming out of the 
 ground, heaving the tracks in all sorts of kinks, sev- 
 eral trains a day would be off the rails. 
 
 There were no telegraph, no telephone, no block- 
 signals, nor even any headlights on the engines. The 
 first intimation of a wreck would be the arrival of a 
 messenger on a farmer's horse. A wrecking-crew was 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 127 
 
 kept constantly in readiness at each end of the line and 
 at Parkesburg. 
 
 Experience taught in due time that it wasn't always 
 necessary to wait for the arrival of a messenger with 
 news of disaster. If a train didn't show up when it 
 should the wrecking-crew would start out in search of 
 the derelict, with two men riding on the front end of 
 the locomotive, who would take turns in sprinting 
 ahead with a red light around curves as a precaution 
 against an additional wreck. 
 
 While the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad was 
 being built, good progress was being made on the 
 Alleghany Portage Railroad. One track of this re- 
 markable road was opened November 21, 1833, and 
 early in the spring of 1834 a double track was com- 
 pleted and the road was ready for traffic. 
 
 When the engineers in laying out a railroad came 
 to a hill they could not go around they laid a line of 
 rails straight up the slope, called it an inclined plane, 
 and placed a stationary hoisting engine at the top to 
 haul the cars up. Even the Philadelphia and Colum- 
 bia Railroad had an inclined plane at the Philadelphia 
 terminus on the banks of the Schuylkill, with a length 
 of 2,800 feet and a rise of 196 feet, and another at 
 Columbia 1,800 feet long, with a rise of 90 feet. The 
 heaviest grade on the road was forty-four feet to the 
 mile. 
 
 Engineers took it for granted that locomotives 
 could only travel on practically level track, just as 
 they had previously taken it for granted that the driv- 
 ing wheels of a locomotive or a steam road carriage 
 would revolve impotently on the rail or on the ground 
 without moving forward. 
 
128 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 But William Norris, a brilliant and energetic 
 young locomotive builder of Philadelphia, Baldwin's 
 most formidable rival, built a locomotive in 1836 
 which he named the " Washington " of the remarkable 
 weight of fourteen thousand four hundred pounds. 
 It had cylinders ten by eighteen inches and a single 
 pair of drivers forty-eight inches in diameter. The 
 boiler carried the heavy pressure of ninety pounds of 
 steam. 
 
 This prodigy performed so well on its trial trip 
 that Norris, who always was regarded as a reckless 
 person, decided to see what it would do on the inclined 
 plane at Philadelphia, on a grade of three hundred 
 and sixty-nine feet to the mile. To his unbounded 
 delight the Washington puffed its way steadily to 
 the top of the plane. No one would believe Norris 
 when he told what the new locomotive had done. 
 They said his tale was a fabrication on the face of it, 
 since it was perfectly obvious that a locomotive sim- 
 ply could not ascend an inclined plane solely by its 
 own power. Even after the feat had been repeated 
 in the presence of many witnesses it could scarcely be 
 credited. Eight months after Norris had demon- 
 strated that a locomotive could not only climb an 
 ascending grade by its own power, but could also haul 
 a train up, A. G. Steere, of the Erie Railway, in a 
 long communication to the Railroad Journal of 
 March 11, 1837, proved by elaborate algebraic for- 
 mulas that the Washington did not climb the hill, be- 
 cause it could not; and that no other locomotive ever 
 could climb an ascending grade by its own power. 
 Mr. Steere was very nice about his exposure of Mr. 
 Norris' alleged " deeds done in flagrant and open 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 129 
 
 violation of the laws of gravitation." He ex- 
 plained the motives which led him to show up the pre- 
 posterous claims as follows: 
 
 " Accounts of the very wonderful feats said to have been 
 performed by Mr. Norris' engines on the Columbia Railroad 
 have not been noticed by scientific men from the fact, I sup- 
 pose, that the errors in them were so enormous and apparent 
 that they supposed they would be detected by all and were, 
 therefore, not worth exposing. But the mass of those who 
 read these accounts, now again put forth as facts, and who 
 are interested in railroad improvements are not scientific 
 men ; and it is to prevent such from daily quoting and swal- 
 lowing absurdity with such grave astonishment that I send 
 you the following exposition. I have not the least desire to 
 prejudice the community against Mr. Norris' engines, which, 
 I have no doubt, are really very superior ones, but I do not 
 wish capitalists to mistake steep roads for cheap ones or to 
 suppose engines are going to draw loads which are really 
 impossible for Mr. Norris' engines or any others." 
 
 This was the opening gun in a long and earnest 
 discussion in the columns of the Railroad Journal 
 concerning the possibility or the impossibility of an 
 engine climbing a hill. It was rather difficult, how- 
 ever, to maintain that a thing could not be done when 
 it was being done daily, and the controversy finally 
 died out. 
 
 As the real development of the railroad dates from 
 the astounding discovery that locomotives could haul 
 trains uphill, the following contemporary account 
 from the Railroad Journal of July 30, 1836, of a 
 trial trip made by Norris with his locomotive Wash- 
 ington at the request of D. K. Minor, the editor of 
 the Journal, may be of interest: 
 
130 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 " In pursuance of our request Mr. Norris made arrange- 
 ments with the Commissioners of the Columbia Railroad for 
 the use of his locomotive. Tuesday, July 19 [the first trial 
 had been made on July 9 when the Washington ascended the 
 plane with a trainload of 19,200 pounds in 2 minutes and 
 one second], was the day appointed for the trial. 
 
 " We left New York Monday afternoon at 4 o'clock, ac- 
 companied by Mr. George N. Miner, of New York; Theo. 
 Schwartz, of Paris, and Messrs. Elliot and Betts, of Ala- 
 bama. Mr. Schwartz, who was to sail to Europe next day, 
 gladly made the trip with a view to carrying home his 
 testimony as an eye witness. Our journey over the Camden 
 and Amboy and Trenton and Philadelphia Railroads was 
 highly interesting and the conversation of the evening will 
 long be remembered with pleasure. We arrived at Phila- 
 delphia about midnight, and after sundry mistakes and mis- 
 chances succeeded in obtaining some repose. 
 
 " On Tuesday morning two cars drawn by horses set out 
 with a party of upwards of forty. We arrived at the foot 
 of the inclined plane before 6 o'clock while the rails were yet 
 quite wet with the dew. On our arrival it was found that by 
 accident or design, while the fire was burning the water had 
 been blown out of the boiler so as to endanger the tubes. 
 The result was a leakage of some consequence during the 
 day. 
 
 " The engine started at the foot of the plane and on the 
 plane. After proceeding a few feet the wheels were found to 
 slip and the engine returned. It was said that the rails were 
 found to have been oiled at this place; but a small quantity 
 of sand was strewn on the spot and the engine proceeded. She 
 regularly and steadily gained speed as she advanced to the 
 very top, passing over the plane in 2 minutes and 24 seconds. 
 
 " The enthusiasm of feeling manifested cannot be de- 
 scribed. So complete a triumph had never been obtained. 
 The doubts that had been entertained by some and the fears 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 131 
 
 of others were dispelled in an instant. The eager look that 
 settled upon every one's face gave way to that of confident 
 success while all present expressed their gratification in loud 
 and repeated cheers. 
 
 " The length of the plane is 2,800 feet ; the grade 369 
 feet to the mile, or 1 foot rise in 14.3 feet, which is a much 
 steeper grade than the planes on the Mohawk and Hudson 
 Railroad, those being 1 foot in 18, making an ascent of 196 
 feet in 2,800. The weight of the engine with water was 
 14,930 pounds; the load drawn up the plane, including the 
 tender with coal and water, two passenger cars with 53 pas- 
 sengers, was 31,270 pounds; steam pressure less than eighty 
 pounds to the square inch ; time of run 2 minutes, 24 seconds. 
 It is to be remembered that the rails were wet with dew. As 
 to the oil, it was afterwards mentioned that bets were made 
 with the workmen to a considerable amount and those having 
 been lost by the successful performance of the engine on a 
 former day were quadrupled, and to save themselves it is 
 not unlikely that this means was provided to accelerate the 
 descent rather than the ascent of the engine. 
 
 " The party again embarked after examining the work- 
 shops and proceeded to Paoli for breakfast and thence to 
 Lancaster, the engine conveying at the same time a number 
 of freight cars. The unfortunate location of this road is 
 very evident; frequent and short curves are introduced so 
 uniformly that it would be supposed that such a location 
 was to be preferred to a direct one. 
 
 " We arrived at Lancaster and partook of an excellent 
 dinner. After dinner the company were presented to Gover- 
 nor Ritner, who was then in town. He afterwards accom- 
 panied the party some few miles from Lancaster when he 
 left us much gratified with his rapid journey. We returned 
 in an eight-wheeled car, a form that we much admired. The 
 whole weight attached to the engine, tender and so forth in- 
 cluded, must have been over fourteen tons. The time of the 
 
132 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 run, exclusive of stoppage, from Lancaster to the head of the 
 Schuylkill inclined plane, was 3 hours, 11 minutes, being a 
 distance of 76 miles. This, it is to be remembered, was over a 
 road having curvatures of less than six hundred feet radius, 
 up ascents of sometimes 45 feet to the mile. On level and 
 straight portions of the road a velocity of forty-seven miles 
 an hour was attained. As the trip had already been pro- 
 tracted this engine was obliged to leave on her return to 
 Lancaster the same evening and we descended by the rope. 
 We returned to the city about 8 o'clock in the evening con- 
 vinced of the success of our host, Mr. Norris, and having 
 in the language of one of our party ' lived six days in one.' 
 
 " The following are the dimensions of the George Wash- 
 ington engine of William Norris: diameter of cylinders, 
 10 1-4 inches; length of stroke, 17 5-8 inches; number of 
 tubes, 78 ; outside diameter of tubes, 2 inches ; length of tubes, 
 7 feet ; diameter of driving wheels, 4 feet ; diameter of truck 
 wheels, 30 inches; whole weight of engine, 14,930 pounds; 
 actual weight on drivers, 8,700 pounds. It must be remem- 
 bered that there is no contrivance, as in some engines, for in- 
 creasing the adhesion by throwing the weight of the tender 
 upon the engines, the axle being in front of the firebox, pre- 
 venting any such arrangement. This engine, we are in- 
 formed, is making the regular trips, though a full load has 
 not yet been obtained on account of a scarcity of cars. The 
 greatest load as yet drawn by it over the road was one hun- 
 dred and nineteen tons gross weight in twenty-two cars." 
 
 This account was accompanied by a certificate 
 signed by fifty-three passengers attesting the fact 
 that they had actually been drawn up the inclined 
 plane as described. Soon afterward Norris built the 
 " Washington County Farmer," weighing 18,170 
 pounds, for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 
 which was tested on the same plane, according to the 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 133 
 
 National Gazette of October 19, 1836, " to the com- 
 plete satisfaction of numerous scientific gentlemen in- 
 vited expressly for the occasion." The time required 
 for the ascent was 3 minutes and 15 seconds. In de- 
 scending, the engineer, according to the same author- 
 ity, repeatedly " came to a dead stand from a great 
 speed, and for some minutes played up and down the 
 grade, thus proving most satisfactorily the great 
 power of the engine and the perfect safety in its per- 
 formance. The engine is a masterpiece of machinery 
 and of beautiful exterior. The result here obtained 
 has never been equaled by the best engines in this 
 country or Europe, excepting only similar perform- 
 ances of the George Washington engine by the same 
 maker. The advantage of this great improvement in 
 locomotives is self-evident. Railroads can be con- 
 structed at much less cost than heretofore now that 
 engines can be procured to perform on grades of 
 seventy feet or even a hundred feet rise in the 
 mile." 
 
 So little did the general public understand what a 
 locomotive could do or should be that a genius named 
 French actually induced the legislature of Virginia 
 to appropriate a sum of money as late as 1850 to 
 make a practical test of his locomotive for wooden 
 railroads. French had observed that wooden rails 
 would not answer the purpose because the weight of 
 the locomotives broke and splintered them. As he 
 was convinced that wooden rails were much better 
 than iron, and as he had found that beech and maple 
 rails would last five years or more under favorable 
 conditions, the problem was to adapt the locomotive 
 to the rails and not the rails to the locomotive. He 
 
134 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 did this by means of horizontal driving wheels, which, 
 by means of a lever, were made to grip a wooden third 
 rail in the middle of the track. As these horizontal 
 driving wheels held the locomotive on the track, the 
 necessity for flanges on the wheels was thus done 
 away with and another source of destruction to 
 wooden rails avoided. George E. Sellers, of Cincin- 
 nati, also invented a " gripping " locomotive that 
 found many advocates. 
 
 An equally brilliant design for cars that could not 
 upset was evolved by one Lawrence Meyers, of Potts- 
 ville, Pa., a year later. It was alleged that the 
 Meyers car won the approval of President John 
 Tucker, of the Reading Railroad. Meyers' car con- 
 sisted of a cylinder of wrought iron 42 inches in diam- 
 eter, on each end of which a wheel 52 inches was riv- 
 eted so that it would roll along the track. The 
 cylinder was to be filled with coal, of which it would 
 hold two tons. Several of these cylinders being con- 
 nected by means of a wooden frame were to constitute 
 a " Revolver train." 
 
 When it came to passing the Alleghanies, the engi- 
 neer laid out a succession of ten inclined planes with 
 " levels " between, on which the grades were not heavy 
 enough to require the employment of a hoisting engine 
 and cable. The total length of the Portage road was 
 thirty-six miles. 
 
 The summit was 1,398 feet above the eastern canal 
 basin, and 1,171 feet above the western, and 2,326 
 above sea-level. The longest of these planes was 
 3,116 feet, and the rise was 307 feet. The most con- 
 spicuous features of the road were the Conemaugh 
 Viaduct, eight miles east of Johnstown, which was de- 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 135 
 
 stroyed by the great flood of May 31, 1889, and the 
 Staple Bend tunnel, nine hundred feet long, four 
 miles east of Johnstown. This was the first tunnel 
 built in America. 
 
 The engines for operating these planes had two 
 cylinders fourteen inches in diameter by sixty inches 
 stroke, made fourteen revolutions a minute, and at a 
 steam pressure of seventy pounds developed about 
 thirty-five horse-power. They hauled cars up the 
 planes at the rate of four miles an hour, by means of 
 ropes eight inches in diameter and from 3,316 feet to 
 6,662 feet long. These ropes were the cause of con- 
 siderable outlay, since they cost on an average three 
 thousand dollars and lasted only about sixteen 
 months. 
 
 Toward the last John A. Roebling, the great bridge 
 builder, induced the Board of Canal Commissioners 
 to experiment with wire cable. The first trials were 
 not satisfactory, but a little investigation showed how 
 to overcome all difficulties, and then wire displaced 
 hemp. 
 
 To run each of these planes required an engineer 
 at $2.00 a day, a fireman at $1.12^, and a man at top 
 and bottom at $1.00 per day to attach and detach the 
 cars. On reaching a level, horses or a locomotive 
 would be attached and the cars hauled to the next 
 level on a road laid with malleable iron rails imported 
 from Wales. 
 
 The use of horses was found wasteful, expensive, 
 slow, and unsatisfactory, so before the second track 
 was finished the Board had ordered a first instalment 
 of a couple of locomotives. But the use of horses 
 by individual transporters continued until 1850, with 
 
136 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 the same results as on the Philadelphia and Columbia 
 Railroad. 
 
 No two teamsters wanted to start at the same time, 
 and no two were willing to stop at the same place to 
 feed. These teamsters were an exceedingly difficult 
 lot of men to handle. They were rough, quarrelsome, 
 stubborn, and unmanageable, fearing neither man nor 
 fiend. It was impossible to get them to regulate 
 their movements by a time table. The officers of the 
 road had no power to discharge them or keep them 
 off the road, so they worked their own sweet will, for 
 was not the railroad a public highway provided by the 
 State, and were they not as good citizens as any other 
 man, if not better? 
 
 It sometimes happened that a teamster would get 
 stalled so that he could not go forward. Being too 
 stubborn to go back, he would stay where he was, 
 blocking the entire road, perhaps for hours, until a 
 better man came along and thrashed him into a rea- 
 sonable frame of mind. Theoretically an unruly 
 teamster could be arrested for obstructing the rail- 
 road and taken before a magistrate, who might fine 
 him. But as the magistrates were miles away, and 
 an arrest meant a fight first, such extreme measures 
 were not often resorted to. 
 
 When the road was first opened it had but a single 
 track. In order to keep it in operation at all it was 
 necessary to set up center posts half-way between 
 turnouts and make a rule that the man who passed 
 the center post had the right to proceed in case of 
 meeting a team going in the opposite direction, which 
 would have to go back to a turnout. This caused 
 the drivers, who were always reluctant to turn back, 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 137 
 
 and never did so if they could bully the other fellow 
 who had the right of way into doing so, to start slowly 
 in leaving a turnout so they might not have to return 
 so far. As they proceeded they would increase their 
 speed until by the time they reached the center post 
 the horses would be going at a wild gallop, with 
 drivers plying the lash, shouting, and swearing. 
 Sometimes cars collided near a center post while go- 
 ing at high speed, wrecking both cars and tying up 
 traffic until the wreckage could be cleared away. In 
 one of these collisions a man was killed. 
 
 Even after the road was double-tracked the situa- 
 tion became so intolerable that S. W. Roberts, the 
 chief engineer, determined to have conditions changed 
 if possible. A change could only be brought about 
 by legislation, which was not easy to obtain. The 
 State was Democratic, and the methods then in use 
 of allowing every man to do as he pleased were con- 
 sidered to be the popular way to operate a railroad. 
 The proposal to exclude private transporters from the 
 Portage Railroad and operate it by the State met with 
 the most vehement opposition, both from the public 
 and the legislature. Roberts finally had his way 
 when he won Thaddeus Stevens, who bossed the 
 Pennsylvania legislature as he afterwards did Con- 
 gress, to his view of the way a railroad should be oper- 
 ated. The average load on the cars was six thou- 
 sand pounds, and the cost of moving freight over the 
 Portage road averaged ninety-six cents a ton. Five 
 minutes were consumed in going up or down the 
 longest plane, and three minutes more were required 
 to attach and detach the cars. 
 
 The limit of capacity was five hundred and seventy- 
 
138 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 six cars one way in twenty-four hours. In the six 
 months ending October 31, 1836, 19,171 passengers 
 and 37,087 tons of freight passed over the Portage 
 road. 
 
 Charles Dickens made a trip over the Portage road 
 in 1842, and was delighted with the experience, which 
 he describes in his " American Notes." But, then, 
 Dickens was not accustomed to Pullmans. If he had 
 been, he would hardly have been enraptured with a 
 journey that consumed seven hours in traversing 
 thirty-six miles. 
 
 With the Portage road open it was possible to make 
 the journey of 395 miles from Philadelphia to Pitts- 
 burg, on public works, 118 miles being by rail and 
 277 on canals, in 91 hours, or an average of 4.34 miles 
 an hour. The fare was fifteen dollars. In both time 
 and expense even this was a decided advance on the 
 stage coach, which required seven days to make the 
 trip, and cost the passenger twenty dollars for fare 
 and eight dollars and twenty-one cents for meals en 
 route. For twenty years the Pennsylvania Public 
 Improvements were an important trade route. 
 
 Some time after the Portage road was opened an 
 emigrant, who had loaded his family and all his 
 earthly possessions on a boat on the Susquehanna, 
 arrived at Hollidaysburg on his way to Missouri. 
 He was going to sell his boat and continue his journey 
 as best he could; but the accommodating superin- 
 tendent of the Portage Railroad told him to wait a 
 minute, and he'd see what he could do. 
 
 In a couple of hours he had rigged up a sort of 
 cradle on a couple of cars, which were run into the 
 water under the boat. The latter was fastened to the 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 139 
 
 cars, which were attached to the cable, and away went 
 boat, emigrant, and all over the mountains. In due 
 time the boat was deposited in the canal at Johns- 
 town. 
 
 This incident led to the building of canal boats in 
 sections and of trucks to transport the sections over 
 the mountains, thus avoiding the expense and delay 
 of breaking bulk on each side of the mountains. To 
 move one of these sectional boats over the mountains 
 required the services of twelve stationary engines, 
 twelve different teams of horses, nine locomotives 
 thirty-three changes of power in thirty-six miles 
 and fifty-four men. 
 
 While this line from Philadelphia to Pittsburg 
 was being constructed, the link which was to extend 
 the line to New York was being evolved out of a chaos 
 of conflicting interests and financial difficulties. New 
 Jersey was just as much wrought up over the relative 
 merits of canals and railroads as any other common- 
 wealth. 
 
 In fact, it reached a point in the winter of 1829- 
 1830 at Trenton when partisans of either side were 
 afraid to venture out after dark unarmed. The legis- 
 lature poured oil on the stormy waters by chartering 
 simultaneously the Camden and Amboy Railroad 
 and the Delaware and Raritan Canal to open com- 
 munication between Philadelphia and New York. 
 
 In order that the companies might be able to offer 
 inducements to capital the legislature granted each a 
 monopoly in its own line of construction. 
 
 Grading on the railroad was begun at Borden- 
 town, December 1, 1830. That made the canal peo- 
 ple jealous, and in spite of all pledges to keep to their 
 
140 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 own specialty they insisted on building a railroad also. 
 There was another battle of the lobby at the legisla- 
 tive session of 1830-1831, which was so virulent as to 
 endanger the existence of both companies. 
 
 This contest also ended in a compromise by which 
 the two companies were merged under the famous 
 " marriage act " of February 15, 1831. 
 
 Enough track was laid to enable the company to 
 give an exhibition trip November 12, 1831, behind 
 one of the many John Bull locomotives,* which were 
 almost as numerous as Washington's headquarters. 
 The first woman who ever rode on a railroad on New 
 Jersey soil was a guest on this occasion. She was 
 Mme. Murat, wife of Prince Murat, Napoleon's 
 nephew. 
 
 * Of the numerous " John Bull " locomotives, this one, the oldest 
 complete locomotive in America, has at last come to be known as the 
 John Bull. It is not a model nor a reproduction but the original engine. 
 The picture on the opposite page is from a photograph made at the 
 World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. 
 
 Originally the John Bull was locomotive No. 1 built by Stephenson 
 & Co. in 1830-1 for the Camden and Amboy Railroad, now a part of the 
 Pennsylvania system. It was shipped from Liverpool July 14, 1831, and 
 made its first trip in regular service November 12, 1831. 
 
 The John Bull and its train was exhibited at the Centennial Exposition 
 in Philadelphia in 1876. On April 17, 1893, the engine with train, as 
 shown in the picture, left New York City under its own steam and 
 made the run of 912 miles over the Pennsylvania Railroad to Chicago, 
 meeting with a continuous ovation throughout the trip, and arriving 
 April 22. It was one of the greatest attractions at the World's Fair, 
 carrying thousands of passengers over the exhibition tracks in the 
 Terminal Station yard. The locomotive left Chicago under its own 
 steam again December 6, 1893, going over the Pennsylvania system by 
 way of Harrisburg and Baltimore to Washington. Having made its 
 last trip under steam it was returned to the United States National 
 Museum to remain there permanently. 
 
 The two Camden and Amboy coaches shown are of the model of 1836. 
 One is the original car, the body of which was used as a chicken coop 
 at South Amboy, N. J., for many years. 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 141 
 
 Mme. Murat was the daughter of Colonel Frazier, 
 a Scotch officer who, while serving in the British ar-iy 
 in the Revolution, fell madly in love with a beautiful 
 Virginia girl, and returned and married her as soon 
 as he could give up his commission. 
 
 The directors of the New Jersey Railroad and 
 Transportation Company issued an address on Jan- 
 uary 1, 1839, in which they congratulated themselves 
 and the public on the opening of an all-rail line from 
 Camden to Jersey City, by which it was possible to 
 go from Philadelphia to New York in six or seven 
 hours with almost as much comfort as the traveler 
 could have at his own fireside, whereas the journey 
 had formerly required eleven to twenty hours, and 
 had been made at the expense of great discomfort and 
 even hazard to life. 
 
 Another important link in the State system of 
 railroads, destined later to become a part of the great 
 Pennsylvania system, was the Cumberland Valley 
 Railroad, which was formally opened from Harris- 
 burg to Chambersburg, Thursday, November 16, 
 1837. A double-header was run over the road to 
 accommodate the great number of guests. 
 
 Shouts of welcome greeted the train at every rev- 
 olution of the wheels. The people were wild with 
 delight. Here is the way the Carlisle Republican 
 described the trip of that first train: 
 
 " Dogs dropped their tails between their legs and ran like 
 frightened fiends, howling and trembling, to the far-off moun- 
 tains. Men there were who cleared ditches and fences at a 
 single bound as the hissing engines approached. Others 
 rolled on the ground and cracked their heels together to ex- 
 press in a new way a new delight. 
 
WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 " Old men and women leaned on their staffs and gazed in 
 visible awe as if doomsday were at hand. Blooming maidens 
 capered and danced and looked with more delight on the grim 
 and besooted countenance of the steam demon than ever they 
 did on clean-washed lovers dressed in Sunday clothes." 
 
 While the Board of Canal Commissioners was pub- 
 lishing assurances that the system of canals and rail- 
 roads built under its direction, at an expenditure of 
 nearly twenty million dollars, placed Pennsylvania on 
 an eminence where there could be no apprehension of 
 rivalry from sister States, the people were growing 
 more and more dissatisfied. 
 
 The management of the State railroads and canals 
 had become a public scandal. The paymaster openly 
 counted out ten per cent of the wages of the em- 
 ployees, which he tossed into a bag at his side labeled 
 " political assessments." Gravel trains loaded with 
 men were run over the road on election day, the men 
 getting off at every town and voting. 
 
 The public service was fairly swamped with em- 
 ployees whose chief duties were to draw their salaries 
 and vote. Transporters who refused to do the bid- 
 ding of the party in power were ruined, while the 
 more complaisant received rebates equal to the 
 amount of the tolls they had paid. 
 
 The pass system originated in Pennsylvania under 
 State ownership of the railroads. At first the State 
 officials claimed the right to travel over the State 
 highways free of charge. Then county officials 
 claimed the same right, then politicians were unable 
 to see why they should pay, and so it went on until 
 more deadheads than paying passengers were being 
 carried. 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 143 
 
 Thaddeus Stevens, who had been so apprehensive 
 of the dangers of putting locomotives on the State 
 railroads on account of the patronage they would 
 place in control of the party in power, on being made 
 chairman of the Board of Canal Commissioners at 
 once proceeded to demonstrate that his fears were well 
 founded. 
 
 He owned some iron lands in the southern part of 
 the State to which he undertook to build a railroad, 
 which was so wildly impracticable and so devious that 
 it is known in history as " Stevens's tapeworm." He 
 spent three-quarters of a million dollars of State 
 money on it before he was deposed, not one dollar 
 of which was ever of any earthly benefit to the State. 
 
 But the worst of it all was that the State was not 
 reaping the commercial benefits expected. In addi- 
 tion to mismanagement the canals were frozen over 
 and useless in winter. Philadelphia, as well as other 
 parts of the State, was steadily falling behind. 
 
 A mass-meeting was held in the Chinese Museum 
 building, Philadelphia, December 10, 1845, at whicli 
 a memorial was prepared asking the legislature to 
 charter a private railroad corporation to build a rail- 
 road system that would be up with the times. 
 
 There was a savage fight in the legislature that 
 winter, for the Baltimore and Ohio wanted to build to 
 Pittsburg, and the people of the southern and west- 
 ern parts of the State, who felt that they had been 
 badly treated by the State Board, favored the Balti- 
 more and Ohio project. 
 
 The outcome was a charter for both roads, but the 
 Governor was authorized to give preference to the 
 Pennsylvania Company if it should have one million 
 
144 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 dollars in the treasury and thirty miles under con- 
 tract by July 30, 1847, by annulling the charter of the 
 Baltimore and Ohio. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was organ- 
 ized March 31, 1847, and J. Edgar Thomson, son of 
 the man who had built the little wooden railroad 
 thirty-eight years before, was made chief engineer 
 and general manager. Ground was broken for the 
 Pennsylvania Railroad at Harrisburg, its eastern 
 terminus, July 7, 1847. Connection was made with 
 the Portage Railroad, November 1, 1850. 
 
 Trains were run from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, 
 December 10, 1852, by the Philadelphia and Colum- 
 bia Railroad and the Alleghany Portage Railroad. 
 A line through the mountains, to cut out the Portage 
 road, was not completed till February 2, 1854. 
 
 As soon as the engineering difficulties were solved 
 and the construction department was running 
 smoothly, Thomson was called to the president's 
 chair to create an effective working organization. 
 
 Mr. Thomson was a man of splendid physique and 
 a tireless worker. He talked little, but was a good 
 listener. Above all, he had the gift of selecting the 
 right man to do a given task. 
 
 A remarkable example of this is shown in his choice 
 of a man to establish that discipline and esprit de 
 corps for which the Pennsylvania Company is so 
 famous that to this day it is held up as the apotheosis 
 of all that is desirable in a railroad staff. 
 
 This work fell upon General A. L. Roumfort, who 
 was born in Paris, educated at West Point, had con- 
 ducted a military school in which some of the most 
 prominent men of their time were educated, had been 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 145 
 
 a member of the legislature for several terms, and 
 finally had filled the position of superintendent of the 
 Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad. He was six 
 feet tall and built in proportion. He had a military 
 bearing and dignified manner. 
 
 His first task was to create an orderly baggage sys- 
 tem out of the chaos at Aqueduct and Harrisburg. 
 During the spring freshets swarms of raftsmen 
 passed over the road, leaving at Aqueduct to proceed 
 up the Susquehanna. They were rough, boisterous, 
 and lawless. Their baggage consisted of stoves, pots, 
 pans, rope, carpet-bags, bundles of clothing, and pro- 
 visions and chests. 
 
 General Roumfort's appearance commanded re- 
 spect and obedience. He established order at Aque- 
 duct and he created system where confusion had 
 reigned in the baggage department. He attempted 
 to uniform the trainmen. Passenger conductors 
 were required to appear in blue cutaway coats with 
 brass buttons, buff vests, and black trousers, and 
 passengers brakemen in gray sack suits ; but the plan 
 was not popular and when the first suits wore out 
 they were not replaced until the Civil War had earned 
 respect for uniforms. 
 
 General Roumfort's favorite seat in fair weather 
 was on a corner of the second-story porch of the old 
 station at Harrisburg, where he could hear the whistle 
 of the approaching trains. 
 
 There was a bell in a little tower on the top of the 
 depot, which was rung to announce the arrival and 
 departure of trains. As soon as the whistle was 
 heard General Roumfort's sonorous voice would wake 
 the echoes. 
 
H6 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 " Billie ! O Bil-lie ! Ring that bell." 
 
 When the " tub," the first through train between 
 Harrisburg and Philadelphia, was put on, the 
 general sent for William Wolf and Benjamin Ken- 
 nedy, the engineers who were to take the run. Both 
 men were undersized. The general thus addressed 
 them: 
 
 " Now, boys, you are going to run through to Phil- 
 adelphia over a strange road. When you leave Co- 
 lumbia you will have a steep grade to Mountsville. 
 See that you have a good supply of water in the 
 boiler. Also instruct your firemen to have in a good 
 fire for the Gap grade. 
 
 " When you reach Downingtown instruct your fire- 
 men to have a good fire for the Byers hill, thirteen 
 miles to Paoli. Now, you two little engineers, run 
 along to your tw T o little engines and see that you 
 make time." 
 
 The choice of Thomas A. Scott as superintendent 
 of the western division was equally felicitous. The 
 road was not finished to Pittsburg when Scott took 
 up his duties there. Pittsburg had wanted the Bal- 
 timore and Ohio Railroad, and the city had waxed 
 extremely hostile when that road's charter had been 
 annulled. 
 
 But Scott handled the situation with such consum- 
 mate diplomacy that he not only allayed all animosity 
 but actually secured one million dollars for the Penn- 
 sylvania and many valuable franchises and privileges 
 besides. 
 
 Diplomacy was quite as much needed as engineer- 
 ing skill in the first stages of the Pennsylvania Rail- 
 road. At first the company was not permitted to 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 147 
 
 run its trains over the Philadelphia and Columbia 
 Railroad. When it was granted this boon it could 
 not run its own comfortable cars, because the tracks 
 were too close together, and the roof of the Elizabeth- 
 town tunnel was too low. 
 
 Individual transporters were still doing business 
 on the State road, and their operations sadly inter- 
 fered with the development of the transportation 
 business the new road needed. But too radical or 
 too sudden a change would have aroused public oppo- 
 sition which would have been disastrous. 
 
 The difficulty was solved by the purchase of the 
 main line of the public works by the Pennsylvania 
 Railroad Company for seven million five hundred 
 thousand dollars, possession being given by the State 
 August 1, 1857. The first through train from Phil- 
 adelphia to Pittsburg without transfer of passen- 
 gers was run July 18, 1858.' On the same day smok- 
 ing-cars were first run on through trains and Wood- 
 ruff's sleeping-cars on the night trains. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Railroad was now fully 
 launched. Its development was so rapid that when 
 the Civil War began, three years later, it was in a 
 position to do the nation a great service, not only on 
 its own rails, but also by supplying skilled and dis- 
 ciplined executive and operating men to the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 December 1, 1871, it acquired by lease for nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine years the line to Jersey 
 City, and six years later had a double track in opera- 
 tion across the State of Pennsylvania. It had long 
 since acquired lines to Chicago, St. Louis, and the 
 Central West, the westward extension being greatly 
 
148 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 accelerated through the kind assistance of Jay Gould. 
 It cannot be truthfully said, though, that the Penn- 
 sylvania was at all grateful to the great manipulator. 
 
 The Pennsylvania had been encouraging by finan- 
 cial assistance and otherwise the development of a 
 chain of little railroads between Pittsburg and Chi- 
 cago, which was afterwards welded into the Pitts- 
 burg, Fort Wayne and Chicago. The Pennsylvania, 
 however, was satisfied with a traffic arrangement and 
 did not attempt actual possession. 
 
 When Gould, after establishing himself as the mas- 
 ter of the Erie, began reaching out right and left for 
 every railroad property that was lying around loose, 
 other managements were thrown into a panic. Be- 
 fore the Pennsylvania could recover its self-possession 
 sufficiently to profit by the object lesson Gould had 
 given, that astute operator had secured possession of 
 a majority of the stock of the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne 
 and Chicago. An election for directors was to be 
 held in March, 1869, when he would have established 
 himself securely in the management of a line that was 
 absolutely essential to the continued prosperity of 
 the Pennsylvania, had not that road established a 
 world's legislative record by securing the passage of a 
 bill by both houses of the Pennsylvania legislature 
 and its signature by the Governor in thirty-four min- 
 utes by the clock on February 3, 1869. This was the 
 famous " classification bill," which divided the board 
 of directors of the Fort Wayne road into three classes 
 in such a way that it would require three years to 
 elect a majority. This was too slow for Gould, and 
 he withdrew. After such a narrow escape the Penn- 
 sylvania lost no time in securing its Western exten- 
 
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 149 
 
 sion against the possibility of any such embarrassing 
 complications in future. 
 
 The same zeal was displayed in adopting improve- 
 ments and in extending the system and perfecting 
 organization. The Pennsylvania Railroad was the 
 first to use steel rails, in 1863; the first to use Bes- 
 semer steel rails, in 1865; the first to adopt the air- 
 brake, in 1866; the track tank, in 1872, and the signal 
 block-system, in 1873. 
 
 When the semi-centennial of the company was cel- 
 ebrated in Philadelphia, April 13, 1896, President 
 Roberts was able to report as a net result of all these 
 endeavors that the Pennsylvania Railroad comprised 
 138 separate railroads, representing what were orig- 
 inally 256 separate corporations with 9,000 miles of 
 main line having an aggregate capital of $834,000,- 
 000, an army of 104,000 employees, who received 
 $59,000,000 in wages annually, and that the com- 
 pany, in its existence of fifty years, had paid $166,- 
 000,000 in dividends. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 
 
 "HHICKETS, please!" 
 
 A As Master of Transportation John T. 
 Clark uttered this phrase for the first time on the first 
 train on the first railroad in the Empire State, on the 
 morning of August 9, 1831, the spectators, who had 
 been poking their fingers into the mechanism of 
 the first locomotive, abandoned that diversion and 
 pressed toward the speaker to witness the exciting 
 operation of taking up tickets. 
 
 That first collection of tickets was made in a 
 distinctly open-and-aboveboard, public style. The 
 train was standing on the crest of a hill on the out- 
 skirts of Albany, where it had awaited its first load 
 of passengers, for the excellent reason that it did not 
 dare to venture down for them. 
 
 In those days locomotive builders thought they 
 were doing pretty well to evolve a machine that would 
 move on level ground, without attempting to climb 
 hills. So, the passengers were hauled up an inclined 
 plane with a total lift of one hundred and eighty-five 
 feet above the valley of the Hudson, on little plat- 
 form cars drawn by a cable operated by a twelve- 
 horse-power engine, on exactly the same plan that is 
 used to-day on the Otis Elevating Railway in the 
 Catskills. 
 
 The first passengers, having bought their tickets 
 
 150 
 
ij f-> 
 
 ! 1 
 
 fi fe 
 
 w 
 
 &H o 
 H M 
 
 K5 
 
 QQ 
 
 5 H 
 
 a 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 151 
 
 at the hotels the night before, found themselves ob- 
 jects of the admiration and envy of several hundred 
 persons who had assembled to see the start of the first 
 train on the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad. The 
 only contemporaneous pictorial representation extant 
 of that historic first train was cut out of black paper 
 with a pair of scissors by the famous silhouette artist, 
 W. H. Brown. 
 
 Because Mr. Brown ran short of paper, his sil- 
 houette represents only the engine the " De Witt 
 Clinton " and two coaches, but in reality there were 
 five coaches. Those first cars were literally coaches 
 stage coaches mounted on flanged wheels to enable 
 them to run on rails, and coupled together with three 
 long links between each two coaches. 
 
 The foremost two were reserved for the more dis- 
 tinguished passengers, while the others were provided 
 with planks for seats, in order to accommodate as 
 many as possible of those who wished to risk their 
 necks in experimenting with the new mode of travel. 
 Although the coaches were packed like a Broadway 
 trolley-car in the rush hours, several hundred who 
 wished to make the trip were left behind for lack 
 of accommodation. 
 
 The engine had but one occupant Dave Mat- 
 thews, the mechanic who had built the machine at the 
 West Point Foundry, in New York City, from plans 
 drawn by John B. Jervis, the chief engineer of the 
 road, and had brought it to Albany and set it up, 
 laboring night and day to induce the thing to run. 
 He had had trouble enough in doing it, too, for about 
 everything went wrong that could do so. 
 
 The work of building began April 1, 1831. It 
 
152 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 was shipped up the Hudson on June 25, and a week 
 later Matthews had steam up. The De Witt Clinton 
 was eleven feet six inches long, weighed 6,758 pounds, 
 had two cylinders five and a half by sixteen inches, 
 and four wooden driving wheels with iron tires four 
 feet six inches in diameter. 
 
 The boiler held 115 gallons of water and carried 
 a steam pressure of fifty pounds. The locomotive 
 was expected to develop ten horse-power and to be 
 able to haul fifteen tons on the level at a speed of 
 fifteen miles an hour. It could be pushed along 
 readily by the pressure of one hand. 
 
 When Matthews raised steam for the first time his 
 troubles began. In the first place, the chimney was 
 too large, and the ends of the exhaust-pipes they 
 hadn't got around to nozzles yet were placed so low 
 down that they couldn't get a draft ; so, some rebuild- 
 ing had to be done at once. 
 
 When the Clinton was given its second trial the 
 water surged over into the cylinders, threatening to 
 knock them to pieces, as the engine bobbed over the 
 rough track. A dome was built, and trouble number 
 two was overcome. 
 
 The Clinton was planned for anthracite, but the 
 coal packed and wouldn't burn at all until a steam- 
 blower was put on, and then the grates were burned 
 out, so they had to fall back on pitch-pine as the 
 fuel for that first trip with passengers. 
 
 Yet, with all its faults, the De Witt Clinton, the 
 third locomotive built on American soil, was a pretty 
 good machine, for it developed a capacity for getting 
 over the road with something more than its rated load 
 and considerably more than its anticipated speed that 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 153 
 
 formed an agreeable contrast to the performances of 
 locomotives imported from England. 
 
 Two weeks after the Clinton was placed in service, 
 the Mohawk and Hudson Company received a loco- 
 motive called the " Robert Fulton," from George Ste- 
 phenson, the famous English railroad builder, weigh- 
 ing twelve thousand seven hundred and forty-two 
 pounds, double the weight of the Clinton. Stephen- 
 son sent a letter with the Fulton, in which he said: 
 
 " As to the power of this engine, it will take twenty tons 
 without difficulty, but with twelve tons it will be much better. 
 The small inclination of 1 in 225 will affect the motion of the 
 engine very little." 
 
 As a matter of fact, the Fulton quickly demon- 
 strated its inability to pull twelve tons or any other 
 weight. Being assigned to pull an excursion train 
 to take the Governor, Lieutenant- Governor, State 
 Senators, Congressmen, members of the New York 
 City Council, the mayor of Albany, and other distin- 
 guished guests over the road one day in the latter 
 part of August, the Fulton broke down, and the 
 party was hauled to Schenectady and back by the 
 Clinton, with three coaches and in seven other cars, 
 the latter drawn each by a single horse. 
 
 Having collected the tickets on this first run of 
 the Clinton by walking from coach to coach and 
 climbing up on the steps, Master of Transportation 
 (long since degenerated into conductor) Clark 
 walked forward to the little platform car which, being 
 laden with a cask of water and a few sticks of wood, 
 fulfilled the function of tender, and seating himself, 
 drew from a pocket a tin horn, on which he blew a 
 long blast. 
 
154 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 At this signal Matthews opened the throttle with a 
 suddenness that almost caused the Clinton to jump 
 off the rails. To tell the truth, he had secret mis- 
 givings about his ability to start the load, and he 
 meant to take no chances. Besides, there was no 
 superintendent to lecture him on the importance of 
 handling his passengers gently. 
 
 The result of those tactics, with so much slack 
 between the coaches, can be imagined. There was a 
 violent jerk on each coach in succession, which almost 
 snapped the passengers' heads off as boys jerk the 
 heads off snakes by swinging them by the tails. Many 
 a beaver rolled into the ditch or on to the coach floor, 
 and not a few of the passengers sprawled after them. 
 
 But as the Clinton moved on at an increasing speed 
 the jerks gradually tapered off into a steady pull as 
 the cheers of the admiring spectators died away in 
 the distance. By the time the passengers dared draw 
 a long breath and look about them, they found them- 
 selves in the midst of new tribulations. 
 
 Matthews had tinkered with the exhaust and the 
 smoke-stack until he had produced a pretty strong 
 draft. The result was that a steady stream of pitch- 
 pine cinders, from the size of a pin-head to that of a 
 man's thumb-nail, poured back upon the passengers, 
 and particularly those on the roofs. 
 
 Umbrellas were raised as a protection, but they 
 burned up like so much tinder, and before a mile 
 was passed the ruins of the last umbrella had been 
 pitched overboard. Meanwhile, there was wild con- 
 fusion as the clothing of one passenger after another 
 burst into a blaze, which his neighbors scrambled 
 frantically to put out. 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 155 
 
 Five miles from Albany the first stop was made to 
 the accompaniment of a succession of violent bumps 
 and jerks like those which marked the start. Clark 
 and some of the passengers raided a fence near the 
 track to procure rails, which were lashed to the 
 coupling-chains with some of Matthews' supply of 
 packing-yarn to stop the jerking by holding the 
 coaches rigidly apart. 
 
 After this improved coupling had been devised the 
 inside passengers and Master of Transportation 
 Clark, who was hugging himself with joy because he 
 was so near the engine that the sparks flew over him, 
 were better able to enjoy the fun. 
 
 The flight of that first train had been pretty well 
 advertised, and the whole countryside had turned out 
 to see it. Farmers, with their families and their 
 wives' relations, had driven over to the road in lum- 
 ber-wagons, light wagons, and all sorts of convey- 
 ances, and being naturally desirous of obtaining a 
 good view, had driven up as close to the track as they 
 could get. The track for nearly the entire distance 
 from Albany to Schenectady was lined with farmers' 
 rigs like the infield fence at a race-course. 
 
 When the engine came snorting along, the horses, 
 with their noses close enough to the track to touch 
 the monster as it came along, did what any self- 
 respecting horses might be expected to do under such 
 circumstances that is, they reared, snorted, shied, 
 and ended by running away. The result was a grand 
 stampede all along the line, which strewed the right- 
 of-way with prostrate forms and debris until it looked 
 like a battle-field at the close of a great conflict. 
 
 Schenectady, the western terminus of the road, six- 
 
156 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 teen miles from Albany, was reached in forty-six 
 minutes. The train stopped at the top of a hill, the 
 passengers were lowered down an inclined plane with 
 a lift of one hundred and fifteen feet, and the first 
 railroad trip in New York was at an end. There 
 was a great celebration, with music, cannon salutes, 
 processions, and speech-making, closing with a dinner 
 in the evening, at which C. C. Cambreleng, the gen- 
 eral manager of the road, with the title of agent, pro- 
 posed this toast: 
 
 " The Buffalo Railroad: May we soon breakfast 
 at Utica, dine at Rochester, and sup with our friends 
 on Lake Erie." 
 
 His wish was granted at an early date. 
 
 The passengers on that first train returned to their 
 homes to find themselves almost as great heroes as 
 the veterans of the Revolution. They told the story 
 of their wonderful experiences over and over, and 
 their stories didn't shrink a bit from frequent reitera- 
 tion, either. Soon the railroad fever was spreading 
 through the State like measles in a boarding-school. 
 
 Sixty days after the De Witt Clinton's first trip a 
 single issue of the Albany Argus contained notices 
 of intention to file applications for charters for rail- 
 road companies with an aggregate capital of twenty- 
 two million dollars. Matters came to such a pass 
 that when a man went away from home he was 
 ashamed to register from his own town unless it had 
 a railroad enterprise mapped out. 
 
 The legislature which met in the January succeed- 
 ing the opening of the Mohawk and Hudson Rail- 
 road was confronted with no fewer than forty-nine 
 applications for railroad charters. 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 157 
 
 At the session of 1836 fifty-eight railroad charters 
 were granted or renewed. The Assemblyman who 
 could not take home at least one railroad charter 
 from Albany need expect no further political favors 
 from his outraged constituents. Up to 1849 one 
 hundred and fifty-one separate railroads had been 
 chartered in New York. Fortunately, but thirty of 
 these lines were ever built. In that year the legisla- 
 ture, in self-defense, delegated its chartering powers 
 to the Secretary of State, and was thus enabled to 
 devote some time to other public business. 
 
 As early as 1840 the State had dipped into its 
 treasury to the extent of $3,478,000 to help poor but 
 worthy railroads. No fewer than fifty railroad com- 
 panies have received cash gifts from the people of 
 New York through the State and local governments. 
 Of these, ten companies received cash aid direct from 
 the State treasury aggregating $10,060,591, while 
 two hundred and ninety-four cities, towns, and vil- 
 lages contributed $29,978,905 more, making a grand 
 total of $40,039,496 as a free gift toward the total 
 value of the $500,000,000 worth of railroad property 
 in the State. 
 
 At all events the popular attitude toward railroads 
 now afforded an interesting contrast to the apathy 
 with which the proposal to build the Mohawk and 
 Hudson, the first railroad in New York, was re- 
 ceived. The charter for this road was granted Feb- 
 ruary 28, 1826, upon the application of Stephen Van 
 Rensselaer, of Albany, and George W. Feather- 
 stonhaugh, of Duanesburgh. There was not a rail- 
 road in the country then; but as the petitioners asked 
 no favors from the State, but professed their will- 
 
158 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 ingness to pay the cost of the experiment themselves, 
 the legislature saw no harm in granting the desired 
 permission. Stock in the enterprise proving unsala- 
 ble, the legislature was asked two years later to mod- 
 ify some of the conditions on which the charter was 
 granted. 
 
 The messages of Governor Clinton in 1827 and 
 1828, and of Governor Van Buren in 1829 and 1830, 
 had not a word to say on the subject of railroads. 
 Governor Throop in 1831 referred in his message to 
 the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Rail- 
 road in England, and hazarded the opinion that a 
 railroad across the State might be found useful in 
 winter when the canal was frozen up. 
 
 Early in September, 1831, a convention at Buf- 
 falo addressed a circular to the State at large urging 
 that immediate steps be taken for the construction of 
 a railroad from Lake Erie to the Hudson River. It 
 was argued that such a road, instead of injuring the 
 Erie Canal, would benefit it by relieving it of passen- 
 ger and light freight traffic, thus leaving it free to 
 handle exclusively the heavy freight to which it was 
 particularly adapted. Buffalo, Rochester, and Syr- 
 acuse united in a great convention at the latter place 
 October 12, 1831, in furtherance of the project. At 
 this great mass-meeting a committee was appointed 
 to apply for a charter for a company with a capital 
 of five million dollars to build the road. Four rail- 
 road charters were granted by the legislature that 
 winter. 
 
 Despite the desire for a through railroad from 
 Albany to Buffalo, experienced most keenly by the 
 towns which had sprung up along the Erie Canal, its 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 159 
 
 construction was not begun as a single undertaking, 
 but in a desultory way as an aggregation of discon- 
 nected fragments, the first link being the Mohawk 
 and Hudson from Albany, sixteen miles to Schenec- 
 tady. The next link bridged the gap of seventy- 
 eight miles from Schenectady to Utica. 
 
 As public opinion grew enlightened through dis- 
 cussion, people became read}^, and even eager, to back 
 their schemes with their own money. The Syracuse 
 and Utica Railroad is a striking instance in this con- 
 nection. 
 
 The company was chartered May 11, 1836, to build 
 fifty-three miles of road to connect the towns of Syr- 
 acuse and Utica. The capital stock was eight hun- 
 dred thousand dollars. Within two weeks after the 
 books were opened subscriptions were recorded total- 
 ing two million five hundred thousand dollars. 
 
 This Syracuse and Utica Railroad was remarkable 
 in many ways. Interesting features cropped up from 
 the moment the scheme was broached. While every 
 one concerned wanted the road, they could not agree 
 on the route it should take. One faction favored a 
 direct route south of the Erie Canal; another was 
 determined to have it built on a northern route, which 
 was much longer. Utica fought desperately for the 
 longer route because that would necessitate a trans- 
 fer through the town by omnibus and wagon from 
 the proposed eastern connection, and Utica wanted 
 things arranged so passengers would have to stay 
 over night at its hotels. A formidable lobby de- 
 scended on Albany. The legislature neatly side- 
 stepped embarrassing alliances by directing that the 
 road should be built " by the most available route." 
 
160 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 The lucky ones who obtained stock paid in their 
 money promptly, surveys were made at once, and the 
 line was completed and opened for traffic fourteen 
 months after the contracts were let, at a cost of one 
 hundred thousand dollars less than the capital. 
 
 The pile system of construction invented by E. P. 
 Williams, of Utica, was used. This was supposed 
 to be a great improvement on the stone blocks used 
 in the Mohawk and Hudson. Piles first soaked in 
 salt to prevent rotting were driven to a depth of from 
 twenty-five to thirty feet by splicing them. 
 
 Most of the way was through marshy ground and 
 heavy timber. On top of the piles longitudinal 
 stringers were laid, tied together at intervals of 
 twenty feet by cross-pieces. On top of the stringers 
 were laid " ribbon pieces." 
 
 According to the contract, these ribbon pieces were 
 to be of " white oak, free from wain, sap, and knots, 
 one and one-half by three inches, and ten to fifteen 
 feet long." On top of these ribbon pieces the iron 
 strap-rail was spiked. 
 
 The first train from Utica arrived at Rome on 
 Thursday, June 27, 1839, when the editor of the 
 Rome Sentinel boasted that he had achieved the re- 
 markable feat of shaking hands in the streets of his 
 own town with men who had left Utica forty-five 
 minutes before. 
 
 In the afternoon the train continued its journey to 
 Syracuse. There was great excitement cheering 
 multitudes, booming cannon, speech-making, and 
 dining. 
 
 On the same principle that the inventor of a new 
 breakfast food sends out demonstrators to distribute 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 161 
 
 free samples of his product, the management of the 
 Syracuse and Utica Railroad gave free sample rides 
 for the rest of the week to all who could find room to 
 hang on to its trains. 
 
 Business was pretty generally suspended along the 
 road for that week while the population satisfied its 
 craving for railroad travel. The scheme worked like 
 a charm; for when the collection of fares began on 
 Wednesday, July 3, the receipts averaged six hun- 
 dred dollars a day for many weeks thereafter. Con- 
 sidering that the country was new, and that it wasn't 
 much of a railroad, after all, this was doing pretty 
 well. 
 
 On the Fourth of July an excursion was run over 
 the road that they are still talking about in that part 
 of the State. All the available rolling-stock, which 
 wasn't a great deal, was crowded to suffocation by 
 an ecstatic crowd which went into raptures over the 
 swift motion through the great forests, which at that 
 time of year were at their best. The road being ele- 
 vated on piles, the excursionists were able to fancy 
 they were sailing through the air. 
 
 Henry Clay came up from his Kentucky home for 
 a ride on the wonderful pile railroad. He praised it 
 until the people were filled with delight. Even Pres- 
 ident Van Buren heard so much about it that he had 
 to come up and take a ride, spending the night of 
 September 10, 1839, at Utica. 
 
 No wonder that the stock quickly rose to one hun- 
 dred and ten, or that the company was able to pay 
 dividends of five dollars a share every six months. 
 
 The next link westward in the Buffalo Railroad 
 which Mr. Cambreleng toasted at that memorable 
 
162 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 dinner of August 9, 1831, the Auburn and Syracuse 
 Railroad, was organized some seventeen months be- 
 fore the Syracuse and Utica, but it did not have the 
 smooth and pleasant career of the latter. 
 
 In fact, it encountered greater difficulties than any 
 other of the railroads in the Buffalo chain. Surveys 
 were begun in April, 1835, and construction in the 
 following December, but the financial disturbances 
 of 1836 and 1837, and the great advance in the price 
 of provisions, material, and labor, came pretty near 
 wrecking the company. 
 
 However, the road was finished, and, with wooden 
 rails and horses for motive power, was opened Jan- 
 uary 8, 1838. The company raised money enough to 
 buy a locomotive, the " Syracuse," with which H. 
 Perry, the master mechanic, took the officers over the 
 road June 4, 1839. Meanwhile, iron strap-rails had 
 replaced the wooden ones. 
 
 The Auburn and Syracuse Railroad enjoyed the 
 unique distinction of having been conceded by the 
 legislature the privilege of carrying freight. All the 
 other early railroads were restricted to the carrying 
 of passengers and their baggage and the mails. One 
 of the first things to do, therefore, was to organize the 
 freight business. W. G. Fargo, the great express 
 man, began life by doing what he could to establish 
 this important branch of the Auburn and Syracuse 
 Railroad's business as freight agent in the old Gen- 
 esee Street depot at Auburn. 
 
 The business of freighting by wagon was pretty 
 well established by this time, and it promised to be 
 none too easy a task to make head against this wagon 
 competition at the outset. 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 163 
 
 But the company got in a master stroke of diplo- 
 macy. Uncle Nat Williams, a well-known character, 
 on the shady side of fifty, with a cheery voice, a beam- 
 ing face framed in a fringe of white whiskers, and a 
 pleasant word for everybody, had the cream of the 
 freighting business out of Auburn. To Uncle Nat 
 the scheming railroad company proposed that if he 
 would withdraw his teams from the freighting busi- 
 ness he should be made freight conductor. 
 
 Uncle Nat yielded to this temptation, and thus 
 became the first freight conductor in the State of New 
 York. His cheery voice waked the echoes along the 
 Auburn and Syracuse road, for Uncle Nat continued 
 to give signals with his lungs just as he had done 
 when he was handling horses instead of railroad men, 
 until September 5, 1841, when he retired to enjoy 
 the rest his busy life had earned. 
 
 The trains of which Uncle Nat and his fellow con- 
 ductors had charge were not at all imposing. The 
 box cars were not much bigger than a good-sized 
 packing-case. They had four wheels, and thirty 
 barrels of flour loaded one to the limit of its capacity. 
 
 Switching was done with horses. When the cars 
 were loaded they would be hauled down to the main 
 line, where they were coupled to the locomotive. 
 Fourteen loads made a full train. 
 
 Passenger cars were more like instruments of tor- 
 ture than vehicles for travel. Like the freight cars, 
 they had four wheels. They were divided into three 
 compartments, like European cars of to-day, only 
 they were not so large. 
 
 Each compartment would seat eight persons, pro- 
 vided care was exercised not to select too large per- 
 
164 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 sons, four on each seat, face to face. There was no 
 elbow-room, and no room to stand up straight. 
 
 Neither were there any stoves to heat the cars in 
 winter. The conductor got around to collect fares 
 by walking from one side door to another along a 
 ledge outside the car barely four inches wide, holding 
 to a hand-rail near the top. 
 
 This was anything but a cheerful task in stormy or 
 windy weather. Conductor George Williamson lost 
 his hold one cold, snowy night near Marcellus, and 
 fell to a snow-drift beside the track, from which he 
 rolled under the wheels and was killed. 
 
 Stevenson & Co., stage builders, of New York 
 City, built an eight- wheeled passenger car in 1839 
 which was tried on the Auburn and Syracuse road. 
 It was the only eight-wheeled passenger coach run on 
 any of the railroads between Albany and Auburn for 
 several years. 
 
 It was so much larger than the little bandboxes for 
 which the road had been built that it would barely 
 clear obstructions. Soon after this car was put into 
 service Conductor Samuel Wildrick was crushed to 
 death between it and the depot doorway at Syracuse 
 as his train was pulling out in the evening for 
 Auburn. 
 
 The space between car and doorway was less than 
 four inches. Wildrick was not missed until the train 
 had run three miles. It was backed up, and the body 
 was found lying where it had fallen. 
 
 For a long time the motive power of the Auburn 
 and Syracuse consisted of three locomotives, all of 
 Rogers make, weighing ten and a half tons each. 
 They had a single pair of drivers, and it kept them 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 165 
 
 busy to get over the road with fourteen of the little 
 cars. 
 
 At first the company tried to run the locomotives 
 on wooden ribbon pieces, but they would not stay on 
 the track, so it was necessary to lay " snakeheads." 
 These snakeheads, or strap-rails, were in universal use 
 for eight years in New York, up to 1847. 
 
 They were nothing in the world but flat bar iron 
 two and one-half inches wide and three-quarters of 
 an inch thick, laid on six-by-six pine string-pieces and 
 held in place by spikes eighteen inches apart. The 
 weight of the train would cause these iron straps to 
 curl up like a hoop with force sufficient to break or 
 pull out the spikes near the ends, which would be left 
 sticking up from the wooden base all the way from a 
 few inches to two feet. 
 
 These projecting ends had a playful habit of pok- 
 ing themselves up through the cab of an engine or 
 the floor of a car when a train struck them from the 
 wrong direction. If an engineman or a passenger 
 happened to be in the way he was pretty likely to be 
 hurt. 
 
 R. P. Witherspoon, a young lawyer of Syracuse, 
 had occasion to go to Auburn one December evening 
 in 1840. The day being cold and blustery, his wife 
 insisted on turning up his overcoat collar with her 
 own hands and wrapping so many thicknesses of 
 woolen comforter around his neck that he couldn't 
 bend his head to kiss her good-by, but was obliged to 
 have her stand on a chair to receive the salute. 
 
 He grumbled about being muffled up like a hired 
 man, but his wife insisted that he would surely catch 
 his death of cold if he didn't submit. Being newly 
 
166 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 married, he agreed to wear the muffler as his wife had 
 arranged it. 
 
 Mr. Witherspoon entered the car next the engine, 
 and selected the right-hand end seat facing forward, 
 in the middle compartment. Two strangers occupied 
 the same seat, while two friends sat opposite. After 
 riding a few miles, Mr. Witherspoon changed to the 
 opposite seat, in order to converse more comfortably 
 with his friends. 
 
 He had scarcely made the change when there was 
 a crash. Turning his head quickly, Mr. Wither- 
 spoon had barely time to get a glimpse of a snake- 
 head pushing up through the seat he had just vacated 
 when it curled over, and catching him in the throat, 
 pushed him violently back through the thin wooden 
 partition. 
 
 He was stunned for an instant. When he recov- 
 ered his wits he found himself lying with head and 
 shoulders through the broken partition, with both 
 hands clutching the snakehead, the end of which 
 rested against the numerous folds of coat collar and 
 comforter under his chin. That comforter had saved 
 his life. The train was stopped until the snakehead 
 could be spiked back in its place. 
 
 Emigrant traffic, which was very heavy in the early 
 days of the Auburn and Syracuse, promptly forsook 
 the canal as soon as there were railroads to travel 
 upon; for, crude as those pioneer roads were, they 
 were a decided improvement on canal boats. This 
 emigrant traffic, which included household goods and 
 farming implements, together with its regular freight 
 traffic, and heavy passenger business the road was 
 poorly equipped to handle. New engines had to be 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 167 
 
 obtained. Two were ordered of Dennis, Wood & 
 Russell, of Auburn. They were built under the 
 direction of William S. Hudson, as superintendent, 
 who afterward became noted as a locomotive builder. 
 
 These engines were the first built in America to 
 work steam expansively. One of them, the " Wyo- 
 ming," was considered the best engine of its capacity 
 ever on the road. 
 
 The first engine with six-foot drivers to run west 
 of the Hudson was built for the Auburn and Syra- 
 cuse in 1848 by Rogers. It was named the " How," 
 after Thomas Y. How, treasurer of the road. This 
 engine was a hoodoo from the beginning of its career. 
 It was always getting off the rails or into some other 
 sort of difficulty. 
 
 Its career terminated about a year after it began. 
 William Delano, engineer, with Thomas Hooper, 
 fireman, left Syracuse with four coaches and a bag- 
 gage car one day. There were two visitors in the 
 cab, who wanted to try the novelty of a ride on an 
 engine C. C. Dennis, one of the directors of the 
 road, and Howard Delano, brother of the engineer. 
 
 While running fifty miles an hour the engine left 
 the rails one mile west of Sennett. The engineer and 
 fireman were instantly killed, Dennis received severe 
 injuries which disfigured him for life, while Howard 
 Delano, by some strange freak of fate, was only 
 slightly hurt. The hoodoo engine was so utterly de- 
 molished that no attempt was made to rebuild it. 
 
 A telegraph office was opened at Auburn in May, 
 1846. Soon afterward an attempt was made to use 
 it in sending train orders, with disastrous results. 
 
 The passenger train due in Auburn from Roch- 
 
168 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 ester at 4 A.M. had not arrived at 5:30, and as the 
 engine which was to leave Auburn had to be in Syra- 
 cuse in order to leave there with a passenger train 
 at 7 A.M., it was ordered to leave without waiting for 
 the Rochester train. 
 
 Meanwhile the Rochester train got in and was 
 ordered to run to Syracuse, where the west-bound 
 train was to be held by telegraph. Unfortunately, 
 the operator at Syracuse must have had an extra good 
 breakfast that morning. At any rate, he didn't get 
 to his office until the west-bound train had left. 
 
 A fine large heap of kindling-wood marked the 
 spot near Fairmount where the trains attempted to 
 pass on a curve. Fortunately, no one was seriously 
 hurt. 
 
 Piece by piece the longed-for Buffalo road was 
 growing. The seventy-eight miles from Schenectady 
 to Utica were finished in 1836; the thirty-three miles 
 from Rochester to Batavia were opened in 1837, and 
 extended twelve miles farther, to Attica, in 1842; the 
 seventy-eight miles from Auburn to Rochester were 
 opened in 1841, and the thirty-one miles from Attica 
 to Buffalo in December, 1842. 
 
 By the beginning of 1843 there was a rail route 
 by which it was possible to travel from Albany to 
 Buffalo in thirty hours without changing cars more 
 than six times. 
 
 There were no through tickets and no baggage 
 checks. A ride over each of the seven independent 
 roads was a complete transaction in itself. When the 
 passenger got to the end of the road he hunted up his 
 baggage, if he had any, had it chalked to the next 
 stopping place, bargained with expressmen and hack- 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 169 
 
 men for transfer to the station of the next road in 
 line, bought a new ticket, and took a fresh start. 
 
 Under such circumstances a pass over these diminu- 
 tive railroads would hardly seem to be worth the 
 trouble required to get it. Yet applicants for these 
 favors were so persistent, and they had so serious an 
 effect upon the revenues of the road, that early in 
 1850 the representatives of the roads between Albany 
 and Buffalo were compelled to appoint a committee 
 to find some means to abate the nuisance. The com- 
 mittee recommended that after July 1, 1850, the 
 granting of passes should cease, and that employees 
 should be especially charged not to ask or receive free 
 passage over any other roads. 
 
 By 1850 the science of railroading had progressed 
 so far that the traveler could purchase through tick- 
 ets between Albany and Buffalo for $9.75, though he 
 could not obtain at any price any information upon 
 which he could rely about the movement of trains. 
 Theoretically the express trains covered the distance 
 between Albany and Buffalo in fourteen hours, as the 
 " ticket master," the predecessor of the modern 
 ticket agent, blandly assured all inquirers, and there 
 were five trains a day each way. How faithfully 
 these promises were fulfilled may be gathered from the 
 narrative of a traveler who left Albany at 7 o'clock 
 on a Saturday evening in May, 1850, with the assur- 
 ance that he would be taken through to Buffalo in 
 fourteen hours. 
 
 Arriving at Utica at 11:30 P.M., the train was 
 switched onto a side track and left there. The trav- 
 eler with his fellow passengers sat in the stuffy little 
 coaches, in which a candle at each end struggled to 
 
170 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 make darkness visible, without being able to learn 
 when they could proceed or whether they ever would 
 be taken any further. Then, at 2 A.M. a locomotive 
 bumped down against their train, and after a ride of 
 three hours they arrived at Syracuse at 5 o'clock 
 in the morning. Here the passengers were left 
 without any intimation of what Fate and the rail- 
 road company had in store for them. All attempts 
 to obtain information were fruitless. They could 
 only hover about the cheerless boxes of cars and wait 
 for twelve hours and a half. Then, at 5:30 P.M. 
 they resumed their journey to Rochester, where they 
 arrived at midnight, only to wait another six hours 
 for an engine to take them to Buffalo, where they 
 arrived completely exhausted after a journey of two 
 hundred and ninety miles, which had lasted thirty- 
 eight hours and a half. 
 
 Nor were maddening delays the only unpleasant 
 feature of a railroad journey in those early days. In 
 1845 the Railroad Journal complimented the Har- 
 lem Railroad on its enterprise in introducing cars 
 " so high that one can stand erect when he cannot 
 find a seat." For years after this step in advance 
 it was all a tall man could do to stand erect in the 
 average passenger car. The clerestory did not come 
 into general use until after the Civil War. The 
 windows were very small and the sashes were so 
 loose that they rattled a continuous obligate to the 
 creaking and groaning of the flimsy frame. In fact, 
 the cars were nicknamed " rattlers," " hyenas," and 
 " cribs." As travel was too heavy for the facilities 
 available the cars were generally overcrowded and 
 the air in the tiny boxes was foul almost beyond en- 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 171 
 
 durance. Heat was furnished by a stove at each 
 end. Passengers near the stoves were almost 
 roasted alive, while those in the middle of the car 
 shivered with cold. 
 
 The sleeping cars, though, were the uttermost ex- 
 treme of atrocity. Desultory attempts were made to 
 introduce sleeping cars from the time the first ones 
 were tried on the Cumberland Valley in Pennsylva- 
 nia in 1836. By 1859 several lines, including those 
 in central New York, were using so-called sleeping 
 cars. They were simply " rattlers," crude and rough 
 as they were, fitted up with three tiers of shelves. 
 With three bunks to the section in these low cars 
 the passenger had to spread himself out pretty thin 
 to get into his berth at all. However, there was no 
 superfluous bedding to take up space. The only 
 things in that line furnished by the railroad company 
 were pillows and mattresses, which were piled up in 
 one corner and dragged by the passengers to the 
 scene of torture when required. 
 
 Yet one of these wheeled torture chambers was 
 directly responsible for the luxurious limited trains 
 of the twentieth century. One night in 1859 a young 
 man who had just cleared twenty thousand dollars 
 raising houses to grade in Chicago indulged in the 
 luxury of a berth in a sleeping car from Buffalo to 
 his old home at Westport. After a few hours of 
 agony he fled from his berth to a day coach to rub 
 his aching bones and think of cutting remarks he 
 would have made to the builder of that sleeping car 
 if he had had the chance. But George M. Pullman 
 soon forgot his grievance in more practical musings 
 on the curious fact that no one had yet devised a sleep- 
 
172 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 ing car in which people could sleep, which led him to 
 wonder why he could not do it himself. 
 
 To a man with youth, health, energy, ambition, and 
 twenty thousand dollars, all things are possible. 
 Pullman returned to Chicago, and with Benjamin 
 Field, of New York, arranged to operate sleeping 
 cars on the Chicago and Alton and the Galena and 
 Chicago Union railroads. But for this one time in 
 his career Pullman did a thing first and thought about 
 it afterward. The experiments were so unsatisfac- 
 tory that he gave them up and went to Colorado, at- 
 tracted by the Pike's Peak gold excitement. He 
 found no gold, but he found an opportunity to think 
 over the sleeping car idea more fully. He reached the 
 conclusion that if he were to build a car comfortable 
 and complete in accommodations, handsome and 
 suitable for occupancy both by night and by day, 
 night travel would become popular and the business 
 would grow to vast proportions. This time he for- 
 mulated his plans fully before he made a move. 
 
 Once his mind was made up, Pullman returned to 
 Chicago, and again made an arrangement with the 
 Chicago and Alton to run sleeping cars. The Chi- 
 cago and Alton was then in desperate straits. The 
 sheriff made frequent calls to attach the receipts, and 
 the management was ready to clutch at any straw or 
 enter into any agreement that held out any hope of 
 relief, however shadowy. The management even' 
 gave Pullman the use of a shed in which to build his 
 first sleeping car. 
 
 Pullman's first sleeping car worried other people 
 more than it did himself while it was building. His 
 friends gave proof of their fidelity by protesting long 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 173 
 
 and earnestly against his folly. Railroad men rea- 
 soned with him and explained the many things which 
 made it impossible for him to succeed in his venture. 
 Even the workmen who were hired to build the car 
 felt sorry for their employer's inexperience and lack 
 of business judgment and ignorance of cabinet-mak- 
 ing and all the other handicrafts called into requisi- 
 tion. Whenever he wanted a certain thing done in 
 a certain way, there were always innumerable reasons 
 why it couldn't be done in that particular way or any 
 other way. 
 
 But Pullman obstinately insisted on having his 
 own way, in spite of well-meaning friends and rail- 
 road men who understood the transportation business 
 down to the ground, kindly disposed workmen who 
 knew better than he did himself what he wanted, and 
 the intelligent public that always knows everything. 
 As a crowning act of folly, he employed a famous 
 artist, who had just finished decorating Samuel J. 
 Tilden's house, to come to Chicago and decorate his 
 first car. At last, after several months of toil, the 
 first Pullman palace sleeping car was finished. 
 When it was drawn out on a side track for inspection, 
 the results of the builder's obstinacy were strikingly 
 apparent. 
 
 The " Pioneer," as it had been named, was a foot 
 wider and two and a half feet higher than any car 
 that had ever been built. One of Pullman's railroad 
 friends pointed out that the car could not be run on 
 any railroad then in existence because it was so big 
 that it would not clear the station platforms and 
 bridges. 
 
 " I know it," said Pullman. " I suppose you'll 
 
174 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 have to cut down the platforms and rebuild the 
 bridges." 
 
 And that was precisely what happened. Since 
 Pullman would not build his cars to fit the railroads, 
 the railroads had to be built to fit Pullman's cars. 
 Next they had to improve all their passenger equip- 
 ment to fit the standard set by him. When enough 
 track had been found on which to make a trip, Pull- 
 man invited a judicious selection of influential men, 
 editors of papers with the best circulation, and rail- 
 road officials who would be most useful, to come and 
 see his car and take a ride on it. 
 
 The guests found a car so very different from any- 
 thing the world had ever seen that they were filled 
 with wonder and delight. The Pioneer was not only 
 of enormous size, but it rested on eight-wheeled 
 trucks instead of four-wheeled, had a raised deck with 
 ventilating transoms, and was a beautiful example of 
 cabinet-making and decorative art. All were willing 
 to believe that the Pioneer had cost eighteen thou- 
 sand dollars. The best passenger cars of that period 
 cost four thousand dollars. One thing that puzzled 
 the guests was the lack of anything that looked like 
 sleeping accommodations. They had understood 
 that they had been invited to inspect a sleeping car. 
 But where were the passengers to sleep? 
 
 Pullman smiled, and guessed they had better have 
 something to eat before they talked about sleeping. 
 At a word from him the first sleeping car porters 
 brought out little tables, which fitted between the 
 seats, just as do the tables in use in Pullman cars to- 
 day, and furnished them with linen, silver, and china. 
 The delighted guests sat down to a hot, well-served 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 175 
 
 meal. After the cigars, Pullman requested all hands 
 to step forward into a day coach for a few moments. 
 When tHey were called back a short time later, they 
 found that a complete transformation had been made. 
 The seats and tables had disappeared, and in their 
 places inviting looking beds, completely furnished 
 with fine linen and blankets, could be seen through 
 neatly parted curtains. This sleeping car bore no 
 resemblance to the barren torture chambers they had 
 know r n before. Again there was a round of applause. 
 Then the guests undressed and went to bed. Half 
 an hour later all rose and dressed and watched with 
 keen interest while the porters transformed the sleeper 
 back into a day car. The rest of the trip was spent 
 in discussing the marvel and in examining its details 
 over and over again. 
 
 The Pioneer caused a tremendous sensation. All 
 the papers and magazines published descriptions of 
 it. Everybody was talking about Pullman's sleeping 
 car. All agreed that traveling in such cars would be 
 delightful, but the verdict was equally unanimous 
 that they were a commercial impossibility. Why, men 
 would go to bed with their muddy boots on; they 
 would expectorate on the carpets and upholstery; 
 they would mar the beautifully finished cabinet-work, 
 and oh, well, it couldn't be done. Railroad men and 
 personal friends redoubled their efforts to dissuade 
 Pullman from inviting ruin. To all these objections 
 Pullman made one comprehensive answer, which he 
 had occasion to repeat many times in the course of 
 his life: 
 
 " I have always held that people are very greatly 
 influenced by physical surroundings. Take the 
 
176 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 roughest man, a man whose lines have always brought 
 him into the coarsest and poorest surroundings, and 
 bring him into a room elegantly carpeted and fur- 
 nished, and the effect on his bearing is pronounced 
 and immediate. I am not at all afraid people will 
 go to bed with their boots on. I am convinced that 
 if I devote all my energies to providing handsome 
 cars the financial returns will take care of them- 
 selves." 
 
 Soon after the Pioneer was completed, it was used 
 in the Lincoln funeral train. This necessitated cut- 
 ting down the station platforms between Chicago and 
 Springfield. A few months later the car was wanted 
 to convey General Grant from Detroit to Chicago, 
 so the Michigan Central stations and bridges were 
 hastily adjusted to the standard fixed by Pullman. 
 
 Once the road was adapted to them the Michigan 
 Central was ready to try Pullman cars. In pur- 
 suance of his lifelong policy, Pullman set out to make 
 a great improvement in the new cars. When the sec- 
 ond Pullman car was completed it had cost twenty- 
 four thousand dollars. The first Pullman cars for 
 the Michigan Central settled a question which has 
 been a perennial source of worry to legislators; 
 namely, the proper charge for a berth. Unfor- 
 tunately, the legislators keep forgetting it and trying 
 to settle it all over again. It was impossible to sell a 
 berth in a car that had cost twenty-four thousand 
 dollars for a dollar and a half, which was the rate 
 in the Woodruff sleeping car then used on the Mich- 
 igan Central. But when Pullman announced that 
 he proposed to charge two dollars a berth, President 
 Joy was horrified. 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 177 
 
 " My dear sir," he exclaimed, " that is not to be 
 thought of. If you undertake to charge two dollars 
 a berth when other roads only charge a dollar and a 
 half between Detroit and Chicago, you will simply 
 drive all the night travel to our competitors. It is no 
 concern of mine that you have chosen to spend so 
 much money for useless luxuries for people who will 
 not appreciate them and do not want them." 
 
 " People are willing to pay for the best, if they 
 get the worth of their money," returned Pullman. 
 " But what is the use of spending time in useless argu- 
 ment over a subject which is so easily susceptible of 
 demonstration? Run your cheap cars as usual at a 
 dollar and a half a berth and put my cars on the same 
 train at two dollars a berth, and let the public choose 
 between them. If the traveling public thinks the 
 beauty of finish, the comfort, and the safety of the 
 new cars worth two dollars a night, there are the 
 twenty-four-thousand-dollar cars; if, on the other 
 hand, they are satisfied with the less attractive sur- 
 roundings at a saving of fifty cents, the cheaper cars 
 are at their disposal. We will submit the plain facts 
 on both sides of the issue without argument." 
 
 This was such a practical suggestion that it was 
 adopted without parley. Not only did the patrons of 
 the road utterly refuse to look at the old cars so long 
 as any two-dollar berths were available, but those who 
 were crowded out of the Pullman complained so 
 loudly at being compelled to put up with dollar-and- 
 a-half berths, that within six weeks the cheap cars were 
 taken off altogether. Instead of driving traffic away, 
 the more expensive palace cars drew travel from the 
 other roads, so that competing lines were forced to 
 
178 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 make terms with Pullman. Instead of a leveling 
 down to the cheaper prices, there was a leveling up 
 to the higher. 
 
 When the Union Pacific and Central Pacific were 
 opened, through trains, equipped with Pullman cars, 
 made the run between Omaha and San Francisco. 
 This was a practical demonstration of the conveni- 
 ence of the Pullman system of operation that was con- 
 vincing. 
 
 Soon after the Pullman Company was organized, 
 in 1867, parlor cars were introduced on day runs. 
 Then in the same year the first hotel car, the " Presi- 
 dent," a sleeping car with kitchen and pantry, a buffet 
 car it would be called now, was introduced on the 
 Great Western Railway, of Canada. It was the first 
 car in the world built to serve meals en route. In 
 1868 the first regular dining car, the " Delmonico," 
 was placed in service on the Chicago and Alton. 
 
 The Pullman idea was not based on beauty of sur- 
 roundings and comfort alone, but also on safety. The 
 " Pioneer," and every Pullman car that followed it, 
 were so much heavier and stronger than the ordinary 
 coaches in the train that in case of accident they almost 
 always escaped injury. Pullman wanted something 
 better than a strongly built car; he wanted a solid 
 train. In 1886 he began working on a scheme for 
 continuous trains. As early as 1852 patents had 
 been granted for canvas diaphragms between cars. 
 They were adopted on the Naugatuck Railroad, in 
 Connecticut, in 1857, but were discontinued after four 
 years. They were flimsy and practically useless, for 
 they did not attempt to hold the cars in position, but 
 were merely intended to keep passengers from fall- 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 179 
 
 ing off in passing from one platform to another while 
 the train was in motion. 
 
 In 1887 the modern vestibule was patented. By 
 means of this an entire train was made into one solid 
 yet sinuous whole by elastic diaphragms faced with 
 heavy steel frames, held in place by strong springs. 
 The wide vestibule made it possible for the passenger 
 to go from his sitting-room to his dining-room or his 
 bedroom under one roof, just as he would in his own 
 home. Vestibuled trains required less power to pull 
 them, because the air-pockets between the cars were 
 reduced to a minimum. They also reduced the dan- 
 ger from collisions almost to the vanishing point. 
 Several vestibuled trains have collided at a speed of 
 forty miles an hour without injury to passengers. 
 No safety appliance, with the possible exception of 
 the air-brake, has yet been devised which has proved 
 more valuable for the protection of travelers than 
 this apparently simple device. An exhibition vesti- 
 buled train made the rounds of the principal cities in 
 1887, and then, with three others, was placed in 
 service on the Pennsylvania road. The result was 
 an increase of seventy per cent in travel on the lim- 
 ited trains. 
 
 But to return to the New York railroads of early 
 days: On reaching Albany the passenger for New 
 York was obliged to continue his journey by river in 
 summer and by stage in winter, for the connecting 
 rail link was not built for several years. 
 
 A railroad from New York to Albany was first 
 chartered in 1832. The capital was fixed at three 
 million dollars, and the State, as usual, reserved the 
 right to purchase the road. The idea was pretty gen- 
 
180 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 eral in the early days that the State should own the 
 highways, including the railroads. But nothing 
 came of this scheme, and the time for construction 
 was extended to 1838. 
 
 In 1842 the people of Poughkeepsie, weary of wait- 
 ing for the building of the promised road, employed 
 an engineer to survey a route along the Hudson from 
 New York to Albany. He reported that the route 
 was feasible. There the matter rested for three years. 
 Then a convention was held at Poughkeepsie, at 
 which a re-survey was decided upon, but still nothing 
 happened. 
 
 Finally, on January 23, 1846, Mayor Havemeyer 
 called a meeting in New York City to consider the 
 desirability of building the road to Albany. The 
 New York and Harlem Railroad Company had been 
 chartered to build such a line, but it was not yet com- 
 pleted. The result of this meeting was the granting 
 of a charter to the Hudson River Railroad on May 
 26, 1846. One month later the entire capital stock 
 of three million dollars had been subscribed, most of 
 it being taken in New York City. 
 
 Work was begun promptly, and on October 1, 
 1851, the entire line was opened for business. The 
 first passenger station in New York City was at 
 Chambers Street and College Place, to which point 
 the cars were drawn by horses from Thirteenth Street 
 and Eleventh Avenue. The Hudson River Bridge at 
 Albany was not opened until February 22, 1866. 
 
 In 1850 the alarming discovery was made that the 
 railroads, which had been intended merely for passen- 
 ger traffic, were becoming formidable competitors of 
 the Erie Canal. When this discovery was made the 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 181 
 
 whole commonwealth was agitated by the problems 
 presented. There was a strong sentiment in favor of 
 legislation that would prohibit any such competition. 
 
 As late as 1858 the people of the State were still 
 holding mass-meetings and resolving that the rail- 
 roads had no right to compete with the canal. 
 
 It was strenuously urged that canals had a natural 
 right to carry heavy freight, and that it was suicidal 
 folly for railroads to try to handle such business. 
 Managers who were trying to develop their roads into 
 heavy freight carriers were denounced for ruining 
 themselves and the stockholders. But the march of 
 progress could not be delayed; the canals had to cut 
 rates to meet the competition of the railroads. 
 
 Tolls were levied on railroad freight the same as on 
 canal traffic. Some of the roads in the chain from 
 Albany to Buffalo were limited by their charters to 
 the carrying of passengers ; and they had a hard time 
 getting permission to include the transportation of 
 freight in their business. 
 
 The outcome of the agitation was the first impor- 
 tant railroad consolidation in history. On May 17, 
 1853, ten independent railroads, including the seven 
 forming the route from Albany to Buffalo, with their 
 branches and feeders, having a total of five hundred 
 and forty-two miles of track, were consolidated under 
 the title of the New York Central Railroad. 
 
 The charter was to run for five hundred years, and 
 the capital was fixed at twenty-three million eighty- 
 five thousand dollars, which was the aggregate 
 amount of the capital of the consolidated companies. 
 
 The New York Central began business with 187 
 first-class passenger coaches, 55 second-class, 65 bag- 
 
182 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 gage, mail, and express cars, and 1,702 freight cars. 
 There were 298 miles of main line, 236 miles of 
 branch line, and 29 miles of leased road. 
 
 The average speed of passenger trains, including 
 stops, had increased from an average of twelve to 
 fifteen miles in 1840 to twenty-five miles an hour, 
 express trains forty miles an hour, and freight trains 
 fourteen miles an hour. Although the first-class 
 passenger rate was only two cents a mile as com- 
 pared with five cents a mile in 1840, the passenger 
 earnings for the first year after consolidation were 
 $3,151,514, as compared with $2,479,820 freight earn- 
 ings. The business was extremely profitable, for the 
 company paid in dividends that year $1,125,506. 
 
 Notwithstanding the advantages which resulted 
 from this step, consolidation did not become fash- 
 ionable for some years. The first act in the railroad 
 drama, the period of construction, having now been 
 played out, the scene shifts to Wall Street. 
 
 Cornelius Vanderbilt, having amassed a modest 
 competence of a dozen millions from the operation of 
 his steamship lines, selected Hudson River Railroad 
 stock as a suitable investment in 1863. Wall Street, 
 discovering this fact, prepared a nice little surprise 
 for him by selling Hudson River short. 
 
 Vanderbilt obligingly absorbed all offers until he 
 had the entire stock of the road in his hands. Then 
 he invited the shorts to step up and settle at his own 
 price. 
 
 The New York and Harlem Railroad already 
 being in his hands, Vanderbilt had a bill introduced 
 in the legislature for the consolidation of the two 
 roads the second consolidation in the present New 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 183 
 
 York Central system. Wall Street tried the same 
 game on him after " seeing " certain legislators who 
 were supposed to know how to do things at Albany. 
 
 The result was the same as in the first attempt, 
 except that the shorts sold twenty-seven thousand 
 more shares than had ever been issued, which obliged 
 Vanderbilt to fix the low figure of 283 as the price at 
 which the associated shorts might settle in order to 
 avert a panic. 
 
 About the time this little affair had blown over, 
 the New York Central Railroad directors thought it 
 would be only neighborly to invite the newcomer in 
 the railroad world to take a ride over their road. Mr. 
 Vanderbilt took great pleasure in accepting the invi- 
 tation. He did not communicate his impressions of 
 what he saw, but an idea of them may be formed 
 from what followed. 
 
 The New York Central management, having its 
 eastern terminus on the Hudson River, felt pretty 
 secure, and, consequently, independent, for its grow- 
 ing traffic could be sent by water to New York. But 
 they had forgotten that navigation was interrupted 
 for several months during the winter. 
 
 Consequently, when at the close of navigation in 
 1865, Commodore Vanderbilt, without any notice, 
 withdrew the terminus of the Hudson River Railroad 
 to the eastern bank of the river at Albany and re- 
 fused to receive freight from the New York Central, 
 the stockholders of the latter road were taken com- 
 pletely by surprise. There was a rush to sell, and 
 down went the price. 
 
 Vanderbilt, by a strange coincidence, had been sell- 
 ing New York Central short, and his friends, oddly 
 
184 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 enough, had been doing the same thing. When no- 
 body else wanted New York Central stock, after its 
 communication with New York City had been cut, 
 the Vanderbilt party obligingly took it off the hold- 
 ers' hands at greatly reduced prices. 
 
 No one knew the extent of the clean-up until the 
 next annual meeting of the stockholders. The polls 
 were opened at Albany, as usual, for the election of 
 a board of directors. Not a vote was cast all day 
 long until just a moment before the polls were to 
 close. 
 
 Then Commodore Vanderbilt walked into the room 
 and deposited a single ballot. On opening the ballot- 
 box immediately afterward it was found that this lone 
 ballot represented eighteen million dollars out of a 
 total capital stock of twenty-four million dollars. 
 The new board of directors, who had been brought up 
 from New York, was thereupon called into the room, 
 and proceeded to elect Cornelius Vanderbilt presi- 
 dent. 
 
 The consolidation of the New York Central and 
 the Hudson River Railroads followed soon after. 
 
 These interesting events were celebrated with a 
 quiet little melon-party at the home of Horace V. 
 Clark one Saturday evening in December, 1868. The 
 melon-cutting took the form of an eighty per cent 
 stock dividend distribution of twenty-three million 
 dollars. 
 
 The certificates were equal to stock in every par- 
 ticular except the right to vote. New York Central 
 had closed at 133 Saturday. It opened at 155 Mon- 
 day, and sold up to 159. 
 
 The spectacular changes in the financial history of 
 
GENESIS OF THE VANDERBILT SYSTEM 185 
 
 the New York Central were immediately followed 
 by a physical transformation even more extraordi- 
 nary. Commodore Vanderbilt was no speculator. 
 He wanted railroads that would earn dividends, and 
 to achieve this end, to his way of thinking, it was 
 absolutely necessary to have nothing but the best in 
 both men and materials. 
 
 Staffs were reorganized, bridges rebuilt, heavier 
 rails laid, curves straightened, grades reduced, better 
 and heavier engines and more of them provided, the 
 best cars the builders then knew how to turn out pur- 
 chased, improved methods introduced, and rates re- 
 duced. 
 
 The net result was that three-quarters of a century 
 after the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad was opened 
 for traffic it had become a part of a great railroad 
 system comprising thirteen operating railway com- 
 panies, with 20,000 miles of first-class road, with 
 6,558 additional miles under the same influence, and 
 still another 5,524 miles working in harmony with the 
 great system through having New York Central 
 directors on their boards, making a grand total of 
 32,301 miles of railroad. 
 
 This Vanderbilt system takes in 13.27 per cent of 
 the gross operating receipts of all the railroads in 
 the United States, pays 15.38 per cent of all the taxes 
 paid by railroads in the United States, and pays 
 $20,348,399 in annual dividends, which is 12.94 per 
 cent of all the railroad dividends, and disburses $154,- 
 630,408 in operating expenses annually. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 INCUBATOR RAILROADS 
 
 at ten thousand, going, going gentle- 
 men, are you all done? Going at ten thou- 
 sand once, going at ten thousand twice " 
 
 * ^3 ^j 
 
 The auctioneer was the sheriff of Sangamon 
 County, Illinois. He was standing on the steps of 
 the Capitol on the 26th of April, 1847, facing a little 
 knot of idlers, who lounged in the warm spring sun- 
 shine, watching him as the most engaging diversion 
 that offered at the moment. 
 
 The least interested man in sight, so far as out- 
 ward appearances went, was N. H. Kidgley, of 
 Springfield. He had made the only bid offered for 
 all that remained of a section of the Northern Cross 
 Railroad, the property of the State of Illinois. 
 
 This bit of railroad, twenty-four miles long, had 
 cost the taxpayers $406,233. It was the sole asset 
 left to show for a debt of $4,107,746. Even at that 
 it wasn't much to speak of as railroads go. 
 
 Its only locomotive had been broken up for scrap- 
 iron, its cars were falling to pieces, the iron had been 
 used for sled-shoes and similar purposes by the 
 farmers along the route, and the ties for fence-posts 
 and firewood. But the right-of-way was as sound 
 as a dollar. 
 
 Across the street in a little barber shop an elderly 
 gentleman, with a pronounced waist-line, bearing 
 
 186 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 187 
 
 upon his swelling waistcoat circumstantial evidence 
 that he chewed tobacco, dozed in the chair while the 
 barber leisurely wrestled with his wiry beard. The 
 elderly gentleman was aroused by the sound of his 
 own snoring. 
 
 His glance wandered through the window to the 
 little group of idlers and then to the capitol steps to 
 ascertain the object of their curiosity. Suddenly he 
 sat upright as if he had just recalled something 
 important. 
 
 " Here ; wipe me off quick, Joe," he commanded. 
 
 " All right, Colonel Johnson, there you are, sir," 
 replied the barber, whipping off the towel. 
 
 Colonel Johnson ambled across the street. Just 
 as the auctioneer was in the act of opening his mouth 
 to knock down the railroad to Kidgley, Colonel John- 
 son bawled: 
 
 " One hundred dollars." 
 
 The sheriff looked up in surprise. Ridgley turned 
 toward the colonel with an aggrieved air and fairly 
 gasped with astonishment, while the idlers almost 
 stood erect in the intensity of their excitement. 
 
 The bidding was fast and furious until the price 
 had been run up to twenty thousand dollars. The 
 affair was growing serious for Ridgley. He walked 
 up to Colonel Johnson. 
 
 " See here, colonel," he inquired, " are you bidding 
 for yourself or somebody else? " 
 
 " I'm bidding for some parties in St. Louis," was 
 the reply. 
 
 At the same time there was just the trace of a 
 flutter in the colonel's left eyelid; or it might have 
 been an optical illusion on the part of Ridgley. 
 
188 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 " Well, wouldn't you just as soon accept a com- 
 mission from people in Springfield as in St. Louis? " 
 
 " Oh, certainly," said the colonel, shifting his quid 
 and walking nonchalantly away. Thereupon the 
 road was knocked down to Ridgley for twenty thou- 
 sand dollars. 
 
 Next day the enterprising Colonel Johnson saun- 
 tered into Ridgley's office, where he was handed a 
 check for one thousand dollars. That check was the 
 nearest approach to real money involved in the sale 
 of the Northern Cross Railroad, for Ridgley paid 
 the twenty thousand dollars in State bonds which he 
 had bought for nine cents on the dollar and turned 
 over to the State at par. 
 
 The bang of the auctioneer's gavel closed the first 
 chapter in the history of the first railroad built in 
 the country inclosed by the Alleghanies, the Ohio, 
 and the Mississippi, and opened another which led 
 up to the foundation of what is now the Wabash 
 Railway system. Also it ended a most curious era 
 in the development of the Middle West. 
 
 To begin at the beginning of that first chapter, 
 it may be said that in the early thirties the whole 
 region from the western slope of the Alleghanies to 
 the Mississippi had become one vast incubator for 
 railroad schemes. If money had been as abundant 
 as exuberant optimism, every man would have had 
 his own private railroad long before the nineteenth 
 century was half completed. 
 
 True, these brothers of Colonel Sellers had exceed- 
 ingly vague ideas of what a railroad was; but they 
 were unanimous in their abiding faith that the word 
 was a synonym for " highway " to untold millions 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 189 
 
 which danced in the iridescent air before their en- 
 raptured eyes. 
 
 The incidental fact that none of them had any 
 money troubled them not at all. What was more 
 simple than to call railroads into being by legislative 
 fiat and then let the State government foot the bills? 
 Few of these fiat railroads ever progressed beyond the 
 stock-selling stage, the majority did not live even 
 that long. It was a time of rosy dreams of opulence 
 and of weird financial jugglery, in which nothing 
 multiplied by nothing equaled whatever the promo- 
 ters chose to say it did. Yet, oddly enough, out of 
 these disordered phantoms have been evolved some 
 of the great railroads of to-day. 
 
 To Illinois must be awarded first honors in the art 
 of building railroads by statute. The people had 
 been building towns on paper, until the industry had 
 begun to pall upon them. Then Governor Joseph 
 Duncan, in a message to the special session of the leg- 
 islature in 1836, diverted attention from towns to 
 railroads. The suggestion caught the popular fancy 
 at once. 
 
 Agitation for a bewildering scheme of canals and 
 railroads was taken up by a certain type of patriots 
 and statesmen who, having nothing to lose, could 
 afford to be sanguine to the point of certainty, if not 
 beyond. A great internal improvement convention 
 was held, at which the immediate execution of a stu- 
 pendous program was demanded. 
 
 From the time the first internal improvement 
 schemes, an act passed January 28, 1831, for survey- 
 ing a route for a canal or railroad in St. Clair County, 
 and for the Illinois and Michigan Canal from Chi- 
 
190 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 cago to the head of navigation on the Illinois River, 
 sanctioned on February 15, 1831, were formulated 
 up to 1835 opinion was about equally divided in Illi- 
 nois on the relative merits of canals and railroads. 
 Then the railroads began to forge ahead in popular 
 estimation. The Chicago and Vincennes Railroad 
 was incorporated in 1834, but nothing further was 
 done in the matter for years. 
 
 The legislature, by an act to which the Governor 
 affixed his signature February 27, 1837, appropri- 
 ated $10,237,000 to launch the internal improvement 
 scheme. This imposed a debt of $34.10 per capita 
 upon the scanty population of poor, hard-working 
 pioneers at a time when the State was already in debt 
 and without revenues sufficient to meet current ex- 
 penses. Chicago, then a village with a population 
 of 1,470, had to have a garrison to protect it from the 
 Indians. The temptation to achieve sudden opu- 
 lence by statute, however, was too strong to be 
 resisted. 
 
 Every man who had a railroad scheme secured for 
 it from thirty thousand dollars up to one million 
 eight hundred thousand dollars, according to the 
 amount of influence he could command. As a begin- 
 ning, one thousand three hundred and forty miles of 
 railroad were to be constructed in the State, and 
 every river was to be made navigable. To allay 
 jealousies and heartburnings the sum of two hundred 
 thousand dollars for roads and bridges was distrib- 
 uted among the back counties which could not com- 
 mand the influence necessary to secure a railroad. 
 
 A board of fund commissioners was created and 
 ordered to commerce operations forthwith. In order 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 191 
 
 to avert local jealousies and assure every community 
 an equal chance, the commissioners were instructed 
 to begin work simultaneously at both ends of every 
 road, and in the middle, too, if it could be reached by 
 a navigable stream. 
 
 The legislature of 1838 appropriated five million 
 dollars more, and authorized the issue of additional 
 bonds to the amount of four million dollars. 
 
 Of the score of railroads planned in Illinois, none 
 was carried far enough to admit of laying rails except 
 the Northern Cross, which was to run from Quincy 
 on the Mississippi to the Indiana line. Ground was 
 broken for this road at Meredosia, on the east bank 
 of the Illinois River, late in August, 1837. The cer- 
 emony occupied the entire day, and the undivided 
 attention of all the inhabitants for many miles around. 
 
 The contractors having failed to gather a working 
 force by offers of twenty dollars a month and board, 
 James Harkness, who was employed as master car- 
 penter to build the bridges, went to Louisville to 
 get men. His offer of nineteen dollars a month and 
 board, with eight jiggers of whisky a day as a 
 clincher, soon secured a full force. Robert Reynolds 
 and Joseph Williams, expert whip-sawyers, were en- 
 gaged to saw the bridge timbers. 
 
 Harkness, as engineer, had also to lay out the 
 road from Meredosia. He got on swimmingly until 
 he ran his line straight through a cabin on the prairie 
 belonging to C. E. Lazenby, an Englishman. Mrs. 
 Lazenby, who was famed for her flow of language, 
 came out and berated poor Harkness until he was 
 glad to go back and change his line so as to leave the 
 cabin some distance to one side. 
 
192 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 Thereupon Mrs. Lazenby made peace with the rail- 
 road. Harkness taught her how to make egg-nog 
 and milk punch. She bought another cow to increase 
 the milk supply, and made enough money from the 
 patronage of the railroad builders to pay for a good 
 two-story frame house. 
 
 Strap-rails from the East were brought up the river 
 to Meredosia in the spring of 1838, and on May 9th 
 track-laying was begun. The track was of the 
 customary construction of the day. Longitudinal 
 wooden sleepers a foot square were laid on the ground. 
 
 On these ties were laid, and on the ties were wooden 
 rails or stringers three inches wide at the bottom, 
 tapering to two and one-quarter inches at the top. 
 On these the strap-iron rails, five-eighths inch thick, 
 two inches wide, and fifteen to twenty feet long, were 
 spiked with ordinary twenty-penny nails. 
 
 November 8, 1838, the first puff of a locomotive 
 was heard in Illinois. It was not much of a locomo- 
 tive. It had a single pair of drivers, two feet in diam- 
 eter, no cab, no pilot, no whistle, no bell, no spark 
 arrester, but it made a great hit. Crowds swarmed 
 into town clamoring to ride on the " thing," and 
 audibly wondering what made the thing's wheels go 
 round. 
 
 The " thing " hauled a select party, including the 
 oldest inhabitant, Daniel Waldo, to the end of the 
 eight miles of track and back again, to the unbounded 
 astonishment of the natives. The trip was somewhat 
 delayed owing to the fact that the engineer was so 
 overcome by the frequency of hospitable invitations 
 to take something in honor of the auspicious event 
 that he had to be carried to a hotel to recover. 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 193 
 
 During the winter this first locomotive did occa- 
 sional service in hauling ties and rails on four-wheeled 
 cars ten feet long. The local papers of July 1, 1839, 
 carried the first railroad advertisement printed in the 
 Mississippi Valley, announcing that three " pleasure 
 cars " had been received and that " extensive arrange- 
 ments will be made for the entertainment of pleasure 
 parties desirous of witnessing a railroad in actual 
 operation." 
 
 Two trips a day were made between Meredosia 
 and Morgan City, the distance of twelve miles being 
 covered in two hours. The train would stop any- 
 where for freight or passengers. There were fre- 
 quent races between the train and the stages, in which 
 the stages won as often as they were beaten. By win- 
 ter the track had been laid to Jacksonville. The 
 engineers planned to build the road north of town; 
 but the citizens were so eager to revel in the posses- 
 sion of a real railroad that in obedience to public 
 clamor the rails were laid right down the principal 
 street to the public square. 
 
 In the first snowstorm the " pleasure car " came to 
 grief. After struggling slowly along until within a 
 mile and a half of Morgan City, the train stuck fast, 
 and the passengers, to their intense disgust, had to 
 continue their journey on foot. For the rest of the 
 winter the movements of the train were extremely 
 uncertain. 
 
 Construction east of Jacksonville was pushed 
 throughout 1840 and 1841, and on February 15, 1842, 
 the first train entered Springfield. Three round 
 trips a week were made. The train was an " accom- 
 modation " train literally. The need of business was 
 
194 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 so urgent that the company could not afford to stand 
 on dignity or make conditions with its patrons. Any 
 one who had any freight to offer dumped it alongside 
 the track wherever it suited his convenience, and the 
 trainmen loaded it when they came along. Freight 
 for delivery was put off opposite the nearest house, 
 and the charges were collected at some future date. 
 At Jacksonville the merchants sent draymen, who 
 unloaded their goods and returned with the money 
 when convenient. 
 
 But no amount of coddling could make this pioneer 
 railroad fifty-seven miles long pay. The engineer 
 finally ran the locomotive off the track on the prairie 
 east of Jacksonville, burning out some flues and in- 
 flicting so much other damage that the discouraged 
 management let it lie there for nearly a year. 
 
 General Semple, of Alton, then purchased it, and 
 undertook to make a traction engine out of it by put- 
 ting tires two feet wide on the wheels. But he had 
 to take a yoke of oxen along to pull it out of the mud, 
 and after a journey of a score of miles across the 
 prairies it was once more abandoned, this time to lie 
 until it was broken up for old iron. 
 
 The broad tracks across the prairie left in this 
 journey were the cause of fearsome wonderment 
 among the natives, being taken for the trail of a mon- 
 ster serpent. Two venturesome settlers plucked up 
 courage to follow the trail with guns and dogs " to 
 see what the critter mout be like." 
 
 After the locomotive had been abandoned, mules 
 were used for motive power. One man had sole 
 charge of the train, which now hauled only freight, 
 when it could get any to haul. The roadbed was 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 195 
 
 allowed to go unrepaired, the strap-rails were stolen 
 by farmers for sled-shoes, and the whole outfit finally 
 fell into hopeless wreck, when it was sold as already 
 described. The other sections of the line were bought 
 in by Kidgley and his associates, James Dunlap and 
 ex-Governor Joel Mattison. 
 
 The track was repaired, new bridges built, U rails 
 laid, three locomotives and larger cars procured, the 
 track through the main street of Jacksonville taken 
 up, to the infinite relief of the good citizens who had 
 demanded that the railroad should pass their doors, 
 and in the fall of 1849 daily trains were operated from 
 Springfield to the river, making the trip of fifty- 
 seven miles in five hours. 
 
 Further improvements were made in 1850 and 
 1851, including the laying of T rails. In 1855 the 
 road was finished to the Indiana line, where it was 
 joined to the track building west from Toledo by the 
 Toledo and Illinois River Railroad Company in 
 Ohio, and the Lake Erie, Wabash and St. Louis in 
 Indiana. The companies were subsequently merged 
 and later became the Wabash. 
 
 Another Illinois road which was hatched about the 
 same period as the Wabash, and ultimately devel- 
 oped into a great system, was what is now known as 
 the Illinois Central. The road was incorporated 
 January 18, 1836, to be built with State aid and under 
 State supervision. 
 
 But the company became insolvent without having 
 accomplished anything, its affairs were wound up, 
 and on March 6, 1843, the Great Western Railway 
 Company was incorporated to build the Central road. 
 This charter was repealed March 3, 1845, and re- 
 
196 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 newed February 10, 1849, but still no actual progress 
 was made. 
 
 In December, 1849, Stephen A. Douglas intro- 
 duced a bill for a land grant which became a law 
 in January, 1850. Under the terms of the law 
 2,595,000 acres of land in Illinois, Mississippi, and 
 Alabama were granted to aid in building a railroad 
 from Chicago to Mobile. This was not the first land 
 given by the National Government to aid in building 
 a railroad, but it was one of the most important 
 grants. 
 
 The land was given to the State, and the Great 
 Western Company was induced to surrender its char- 
 ter. January 15, 1851, Governor A. C. French sent 
 a communication to the legislature transmitting an 
 offer from Eastern capitalists to take the land grant 
 and build the road by July 4, 1854. An act incorpo- 
 rating the Illinois Central Railroad accordingly be- 
 came a law on February 10. 
 
 Never before had so vast a work as the construction 
 of seven hundred miles of railroad been undertaken 
 by one company. The Illinois papers hoped it could 
 be done, but they were pretty sure it never would be. 
 However, on March 22, 1851, the board of directors, 
 at a meeting held in New York, chose Roswell B. 
 Mason, of Bridgeport, as chief engineer, and told him 
 to see what he could do about it. 
 
 The route was separated into divisions, a surveying 
 party was assigned to each, and the entire line was 
 located and under construction by fall. For one 
 hundred and thirty miles south of Chicago the coun- 
 try was unbroken wilderness in which large herds of 
 deer roamed. Indeed, there were not a dozen towns 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 197 
 
 along the route of sufficient importance to be desig- 
 nated on the maps. 
 
 The first construction work done was between 
 Chicago and Calumet, to enable the Michigan Cen- 
 tral to enter Chicago. The main line between Cairo 
 and La Salle, 301 miles, was completed January 8, 
 1855. Large numbers of slaves in Kentucky 
 promptly showed their appreciation of the advan- 
 tages of the new railroad by escaping over it. 
 
 The Galena branch, from La Salle to Dunleath, 
 146 miles, was finished June 12, 1855, and the branch 
 from Chicago to the junction with the main line, 249 
 miles, September 21, 1856. Next day Chief Engi- 
 neer Mason sent a despatch to the board of directors 
 announcing that his task of building 705 miles of 
 railroad was finished. Then he resigned. Not long 
 afterward he was elected mayor of Chicago. 
 
 One year later the company was obliged to assign. 
 Richard Cobden, the famous British statesman, who 
 had almost his entire fortune invested in the road, 
 came over, and by his advice helped the board of 
 directors to get the company on its feet again. By 
 October 31, 1882, the seven per cent of the gross re- 
 ceipts which under the law had to be paid to the State, 
 had yielded $9,087,835, or more than enough to pay 
 for all the public institutions in the State. This rich 
 and ever-increasing source of income is permanent, 
 for the State constitution provides that the law can 
 never be repealed. In the long run Illinois ventures 
 in railroad hatching turned out to be very profitable. 
 
 Chicago's first railroad was the Galena and Chi- 
 cago Union, now part of the Chicago and North- 
 western system, which was chartered January 16, 
 
198 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 1836, by Ebenezer and T. W. Smith, real estate men, 
 who wanted something to boom their holdings. It 
 was then an open question whether Galena was not 
 destined to become a greater city than Chicago. 
 
 James Seymour began the survey, February 19, 
 
 1837, at the foot of Dearborn Street, and managed 
 to run a line due west ten miles to the Desplaines 
 River, by wading waist-deep in cold water part of 
 the way. Next year some piles were driven along 
 Madison Street and stringers placed upon them. 
 But it was a difficult matter to build a railroad with- 
 out money, and as no one in that new country had 
 any money worth mentioning, the project languished 
 for years. Finally, in 1845, a convention made up 
 of delegates from all the counties through which the 
 proposed railroad was to run was held at Rockford. 
 A further struggle of nearly two years followed be- 
 fore the charter could be amended and the company 
 reorganized, when it was found that a New Yorker 
 named Townsend and a Springfield man named 
 Mather had contrived to buy up practically all the 
 stock at one cent on the dollar, but were willing to 
 part with it if they w T ere suitably rewarded for their 
 trouble. The company was finally reorganized in 
 1847 with William B. Ogden, another real estate 
 dealer, as president. The real survey was begun in 
 September of that year by Richard P. Morgan, late 
 of the Hudson River Railroad, as engineer-in-charge 
 at the munificent salary of $2.50 a day. 
 
 In due time Mr. Morgan reported to the directors 
 that the distance from Chicago to Galena by the 
 route he had selected was 182 miles, and that the road 
 would cost $2,648,727, or $14,553 a mile. The engi- 
 
II 
 
 2 o 
 
 o 
 
 'H * 
 
 -M C 
 
 H S 
 
 ee H 
 
 "S -2 
 
 ^ to 
 
 H g I 
 
 ^ * *- 
 2 - 
 
 &H ^ -! 
 
 II 
 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 199 
 
 neer gave it as his opinion that the probable earnings 
 for the first year after the road was completed would 
 be about $393,000. He thought 50,000 passengers 
 at an average fare of $3 each would equal all of the 
 travel from every source, as there were but 200,000 
 people in all the country to be traversed, or who could 
 use the road when built. Still, even with this modest 
 traffic, the engineer was of the opinion that the net 
 earnings would pay dividends of 8 per cent. 
 
 The survey progressed so rapidly that the first 
 seven miles west of Chicago were put under contract 
 in the fall of 1847. Actual grading, however, was 
 not begun until June, 1848, near what is now the cor- 
 ner of Kinzie and Halstead Streets, then outside the 
 city limits. The first rails laid were the old strap- 
 iron affairs, which were purchased solely because the 
 Eastern roads were taking them up to make room 
 for the more modern T rails, and hence would be glad 
 to sell their strap-rails very cheap. Even these sec- 
 ond-hand strap-rails cost $50 a ton on board the boat 
 at Buffalo. They were bought on credit and were to 
 be paid for in two and a half years. 
 
 The first locomotive, the " Pioneer," was also a 
 second-hand bargain, bought on credit from the Buf- 
 falo and Attica Railroad, which was furnishing the 
 strap-rails. Being the first locomotive that ever ran 
 west of Chicago, the Pioneer deserves more than pass- 
 ing mention. It was built by M. W. Baldwin, the 
 Philadelphia watchmaker whom Fate turned from his 
 chosen calling to found the world's greatest locomo- 
 tive works. It had cylinders ten by eighteen inches, 
 a single pair of driving wheels four and a half feet in 
 diameter, and weighed ten tons. After long service it 
 
00 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 was retired. It was exhibited at the World's Colum- 
 bian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 in charge of John 
 Ebbert, its first engineer, who ran it for many years, 
 and was also exhibited at the Louisiana Purchase 
 Exposition at St. Louis in 1904. It can now be seen 
 at the Field Museum in Chicago. The Pioneer ar- 
 rived at Chicago on the brig Buffalo October 10, 
 1848, and was unloaded next day, which was Sunday. 
 October 31 a hundred persons, including the stock- 
 holders and newspaper men, were invited to make a 
 trip over the entire system of ten miles. All the com- 
 pany's rolling-stock, consisting of one locomotive and 
 six box cars, was turned out in honor of the great 
 event. 
 
 On the return trip a load of wheat was transferred 
 from a farmer's wagon to one of the cars, and hauled 
 in triumph back to town. This was the first ship- 
 ment of wheat by rail into Chicago. The event made 
 a great sensation. The farmers were eager to expe- 
 rience the novelty of shipping wheat by rail, and the 
 company was quick to take advantage of the situ- 
 ation. 
 
 One week later the city was electrified by the an- 
 nouncement that as much as thirty loads of wheat 
 were awaiting purchasers at the Desplaines Station. 
 To boom the passenger traffic the railroad manage- 
 ment announced that wheat buyers would have to go 
 to Desplaines instead of awaiting the arrival of grain 
 at the foot of Randolph Street Bridge. 
 
 The first railroad depot in Chicago was a one-story 
 wooden affair built by the Chicago and Galena Union 
 Railroad, near the junction of the present Canal and 
 Kinzie Streets, in the fall of 1848. In the following 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 201 
 
 year the building was enlarged and a portion of it was 
 set aside for freight, while the east end was used for 
 passengers. A second story, surmounted by an ob- 
 servatory, was added for the general offices. Here 
 President John B. Turner and his associates planned 
 the extension of the road and controlled its destinies. 
 President Turner occasionally left his more pressing 
 duties to ascend to the observatory, where with an 
 old-fashioned marine telescope he swept the open 
 prairies that extended from his office to the horizon 
 watching for the first signs of smoke from his ap- 
 proaching trains. On clear days the smoke could be 
 seen when the trains were six miles distant. The use 
 of the telegraph was not yet dreamed of on any West- 
 ern road. 
 
 In August, 1853, the road, for the construction 
 of which the president and directors had had to bor- 
 row money on their individual credit, paid a dividend 
 of eleven per cent, and six months later another of 
 ten. September 4, 1853, the road was opened for 
 traffic to Freeport, 131 miles from Chicago. Two 
 passenger and three freight trains each way daily 
 were required to care for the traffic. 
 
 This heavy traffic necessitated something better 
 than a marine telescope and time card rules for hand- 
 ling it, so the company in 1854 installed a telegraph 
 line and used it for the operation of its trains. This 
 was the first use of the telegraph for the movement 
 of trains in the West. In the same year the com- 
 pany bought two locomotives adapted to burning soft 
 coal with the stipulation that they were not to be paid 
 for unless they were " successful with Illinois soft 
 coal." Prior to this experiment all Western loco- 
 
WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 motives burned wood exclusively at an average cost 
 of $2.13 a cord. 
 
 The prosperity of the pioneer line was of short 
 duration. The great panic of 1857 not only put a 
 stop to railroad building, but it also cut off dividends 
 and very seriously crippled all Western roads. The 
 Galena and Chicago Union was obliged to reduce its 
 working force from 1,904 in August, 1857, to 722 in 
 January, 1858. The same panic put a summary end 
 to work on the Chicago, St. Paul and Fond du Lac 
 Railroad, organized to build to St. Paul and the cop- 
 per regions on the shores of Lake Superior, with the 
 result that the company was absorbed by the Chicago 
 and Northwestern Railroad Company, organized 
 June 6, 1859. Although this company was so des- 
 perately poor that for some time it could not pay in- 
 terest on its bonds, and the officers had to make up 
 part of the pay-rolls out of their own pockets, it con- 
 trived to absorb the 545 miles of owned and leased 
 lines of the Galena and Chicago Union in 1864, when 
 it owned but 350 miles of its own. The consolidation 
 was a nine days' wonder from the Atlantic to the 
 Missouri River. 
 
 The period of active railroad construction in the 
 Central West began in 1851. First of all the rail- 
 road contractors to attract the world's attention by 
 the miracles they wrought in rapid construction were 
 Sheffield and Farnam, who took the contract to build 
 the Chicago and Rock Island, now a part of the Chi- 
 cago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway. 
 
 Beginning at Chicago, April 10, 1852, the road 
 was opened to Rock Island, 181 miles, February 22, 
 1854. The road, the first from the Great Lakes to 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 203 
 
 the Mississippi, was turned over to the company July 
 10, 1854, a year and a half before the date specified in 
 the contract. 
 
 The internal improvement mania seems to have 
 broken out spontaneously all over the West about the 
 same time. While the people of Illinois were com- 
 mitting themselves to extravagant and impracticable 
 plans for railroads and canals, Indiana, which was 
 no better able to pay the bills than her neighbors, 
 planned a ten-million-dollar system of railroads. 
 
 In 1833, when the Territory of Michigan had a 
 population of only thirty-five thousand, the Erie and 
 Kalamazoo Railroad, the first fragment of which 
 ultimately became a part of the Lake Shore system, 
 was chartered to build from Toledo to the head- 
 waters of the Kalamazoo River. At the same time 
 the Detroit and St. Joseph Railroad, which in the 
 process of evolution became a part of the Michigan 
 Central, another Vanderbilt line, was also chartered 
 to build from Detroit to St. Joseph on Lake Mich- 
 igan. Before these two roads entered upon the 
 placid prosperity of a common management they 
 were pitted against each other in a long and spectac- 
 ular contest for supremacy. 
 
 Not having capital or the means of obtaining it, 
 the Detroit and St. Joseph could not be completed. 
 In 1836 the State government determined to take 
 over the property, finish it, and name it the Central 
 Railroad. By an act approved March 24, 1837, the 
 internal improvement program was expanded to in- 
 clude three railroads across the southern end of the 
 southern peninsula, where all the scanty population 
 of the State was gathered. The law authorized a 
 
204 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 loan of five million dollars to finance the undertaking. 
 Governor S. T. Mason and Theodore Romeyn were 
 appointed a committee to negotiate the loan. Mason 
 was honest, but a poor business man. The sequel 
 seems to indicate that Romeyn, also, was no match 
 for Wall Street financiers. 
 
 After considerable difficulty the commissioners 
 sold the bonds to the Morris Canal and Banking 
 Company, of New Jersey, on most unfavorable 
 terms. The Banking Company paid five hundred 
 thousand dollars in its own paper on account, and, 
 after taking the precaution to sell the Michigan bonds 
 in Europe, failed. The State of Michigan was thus 
 saddled with a debt of five million dollars, for which 
 it had received no value whatever. The affair came 
 near bankrupting the new State, and earned for it the 
 odium of a repudiator; for the taxpayers were not 
 willing to redeem bonds for which they had never 
 received an equivalent. 
 
 After this disastrous experience the State was not 
 in a position to build railroads. Nothing whatever 
 was done on the northern line. In the course of eight 
 years the Central was completed to Kalamazoo. The 
 Southern road, now a part of the Lake Shore system, 
 was finished to Hillsdale, sixty-seven miles from 
 Monroe, in October, 1843, at a cost of one million 
 four hundred thousand dollars. It was the usual 
 flimsy wooden structure with strap-rails. The State 
 charged twelve cents a bushel to haul wheat from 
 Hillsdale to Monroe in cars that held a hundred 
 bushels, provided the grain was in bags. The ware- 
 housemen got three cents a bushel for storing and 
 shipping, one cent for buying, and another three 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 205 
 
 cents for storing at Monroe, making a total of nine- 
 teen cents for moving the grain from the farmer's 
 wagon at Hillsdale to the vessel at Monroe, sixty- 
 seven miles away. 
 
 In 1845, James F. Joy, a young lawyer of Detroit, 
 in the absence of clients, devoted a portion of his 
 superabundant leisure to writing letters to the local 
 papers advocating the sale of the State railroads to 
 private corporations. A paper containing one of 
 these letters by the merest chance fell into the hands 
 of John W. Brooks, superintendent of the Syracuse 
 and Rochester Railroad. Brooks was only twenty- 
 seven, and he was burning to get into something big; 
 so he hurried off to Detroit, where he and young Joy 
 quickly agreed to pool their capital of nothing apiece 
 and buy one of the State railroads. Joy was to draw 
 up the charter and inveigle the legislature into selling 
 out, while Brooks went to Boston to try to raise some 
 capital with which to put their prospective purchase 
 in operating condition. 
 
 Local jealousies made so much trouble for Joy that 
 he was barely able to squeeze his measure through the 
 legislature on the last day of the session. But the 
 State was bankrupt and simply had to get rid of the 
 railroads, even if no cash was received for them. 
 And of course no one would think of disbursing real 
 money for railroads when they could be paid for in 
 State bonds obtainable at almost any price from four- 
 teen cents on the dollar up, but which the State was 
 obliged to accept at par. The Central road was sold 
 to Brooks and Joy for two million dollars. The 
 Southern road went to E. C. Litchfield, of Detroit, 
 and John Stryker, of Rome, N. Y., for five hundred 
 
206 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 thousand dollars, payable in ten years on the instal- 
 ment plan. 
 
 Getting capitalists to invest was more difficult than 
 overcoming local prejudices in Michigan; but at last 
 the Central was organized with John M. Forbes, a 
 New York tea merchant, who had made a fortune 
 in Hong Kong, as president. Then Brooks returned 
 to Michigan as general superintendent, and in two 
 years had the line completed and in operation to New 
 Buffalo, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, from 
 whence steamers plied to Chicago, then a town of ten 
 thousand inhabitants, situated in a quagmire. 
 
 As the rails approached New Buffalo it dawned 
 upon Joy and Brooks that the water route would 
 never do, but that they would have to lay their rails 
 into Chicago. The only difficulty was that they 
 could get no charter to build through Indiana. A 
 railroad had been chartered by the Indiana legisla- 
 ture in 1835 to build from La Porte to Michigan 
 City. This project for a railroad twelve miles long 
 was designated as the " Atlantic and Pacific Rail- 
 road Company " when it was brought before the leg- 
 islature ; but this grandiloquent title aroused so much 
 ridicule that its sponsor contracted it to the " Buffalo 
 and Mississippi." As he would not yield another 
 mile, the road was finally incorporated under that 
 title. 
 
 A beginning was made at La Porte June 14, 1837, 
 with the customary celebration, and a mile of the road 
 was partly graded. The panic and the epidemic of 
 1838 killed the Buffalo and Mississippi so dead that 
 for ten years even the formality of an annual election 
 was not observed. In October, 1847, W. B. Ogden, 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 207 
 
 who, in default of a successor, still regarded himself 
 as president, called a meeting of stockholders to re- 
 vive the project. One man, the holder of two shares, 
 responded to the call. Two years later, when there 
 were indications that the franchise was about to be- 
 come valuable, the company was at last reorganized 
 under the name of the Northern Indiana Railroad. 
 
 Meanwhile Joy had arranged in 1848 to buy the 
 charter for fifty thousand dollars. Brooks was de- 
 lighted. He wrote a letter to Joy in which he for- 
 mally commended the purchase and ventured the ex- 
 travagant prediction that in twenty years Chicago 
 would have two hundred thousand inhabitants. 
 
 Armed with this letter, Joy went to New York to 
 secure the ratification of his great bargain. Every- 
 thing went off beautifully until the directors read 
 Brooks's prediction about the two hundred thousand 
 inhabitants in Chicago in 1868. In great disgust 
 they declared that any man who could make such pre- 
 posterous prophecies was so obviously lacking in com- 
 mon sense that they would have nothing to do with 
 anything he proposed. The charter deal was re- 
 pudiated. 
 
 The Southern road, which up to that time had been 
 in a bad way, and could have been bought cheap by 
 the Central, snapped up the charter which the Cen- 
 tral's board of directors had rejected as worthless, 
 and began laying track from White Pigeon through 
 Elkhart toward Chicago. 
 
 To retrieve this lost opportunity Joy hurried to 
 Indianapolis to try to obtain a charter from the leg- 
 islature. The Southern road, which wanted to mo- 
 nopolize the Chicago business, blocked his efforts. 
 
208 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 He retaliated by introducing a bill in the Michigan 
 legislature to forfeit the Southern's charter because 
 its terms had not been fulfilled. The Southern 
 called on the northern Indiana towns for help, and 
 engaged Schuyler Coif ax, afterwards vice-president 
 of the United States, to manage its campaign. Then 
 ensued one of the hottest fights in the history of rail- 
 road lobbying. It ended in an agreement that both 
 sides should leave Indianapolis. 
 
 Joy observed the treaty faithfully, but found time 
 before leaving to slyly lay the wires for amending 
 the charter of a north and south line in Indiana to 
 enable the company to build branches from points on 
 the main line before the main line itself was com- 
 pleted. For a suitable consideration the Indiana 
 company was to build a " branch " that would enable 
 the Michigan Central to cross the State and then 
 lease the " branch " in perpetuity to the latter road. 
 Joy again went to New York with a charter that 
 would open the way to Chicago, but the directors re- 
 fused to believe it would answer the purpose until 
 Judge Benjamin R. Curtis, of Massachusetts, who, 
 as justice of the United States Supreme Court, after- 
 ward wrote the dissenting opinion in the famous 
 Dred Scott case, assured them that it was all right. 
 Then the directors paid half a million dollars for a 
 privilege that Joy had tried a short time before to get 
 them to buy for one-tenth of that sum. 
 
 Joy then went to Illinois to get a charter that 
 would enable the Central to build from the Indiana 
 line to Chicago. He employed Abraham Lincoln, a 
 rising lawyer of Springfield, to get the measure 
 through the legislature; but Lincoln was not a good 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 209 
 
 corporation lobbyist, and he failed. The difficulty 
 was finally solved after a sharp struggle by divert- 
 ing the route of the Illinois Central to the Indiana 
 line so the Michigan Central could get into Chicago 
 over it. 
 
 Under its new management the Southern road had 
 been making haste slowly. Upon taking possession 
 in 1846 the first act of the new board of directors was 
 to decide that no more credit should be allowed for 
 freight charges or passage, which would seem to indi- 
 cate that the former management had been more 
 easy-going than is usual at the present time. At the 
 same meeting the directors elected two conductors, or 
 " captains of trains," at salaries of forty dollars a 
 month, thus manifesting an attention to detail which 
 is not kept up under the present management. Little 
 further was done until August 1, 1849, when a per- 
 petual lease of the Erie and Kalamazoo was secured. 
 This road had had a stormy and uncertain existence, 
 managed part of the time by a commission repre- 
 senting the board of directors and part of the time 
 by a receiver appointed by the court, and still an- 
 other part of the time by both together, until it was 
 finally sold under accumulated judgments to Wash- 
 ington Hunt, of Lockport, N. Y., and George Bliss, 
 of Massachusetts, who seized the first opportunity to 
 get rid of it. 
 
 When the Southern secured control of the North- 
 ern Indiana a great construction race with the Cen- 
 tral ensued. It was won by the Southern, which ran 
 its first train into Chicago February 20, 1852. The 
 first train over the Central did not reach Chicago until 
 May 21 of the same year. Two years later it was 
 
210 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 possible to make the journey from New York to Chi- 
 cago in thirty-six hours, or exactly the time now re- 
 quired for the round trip by the fastest trains. 
 
 While straining every nerve to get into Chicago, 
 the Central underwent a singular experience in Mich- 
 igan, an inheritance resulting from State manage- 
 ment, that for a time threatened disaster. 
 
 Under political management the railroad officials 
 were especially considerate of the sensibilities of the 
 voter, just as the State railroad management in Penn- 
 sylvania had been. If a hog or a cow chanced to 
 be killed by a train on the State lines, settlement was 
 promptly made for about three times the value of the 
 animal. The farmers along the road were not slow 
 to perceive the advantages of the home market which 
 Providence had thus brought to their doors. They 
 began feeding their old, decrepit, and diseased stock 
 on the railroad track, where it would stand a good 
 chance to meet an untimely but profitable fate. 
 
 The business acumen of the farmers was robbed 
 of its just return to some extent by the caution of the 
 railroad men. In those days of strap-rails and light 
 equipment the little locomotives and cars were pretty 
 certain to fare badly in any encounter with a cow or 
 even with a hog. So while the engineers may not 
 have had any compunctions about killing the trouble- 
 some stock, they had a wholesome regard for their 
 own safety, which prevented them from taking un- 
 necessary chances. In spite of all precautions, 
 though, a good deal of stock was killed. 
 
 When T rails and larger engines were introduced 
 under private management, the slaughter of stock, 
 long accustomed to yarding on the track, was appall- 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 211 
 
 ing. At first the company attempted to pay a fair 
 valuation for stock killed by its trains; but upon in- 
 vestigating the causes of such extraordinary mor- 
 tality, fenced the track and announced that thereafter 
 only one-half the value of any animal killed while 
 trespassing upon the company's property would be 
 paid. 
 
 The farmers showed their resentment of this un- 
 generous attitude of the railroad company by start- 
 ing a systematic campaign of petty annoyances which 
 in the aggregate became serious. Stations and all 
 other accessible property were damaged, journal 
 boxes were filled with sand so they would heat and 
 delay trains, switches were tampered with, and the 
 rails were frequently greased for long distances. This 
 always brought trains to a standstill until the train- 
 men got off and sanded the greased rails. 
 
 This soon became too tame for the farmers, who 
 began placing obstructions on the track. Matters 
 reached such a pass that a hand-car had to be sent out 
 just ahead of every train to remove ties and logs and 
 old strap-rails placed on the track by would-be 
 wreckers. If the hand-car got too far in the lead the 
 lurking miscreants would dodge in behind it and 
 place fresh obstructions on the track before the train 
 came along. 
 
 Next, trains were stoned as they passed through 
 the woods at night, and finally volleys were fired at 
 them repeatedly. It became a matter of common 
 report that the enemies of the road had sworn to kill 
 some passengers. Naturally enough, under such cir- 
 cumstances, passenger traffic ceased almost entirely. 
 Even some of the engine and train men quit the road 
 
WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 rather than take further risks of being shot from 
 ambush or killed in a wreck. 
 
 With ruin staring it in the face unless this baseless 
 persecution could be stopped, the railroad company 
 engaged a corps of amateur detectives in October, 
 
 1850, to secure evidence against the ringleaders. It 
 did not take long for the detectives to ascertain that 
 the chief trouble makers were Abel F. Fitch, a lead- 
 ing citizen of Michigan Centre, who cherished a 
 grudge against the railroad company because he had 
 been unsuccessful in getting a contract, and Amos 
 Filley, the keeper of a tough saloon. These two had 
 taken advantage of the hostility of the farmers to 
 square accounts with the railroad for their own griev- 
 ances. 
 
 The detectives ingratiated themselves into the con- 
 fidence of the conspirators so completely that one of 
 them was actually selected to set fire to the depot at 
 Niles. He carried out this duty conscientiously after 
 he had secretly notified the company to have men 
 handy to put out the fire. By the end of March, 
 
 1851, the detectives announced that they had all the 
 evidence needed for conviction of the chief conspira- 
 tors. 
 
 A special train carrying some seventy-five detect- 
 ives and deputy sheriffs was sent to Michigan Centre 
 on the night of April 10, 1851. Divided into squads, 
 this large force made a swift and stealthy round-up 
 of the town and its vicinity. The raid was a com- 
 plete success. One after another thirty-six prisoners 
 were brought in, the majority of whom made damag- 
 ing admissions to save themselves under the impres- 
 sion that full confessions had already been made by 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 213 
 
 the leaders. On returning to Detroit, Henry Gay, 
 a member of the gang who had burned the new freight 
 depot at that point five months before, was arrested. 
 
 This remarkable raid and the ensuing trial, which 
 lasted from the first of May to the end of September, 
 created a tremendous sensation throughout the State. 
 Although W. H. Seward, ex-Governor of New York, 
 was engaged to lead the defense, twelve of the gang 
 were convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary, 
 from which they were soon pardoned, while two others 
 died in jail before the trial was ended. 
 
 In April, 1855, the Michigan Southern and North- 
 ern Indiana were consolidated. Soon after a divi- 
 dend of ten per cent was declared, and for a time 
 the company was very prosperous and aggressive, 
 building branches and improving equipment. But 
 there was such a thing as being too enterprising, as 
 the Southern found out when the crash of 1857 
 caught it with a heavy floating debt. Then its for- 
 tunes underwent an eclipse so total that the board of 
 directors had to borrow chairs to hold a meeting, the 
 sheriff having seized every stick of furniture for 
 debts. 
 
 Meanwhile the other component parts of the pres- 
 ent Lake Shore system had come into existence and 
 were slowly gravitating toward the inevitable consol- 
 idation. Nehemiah Allen, a Quaker, was the first to 
 propose a railroad along the shore of Lake Erie. But 
 the idea of a railroad presuming to compete with the 
 large, luxurious, and swift steamers plying between 
 Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit seemed so prepos- 
 terous that he was regarded as a crank* No move 
 was made to build a road east of Cleveland until July 
 
214 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 4, 1849, when books were opened for subscriptions 
 for the stock of the Painesville, Ashtabula and Gen- 
 eva Railroad, which was opened for traffic November 
 20, 1852. In spite of all predictions that a railroad 
 could never compete with the lake, this road paid 
 dividends of five to ten per cent every six months for 
 the next twenty years. A small stock investment re- 
 luctantly made by the city of Cleveland formed the 
 principal part of that city's famous sinking fund. 
 
 The building of this road completed a rail route to 
 Buffalo one hundred and eighty-three miles to the 
 east ; but right in the middle was the Erie and North- 
 east Railroad of six-foot gauge, twenty miles long. 
 This necessitated two transfers of passengers and 
 freight at Erie and at State Line, the termini of the 
 broad-gauge road. This was an intolerable condi- 
 tion of affairs, yet business was actually done that 
 way for a year. As traffic increased the double 
 transfer grew too burdensome to be endured; so on 
 November 16, 1853, a contract was signed to change 
 this twenty miles of track to standard gauge, so that 
 trains could be run through between Cleveland and 
 Buffalo. 
 
 This seemed to be the logical, if not the inevitable, 
 thing to do ; but, strangely enough, the people of Erie 
 resented this as an invasion of their personal and 
 private rights, which they determined to resist. They 
 announced that they would prevent the change of 
 gauge at all costs. The result was an episode which 
 was certainly unique. 
 
 In 1846 the Erie and Northeast Railroad was or- 
 ganized in Erie to build a railroad to the New 
 York State line, where connection was to be 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 215 
 
 made with the lines of two companies organ- 
 ized in New York State: the Dunkirk and State 
 Line, which proposed to build from Dunkirk, which 
 was to be the terminus of the Erie, to the State line, 
 and the Buffalo and State Line, which was to build 
 from Buffalo, the western terminus of the series of 
 little roads forming a route across New York, to the 
 State line. As the Erie was a broad-gauge road, the 
 people of Erie hoped to get a through route to New 
 York City by building their road of the same gauge. 
 But as it would obviously be unprofitable to build 
 parallel competing lines, the two New York compa- 
 nies got together and agreed to build but one line, 
 which was to be of standard gauge. 
 
 The transfer of baggage, mail, express, freight, 
 and passengers necessitated by the different gauges 
 of the Erie and Northeast and its connections was 
 extremely profitable to the hotels, omnibuses, and 
 draymen of Erie. They feared if through trains 
 were run their town would become a " Helmit by the 
 Wayside," as the local orators expressed it. At- 
 tempts to intimidate the railroad by revoking its right 
 to lay tracks through the streets or to cajole it by 
 proffers of municipal assistance in laying a track to 
 the dock proving equally unavailing, Mayor Alfred 
 King called a public meeting on July 19, 1853, to 
 devise means to prevent the change of gauge which 
 had been determined upon by the Erie and Northeast 
 management on the preceding day. The whole pop- 
 ulation of the town in response to the call assembled 
 in the park, where excited orators delivered inflam- 
 matory harangues urging the people to resort to arms 
 if necessary to prevent the railroad company from 
 
216 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 adapting its property to the requirements of its rap- 
 idly growing traffic. 
 
 Immediately afterward the town council met and 
 passed an ordinance forbidding the company to 
 change the gauge of its tracks under severe penalties. 
 A continuous series of ordinances and resolutions by 
 the town council and daily meetings at which the 
 speeches grew more and more incendiary, wrought the 
 town into a frenzy. 
 
 Accordingly when Erie was alarmed early on the 
 morning of December 7, 1853, by the violent ringing 
 of the courthouse bell, practically every able-bodied 
 man in the place rushed to the courthouse square. 
 Upon learning that a force was actually at work 
 changing the gauge, a procession led by Mayor King 
 marched to the railroad, drove away the construction 
 gang with a shower of stones and rotten eggs, and 
 tore up the track. A similar mob at Harbor Creek, 
 seven miles east, tore up the track at that point. 
 Guards were posted to prevent the track from being 
 relaid. 
 
 This made a gap of seven miles, across which all 
 passengers and baggage had to be transferred 
 through deep snow in bitterly cold weather. This 
 seven-mile march came to be known as " Crossing the 
 Isthmus." Many passengers had feet, hands, and 
 faces frostbitten in crossing the Isthmus. Women 
 and children in particular suffered severely. 
 
 Freight traffic was almost entirely suspended. The 
 result of all these unnecessary hardships was to arouse 
 the bitter hostility of the traveling public and ship- 
 pers. Erie soon found herself without a friend. 
 Loud appeals were made by the people of other sec- 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 217 
 
 tions to the Federal Government to put an end to 
 the outlawry at Erie and thus raise the embargo on 
 commerce, while the railroad company sought re- 
 dress in the courts. 
 
 When a United States marshal attempted to serve 
 an injunction on the leaders of the mob, the document 
 was trampled under foot in token of contempt of the 
 courts, and the marshal and his deputies were impris- 
 oned. Five separate attempts by the railroad com- 
 pany to relay its tracks and resume traffic were 
 thwarted by the mob, which came to be known as 
 the " Rippers " in recognition of its prowess in rip- 
 ping up track. The small minority who believed the 
 railroad had a right to manage its own affairs in its 
 own way were derisively dubbed " Shanghais." 
 
 On one occasion the Rippers attempted to capture 
 a train, but were thwarted by the quick-witted engi- 
 neer, who began backing toward the New York line. 
 The Rippers were so disconcerted by this unexpected 
 move that they all tumbled off into the snowdrifts 
 the best way they could, with the exception of Old 
 Bill Cooper, their leader. Old Bill, being afraid to 
 jump, was taken captive by the trainmen, who took 
 him some distance beyond the State line, then dele- 
 gated the most muscular one of their number to lock 
 him every step of the way back into Pennsylvania. 
 
 With a total lack of humor, Major Fitch, the poet 
 laureate of the Rippers, made the kicking of Old Bill 
 Cooper the subject of a stirring ballad, which did not 
 a little to keep the martial spirit of the Rippers alive. 
 
 Finally Governor Bigler, of Pennsylvania, went to 
 Erie and persuaded the people to permit the railroad 
 company to relay its tracks and resume traffic on 
 
218 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 February 1, 1854, when the first train ran through 
 from Buffalo to Cleveland. This truce, however, did 
 not end the strange Erie war. An incredible bitter- 
 ness and animosity had been engendered, which de- 
 moralized business, disrupted churches, and led to 
 frequent assaults. At all hours of the day and night 
 the courthouse bell called the citizens together to 
 listen to harangues which grew ever more incendiary. 
 
 Matters finally reached such a pass that martial 
 law was required to restore order. Discussion of the 
 railroad question was forbidden under severe penal- 
 ties, and special constables w r ere appointed to enforce 
 this ordinance. More than a year after traffic was 
 resumed a mob summoned by the courthouse bell 
 tore up the railroad track and burned the bridges in 
 Erie. After that the railroad was disturbed no more, 
 but the ill-feeling engendered by the episode only 
 died out with the generation involved in it. 
 
 After the war was ended the career of the Erie and 
 Northeast \vas prosaic enough. It was consolidated 
 with the Buffalo and State Line to form the Buffalo 
 and Erie on May 15, 1867, and on June 22, 1869, by 
 another consolidation with the Cleveland, Painesville 
 and Ashtabula, the Cleveland and Toledo, and the 
 Michigan Southern, and Northern Indiana, each of 
 the companies being a consolidation of two smaller 
 roads, became a part of the Lake Shore and Michigan 
 Southern. 
 
 Ohio was in an even greater hurry than Illinois to 
 acquire a railroad system. The people of Sandusky 
 held a meeting in 1825 to plan a railroad to Dayton. 
 This was a year before a charter was issued to the 
 Mohawk and Hudson, the first link in the chain that 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 219 
 
 afterward became the New York Central. But the 
 scattered settlers in the woods had not then learned 
 the potency of the legislative fiat in building rail- 
 roads, and as the Sandusky crowd had no money, 
 nothing came of the scheme. 
 
 The agitation was kept up, however, until it re- 
 sulted in the most remarkable feat in railroad build- 
 ing ever recorded. On the evening of April 25, 1836, 
 seven men, who by their united efforts could not have 
 raised twenty-five thousand dollars, met in the Man- 
 sion House, at Painesville, O., and organized the 
 Ohio Railroad Company, to build a line from Penn- 
 sylvania across the northern tier of Ohio counties to 
 Manhattan, then a rival of Toledo, now r a part of it. 
 
 By means of the wonderful " plunder law " of 
 Ohio, which obliged the State to furnish one-third of 
 the capital of railroad companies when the stockhold- 
 ers had furnished the other two-thirds, these seven 
 men, by simply writing their names as subscribers for 
 six hundred thousand dollars' worth of stock, ob- 
 tained two hundred and nineteen thousand dollars in 
 State bonds, which they sold, thus obtaining the only 
 capital they had. 
 
 Having decided to build their railroad on piles in- 
 stead of grading a roadbed, they were ready for the 
 services of a chief engineer. Cyrus Williams pre- 
 sented himself as a ready-made engineer, and was 
 given the job. Williams had been a barn-builder in 
 central New York until he was crippled by a glancing 
 blow from his adze. 
 
 Then he turned shoemaker until he was cured of 
 his lameness through the skill of an Indian friend and 
 the marvelous efficacy of " Seneca Oil," better known 
 
220 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 now as plain petroleum, when he again became a barn- 
 builder, and by easy gradations developed into a 
 house-builder, and finally a bridge-builder. As the 
 Ohio Railroad was to be one continuous bridge, he 
 was evidently the man for the place. 
 
 The construction outfit was the most wonderful 
 traveling railroad circus ever seen. First came a 
 curious framework with two pile-drivers at the front 
 end. Following this was a portable sawmill on the 
 track, with the engine coupled direct to the saw shaft. 
 
 This mill furnished the timbers for the structure 
 as they were needed. Back of the sawmill, also on 
 the track, was a traveling boarding-house for the men. 
 
 The piles were nine to twenty-five feet long, ac- 
 cording to the irregularities of the ground. After 
 they were driven they were cut off to grade by a cir- 
 cular saw on a swinging arm. The pile-drivers were 
 moved forward, holes were bored in the tops of the 
 piles, and a handful of salt poured in to preserve the 
 wood. 
 
 Stringers were fastened to the piles by wooden 
 pins, wooden rails were laid on these, and finally 
 strap-iron, weighing twenty-five tons to the mile, was 
 nailed down. Fifty-two miles of this structure, from 
 Fremont to Maumee, were finished by the spring of 
 1843. Then the continuous quarrels of the directors 
 became so violent that they put an end to the work. 
 No train was ever run over the road. 
 
 The first railroad actually operated in Ohio was the 
 Mad River and Lake Erie, now part of the Indian- 
 apolis, Bloomington and Western, the first earth on 
 which was turned at the end of Water Street, San- 
 dusky, September 7, 1835, with great festivities. 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 
 
 J. H. James, of Urbana, president of the road, 
 happened to be in New York early in October, 1837. 
 Hearing that Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor, found- 
 ers of the Rogers Locomotive Works, were to make 
 a trial trip with their first locomotive on the 6th, he 
 obtained permission to go along. 
 
 This first Rogers engine had cylinders eleven by 
 sixteen inches inside the frame, with eccentrics out- 
 side, and a single pair of drivers four feet six inches 
 in diameter. These drivers were of cast iron, with 
 hollow spokes and rims a great novelty then. There 
 was a four-wheeled truck in front, but no cab, pilot, 
 nor headlight. 
 
 However, the new engine gloried in a whistle, the 
 first ever attached to a locomotive. On the trial trip 
 from Paterson to New Brunswick and back the whis- 
 tle was so overworked that there was scarcely steam 
 enough to run the engine. 
 
 President James was so entranced with the new 
 locomotive, and particularly with the whistle, that he 
 insisted on buying it, notwithstanding that it had been 
 built for a New Jersey road. It was forthwith 
 shipped to Sandusky, arriving November 17, 1837. 
 
 Not a foot of track had been laid, but the arrival 
 of the locomotive inspired immediate efforts in that 
 direction. By the time Thomas Hogg, who had ac- 
 companied the locomotive as engineer, had his ma- 
 chine set up, enough track had been laid to give the 
 delighted Ohioans an opportunity to see, and partic- 
 ularly to hear, a locomotive in actual operation. That 
 whistle made itself heard all over the State. 
 
 Admiring legislators were so impressed with the 
 merits of a locomotive with a whistle that they passed 
 
222 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 a law at the next session that all railroads built or to 
 be built in the State of Ohio should be of the same 
 gauge as the locomotive at Sandusky, which hap- 
 pened to be four feet ten inches. On the completion 
 of the road to Belle vue, sixteen miles from Sandusky, 
 it was opened for business. 
 
 A letter in a newspaper led to the building of the 
 present Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and St. 
 Louis Railroad, just as a similar cause led to the de- 
 velopment of the Michigan Central. The letter was 
 written by J. H. Sargent, the noted civil engineer, 
 and was published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer 
 early in 1846. It opened the eyes of Cleveland busi- 
 ness men to the dangerous rivalry of Sandusky, which 
 was pushing a railroad south to Cincinnati. A com- 
 pany was formed, and Sargent was sent out to make 
 a survey in 1847. 
 
 At the farther end of the State railroad develop- 
 ment was proceeding more rapidly. The Little 
 Miami Railroad, from Cincinnati through Xenia to 
 Springfield, eighty-three miles, which was begun in 
 1841, came to be known all over the country as the 
 " Model Road." General Superintendent William 
 H. Clement earned this reputation for his road by 
 his recognition of the necessity of developing the 
 character of his employees and enforcing discipline. 
 
 Clement's power was never so well shown as in the 
 unprecedentedly severe winter of 1856-1857, which 
 brought on a fuel famine as bad as that in the North- 
 west in the winter of 1906. Coal advanced from 
 fourteen to sixty cents a bushel in Cincinnati. The 
 Little Miami was the only road reaching a coal-field. 
 Axles and wheels became as brittle as glass in the 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 
 
 intense cold, frequently breaking and demoralizing 
 the train service. 
 
 People became so clamorous for coal that they 
 threatened to tear up the tracks because the road 
 could not supply their needs at once. In this emer- 
 gency train-crews were kept doubling the road almost 
 continuously, with little chance to eat and still less 
 opportunity for sleep, until at last the fuel famine 
 was relieved. 
 
 No set of railroad men was ever called upon to 
 endure more severe service than the Little Miami men 
 that winter. Brakemen in those crude days had to 
 get out and stay on top of their trains often for 
 hours with the temperature twenty degrees below 
 zero. Yet no one complained. 
 
 Kentucky was five years ahead of Ohio in getting 
 her first railroad in operation. Henry Clay was the 
 leading spirit in this enterprise, the Lexington and 
 Ohio River Railroad, the first west of the Alleghanies 
 and south of the Ohio. It was to run from Louisville 
 to Lexington, and was begun in 1831. Mules fur- 
 nished the motive power at first. The cars had ac- 
 commodations for four passengers, provided two of 
 them did not object to riding backwards. 
 
 In 1833 a Lexington mechanic made a curious con- 
 trivance which he called a " steam motive power." 
 One bleak November day the steam motive power 
 with half a dozen cars attached went out on a trial 
 trip, while all Louisville stood around and envied the 
 fortunate few who could get aboard. The passengers 
 put on rather more airs than the occasion seemed to 
 warrant, until the train got about four miles from 
 town, when snow began falling. At this the steam 
 
224 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 motive power came to a stop and refused to go any 
 farther. The passengers had to foot it back to town, 
 to their own great humiliation and the intense enjoy- 
 ment of those who had been left behind. 
 
 The colored population felt greatly relieved when 
 the steam motive power was condemned as impracti- 
 cable, and horses were substituted. The colored 
 sages had said all along that horses were much the 
 safest when the great speed of eight miles an hour 
 was to be attained. 
 
 In 1835 a locomotive was obtained from the East 
 and kept in use until the owners, becoming convinced 
 that a railroad would pay, rebuilt the line and ordered 
 more locomotives. The stage companies and wag- 
 oners had thought the railroad a great joke at first, 
 but when they realized that it really would become a 
 competitor, they covered the track with gravel and 
 invited any one who wanted his head blown off to 
 step up and try to remove the gravel. 
 
 It is curious to find that Abraham Lincoln and 
 Jeff Davis were first arrayed against each other over 
 the affairs of one of these Western incubator rail- 
 roads. The road which, starting February 27, 1847, 
 as the Rock Island and La Salle Railroad, ultimately 
 developed into the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, 
 was the first road to connect the Great Lakes with the 
 Mississippi. The contract for the first railroad 
 bridge across the Mississippi was let by the Rock 
 Island September 26, 1853. The bridge, which was 
 at Rock Island, was finished April 21, 1856. Jeff 
 Davis, as Secretary of War, used all his influence in 
 behalf of the steamboat interests to prevent the build- 
 ing of the bridge, even directing the United States 
 
INCUBATOR RAILROADS 
 
 District Attorney to seek an injunction to stop the 
 work. Judge McLean, however, refused to grant the 
 injunction. 
 
 Fifteen days after the bridge was opened one span 
 of it was burned by the steamboat Effie Afton, which 
 was on fire, drifting against a pier. The owners of 
 the boat sued the railroad for obstructing navigation 
 and causing the loss of their boat. But Lincoln, as 
 counsel for the railroad company, convinced the jury 
 that the bridge was not an obstruction to navigation, 
 thus retrieving the prestige he had lost as a railroad 
 lawyer in the Michigan Central charter affair, and 
 demonstrating for the first time that he was more 
 than a match for Jeff Davis. 
 
 To attempt to follow even a material portion of the 
 formidable flock of railroads hatched by the ardent 
 optimists of the central West would be as profitless 
 as it would be wearisome. In Illinois alone no fewer 
 than 789 distinct railroad organizations were formed 
 between 1835 and 1882, and neighboring States were 
 not far behind. 
 
 After 1855 the most ambitious schemes of the " In- 
 ternal Improvement " era began to be realized, for 
 railroad building then went on with great rapidity. 
 Illinois, which had only 110 miles of railroad in 1850, 
 had 2,799 in 1860. Ohio's mileage grew from 575 in 
 1850 to 2,945 ten years later; Indiana's from 228 
 to 2,163; Michigan's from 342 to 779; and Wiscon- 
 sin's from 20 to 904. 
 
 The twin brothers of Colonel Sellers had only mis- 
 taken their cue, and appeared on the stage twenty 
 years too soon. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THE FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 
 
 VIEWED through the perspective of years, the 
 building of the first transcontinental railroad 
 seems less a commercial enterprise, stimulated by 
 political considerations, than a great melodrama in 
 which the stage was a continent and the audience a 
 nation. Like many another prosperous production, 
 the first act of this episode in real life was swamped 
 with talk and skimped in action. But thereafter the 
 thrills came thick and fast in an ascending scale of 
 climaxes, culminating in a grand finale which earned 
 a world's applause. 
 
 Taking all the circumstances into consideration, no 
 railroad project so daring has ever been proposed. 
 Bearing in mind the small population and the poverty 
 of the Nation, the half-developed state of the practice 
 of railroad building and operation, and of the myriad 
 other sciences upon which it depends, the immensity 
 of the wilderness to be crossed, the distance from the 
 base of supplies, the crudeness of transportation facil- 
 ities, the number and implacable ferocity of the sav- 
 age foes to be encountered, it must be conceded that 
 the building of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific 
 must forever remain unparalleled in the annals of the 
 railroad. 
 
 Until the rails met on that fateful day at Promon- 
 tory the Union was incomplete. It was but a geo- 
 
 226 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 
 
 graphical dogma, a mere political theory, which an 
 attempt to materialize the proposed Pacific Empire, 
 or other contingency, might readily have changed. 
 The driving of that last spike riveted the bonds that 
 made the East and the West one grand whole as 
 surely as it held the rail in place. All the magnificent 
 achievements of after years have been possible to the 
 great Nation then made a virile fact: whether they 
 would have been possible otherwise may well be 
 doubted. 
 
 Less than six months after the De Witt Clinton, 
 the third locomotive built on American soil, had made 
 its initial trip from Albany to Schenectady, when 
 there were less than a hundred miles of railroad in the 
 country, Judge S. W. Dexter, of Ann Arbor, Mich., 
 proposed, in an editorial in his paper, the Weekly 
 Emigrant,, of February 6, 1832, that a railroad should 
 be built from the Great Lakes, across more than two 
 thousand miles of unbroken, almost unexplored, wil- 
 derness, to the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 In the winter of 1836-7 John Plumbe, a Welsh 
 civil engineer who had worked under Moncure Rob- 
 inson in surveying a route over the Alleghanies for 
 the State of Pennsylvania in 1831-2, and who had 
 afterward acted as superintendent of the railroad be- 
 tween Richmond and Petersburg, Va., asked a few 
 friends and acquaintances to meet him at his home in 
 Dubuque, la., to discuss privately the building of a 
 railroad to the Pacific coast. Plumbe, who acted as 
 correspondent for papers in New York, Boston, Phil- 
 adelphia, Baltimore, and Cincinnati, had long been 
 advocating the building of a transcontinental rail- 
 road. Pursuant to a call issued by him, the first pub- 
 
228 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 lie convention ever held to discuss the Pacific rail- 
 road project, met in Dubuque March 31, 1838. Res- 
 olutions asking Congress to appropriate funds for a 
 survey were adopted and in due time were laid before 
 Congress by Territorial Delegate George W. Jones. 
 In response Congress set aside funds with which a 
 survey for a railroad was made from Milwaukee to 
 Dubuque. In the winter of 1839-40 Plumbe induced 
 the legislature of Wisconsin to address a memorial to 
 Congress asking that the survey be continued west of 
 the Mississippi. He took the memorial to Washing- 
 ton himself and devoted a good deal of time to advo- 
 cating his project, but he was too far ahead of time, 
 and nothing came of his efforts. 
 
 Then came Asa Whitney, a New York merchant, 
 who, while on a business trip to China, became filled 
 with the idea of a railroad across the continent as the 
 means of securing for America the rich trade of the 
 Orient. Returning to New York in 1840, he gave 
 up business, and with the fanaticism of a Mad Mullah 
 preaching a holy war devoted ten years of his life and 
 all of his fortune to advocating the immediate build- 
 ing of a transcontinental railroad. 
 
 In 1845 he submitted to Congress a proposal to 
 undertake the building of the road in consideration 
 of a grant of land sixty miles wide for the length of 
 the route. For the next five years he bombarded the 
 national legislature with memorials and addresses, 
 carrying on, at the same time, a vigorous publicity 
 campaign. 
 
 Whitney's plan was coldly received in the East. 
 Six months' hard work was required to get enough 
 signatures of well-known citizens of Philadelphia to 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 229 
 
 justify a call for a meeting, which was finally held in 
 that city December 23, 1846. Whitney's eloquence 
 made few converts. 
 
 Going to New York City, he fared even worse. 
 Although Mayor John Swift was induced to preside 
 at a meeting January 4, 1847, a mob broke up the 
 meeting, and Mayor Swift, the vice-presidents, and 
 Whitney were glad to escape by the back door. 
 
 Whitney's bill was killed in Congress in July, 1848, 
 chiefly through the efforts of Thomas Benton. The 
 project was revived in another bill, only to be sum- 
 marily slaughtered in January, 1849, through the 
 efforts of Benton. Then Whitney made a canvass of 
 the State legislatures, and in 1850 was back in Con- 
 gress again with a new bill for his project, backed 
 by memorials from the legislatures of fourteen States 
 and from public meetings in eight cities. 
 
 At the first session of the Thirty-first Congress 
 committees of both Houses made exhaustive reports 
 favoring Whitney's transcontinental railroad project; 
 but sectional feeling killed the bill a third time, 
 and that was the end of Whitney's efforts. Worn 
 out with his exertions, and his money all gone, he had 
 no choice but to give up the struggle. His remain- 
 ing years were eked out on the proceeds of a small 
 dairy in Washington. 
 
 An interesting estimate of Whitney's character, 
 which may explain why Congress looked with so little 
 favor upon his scheme, may be found in the following 
 extract from an editorial in the American Railroad 
 Journal of April 5, 1851 : 
 
 " We freely admit that Mr. Whitney possesses some quali- 
 ties which eminently fit him to head a great enterprise. He 
 
230 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 is enthusiastic and possessed to a remarkable degree with the 
 capacity for inspiring others with his own views. He is 
 deterred by no obstacle and discouraged by no defeats. But 
 here his qualifications for conducting to a successful issue a 
 work of such immense magnitude as that of a railroad from 
 the Atlantic to the Pacific end. He is self-confident without 
 experience or training, arrogant in his opinions, and over- 
 bearing toward all who differ from him. He has a hearty 
 contempt for the whole engineering profession and loses his 
 temper the moment that one of that class talks about tunnel- 
 ing, bridging, excavation, etc., which are certainly great an- 
 noyances in railroad construction and which have made others, 
 besides Mr. Whitney, lose their temper. He can never toler- 
 ate the introduction of such disagreeable topics as these, but 
 is never tired of poring over maps and enlarging upon the 
 grandeur of his scheme. So long as his mission was confined 
 to the matter of arousing the attention of our people to the 
 importance of the proposed work, his success was remark- 
 able. The moment he came to the question of construction 
 his plans failed to receive respectful attention. Congress, in 
 fact, refused the courtesy of printing extra copies of his bill 
 for circulation and turned the cold shoulder upon the whole 
 scheme. As far as the railroad to the Pacific is concerned 
 the public voice is unanimous in its favor ; but in reference to 
 the plan of construction, that of Whitney has hardly a de- 
 fender. We are sorry for his disappointments and heartily 
 wish he would adapt his scheme to the practical ideas of the 
 present day, of which he appears to have not the least 
 appreciation." 
 
 When Whitney made his final exit, Josiah Perham, 
 of Boston, took up the role of prophet to carry on 
 the crusade for a transcontinental railroad. To Per- 
 ham his efforts were literally in the nature of a cru- 
 sade, for he believed he had a divine mission to bring 
 about the building of the road. 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 
 
 Perham was a Maine woolen manufacturer, who 
 lost all his property by unwise plunging in land spec- 
 ulation*. Going to Boston in 1842, he started a wool 
 commission business, in which he prospered for a time, 
 but was again a bankrupt seven years later. He 
 was about to start for California during the great 
 excitement of 1849 over the discovery of gold, when 
 he chanced to make the acquaintance of an artist who 
 had just completed a panorama of Niagara Falls, 
 the St. Lawrence, and the Saguenay. He saw a 
 chance to make some money out of this, so he aban- 
 doned his contemplated trip to California. 
 
 Perham's plan was to go to nearby towns and or- 
 ganize cheap excursions to Boston to see the " Seven 
 Mile Mirror," as the panorama was called. This gave 
 country people a chance to spend a day in the city at 
 small cost, which they were quick to accept, making 
 Perham's scheme a great success for him and for the 
 railroads. 
 
 At first the railroad managers were astonished at 
 the way Perham's plan caught the popular fancy; 
 but they soon recovered and did everything they could 
 to help it along. It was in this way that the cheap 
 excursion business originated. 
 
 Perham quickly extended his field of operations to 
 include all New England and Canada. In 1850 he 
 brought more than two hundred thousand excursion- 
 ists to Boston. Then he began sending parties to 
 New York, Niagara, Quebec, and other points of in- 
 terest. In twelve years he had made another for- 
 tune, and had become one of the most widely known 
 men in the country. 
 
 While busy with his popular excursions, Perham 
 
WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 found time to become an enthusiast on the subject of 
 the Pacific Railroad, to evolve a scheme for building 
 it that certainly had the merit of originality, and to 
 convince himself that he had been inspired to execute 
 it. Perham's plan, perfected in 1853, was to apply 
 the popular idea to the financing of the Pacific Rail- 
 road. He thought he could collect a million sub- 
 scriptions of a hundred dollars each from the general 
 public, which, he imagined, was eager to make such 
 an investment from patriotic motives. The People's 
 Pacific Railroad was incorporated in Maine, March 
 20, 1860. 
 
 In Congress Perham received scant encourage- 
 ment, even though he was able to secure the support 
 of the omnipotent Thad Stevens. Finally a bill was 
 drafted which met the views of Congress, but not 
 until after the Union Pacific and Central Pacific had 
 been launched. The measure was signed by Presi- 
 dent Lincoln July 2, 1864. 
 
 The People's Pacific Railroad became the forerun- 
 ner of the Northern Pacific ; but Perham did not live 
 to see the work under way. His last fortune was 
 frittered away on this Pacific Railroad propaganda, 
 and, like Whitney, he died a poor man. 
 
 The first soil actually moved in the attempt to build 
 a transcontinental railroad was turned July 4, 1851, 
 on the south bank of Choteau pond, on the outskirts 
 of St. Louis, by Mayor Luther M. Kennett, who then 
 expressed the eloquent hope that the spade with 
 which he did it " would not rust until it was finally 
 burnished by the golden sands of the Pacific." St. 
 Louis, then a city of 90,000 inhabitants, with a com- 
 merce of fifty million dollars a year, had had the rail- 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 233 
 
 road fever ever since the first railroad convention was 
 held April 20, 1836. Yet nothing was accomplished 
 until the Pacific Railroad Company, of which Thomas 
 Allen was president, was incorporated January 31, 
 1850. The track of the company, which ultimately 
 became the Missouri Pacific, did not reach Kansas 
 City until October, 1865. The spades of its builders 
 have not yet been " burnished by the golden sands of 
 the Pacific." 
 
 Meanwhile, in the decade from 1850 to 1860, Con- 
 gress devoted a large and steadily increasing propor- 
 tion of its time to discussion of the Pacific railroad 
 project. As the idea grew, no Congressional orator 
 considered an address on any topic complete without 
 a fulsome peroration devoted to the Pacific railroad. 
 Senator Butler, of South Carolina, declared: 
 
 ' The Pacific railroad project comes nearer being 
 a subject of deification than anything I ever heard 
 in the Senate." 
 
 The net result of all this talk was an appropriation 
 of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in 1853 to 
 defray the expenses of six surveys to ascertain the 
 most practicable route for the proposed road. An 
 additional appropriation, later on, paid for four more 
 surveys. There was scarcely a town or a hamlet 
 from Canada to the Gulf and the Atlantic that was 
 not only willing to be benefited to the exclusion of 
 other towns by being made the terminus of a railroad 
 built at government expense, but was also determined 
 to see that the road was not built on any other terms. 
 
 Charleston, S. C. ; Memphis, New Orleans, Corpus 
 Christi, Tex.; Fulton, Ark., and Independence, 
 Mo., were among the insistent candidates for the 
 
234 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 terminus, backed by the Southern statesmen, who 
 were resolved that the road should not benefit the 
 North, whatever happened. 
 
 The war with Mexico had added California to the 
 Union. A year later the discovery of gold, followed 
 by the rapid development of agricultural and other 
 resources, capped, finally, by the finding of the great 
 Comstock lode, built up sources of traffic which de- 
 manded better facilities than were afforded by a sea 
 voyage of nineteen thousand miles. Lastly, there ap- 
 peared at the proper time, as he always does, the 
 Man. 
 
 To Theodore D. Judah belongs the credit of mak- 
 ing the actual beginning of the first transcontinental 
 railroad. Judah was educated at the Troy Engineer- 
 ing School. He was resident engineer of the Con- 
 necticut River Railroad, surveyed and built the rail- 
 road from Niagara Falls to Lewiston, and served as 
 engineer on the Erie Canal, and on the Rochester and 
 Niagara Falls Railroad. 
 
 He gave up a lucrative position in 1854 to go to 
 California to build the Sacramento Valley Railroad, 
 the first on the Pacific coast. Twenty-two miles of 
 that road were completed in 1856. 
 
 Judah was not only almost as much of a fanatic 
 on the subject of a Pacific railroad as Asa Whitney, 
 but he combined with the enthusiasm of the promoter 
 the practical knowledge of the engineer and the exec- 
 utive capacity which gets things done. In the fall 
 of 1856 he went East to raise funds for extending the 
 Sacramento Valley Railroad from Marysville to San 
 Francisco. 
 
 The winter of 1856-1857 he spent in Washington 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 235 
 
 trying to secure a land grant for the railroad scheme. 
 Returning to California, he took a prominent part 
 in the railroad convention held in San Francisco Sep- 
 tember 19, 1859. He was sent as the accredited 
 agent of this convention to Washington to lobby for 
 the transcontinental road. 
 
 His room became the headquarters for advocates of 
 the Pacific railroad, and he himself was the recog- 
 nized authority on everything relating to the subject. 
 He was made secretary of the Pacific Railroad Com- 
 mittee of the House, and was accorded the privileges 
 of the floor of both Houses. 
 
 So effectively did Judah labor that he returned to 
 California in the summer of 1860, confident of success 
 when the new administration came in, to solve a prob- 
 lem which was the bugbear of timid Congressmen. 
 This was to find a pass through the Sierras. 
 
 Judah had no money to pay for surveys, and the 
 business men of San Francisco had borne his expenses 
 to Washington that he might induce other people to 
 foot such bills, not to earn the privilege of doing it 
 themselves. So the engineer went to his friends in 
 the mountains. 
 
 They hadn't much to spare, but what they did have 
 they gave freely. Dutch Flat, Illinoistown, Grass 
 Valley, and Nevada City, among them, raised the 
 money to buy the outfit for Judah's trip into the 
 Sierras and the men to help him. 
 
 Mrs. Judah accompanied the party. While her 
 husband was out with the men she caught trout for 
 their meals. When the larder was supplied she laid 
 aside her rod and sketched the magnificent mountain 
 scenery. Two of her sketches were used on the stock 
 
236 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 certificates of the Central Pacific Railroad; others 
 went to enlighten outsiders regarding California. 
 
 Judah was as successful with his transit as his wife 
 was with rod and pencil. He found a pass by which 
 the Sierra Nevadas could be surmounted 128 miles 
 east of Sacramento on a maximum grade of 105 feet 
 to the mile at a maximum cost of $150,000 a mile, a 
 saving of 184 miles in distance and $13,500,000 in 
 money over the route proposed by the government 
 engineers. 
 
 Returning to Dutch Flat, he made the first profile 
 of the new pass on the counter of his friend D. W. 
 Strong's drug-store. Armed with this, he pro- 
 ceeded to Sacramento. He had been in the habit of 
 dropping in at the hardware store of Huntington & 
 Hopkins, No. 52 K Street, where he was always sure 
 of finding sympathetic spirits with whom he could 
 discuss his hobby. 
 
 Calling together C. P. Huntington and Mark 
 Hopkins, the proprietors of the store; the Crocker 
 brothers, dry goods merchants down the street, and 
 Leland Stanford, wholesale grocer, Judah told of the 
 practicable pass he had found. They were quick to 
 realize what it meant, and warmly urged him to go to 
 San Francisco and raise the capital ; then they would 
 help him to form a company and take care of the 
 profits. The uniform willingness to let some one 
 else foot the bill for the Pacific railroad was as spon- 
 taneous and as cordial west of the Sierras as east. 
 
 Judah went to San Francisco with the profile of 
 his practicable pass and figures showing that two hun- 
 dred eight-mule teams passed over the Placerville 
 road to Virginia City daily, and half as many over the 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 237 
 
 Henness road, which traffic alone would make a very 
 respectable local income for a railroad. But the San 
 Francisco capitalists laughed at him. 
 
 Once more Judah traveled the dusty road to the 
 hardware store in Sacramento. What he said when 
 he arrived there no outsider will ever know, but it 
 must have been very much to the point, for in June, 
 1861, the Central Pacific Railroad Company, with a 
 capital of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dol- 
 lars, was organized. 
 
 Leland Stanford, who had just been elected Gov- 
 ernor, was president of the company; C. P. Hunt- 
 ington, vice-president; Mark Hopkins, the other 
 member of the hardware firm, treasurer; James 
 Bailey, secretary, and Judah, chief engineer. The 
 Sacramento merchants didn't object to putting their 
 names down for fifteen thousand dollars each, or even 
 to contributing enough actual cash to send Judah 
 East again after the necessary capital. 
 
 In October, 1861, Judah set out for Washington 
 once more, as agent of the Central Pacific Railroad, 
 to secure government aid in bonds and land to build 
 the road. He drew up a bill embodying substan- 
 tially the plan upon which the road was finally built, 
 and intrusted it to A. A. Sargent, newly elected Rep- 
 resentative from California. 
 
 The House passed the bill May 6, 1862, the Senate 
 June 20, and President Lincoln affixed his signature 
 July 1. Judah was able to start back to Sacramento 
 ten months after he left there with his object accom- 
 plished. 
 
 Even with government aid assured, the San Fran- 
 cisco bankers still refused to put up the ready money 
 
238 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 needed to make a beginning. Orders had been given 
 for plans for an office building. Just as a final and 
 more than usually emphatic negative had been re- 
 ceived to the last appeal for funds, the architect 
 walked into the hardware store and with pardonable 
 pride exhibited his designs. 
 
 Huntington, senior partner in the hardware firm 
 and the actual executive of the railroad company, 
 glowered at the plans in silence. At last he blurted 
 out: 
 
 " How much is that thing going to cost?" 
 
 " Only twelve thousand dollars." 
 
 " Twelve thousand dollars ! Why, man, do you 
 know we'll have to pay the bill ourselves? Here, I 
 can beat that to a frazzle." 
 
 Taking up a piece of chalk, Huntington rapidly 
 drew on a door the plans for the first general offices 
 of the Central Pacific Railroad. The building was 
 completed that same afternoon, at a cost of one hun- 
 dred and fifty dollars. Finding that they really 
 would have to make a beginning with their own 
 scanty means, the Central Pacific directors decided 
 that they would only undertake what they could pay 
 for. 
 
 Grading was begun January 1, 1863, when Gov- 
 ernor Leland Stanford shoveled some sand from a 
 cart into a mudhole at the foot of K Street, Sacra- 
 mento, in the presence of the members of the legisla- 
 ture, the State and city officers, and a mixed crowd 
 which was highly amused by the idea of a bunch of 
 local storekeepers trying to build a railroad across 
 the continent. But once the work was begun it never 
 stopped until it was completed. 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 239 
 
 The first shipment of rails arrived in Sacramento 
 in October, 1863. By June 1, 1864, the track had 
 been laid to Newcastle, thirty-one miles from Sacra- 
 mento, and nine hundred and thirty feet above the 
 sea. 
 
 Although the legislature authorized San Fran- 
 cisco, Sacramento, and Placer counties to issue bonds 
 to a total amount of one million one hundred and fif- 
 teen thousand dollars in aid of the road, this action 
 had no effect whatever upon the adamantine hearts of 
 the coast capitalists. In desperation the hardware 
 store crowd scraped the till and managed to get to- 
 gether enough money to send Judah East once more 
 this time to try to sell their franchise. 
 
 But he caught the fever in crossing the Isthmus of 
 Panama, and died in November, 1863. He was only 
 thirty-seven years old, but he had laid the corner- 
 stone of a mighty monument to himself. 
 
 Fortunately for the hardware store crowd, the 
 Eastern capitalists preferred government bonds to 
 railroad securities. The only way to get back the 
 small amount they had invested was to put in more 
 and keep putting in more. Accepting the inevitable 
 at last, they went at the task in dead earnest, and by 
 a succession of miracles raised money enough to meet 
 the pay-rolls and other bills while they worked with 
 desperate energy to finance the enterprise. Also, 
 they took care to retain control of the situation. 
 
 Not until September, 1866, three years and eight 
 months from the date of beginning, did the rails reach 
 Alta, seventy miles east of Sacramento, at an eleva- 
 tion of 5,625 feet. Two months later the line had 
 been extended twenty-three miles farther to Cisco, 
 
240 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 overcoming an elevation of 2,286 feet in that dis- 
 tance. The road was now in the very heart of the 
 Sierras, only thirteen miles from the summit. 
 
 By this time the Union Pacific Railroad, which had 
 been organized to build the eastern end of the line, 
 stimulated by the example of the Central Pacific, was 
 under way. Although the former did nothing for 
 eighteen months after the latter began operations, by 
 the time the Central Pacific was ninety-three miles 
 into the mountains, where the maximum government 
 subsidy was only half the cost of construction, the 
 Union Pacific had extended its rails two hundred and 
 forty-seven miles out on the plains, on an average 
 grade of thirteen and a half feet to the mile, where 
 the minimum subsidy more than paid for the road. 
 
 The Union Pacific Company had seen quite as 
 much of trouble as the hardware store crowd. Under 
 the act of 1862, the Union Pacific was duly organized, 
 with General John A. Dix as president, and T. C. 
 Durant as vice-president. By heroic exertions the 
 company contrived to raise money enough to pay the 
 expenses of celebrating the breaking of ground at 
 Omaha, December 2, 1863, eleven months after 
 ground was broken on the Central Pacific. 
 
 That was all that was done for many a day. No- 
 body wanted Union Pacific Railroad securities or 
 land. The Mississippi and Missouri Railroad, which 
 later became the Rock Island, had sent General G. 
 M. Dodge out across the plains on a survey ten years 
 before, but the company didn't think it worth while 
 to push on beyond the Missouri River. 
 
 Neither could the Northwestern, then building 
 across Iowa, see any money in a railroad across the 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 
 
 lonely plains. No one would have anything to do 
 with the Union Pacific on any terms whatsoever. 
 The company got into such desperate straits that it 
 was obliged to sell part of its material and cars. 
 
 No one coming to the rescue of the Pacific railroad 
 project, Congress, in 1864, had doubled the subsidy, 
 making the amount $16,000, $32,000, and $48,000 a 
 mile in bonds, according to the nature of the country, 
 and twenty sections of land per mile instead of ten. 
 Altogether, the government aid offered lacked but 
 $4,000,000 of the estimated cost of the road. 
 
 In spite of everything that could be done the 
 Union Pacific remained a financial outcast until the 
 fall of 1867. Capitalists knew the road could never 
 be completed, and that it could not possibly earn ex- 
 penses if it was built. When it seemed as if the 
 whole affair was doomed to become a humiliating 
 fiasco, Congressman Oakes Ames, of Massachusetts, 
 a wealthy manufacturer whose shovels had become 
 favorably known wherever such implements were 
 used, was asked by the administration to undertake 
 the building of the Union Pacific. By the influence 
 of his great wealth and business connections, aided 
 by the attraction of the increased subsidy, he was 
 finally able to finance the enterprise through the 
 medium of a construction company, the notorious 
 Credit Mobilier, the cause of the greatest legislative 
 scandal in American history. 
 
 As the government assumed all risks under this 
 plan, and the profits promised to be enormous, capital 
 at last took up the project, though timidly. So 
 grudgingly was money advanced that the work 
 would have come to a stop even then, and the comple- 
 
WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 tion of the enterprise would have been delayed for 
 years, if Oakes Ames had not sacrificed his personal 
 fortune, saying: 
 
 " We must save the credit of the road. I will 
 fail." 
 
 But as soon as it became a certainty that the Union 
 Pacific would be completed, and that the builders 
 would make immense profits from its construction 
 and operation, blackmailers, stockjobbers, and plun- 
 derers of every degree pounced upon it like a pack of 
 famished wolves. Cornelius Wendell, a government 
 commissioner whose duty it was to examine a com- 
 pleted section, refused to approve it until he was paid 
 twenty-five thousand dollars. As delivery of the 
 government subsidy was dependent upon his ap- 
 proval, he got the money. 
 
 James Fisk managed to gain control, and then held 
 up the company in the most approved style, threaten- 
 ing to ruin it unless paid his price. When more 
 legislation was needed influential Congressmen re- 
 quired to be " seen," and Oakes Ames made the 
 crowning mistake of his career by taking three hun- 
 dred and seventy-five shares of Credit Mobilier stock 
 to Washington, where, in his own phrase, which has 
 become a classic, he " put it where it would do the 
 most good." 
 
 Those who could find no leverage by which to ex- 
 tort money busied themselves with criticising finan- 
 cial and engineering methods and everything else con- 
 nected with the project. It seemed as if there were 
 as many foes in the rear as at the front. 
 
 Besides all this the physical obstacles to be over- 
 come were immense. Omaha for all practical pur- 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 
 
 poses was almost as inaccessible as San Francisco. 
 The nearest railroad was the Northwestern, one hun- 
 dred and fifty miles to the east, and in no hurry to 
 reach Omaha. Every pound of supplies had to be 
 brought overland by wagon or up the Missouri River 
 in steamboats. 
 
 As a sample of the expense of railroad building 
 under these circumstances it may be mentioned that 
 ties cost two dollars and fifty cents each when they 
 were finally in place. The workmen had so little 
 confidence in the solvency of the concern that they 
 demanded and received their day's pay before be- 
 ginning work. 
 
 While the white men, who had been so ready to 
 applaud the abstract idea of a transcontinental rail- 
 road, and so reluctant to facilitate its realization, were 
 giving the Union Pacific so much trouble, the Indians 
 rendered the company an invaluable service. This 
 they achieved through an earnest effort to lift the 
 scalps of General G. M. Dodge and his escort. 
 
 In the winter of 1864-1865 the Indians had de- 
 clared war by way of varying the steady round of 
 unofficial outrages, which had begun to pall upon 
 them. General Dodge, who had made the survey 
 for the Rock Island in 1853, was sent out to conduct 
 the campaign against them. 
 
 Repeated efforts had failed to reveal a pass by 
 which the road could be taken over the mountain 
 range in southern Wyoming. General Dodge, being 
 keenly interested in the Union Pacific survey, took 
 advantage of every opportunity to pick up topo- 
 graphical points. 
 
 One day the general took an escort of six cavalry- 
 
WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 men, and, arranging to meet the main body of troops 
 at a certain point, set out to have a look at the coun- 
 try. About noon he discovered a large body of In- 
 dians trying to corral him and his escort. Being a 
 good Indian fighter, he rode hard for the nearest 
 ridge, where there was no cover to enable the scalp- 
 hunters to stalk him, and started along its crest toward 
 his command, stopping occasionally to beat off the 
 Indians whenever they became too eager. 
 
 After a long ride the little party reached the main 
 body of the troops. The ridge upon which the In- 
 dians had herded them all afternoon had led them 
 down a gentle slope without a break to the plain. 
 The pass through the mountains had been found. 
 
 One year later General Dodge returned to the 
 spot where the ridge blended into the plains and laid 
 out the city of Cheyenne, Wyo. While he was at 
 work the Indians raided a party of Mormon emi- 
 grants on the trail over which the general had just 
 passed and killed a couple of men, thus enabling the 
 cemetery of the new town to be started without delay. 
 
 By the beginning of 1867 the Union Pacific was 
 in operation to a point three hundred and five miles 
 west of Omaha. The completion of the Northwest- 
 ern to Omaha, in December, 1866, opened up a line 
 of communication w r hich very greatly reduced the 
 cost of supplies. 
 
 The Union Pacific being now extended to a point 
 most convenient for the Indians, all the tribes of the 
 plains united their forces for the avowed purpose of 
 exterminating the whites. Fifteen thousand war- 
 riors took the field, devoting especial attention to the 
 railroad. 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 245 
 
 Everything had to be done under armed guard. 
 The engineers laid out the line within musket-range 
 of a strong military escort, dividing their attention 
 between their instruments and their rifles. Even 
 then numbers of them were killed and their stock run 
 off by thousands. 
 
 One party of ten men was " jumped " by Indians 
 in Wyoming. Not being skilled in Indian fighting, 
 they did the worst thing they possibly could have 
 done they undertook to conceal themselves in a 
 clump of sage-brush, some five hundred feet in diam- 
 eter, which was commanded by a little bluff at a dis- 
 tance of two hundred yards. 
 
 The sage-brush afforded no protection, and simply 
 provided a cover under which the Indians could creep 
 up on them without risk of being seen. Whenever 
 a white man moved or made a sound a volley of bul- 
 lets would come in his direction. When darkness 
 came three white men, the only ones left alive, crept 
 from that sage-brush and contrived to reach safety. 
 
 Not satisfied with murder and robbery, the Indians 
 pulled up the surveyors' stakes and destroyed them, 
 so that much of the work had to be done over. 
 
 At first the Indians had not known what to make 
 of the locomotive; but soon they gathered courage to 
 try to stop a train by stretching a lariat across the 
 track held by thirty braves on each side. After it 
 was all over the red man had a new grievance against 
 his pale-faced oppressor, which he sought to redress 
 in the usual way. A station near the scene of the 
 disastrous hold-up was raided next evening. 
 
 One man was caught before he could reach the 
 shelter of the building. Him the Indians took to a 
 
246 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 little depression, where they would be out of range 
 of the guns of the few men in the station, staked him 
 out on the ground, built a small fire on his breast, and 
 then gathered about it to warm themselves and enjoy 
 the agonies of the victim. His cries could be heard 
 by the men in the station for several hours, but they 
 dared not venture out in the darkness to attempt a 
 rescue. 
 
 The Indians soon learned how to wreck trains. 
 One night in the summer of 1867 they placed an ob- 
 struction on the track near Plum Creek, Neb., and 
 ditched a freight train. The engineer, fireman, head 
 brakeman, and conductor were killed. The hind 
 man, named Johnson, was shot in the back. 
 
 The bullet knocked him down, but did not render 
 him unconscious. He had presence of mind enough 
 not to utter a sound or move a muscle, even when an 
 Indian seated himself astride his body and with an 
 extremely dull knife proceeded, with great delibera- 
 tion, to scalp him. This operation completed to the 
 Indian's entire satisfaction, he stripped Johnson of 
 everything but shirt and shoes and left him. 
 
 Next morning another train was flagged about a 
 mile from the scene of the wreck by a hideous object, 
 which, upon examination, proved to be Johnson, cov- 
 ered from crown to sole with blood and dirt. His 
 scalp was found where it had been dropped by the 
 Indian in the excitement of plundering the train, but 
 it wouldn't grow on again, although an obliging sur- 
 geon gave it every encouragement. 
 
 On another occasion the Indians made the unfor- 
 ate mistake of sacking a train when General Dodge 
 was close at hand. The General was on his way back 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 247 
 
 from the front one day, when he was notified at Plum 
 Creek, two hundred miles west of Omaha, that the 
 Indians had captured a freight train a few miles east 
 of the station. Dodge's private car was merely an 
 arsenal on wheels, with enough space left for a berth 
 and a table, which served alternately as a dining table 
 and a desk. On the train were some twenty men, 
 who had had enough of railroad construction on a 
 war footing, and were bound for civilization. 
 
 On hearing of the capture of the train, General 
 Dodge immediately called for volunteers to help pun- 
 ish the Indians. Every man on the train immedi- 
 ately fell into ranks like veterans, as, indeed, they 
 were. The engine was coupled on to the private car, 
 the volunteers hastily climbed aboard, and as the engi- 
 neer coaxed the utmost possible speed out of his ma- 
 chine, they were given arms and instructions. So 
 quickly was the scene of the wreck reached that the 
 Indians were still busy with the plunder without a 
 thought of danger. 
 
 In perfect order the volunteers sprang to the 
 ground and deployed. So brilliantly was the ma- 
 neuver executed that few of the red wreckers escaped. 
 
 At Sedgwick the Indians made an exceptionally 
 successful raid, capturing the entire outfits of two 
 sub-contractors and killing such a large number of 
 men that the survivors fled to civilization. It was 
 only after considerable difficulty that others were in- 
 duced to take their places. 
 
 The construction gangs fought off Indians with 
 one hand and wielded pick and shovel with the other. 
 No one will ever know how many men were killed 
 by Indians in the building of the Union Pacific. 
 
248 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 Vice-president Durant didn't like to have such 
 things made public. 
 
 The only settlements west of the Missouri, with the 
 exception of Denver and a few other mining camps 
 in Colorado and Nevada, were those of the Mormons 
 in the vicinity of Great Salt Lake. Ogden was a 
 village of a few hundred inhabitants. 
 
 An exception might be made to this statement if 
 the community of something like three thousand in- 
 habitants living in tents and shacks at the end of the 
 track could be called a settlement. As fast as the 
 road was finished to a convenient point it was oper- 
 ated to that point, which then became temporary head- 
 quarters from which the work of construction was 
 managed. The town always moved with headquar- 
 ters, and so came to be known as " Hell-on- Wheels," 
 and the title was appropriate. 
 
 Aside from the railroad employees and a few store- 
 keepers the population consisted chiefly of gamblers 
 and desperadoes and the very worst class of women. 
 The chief article of commerce was vile whisky, and 
 the principal industry was robbery, either thinly dis- 
 guised as gambling, or by more elementary methods 
 whenever convenient. Only by the frequent appli- 
 cation of lynch law were the murders kept down to an 
 average of one a day the greater part of the time. 
 
 There was a ceaseless orgy of the lowest debauch- 
 ery and the grossest crime in this Hell-on- Wheels 
 that has left a stigma which will last as long as the 
 Union Pacific itself. That such shameful conditions 
 are not necessarily a part of railroad building was 
 conclusively demonstrated in the construction of the 
 Canadian Pacific. 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 249 
 
 At one of its stops, six hundred and ninety-eight 
 miles west of Omaha, in August, 1868, " Hell-on- 
 Wheels " assumed the dignity of a " city," which was 
 divided into five wards and christened " Bent on," in 
 honor of the Senator who had taken such a conspic- 
 uous part in the fight on Whitney's project for a 
 Pacific railroad. A mayor and full city government 
 were elected, and ordinances to safeguard the public 
 health were adopted. Being the end of the freight 
 and passenger division, and the beginning of the con- 
 struction division, Benton was an exceedingly lively 
 place. Twice a day enormous trains arrived and de- 
 parted, and stages left for the end of the Central 
 Pacific track and other points in Utah, Montana, and 
 Idaho. All goods for the front and for points on the 
 plains and in the mountains had to be reshipped. 
 
 The streets were beds of alkali dust eight inches 
 deep, which blinded and strangled all passers-by, and 
 floated away in dense irritating clouds to settle in 
 dirty white drifts on the wretched tents and shanties. 
 There were one daily paper, five dance houses, and 
 twenty-three saloons. The chief public resort was 
 known as " The Big Tent," a canvas structure a hun- 
 dred feet long and forty feet wide, at one side of 
 which was a gorgeous bar lavishly set forth with 
 plate-glass mirrors, cut-glass goblets, glasses, and ice 
 pitchers. Brass bands brayed continuously day and 
 night, while monte, faro, roulette, and chuck-a-luck 
 games never closed. 
 
 When railroad headquarters moved, Benton moved 
 also. In a few weeks not a shack was left standing. 
 
 While the Union Pacific was struggling with un- 
 compromising Nature, bad Indians, and worse white 
 
250 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 men, the Central Pacific was also waging a great con- 
 test, though of a totally different character, against 
 the Storm King of the Sierras. 
 
 To build a railroad through mountains where the 
 slope is one foot rise in each foot of distance, and 
 where winter is an almost continuous series of snow- 
 storms accompanied by high winds, is no trifling mat- 
 ter. To cross the Sierras, fifteen tunnels were 
 driven by the expenditure of a million dollars' worth 
 of blasting-powder, the longest being 1,659 feet. 
 Work on the tunnels had been stopped entirely dur- 
 ing the winter of 1865-1866. 
 
 To avoid another such delay, Engineer John R. 
 Gilliss kept three shifts of men at work day and night 
 on the approaches to the tunnels in the summer of 
 1866. One night in the autumn he stumbled over 
 two miles of rough mountain trail and laid out the 
 east end of tunnel number twelve by the light of a 
 bonfire. Before midnight the men were at work. 
 
 When winter began the headings were under- 
 ground, so that the work could go on uninterruptedly, 
 though it was necessary to dig snow tunnels two hun- 
 dred feet long to keep the entrances open. That 
 winter there were forty-four snow-storms, in some of 
 which ten feet of snow fell. As the usual tempera- 
 ture was about thirty-two degrees above zero, the 
 snow was wet and heavy. 
 
 During the storms the wind blew so violently that 
 the drifting snow hid a warehouse thirty feet from 
 the cabin of the engineers. One man was lost in going 
 a short distance in a straight line between rock walls, 
 and came in exhausted. In running lines outside it 
 was necessary to dig deep cuts and tunnels in the 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 251 
 
 snow to get at the original transit points. Yet the 
 tunnel-headings met only two inches out of alignment. 
 
 All summer the Central Pacific was pushed on with 
 a force of ten thousand men, principally Chinese, and 
 one thousand three hundred teams. By December 
 1, 1867, all the tunnels were pierced, and trains were 
 running across the summit to Truckee, one hundred 
 and forty miles east of Sacramento. 
 
 The spring of 1868 found the two companies on 
 equal terms. While the Central Pacific had been 
 crossing the Sierras the Union Pacific had sur- 
 mounted Evans Pass, the highest point on the line, at 
 an elevation of 8,242 feet. Both had ample funds at 
 last, and both were almost equally distant from Mon- 
 ument Point, at the head of Great Salt Lake, the 
 Union Pacific being 522 miles away and the Central 
 Pacific 545 miles. 
 
 As soon as the weather permitted a construction 
 campaign was begun which has never yet been 
 equaled. From twenty thousand to twenty-five 
 thousand men, and from five thousand to six thou- 
 sand teams were employed, and from five hundred to 
 six hundred tons of material were used daily. At one 
 time the Central Pacific had no -fewer than thirty ves- 
 sels loaded with supplies at sea, on the long voyage 
 of nineteen thousand miles from New York around 
 the Horn to San Francisco. Twenty-five sawmills 
 around Truckee worked up timber for the use of the 
 Central Pacific, while a dozen mills in the Black Hills 
 and the Rocky Mountains did a similar work for the 
 Union Pacific. 
 
 Money was no object now. Speed, not economy, 
 was the great desideratum. In their eagerness to 
 
WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 earn as much as possible of the subsidy the rival com- 
 panies pushed their grades ahead until they over- 
 lapped more than two hundred miles. In an attempt 
 to get beyond Promontory Point, where there was a 
 section of the most intricate alignment, heaviest 
 grades, and sharpest curves on the entire line, the 
 Union Pacific took the work out of the contractors' 
 hands and put on day and night shifts to finish the 
 job in a hurry. 
 
 The result was that at the finish it cost $618,000 to 
 move 178,000 cubic yards of material, whereas it had 
 cost but $623,000 to move 800,000 yards under the 
 contract system. The track-layers followed the 
 graders as closely as the delivery of material would 
 permit. In 1867 the Union Pacific laid 240 miles of 
 track; in 1868, 425 miles, and to May 10, 1869, when 
 the tracks met, 125 miles. The Central Pacific laid 
 94 miles through the mountains in 1867, 363 miles in 
 1868, and 186 miles to May 10, 1869. 
 
 General Jack S. Casement and his brother, D. C. 
 Casement, directed the Union Pacific forces, which 
 were handled like an army. In fact, the force on the 
 Union Pacific was largely composed of former army 
 men. Operations partook somewhat of the nature of 
 military maneuvers. The men marched to work to 
 beat of drums, with outposts as a precaution against 
 surprises by Indians. As expressed in one of the 
 popular songs of the day, it was : 
 
 " Then drill, my Paddies, drill ; 
 
 Drill, my heroes, drill; 
 
 Drill all day, 
 
 No sugar in your tay, 
 
 Worldn' on the U. P. Railway." 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 253 
 
 The engineers were the skirmishers, and the tie- 
 makers, of whom there were fifteen hundred employed 
 in the mountains, were the advance guard. The ties 
 had to be sent to the railroad in large wagon trains, 
 under strong military escort. Two thousand graders 
 prepared the line. Back of these came the tie-layers. 
 Bridges were framed and the pieces numbered at the 
 mills, ready to be put together immediately on reach- 
 ing the front. 
 
 Twenty miles back of the tie-layers were the con- 
 struction trains, and still back of these half a dozen 
 miles were the supply trains. Cars were loaded with 
 the proper proportion of rails, chairs, bolts, and 
 spikes, so that there should be no delay in putting 
 down the iron. 
 
 First of all was the boarding train of rough sleep- 
 ing, kitchen, dining, and office cars, that the men 
 might lose no time between their meals and their work. 
 The boarding train would be pushed up to the end of 
 the track while a supply train was run up behind it 
 and unloaded. Then the boarding train would be 
 pulled back, to allow the material to be loaded on 
 little dump-carts, which two horses would take to 
 the front at a gallop. 
 
 Arriving there, four men on each side would seize 
 the rails, run forward, and drop them in place, in an 
 average time of thirty seconds to the rail. A gang 
 following them would half drive eight spikes to the 
 rail and place the bolts. A second gang drove home 
 the spikes and put in the rest with an average of 
 three blows of the sledge to each spike and tightened 
 the nuts on the bolts. 
 
 Lastly came the surfacing gang, which threw in the 
 
254 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 ballast, leveled the track, and tamped the ties in 
 place. On many a day the construction gangs of the 
 two companies laid more miles of track than an ox 
 team averaged in a day's travel on the old overland 
 trail. Such performances as these attracted the at- 
 tention of the newspapers in the East, which began to 
 send their star correspondents to the front and to an- 
 nounce the number of miles of track laid each day, as 
 baseball scores are announced nowadays. 
 
 All this notoriety spurred the rival construction 
 gangs to renewed exertions and made them boastful. 
 One day the Union Pacific laid six miles of track. 
 The Central Pacific thereupon laid seven miles in one 
 day. Upon hearing of this feat the Union Pacific 
 laid seven and a half miles. 
 
 The Central Pacific authorities declared that their 
 men could lay ten miles in one working day if they 
 wanted to. Vice-president Durant, of the Union 
 Pacific, offered to bet ten thousand dollars that they 
 couldn't do it. The money was covered, and April 
 29, 1869, was set as the day for the race. 
 
 A large party of distinguished guests assembled to 
 see the bet decided. Four thousand men, trained by 
 the discipline of four years to the precision of a ma- 
 chine, began their mighty task on the stroke of seven 
 o'clock. Most of the working force was composed 
 of Chinamen, but the Chinamen were not heavy 
 enough to lay the rails. 
 
 For this work there were eight stalwart Irishmen, 
 whose names have been handed down to posterity 
 Michael Shay, Pat Joyce, Thomas Daly, Mike Ken- 
 nedy, Fred McNamara, Ed Killeen, Mike Sullivan, 
 and George Wyatt. They handled the rails at the 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 255 
 
 rate of one minute forty-seven and a half seconds to 
 each two hundred and forty feet. 
 
 In six hours they had laid eight miles of track, so 
 they nailed a board with the word " Victory " on it 
 to a stake, and stopped for dinner on the boarding 
 train, which was now run up. 
 
 After the usual noon rest of one hour, work was re- 
 sumed. At exactly 7 P.M. ten miles and two hundred 
 feet of track had been laid. To do this required the 
 bringing up and placing in position of 25,800 ties, 
 3,520 rails averaging 560 pounds each, 55,000 spikes, 
 7,040 plates, and 14,080 bolts, a total weight of 
 4,362,000 pounds. 
 
 Durant acknowledged himself ten thousand dollars 
 poorer and returned to his own camp. Then, to 
 prove that the job was well done, Campbell, the 
 boarding boss, got on the locomotive and ran the 
 heavy train back over the ten miles of newly laid 
 track in forty minutes. 
 
 Ten days after this great track-laying feat, 
 which has never been equaled, all was ready for the 
 driving of the last spike which would unite the two 
 roads, making a continuous line from the Missouri 
 River to San Francisco Bay. 
 
 When the two roads met the grades overlapped 
 some eighty miles. The Union Pacific had wasted a 
 million dollars in its reckless race to seize the lion's 
 share of the fat government subsidy. The Central 
 Pacific was too crafty for its rival, for it had induced 
 the Secretary of the Treasury to advance it two- 
 thirds of the bond subsidy on its graded line to Echo 
 Summit, forty miles east of Ogden, before the track 
 was completed to Promontory Point, while the Union 
 
256 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 Pacific had actually laid its rails to Ogden. There 
 was a pretty row over this incident, which waxed so 
 virulent that Congress interfered; but the companies 
 concluded it would be the better part of discretion to 
 compromise, which they did; and Congress ratified 
 the agreement by a joint resolution which was 
 adopted April 10, 1869. 
 
 A space of a hundred feet had been left between the 
 ends of the two tracks on May 9, 1869. Early on 
 the morning of the following day Leland Stanford 
 and his party arrived at the end of the Central Pacific 
 track in a special train drawn by the locomotive 
 " Jupiter." Soon after the Union Pacific official 
 train, drawn by engine No. 116, bringing Vice-presi- 
 dent Durant, Directors Dillon, Duff, and others, 
 arrived. 
 
 A strangely mixed crowd of Mormon saints, Mexi- 
 cans, Indians, Chinese, negroes, Irish laborers, army 
 officers and their wives, Eastern bankers, bull whack- 
 ers, muleskinners, frontiersmen, and camp followers 
 had assembled to watch the proceedings with varying 
 degrees of interest, curiosity, or ennui. Mrs. S. W. 
 Strowbridge, wife of the Central Pacific's superin- 
 tendent of construction, who, by the enthusiastic in- 
 terest she had taken in her husband's work, had 
 earned the title of " Heroine of the Central Pacific," 
 was given a place of honor. 
 
 After the Rev. Dr. Todd, of Massachusetts, had 
 offered prayer, a Chinaman carefully smoothed the 
 spot on which the last tie was to be laid. The tie, 
 of California laurel, beautifully polished, was brought 
 up by the two superintendents of construction, Strow- 
 bridge, of the Central, and Reed, of the Union Pa- 
 
FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD 257 
 
 cific. In the center of the tie was a silver plate bear- 
 ing this inscription: 
 
 THE LAST TIE 
 
 LAID IN THE COMPLETION OF THE PACIFIC 
 RAILROAD, MAY 10, 
 
 A spike of gold, silver, and iron from Arizona, and 
 one of silver from Nevada were handed to Durant, 
 of the Union Pacific, who stood on the south side of 
 the track. When he had driven these Dr. Harkness 
 handed the last spike, of California gold, and a silver 
 sledge to Leland Stanford. 
 
 Then, at 12.45 P.M.,, the man who six years before, 
 amid the jeers of a knot of street loafers in Sacra- 
 mento, had tossed the first shovelful of sand turned 
 in the building of the first transcontinental railroad, 
 drove the last spike which completed that splendid 
 achievement. 
 
 The motley crowd of six hundred which saw the 
 blows struck was but an insignificant part of the audi- 
 ence which participated in the ceremony. Through 
 connections between the sledge and the telegraph 
 wires the whole Nation heard the strokes that drove 
 home the last spike. Cannon boomed and bells rang 
 out in response to those taps in every city in the land. 
 At Chicago there was a procession four miles long 
 and an address by Vice-president Colfax. At New 
 York the mayor ordered a salute of one hundred 
 guns, and a " Te Deum " was chanted in Trinity 
 Church while the chimes pealed forth the solemn 
 notes of the " Doxology." 
 
 San Francisco was delirious with joy. The cele- 
 
258 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 bration began there on May 8 and continued uninter- 
 ruptedly until the night of the 10th. The buildings 
 and the shipping in the harbor were decked with flags 
 and bunting, cannon boomed, bells rang, and whistles 
 tooted for hours ; there were speeches and processions, 
 and every one kept open house for all comers. 
 
 The completion of the Pacific railroads did more 
 than anything else to put an end to organized out- 
 lawry in the West, and to curb hostile Indians, who 
 up to that time had cost the government one hundred 
 thousand dollars each to kill. It developed a traffic 
 which earned for the Central Pacific alone, in the 
 first three months, $1,703,000. Also, the construc- 
 tion of the Union Pacific netted its builders the neat 
 profit of $16,710,432, or twenty-seven per cent on the 
 cost. Finally, it created one of the greatest scandals 
 this country has known when the people who had 
 lacked the nerve to invest their money in the enter- 
 prise undertook to get even with the men who had 
 risked and won. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL 
 
 IF the uses of adversity are as sweet as the proverb 
 makes them out to be, then the corporate exist- 
 ence of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway 
 Company has been one long rapture. For if there is 
 any conceivable form of trouble which can befall a 
 railroad that has not beset the Santa Fe, no one who 
 was ever connected with the company has been able to 
 name it. Man and Nature separately and in combi- 
 nation seem to have done their honest best to prevent 
 the development of the road. 
 
 The fact that in the face of all these difficulties it 
 has grown into a vast system of ten thousand miles, 
 tapping the chief centers of traffic from the Great 
 Lakes to the Gulf and the Pacific, is an eloquent 
 tribute to the genius of its builders. 
 
 The builders of the Santa Fe were a remarkable 
 lot of men, as, indeed, they had need to be. Their 
 talents covered a wide range, for the obstacles they 
 had to overcome ran all the way from poverty and 
 prejudice to military strategy. For, be it known, 
 the Santa Fe and its adversary, the Denver and Rio 
 Grande, enjoy the unique distinction of being the only 
 railroads that ever levied war and maintained armies 
 in the field. 
 
 First of these builders, in point of ability as well 
 as chronologically, was Colonel Cyrus K. Holliday, 
 
 359 
 
WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 the dreamer, the enthusiast, who saw before any other 
 man could the golden future of the great Southwest. 
 Colonel Holliday was one of the founders of Topeka. 
 As early as 1859 his vision of a transcontinental rail- 
 road following the old Santa Fe trail into the South- 
 west took form. As a member of the Kansas Terri- 
 torial Senate he secured a charter for his project. 
 That was the only easy step in the building of the 
 Santa Fe. 
 
 For the next nine years Colonel Holliday wore out 
 his shoes tramping from office to office of Eastern 
 capitalists in quest of means to finance his vision. 
 He reaped a rich harvest of rebuffs and ridicule, but 
 no money. But he had the true spirit of the pioneer; 
 that is, he never knew when he was defeated. 
 
 He kept at it until, in 1867, George K. Beach, of 
 New York, was induced to enter into a contract to 
 build the entire road as then planned. But Beach 
 lacked the courage to carry out the contract, so he 
 assigned it to T. J. Peter, of Cincinnati. 
 
 Peter also developed alarming symptoms of cold 
 feet when he went to Kansas to look the ground over, 
 and realized from observation that the Southwest 
 was then inhabited almost entirely by buffalo, prairie- 
 dogs, and Indians, whose principal industry was rais- 
 ing hair. On reflection, however, it occurred to Mr. 
 Peter that a country which could support countless 
 millions of buffalo was capable of supporting civilized 
 men also. 
 
 So, the contracting firm of Dodge, Lord & Co., of 
 Cincinnati, was organized, which built the first thou- 
 sand miles of the road. Twenty-eight miles were 
 built in 1869 between Topeka and Burlingame, Kan. 
 
THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL 261 
 
 Once the beginning was made, the end of the track 
 crept steadily westward. In 1863 Congress granted 
 three million acres of land in Kansas to aid in the 
 building of the Santa Fe Railway, which was to be- 
 come the property of the road only on condition that 
 it was completed to the Colorado line within ten years. 
 
 Congress was as free with land grants then as leg- 
 islatures were with charters. 
 
 Probably there never again will be towns as tough 
 as those which punctuated the progress of the Santa 
 Fe across Kansas. Law there was none, and human 
 life was lightly esteemed. 
 
 Yet, after all, the men killed were nearly always 
 those who needed killing. Those who attended to 
 their own business were usually permitted to do so in 
 peace. 
 
 At Newton, where the road crossed the Texas cat- 
 tle trail, at Abilene, and at other points it was consid- 
 ered an exquisite bit of humor for a party of drunken 
 cowboys to ride their cayuses up and down the wooden 
 sidewalks at full gallop, yelling at every jump, cre- 
 ating a deafening clatter, the chorus to which was a 
 fusillade of revolver shots. 
 
 If any man got in the way of the bullets, that was 
 his affair. There were more saloons than anything 
 else, and each saloon had a dance-hall and a gam- 
 bling outfit in connection. Everything was wide 
 open day, night, and Sunday. 
 
 But for all-around cussedness the palm must be 
 awarded to Dodge City, which was founded in 1872, 
 on the advent of the Santa Fe. This place was in the 
 very heart of the buffalo country. The face of the 
 earth fairly swarmed with the huge creatures. 
 
WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 A good hunter could make one hundred dollars a 
 day slaughtering them. Every one had money to 
 throw at the birds. A paper of pins, a shave, or a 
 drink cost twenty-five cents. No smaller coin was 
 recognized. 
 
 But even in Dodge City there came, by and by, 
 to be a limit to the excesses that could be committed 
 with impunity. Murder was a trivial incident of 
 every-day life for a time. But when Bill McGeachie 
 began to swagger from barroom to barroom boasting, 
 with loud oaths, that he had a jury in hell, meaning 
 that he had sent a dozen men to the nether world with 
 his own pistol, the more respectable part of the com- 
 munity thought it would be a nice thing to send Bill 
 before his jury. 
 
 So, there was a quiet little necktie party one even- 
 ing, at which Bill was the star guest. After that 
 things began to simmer down in Dodge. 
 
 The Santa Fe was fixed as a deadline, to the north 
 of which bad men must not venture. On the south 
 side, gamblers and all the scum of that wild civiliza- 
 tion rioted for a long time afterward. On the north 
 side, considerable pains were taken to insure freedom 
 from molestation for the peaceably inclined. 
 
 A woman was treated with chivalry decidedly 
 militant. If a drunken man accidentally jostled a 
 woman he was promptly knocked down by the nearest 
 bystander, with a profane adjuration to be more po- 
 lite in future. 
 
 The first calaboose in Dodge was a well fifteen 
 feet deep, into which drunks were lowered until they 
 sobered off. Sometimes this unique prison contained 
 half a dozen inmates. 
 
THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL 263 
 
 The Santa Fe Railway conducted its business at 
 Dodge City in a box-car for a long time, and it was a 
 very flourishing business, too. Dozens of carloads 
 of buffalo hides and meat were shipped out daily from 
 the very beginning, and other dozens of carloads of 
 merchandise came in to be distributed throughout the 
 Southwest by the long wagon trains which crowded 
 the streets. 
 
 As an indication of the extent of the business done 
 in the canvas and clapboard town at the end of the 
 track, it may be noted that Charles Roth & Co., of 
 Dodge City, a few weeks after the town came into 
 existence, ordered by wire two hundred cases of bak- 
 ing powder from Long Brothers, of Kansas City. 
 
 The latter firm, thinking there must be some mis- 
 take, inquired if the Dodge people really meant two 
 hundred cases. 
 
 Back the answer came : " Yes ; double the order 
 and rush it." 
 
 The public sense of humor was even more fully 
 developed at Dodge than elsewhere. Baiting tender- 
 feet was a very common form of diversion for a time. 
 Many a snipe hunt was organized, in which the cred- 
 ulous one from the East was inveigled out to a swamp 
 to hold a bag all night, waiting for his new-found 
 friends to drive the snipe into it, while these same 
 friends slipped quietly back to their favorite barroom, 
 where they went into ecstasies of mirth while they 
 waited for the bag-holder to realize that he had been 
 sold. 
 
 The favorite joke, though, was an Indian hunt. 
 The tenderfoot would be induced to go out on a buf- 
 falo hunt with half a dozen local wits, who would ride 
 
64 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 by his side and fill his receptive mind with blood- 
 curdling accounts of Indian atrocities until they 
 caught sight of a party dressed in Indian finery which 
 had ridden out ahead. The supposed Indians would 
 ride toward the hunters, emitting the most frightful 
 whoops of which they were capable. 
 
 At this the tenderfoot would turn and ride for his 
 life back to the town, to the gratification of the jokers. 
 At last, however, the jokers picked out the wrong 
 tenderfoot. 
 
 When the time came for him to exhibit abject fear, 
 instead of carrying out his part of the program he 
 held his base and began pumping lead into the make- 
 believe Indians as fast as his rifle would work. While 
 none of the wounds he inflicted were fatal, they were 
 numerous enough and serious enough to discourage 
 that form of humor thereafter. 
 
 At Dodge there was an Irish justice of the peace 
 named Flannery. Two Irish section hands on the 
 Santa Fe got into a quarrel. One attacked the other 
 with a spike-maul, and was promptly killed by his 
 intended victim with a shovel. 
 
 Duly penitent, the survivor surrendered himself 
 to the authorities. An investigation showed that he 
 had acted in self-defense. Thereupon he was ar- 
 raigned before Mr. Justice Flannery. 
 
 " Guilty or not guilty? " he was asked. 
 
 " Guilty, yer onner." 
 
 " Shut your dom mouth. Ye don't know what 
 ye're talkin' about. I discha-arge ye for want av 
 ividence," roared the justice. 
 
 The completion of the road to the Colorado line, at 
 the close of 1872, marked the end of the first period 
 
THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL 265 
 
 in the Santa Fe history. The great problem to be 
 solved in this first period was to inspire capitalists 
 with faith enough in the future of the West to ad- 
 vance money to build the road and earn the valuable 
 land grant. 
 
 The next hard nut to crack was to convert the land 
 grants into cash, which was merely incidental to cre- 
 ating traffic that would support the road by peopling 
 the wilderness. This difficult task fell to A. E. 
 Touzalin, who at the age of thirty-three was called 
 to fill the position of general passenger agent, general 
 freight agent, land commissioner, and a few other 
 things. 
 
 He was a terrific worker. Soon after he took hold 
 things began to happen in Kansas. Mr. Touzalin 
 was the originator of many of the modern methods of 
 railroad development work. Booklets were prepared 
 and distributed, large advertising contracts placed, 
 and an army of land agents was organized. 
 
 One of the most interesting features of this work 
 was that furnished by C. B. Schmidt, who was ap- 
 pointed foreign immigration agent. Mr. Schmidt 
 was the son of the architect to the King of Saxony, 
 who had wandered out to Kansas and had taken up 
 newspaper work. His first trip to secure immigrants 
 was to Russia, after the Mennonites, who were some- 
 thing like the Quakers. 
 
 The Russian government heard of Mr. Schmidt's 
 mission, and promptly sent a numerous delegation 
 from the police department with a pressing invitation 
 to him to get out and stay out. But by fast driving 
 and night journeys, enlivened by some rather exciting 
 adventures, he contrived to elude the police and do his 
 
266 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 work so well that he was followed to Kansas, in 1875, 
 by a first detachment of one thousand nine hundred 
 Mennonites, who brought two million two hundred 
 and fifty thousand dollars in gold with them. 
 
 The call of this entire body of men, women, and 
 children in their picturesque costumes on the Gov- 
 ernor at Topeka is one of the spectacular incidents 
 in the history of the State. 
 
 The energy and originality displayed in this coloni- 
 zation work disposed of the entire land grant in a few 
 years, at an average price of four dollars and seventy- 
 one cents an acre, with expenses and commissions av- 
 eraging eighty-four cents an acre. Of course, gov- 
 ernment land tributary to the railroad was also settled 
 at the same time, so that in the ordinary course of 
 events the faith of Cyrus K. Holliday and his co- 
 laborers would have been abundantly justified in a 
 heavy volume of traffic. 
 
 But there were drawbacks which no man could fore- 
 see. One of these was the great grasshopper raid of 
 1874. No man who has never seen a grasshopper 
 raid can form any conception of what it is like. For 
 three days the flight of the insects spread a haze over 
 the sun like smoke from a forest fire. They settled 
 down until they covered the face of the earth. 
 
 They flew up in such countless swarms against the 
 noses, eyes, ears, and bodies of horses that they ran 
 away, and they covered the railroads so thick that the 
 wheels ground them into a slimy pulp in which the 
 drivers spun impotently around while trains stood 
 still. What was more serious, the grasshoppers ate 
 every green thing within twenty-four hours after their 
 arrival, leaving the new settlers face to face with 
 
THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL 267 
 
 famine. Many colonists left the country never to 
 return. 
 
 That grasshopper year was a severe blow to Kan- 
 sas, and an even more serious one for the struggling 
 Santa Fe Railway, which started from nowhere and 
 also ended there. The earnings of the five hundred 
 and eight miles in the grasshopper year were two 
 thousand four hundred and sixty-two dollars a mile. 
 But a worse setback was experienced in the drought 
 of 1879-1880. Destitute settlers left the country by 
 thousands, carried free by the railroads. Those who 
 remained had to be supplied with free seed wheat and 
 corn by the railroads. Railroad earnings went down 
 like mercury in a blizzard. 
 
 Under these pleasant conditions, Thomas Nicker- 
 son undertook, as president of the Santa Fe, the sim- 
 ple task of extending the road. He must have been 
 a wonder, for under such discouraging circumstances 
 he raised the necessary money to push the road stead- 
 ily to the westward for six years, from 1874 to 1880. 
 Mr. Nickerson's genius was solely as a financier. 
 
 Nevertheless, he was immensely popular with the 
 men. He never felt it necessary to put on any frills. 
 When he went out on a tour of inspection he didn't 
 need a private car. He just swung himself aboard 
 the little red caboose at the tail end of a way freight 
 with his lunch wrapped in a newspaper, in his coat 
 pocket, and chummed with the crew. 
 
 Stories about these trips in the little red caboose 
 reached the ears of the investing public, and pro- 
 foundly impressed all hearers with the rigid economy 
 of the Nickerson regime, thus stimulating the droop- 
 ing price of stock. 
 
268 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 The latter part of Mr. Nickerson's administration 
 was not marked by that serene repose which is sup- 
 posed to be agreeable to financiers. When the road 
 got into Colorado it also got into an entirely new set 
 of difficulties. William B. Strong, a young man 
 who had been brought up in the way he should go on 
 the Burlington road, was made vice-president and 
 general manager. 
 
 Now, Mr. Strong was the antithesis of Mr. Nick- 
 erson in temperament, taste, and training. Strong 
 was a cyclone which never ran down, to whom strife, 
 difficulty, and discouragement were the breath of life. 
 Whereas Nickerson maneuvered by the gentle arts 
 of diplomacy, Strong greatly preferred, figuratively 
 speaking, to knock his adversary down first and argue 
 with him afterward. 
 
 The result was that Nickerson was obliged to 
 spend a good deal of time roosting on the safety-valve 
 of Strong's enthusiasm when he would have preferred 
 a more congenial occupation, while Strong expended 
 a great deal of nerve force in fretting because he was 
 not permitted to tear the Rocky Mountains up by the 
 roots. 
 
 Events seem to demonstrate that a judicious blend- 
 ing of these diverse temperaments and talents was 
 exactly what was needed to work out the destiny 
 of the Santa Fe. Unfortunately, the management 
 erred at first regarding what that destiny was to be. 
 
 The Santa Fe people had been under the impres- 
 sion that they were to have Colorado for their own. 
 Leadville's palmy days were beginning, and, in fact, 
 the whole State held out alluring promise of rich traf- 
 fic. But Nature, most unfortunately, had created 
 
THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL 
 
 the Rocky Mountains without regard to the limita- 
 tions of railroad engineering. 
 
 There is only one way through the front range near 
 enough to be of use to the Santa Fe, and that is a 
 mere crack in the granite something less than three 
 thousand feet deep, with sides so straight up and 
 down that standing at the bottom one can see the 
 stars at noonday as from the bottom of a well. 
 
 Through this crack roars a mountain torrent which 
 becomes the Arkansas River. Several thousand dol- 
 lars had to be expended in blasting footholds in this 
 granite fissure before the engineers could be sure they 
 could find room to squeeze a line of rails through. 
 
 The Santa Fe prepared to build through this tre- 
 mendous chasm regardless of the fact that the Den- 
 ver and Rio Grande Railroad Company had been 
 organized some years before to do this very thing, and 
 had made a survey through the canon, but had 
 been prevented by their poverty from building. The 
 Denver and Rio Grande then had less than four hun- 
 dred miles of narrow-gauge road in operation. 
 
 At the same time the Santa Fe prepared to con- 
 tinue on toward the Pacific coast by way of Raton 
 Pass, which the Denver and Rio Grande also had 
 planned to use in its business. 
 
 It is a pretty well established fact that two mate- 
 rial bodies cannot occupy the same position in space 
 at the same time. When the bodies which attempt 
 this impossible feat happen to be as substantial as 
 railroads, under the protection of numerous guards 
 of determined Western men whose religion is to shoot 
 before the other fellow does, interesting developments 
 may be looked for. 
 
270 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 As a preliminary to the extension through New 
 Mexico, Mr. Strong was sent to Santa Fe to get the 
 necessary legislation and whatever financial aid could 
 be obtained from the Mexicans, as his first task after 
 joining the Santa Fe Railroad, at the close of 1877. 
 On reaching the Territorial capital he found that the 
 Southern Pacific had thoughtfully endeavored, a few 
 days before, to save him the work and worry of build- 
 ing a railroad through the lonely mountains by secur- 
 ing the passage of a certain law. 
 
 This law provided that a majority of any board of 
 directors operating a railroad should be residents of 
 the Territory, that they must have ten per cent of the 
 cost of construction on hand before beginning work, 
 and there were other interesting details that would 
 make it impossible for the Santa Fe to raise money 
 to build five hundred miles through that remote re- 
 gion. Moreover, the Mexican natives were decid- 
 edly hostile to the proposed American invasion. 
 
 But the Southern Pacific forces had made a fatal 
 error. They had neglected to insert in their measure 
 a clause repealing the old law or providing that the 
 new should take immediate effect. The old law was 
 therefore still in force. 
 
 With characteristic energy, Strong organized a 
 corporation to build his line through the Territory, 
 and prepared and secured the passage of an innocent 
 little bill relieving his new company from all the ob- 
 jectionable features of the new railroad law. This 
 measure was signed by the Governor before the lei- 
 surely hostiles awoke to what was going on. 
 
 Strong hurried back to headquarters, and after 
 much urging secured permission to make the surveys 
 
THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL 271 
 
 in the spring. As this was in the last week of Feb- 
 ruary, 1878, Strong interpreted " spring " as mean- 
 ing that moment. He immediately sent a rush mes- 
 sage to Chief Engineer A. A. Robinson, who, by the 
 way, achieved the remarkable record of building every 
 mile of the Santa Fe system not acquired by pur- 
 chase, to go to Raton Pass and take possession. 
 
 When Mr. Robinson stepped on the Rio Grande 
 train at Pueblo to go to El Moro, the nearest rail- 
 road point to Raton Pass, he found J. A. McMurtrie, 
 the chief engineer of the Rio Grande, on board. Each 
 guessed the other's business. 
 
 On reaching El Moro, McMurtrie instantly set 
 about organizing and arming his force, while Robin- 
 son hurried to Trinidad, five miles away, as fast as 
 horseflesh could carry him. The Denver and Rio 
 Grande company in the beginning instituted the 
 disastrous policy of avoiding established towns and 
 building up towns of its own. This policy quite nat- 
 urally embittered a good part of the people of the 
 State, and endangered the existence of the road. 
 
 Trinidad was an old town, which had been passed 
 by in favor of El Moro, a creation of the railroad. 
 Consequently, Robinson had no difficulty in recruit- 
 ing a little army with shovels and rifles, enthusiastic- 
 ally willing to thwart the Rio Grande company and 
 to shoot up its cohorts if opportunity offered. Mc- 
 Murtrie, on the other hand, found it easy to gather 
 a strong force of equally eager partisans of his own 
 road at El Moro. 
 
 Robinson's men proved to be the best sprinters, for 
 they reached Raton Pass at four o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, just thirty minutes before the McMurtrie forces 
 
WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 appeared. There was a good deal of loud talk, but 
 as neither leader was Western bred, they didn't know 
 where to leave off talking and begin shooting. The 
 baffled Rio Grande forces finally withdrew and left 
 the Santa Fe in possession of the pass. 
 
 It was by the narrow margin of thirty minutes, 
 therefore, that the Santa Fe missed being cut off 
 from the coast and left a mere local road, to be gob- 
 bled up by a stronger system, for if McMurtrie had 
 reached the pass first he would unquestionably have 
 held it for the Rio Grande. 
 
 The first car passed into New Mexico over Raton 
 Summit, December 7, 1878, by means of a switch- 
 back three and a quarter miles long, with six switches 
 and maximum grades of three hundred and sixteen 
 feet to the mile. A Baldwin mogul, weighing one 
 hundred and ten thousand pounds, the largest loco- 
 motive ever built up to that time, was ordered espe- 
 cially to do the work on this switchback. 
 
 A year later a tunnel two thousand feet long 
 pierced the summit at an altitude of seven thousand 
 six hundred and twenty-two feet, reducing the maxi- 
 mum grade on Raton Mountain to one hundred and 
 eighty-five feet. Even that was enough to make 
 things interesting for the train crews before air-brakes 
 came into general use. That same season the grad- 
 ing was completed to Las Vegas, one hundred and 
 ten miles beyond. 
 
 While the main line was being pushed over the 
 Raton Mountains, a spectacular struggle was going 
 on for possession of the Grand Canon of the Arkan- 
 sas. Strong began making arrangements early in the 
 spring for a coup. Being in possession of the tele- 
 
THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL 273 
 
 graph wires, the Rio Grande was able to get hold of 
 cipher dispatches which revealed to them what was 
 going forward. 
 
 Strong, who was at El Moro, heard, on the 19th 
 of April, 1878, that General W. J. Palmer, president 
 of the Rio Grande company, had arranged to cut him 
 out of the Grand Canon. Accordingly, he wired to 
 Engineer William R. Morley, who was at La Junta, 
 to take an engine and proceed with all possible speed 
 to Pueblo, sixty-three miles away, and there take a 
 Denver and Rio Grande train to Canon City, to or- 
 ganize a force with which he was to take possession of 
 the Grand Canon and hold it against the Rio Grande. 
 Morley carried out his instructions until he got to 
 Pueblo. 
 
 No train to Canon City being available, he tried to 
 get a narrow-gauge locomotive on the Rio Grande to 
 take him up, but he was refused. He immediately 
 hunted up the best horse procurable in Pueblo, and 
 started late at night on the forty-mile ride to Canon 
 City. About the same time that he left Pueblo a 
 Rio Grande train also left that place, bearing a force 
 of one hundred men to take possession of the Grand 
 Canon for General Palmer. 
 
 It was a pretty race between horse and locomotive. 
 A narrow-gauge mountain locomotive has to turn its 
 wheels over a good many times to cover a mile, and 
 besides, the track being new and rough, the engineer 
 was not trying to make speed records. Also, the Rio 
 Grande commander didn't know Morley. 
 
 It was an unequal race. The horse was good for 
 a spurt, but a forty-mile run against a locomotive was 
 too much. Toward the last he failed under Morley's 
 
274 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 lash, and something more than a mile from Canon 
 City he dropped dead. 
 
 Without a moment's pause Morley struck a dog- 
 trot, and kept it up till he reached the office of the 
 local company which had been organized to build the 
 road for the Santa Fe. With all possible speed he 
 gathered a force of one hundred and fifty men and 
 started for the mouth of the canon, two miles away, 
 on the run. 
 
 Precious little time was lost in this, for Canon City 
 was bitter against the Rio Grande for seeking to build 
 a rival town near by, and citizens were never very 
 widely separated from their guns. 
 
 Arriving at the mouth of the canon, part of the 
 force began digging wherever they could find any 
 loose dirt. The construction of the Santa Fe road 
 through the Grand Canon had begun. The rest se- 
 lected nice cozy nooks behind bullet-proof bowlders, 
 arranged their rifles and six-shooters so they would be 
 real handy, and waited as if they were expecting some 
 one. 
 
 They didn't wait long. The Rio Grande people 
 were so sure they had the advantage that they had 
 not exhibited undue haste ; therefore, on a second mo- 
 mentous occasion they arrived thirty minutes too late. 
 
 Knowing only too well that the arrangements made 
 for their reception were no idle bluff, the Rio Grande 
 forces withdrew after a brief parley. Work was 
 pushed on the grading with all possible despatch. 
 
 Strong was so delighted with Morley 's achievement 
 that he presented him with a repeating rifle elabo- 
 rately mounted with gold. While making a survey 
 for the Santa Fe near Guayamas, Mexico, some time 
 
By courtesy of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. 
 
 THE ROYAL GORGE, FOR POSSESSION OF WHICH THE RIO GRANDE 
 
 WAR W T AS W T AGED. 
 
 At the point where the hanging bridge is seen in the background the canyon is 
 thirty feet wide at the bottom, while the walls rise almost vertically 2,627 feet 
 above the track. 
 
THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL 275 
 
 later, Morley attempted to take this rifle out of an 
 ambulance muzzle foremost. 
 
 The gun was discharged, killing him instantly. 
 His name has been given to a station on the main line 
 near the southern border of Colorado. 
 
 Possession of the Grand Canon was necessary to 
 the existence of the Rio Grande. The company, 
 therefore, never for a moment considered the possi- 
 bility of giving up the struggle for it. A working 
 force, guarded by a small army of fighting men, took 
 possession of the canon some distance above where 
 Morley was at work, erected forts, and began the con- 
 struction of the road. 
 
 Thereupon the Santa Fe obtained an injunction to 
 restrain the Rio Grande forces from any further 
 action, and also had Chief Engineer J. A. McMur- 
 trie and Treasurer R. F. Weitbrec, of the Rio 
 Grande, arrested. 
 
 Both sides continued to seize and fortify all avail- 
 able points in the canon above and below. There 
 were numerous arrests every day, and events were 
 hurrying forward as speedily as possible to a bloody 
 encounter, when, on April 26, the Rio Grande secured 
 an injunction to stop the Santa Fe's work. Ten 
 days later the Rio Grande had the injunction pro- 
 ceedings transferred to the Federal courts, alleging 
 that it could not get justice in the local courts, which 
 was strictly true, as the feeling against it at Canon 
 City was intense. 
 
 Judge Hallett, of the Federal Court, enjoined both 
 parties from doing anything in the cafton until their 
 rights could be decided in the courts. Each party 
 was placed under twenty thousand dollars bond. The 
 
276 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 matter was taken to the United States Supreme 
 Court. 
 
 For a while it looked as if the guns were to be put 
 aside while the contest was fought to a finish with the 
 less romantic check-book. President Nickerson was 
 continuing his achievements in raising money for con- 
 struction, the system had grown to a total of eight 
 hundred and sixty-eight miles, and the earnings for 
 1878 were three million nine hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand eight hundred and sixty-eight dollars, while the 
 Rio Grande was growing more hopelessly involved 
 every day. General Palmer grew discouraged, and 
 on the 19th of October, 1878, leased his road to the 
 Santa Fe. Possession of the road was given at mid- 
 night, December 13, 1878. 
 
 This move by no means allayed the ill-feeling be- 
 tween the rival companies. The Santa Fe's first act 
 intensified the feeling, aroused the antagonism of the 
 people of Colorado, and played into the hands of the 
 Rio Grande company. A part of the agreement 
 under which the lease was made provided that the 
 lessee should not discriminate against Denver. 
 
 In defiance of this agreement, rates from Denver 
 southward were immediately raised, which had the 
 effect of cutting off Denver's jobbing trade and 
 throwing it to Kansas City. In other ways the Santa 
 Fe gave indications of an intention to wreck the Rio 
 Grande road ; at least, so the Rio Grande people said. 
 
 Almost immediately after the lease was executed 
 the Rio Grande company, alleging that the instru- 
 ment had been broken in letter and spirit by the lessee 
 within twenty-four hours after taking possession of 
 the road, set about getting its property back again. 
 
THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL 277 
 
 General Palmer renewed his efforts to raise money 
 for construction to Leadville, and at last was suc- 
 cessful. 
 
 As time went on the Rio Grande people became 
 exasperated to the fighting point. The sentiments 
 of the management were cordially shared by its old 
 employees in the train and engine service. W. W. 
 Borst, superintendent for the Santa Fe, had to issue 
 a circular admonishing his men to take orders from 
 no one but the Santa Fe authorities. 
 
 Armed detachments began to slip into the Grand 
 Canon and fortify advantageous positions in March, 
 1879, in anticipation of the decision of the United 
 States Supreme Court, which was expected soon. 
 April 19, Mr. Strong went to Denver to prepare for 
 the war in the Grand Canon which seemed inevitable, 
 and also for the impending legal struggle. 
 
 Early in June, 1879, the Rio Grande people pro- 
 cured from Judge Bo wen, at San Luis, an order re- 
 storing the road to them. This order was placed in 
 the hands of the sheriffs of the various counties, to be 
 served simultaneously all along the line at 6 o'clock 
 on the morning of Wednesday, June 9. The Rio 
 Grande saw to it that the sheriffs had plenty of armed 
 men to enforce the mandate of the court. 
 
 The spectacular feature of the day was the raid of 
 ex-Governor A. C. Hunt, an enthusiastic Rio Grande 
 partisan, who is described as a " whirlwind of energy 
 and indiscretion." He lived up to his characteriza- 
 tion in a raid, on that memorable 9th of June, which 
 makes the exploits of Mosby's guerrillas seem tame. 
 
 Starting from El Moro, bright and early, with a 
 train carrying two hundred armed men, he swept 
 
278 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 everything before him as he went up the line to 
 Pueblo. Station agents were captured and taken on 
 the train. There was a good deal of shooting, and at 
 Cuchara two Santa Fe men were reported killed and 
 two wounded. At Denver, office doors were battered 
 in with a cross-tie handled by husky section men. At 
 most points there was an easy victory for the Rio 
 Grande. 
 
 At Pueblo, things looked squally for a time. The 
 Santa Fe had recruited a select band of fighting men 
 at Dodge City, under the command of Bat Master- 
 son, who as marshal of that interesting town had 
 achieved a reputation for skill and celerity in dispos- 
 ing of bad men who expressed a desire to shoot him 
 up. 
 
 This formidable force was posted in the round- 
 house at Pueblo on that 9th of June. The Rio 
 Grande army did not attempt to take the fortress by 
 storm, but threw up fortifications commanding it and 
 prepared for a siege. Doubtless there would have 
 been another Sebastopol if it had not been for R. F. 
 Weitbrec, the practical-minded treasurer of the Rio 
 Grande. 
 
 On the theory that the dollar is mightier than the 
 six-shooter, Mr. Weitbrec sent a flag of truce to the 
 roundhouse. In due time he transacted a little pri- 
 vate business with the valiant defenders of Pueblo, 
 and the siege was ended. 
 
 One last stronghold in Pueblo remained in the 
 hands of the Santa Fe, and that was the despatched 
 office. This was taken late in the evening by an 
 assault in which there was a great deal of shooting, 
 but no list of killed and wounded. Ex-Governor 
 
THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL 279 
 
 Hunt's victorious army then made a dash upon Canon 
 City, where some Santa Fe fugitives had fled with 
 four locomotives. The place was captured without 
 resistance. 
 
 On taking possession of the road, Mr. Strong had 
 allowed the old Rio Grande men, with the exception 
 of a few station agents, to retain their places. This 
 may have been good railroad management, but it was 
 mighty poor military strategy. 
 
 When war broke out the whole operating depart- 
 ment not only became willing captives, but on reach- 
 ing Colorado Springs, which was then headquarters 
 of the Rio Grande, each crew received arms and am- 
 munition to defend its train from recapture. 
 
 Vanquished in war, Mr. Strong appealed to the 
 United States Circuit Court at Denver, where Judges 
 Miller and Hallett, on the 23d of June, ordered the 
 road restored to the lessee within three days. They 
 added an emphatic warning that it would be well if 
 the mandate of the court were obeyed, but intimated 
 that legal proceedings might be begun to cancel the 
 lease. 
 
 Great was the wrath of the Rio Grande men over 
 the order of restitution. Santa Fe engineers were 
 pulled from their cabs and beaten ; threatening no- 
 tices, decorated with skulls and cross-bones, were sent 
 to agents, brakemen, and every one connected with 
 the Santa Fe. A word of sympathy for the Santa 
 Fe was a bid for a broken head. 
 
 Blood flowed freely, and the authorities were pow- 
 erless. Judge Hallett ended the disturbance by ap- 
 pointing Colonel L. C. Ellsworth receiver, on the 
 24th of June, who managed the road until it was re- 
 
280 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 stored to the Rio Grande company, which has re- 
 mained in undisturbed possession ever since. 
 
 During the war the United States Supreme Court 
 had rendered a decision in the contest for possession 
 of the Grand Canon favorable to the Rio Grande. 
 The Santa Fe had not thought it worth while to wait 
 for this little formality, and had rushed work with 
 such energy that twenty miles of road had been com- 
 pleted, and the rest of the line to Leadville nearly all 
 graded. 
 
 To show that there was no hard feeling, the Rio 
 Grande sent Engineer De Remer to carry news of 
 the decision to the Santa Fe construction gang. Mr. 
 De Remer, for company's sake, took fifty men with 
 him on the journey to the end of the track; also fifty 
 repeating rifles. Hunting up the Santa Fe engineer 
 in charge, he ordered him to stop work instantly. 
 
 " By whose authority do you give that order? " 
 
 " By the decision of the United States Supreme 
 Court and these fifty men behind me." 
 
 Work was stopped. 
 
 Jay Gould, having through heavy purchases of 
 Rio Grande stock, acquired the right to act as medi- 
 ator, a protocol was signed, December 20, 1879, which 
 put an end to the Rio Grande war, the most extraor- 
 dinary episode in the annals of the railroad. For 
 months each belligerent had maintained an army of 
 three hundred to five hundred men in the field, had 
 laid sieges, built fortifications, captured trains, cut 
 telegraph wires, kidnaped public officials, purloined 
 court seals, kept a whole State in a ferment, and done 
 many other picturesque things which are now re- 
 garded as foreign to railroad operation. 
 
THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL 281 
 
 By the treaty of Boston, signed February 11, 1880, 
 all possibility of further hostilities was obviated. 
 By the terms of the treaty the lease was canceled, the 
 receivership ended, all litigation was stopped, the line 
 to Leadville became the property of the Rio Grande 
 on payment of one million four hundred thousand 
 dollars to the Santa Fe, and the Rio Grande's pro- 
 jected line from Pueblo to St. Louis was abandoned. 
 The Santa Fe had now grown to one thousand one 
 hundred and eighty-one miles, and its earnings in 
 1879 were six million three hundred and eighty-one 
 thousand four hundred and forty-two dollars. 
 
 Having abandoned its Colorado plans, the Santa 
 Fe was free to devote all its energies to building on 
 to the Pacific. They were needed. While New 
 Mexico is generally regarded as a desert, the face of 
 the country shows unmistakably that it is visited by 
 rainstorms of extreme violence. The engineers con- 
 sulted old inhabitants at great length, studied the 
 topography of the country, and constructed the road 
 in accordance with the information thus obtained. 
 
 But after they had built an impregnable culvert at 
 one point to carry off the surplus waters, they would 
 go out after a storm to find that not a drop of water 
 had flowed through it, while some miles of track they 
 had regarded as safe from the possibility of washout 
 would be scattered promiscuously over the landscape 
 for miles around. 
 
 The Rio Grande River was also extremely trouble- 
 some. One day it would be on one side of the track, 
 the next day on the other. As late as 1884 Superin- 
 tendent George L. Sands and his men might be seen 
 wading, swimming, and diving in efforts to find a sec- 
 
WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 tion of main line over which trains had been running 
 a few hours before. 
 
 In 1880 the Santa Fe entered into an alliance with 
 the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad to build 
 at once that part of the old Atlantic and Pacific line 
 west from Albuquerque, and thus gain an entrance 
 into California independent of the Central Pacific in- 
 fluence. As a precaution against this hostile influ- 
 ence it was provided that the control of the road was 
 to be in the hands of three trustees, two of whom 
 were to be from Boston, where Santa Fe stock was 
 chiefly owned, and that seven of the thirteen direct- 
 ors were to be Santa Fe men. 
 
 Late in 1881 the expenditure of sixteen million 
 five hundred thousand dollars was authorized, and 
 the stockholders were jubilant over the prospective 
 speedy completion of the road. Early in January 
 the astounding fact became known that Jay Gould 
 and C. P. Huntington had purchased the St. Louis 
 and San Francisco, and were in a position to prevent 
 the extension of the road. Gould wanted the South- 
 west for his own roads, and Huntington was inter- 
 ested in protecting his California monopoly. Both 
 insisted that the Santa Fe should stop at the Colo- 
 rado River. 
 
 Other troubles followed thick and fast. Between 
 1885 and the beginning of 1888 the Missouri Pacific, 
 a Gould line, built one thousand and seventy-one 
 miles of road, and the Rock Island built one thousand 
 three hundred miles paralleling the Santa Fe. The 
 payment of dividends ceased, the price of stock went 
 down to almost nothing, and the road lost the confi- 
 dence of shippers and the respect of competitors. 
 
THROUGH TRIBULATION BY RAIL 
 
 The panic of 1893 put on the finishing touches. 
 There was a receivership and a reorganization, and 
 then prosperity. 
 
 Cyrus K. Holliday lived to see his dream fulfilled. 
 The road of which he was a director for twenty years, 
 and which one of his cheerful fellow members of the 
 board predicted would never pay operating expenses, 
 now runs through trains over its own rails from Chi- 
 cago to Denver, Galveston, Los Angeles, and San 
 Francisco. 
 
 Its hoodoo has at last been laid, its rifles have been 
 traded for coupon scissors, and the competitors who 
 once treated it with contumely now respectfully re- 
 quest the loan of its recipe for boosting net earnings. 
 The hopes of its founders have been realized. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 
 
 TO speak of the building of the Canadian Pacific 
 Railway as a " work," sounds almost pedantic. 
 Think of men toiling month after month through 
 almost impenetrable forests, seeking a way across a 
 mountain range, and when at last it seemed as if they 
 must be forced to admit themselves defeated, being 
 led by an eagle to the only pass in the entire range ! 
 
 Think of a vast wilderness turned as if by enchant- 
 ment into a populous and thriving empire by the 
 magic of the steel highway, built on the route the 
 eagle revealed! Think of an enterprise which in- 
 volved the expenditure of one hundred and forty 
 million dollars which the breath of scandal never tar- 
 nished, which met every obligation when it was due, 
 and many even before they were due ; and which vol- 
 untarily pensioned those dependent upon the pioneers 
 who lost their lives in its service ! 
 
 Think of the poor Scotch boy, who began life in the 
 desolation of the Labrador wilderness in the hardest 
 of all services, that of the Hudson Bay Company, at 
 a salary of one hundred dollars a year, winning vast 
 wealth, a peerage, and about everything else that 
 men prize, as one of the prime movers in this great 
 enterprise! 
 
 Think of the many other men who won wealth and 
 titles and fame in executing this same magnificent 
 
 284 
 
I 
 
 c o 
 j -B 2 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 FH S ^ B 
 
 5 5 s 1 
 o 
 
 11 
 
 o ^ 
 
 s a 
 
 
 O ^ 
 
 Mil 
 
 |! 5 
 
 5 ^ 
 
 H ^ I 
 
 c/i ^ 
 
 
 S tf 
 
 O J^ 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 285 
 
 conception, and then say if " Romance " is not a more 
 fitting term with which to characterize the building of 
 the Canadian Pacific Railway. 
 
 The sheer audacity of the project when it was first 
 broached was fascinating. Here was a colony, not an 
 independent nation, a mere appanage of the British 
 crown, with fewer than five million inhabitants scat- 
 tered in a narrow fringe along the eastern end of the 
 boundary line between Canada and the United States, 
 proposing to build a railroad three thousand miles 
 through an unknown wilderness to reach four or five 
 thousand other colonists in the lonely forests of the 
 Pacific coast. 
 
 But as the four thousand would join the newly 
 formed confederation on the Atlantic seaboard only 
 on condition that they be provided with a railroad 
 over which they could travel whenever their advice 
 was needed by their four million brethren, there was 
 nothing to do but build the road. 
 
 The proposal to build the Canadian Pacific encoun- 
 tered the usual derision and the usual demonstrations 
 that it could never be done common to all great enter- 
 prises. But gradually the scheme took shape. As 
 it seemed obvious that no private corporation would 
 consider three thousand miles of railroad through a 
 wilderness a profitable investment, it was proposed to 
 have the government build the road. 
 
 Immediately the transcontinental railroad became 
 a political issue. The Conservative party wanted the 
 road built ; the Liberals took the position that it would 
 be a scandalous waste of public money, since such a 
 road could never earn enough to pay for its axle 
 grease. Here, then, was a subject for dissension 
 
286 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 abundantly capable of keeping the Dominion in a 
 ferment for years, and it did it. Government after 
 government went down in the effort to get the rail- 
 road under way. 
 
 In March, 1874, two years after the surveys had 
 been instituted, the Liberals, more than ever appalled 
 by the formidable undertaking, sent J. D. Edgar as 
 envoy extraordinary to the unreasonable British Co- 
 lumbians to try to persuade them to be content with 
 a wagon road across the mountains to be maintained 
 at an annual expenditure of one million five hundred 
 thousand dollars. Instead of receiving the Liberal 
 envoy graciously, and talking the matter over with 
 him, the indignant British Columbians rushed their 
 Premier, George A. Walkem, straight to London to 
 lay their grievances before the Colonial Secretary. 
 It is said that the obstreperous Westerner so dis- 
 turbed the equanimity of the Colonial Office that it 
 has not recovered to this day. Naturally this did riot 
 make friends of the Liberals ; but in the end the Brit- 
 ish Columbians and the Conservatives had their way. 
 
 Each change of government contributed a little to 
 the evolution of the magnificent project. Sandford 
 Fleming, a Scotch engineer who had built the Inter- 
 colonial Railway, was engaged as chief engineer. In 
 1871 he made the preliminary arrangements for the 
 surveys. As the whole territory, large enough to 
 make a dozen States the size of Illinois, lying between 
 Ottawa and the Pacific, was entirely uninhabited ex- 
 cept by a few hundred persons around the silver 
 mines near Port Arthur and a couple of thousand 
 more at Winnipeg, and was practically unknown, 
 this was a formidable undertaking. 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 287 
 
 In July, 1872, Fleming started from Montreal to 
 take his first look at the country, and after traveling 
 three thousand three hundred miles through the wil- 
 derness in ninety days, arrived in Victoria October 11. 
 In the following year a great amount of surveying 
 was accomplished. 
 
 Although there were no bloodthirsty Indians dog- 
 ging their footsteps with tireless cunning, watching 
 for a chance to massacre without danger to them- 
 selves, the task of the pathfinders was not without its 
 perils. Sometimes death, swift and terrible, overtook 
 those who sought to solve the riddle of the wilderness. 
 On August 7, 1871, Alex. Sinclair, William Mathe- 
 son, and five Indians, belonging to a surveying party 
 assigned to the great woods north of Lake Superior, 
 were surrounded by forest fires and burned to death. 
 
 Then there was Tom Clancy, who started alone to 
 drag a load weighing four hundred pounds, lashed 
 to some poles, across the ice on an arm of Lake 
 Huron, November 13, 1872. His cap, found floating 
 on the water in a hole in the ice, showed only too 
 plainly what became of him. 
 
 May 20 of that same year A. Hamilton, engineer 
 in charge, and E. J. C. Abbott, transit man, in that 
 same wild region went to a Hudson Bay Company 
 post on Lake Temiscamingue in a small canoe to set- 
 tle an account and get G. Knaut and G. Rochette, 
 chain and ax men, who had been laid up with scurvy. 
 
 The post trader wanted them to take a larger canoe 
 on their return trip, but they refused. None of the 
 party was ever seen again, but their canoe was found 
 floating bottom up. 
 
 November 26 of that same disastrous year the 
 
288 WHEN RAILROADS WERfi NEW 
 
 steamer Mary Ward was wrecked a few miles west 
 of Collingwood, and three members of the survey 
 who were on their way to a new field of operations 
 were drowned. July 24, 1873, three men were 
 drowned trying to get away from a camp on White- 
 fish Lake with a canoe-load of supplies. 
 
 The accident happened within two hundred feet of 
 shore while the whole camp was looking on, but no 
 help could reach them in time. Most of the deaths 
 in this preliminary work were from drowning, though 
 a few died from the effects of exposure. 
 
 Altogether thirty-four lives were lost in those seven 
 years of adventurous toil and hardship. In each in- 
 stance the government paid two years' salary to the 
 family of the dead man. Sandford Fleming saw to 
 that, often paying the money first and consulting the 
 government about it afterward. 
 
 Camp equipment, instruments, and provisions usu- 
 ally had to be carried on men's backs, and sup- 
 plies forwarded to parties in the field were trans- 
 ported by the same method, sometimes for hundreds 
 of miles. It can readily be imagined, therefore, that 
 camp life under such circumstances was not exactly 
 luxurious. 
 
 Indians rendered valuable assistance in the surveys. 
 Sometimes the difficulties of travel in the trackless 
 mountains were so great that the white men sent to 
 deliver messages turned back while their Indian com- 
 panions went on and accomplished what they were 
 sent to do, even if they did get in more dead than 
 alive. 
 
 Surveying on the Pacific coast, where, owing to 
 the wet climate, the forest growth is tropical in lux- 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 289 
 
 uriance, was particularly difficult. Marcus A. Smith, 
 the resident engineer in charge of the work in British 
 Columbia, set out early in the summer of 1872 to 
 explore a possible route from Bute Inlet, which is far 
 to the north of the location finally chosen. 
 
 He was provided with both pack-horses and canoes. 
 But the ground was so covered with underbrush, 
 matted together by aralea, a creeper armed with long 
 thorns which made festering wounds wherever it 
 touched the flesh, and so obstructed by enormous 
 fallen trees, that the party could only cover five miles 
 the first day, and the men with the canoes could not 
 do even that well owing to the extreme crookedness 
 of the Inlet. 
 
 As a result of three days' excessively hard work 
 the party advanced eighteen miles. Then the horses 
 were abandoned and Indians were engaged to carry 
 the supplies. The fallen trees were so large that it 
 was necessary to cut steps in them to enable the men 
 to climb over. 
 
 But even this was nothing to the difficulties encoun- 
 tered in endeavoring to follow up the canon of the 
 Homathco River. Here there were cliffs of smooth 
 granite rising vertically two hundred feet from the 
 boiling torrent below. It was necessary to drill holes 
 in the rock for iron bars to support a line of timbers 
 to get through this canon. 
 
 Chasms were bridged with single logs over which 
 men had to crawl with heavy loads on their backs. 
 The roar of the river and the boom of bowlders car- 
 ried along by the torrent striking on the rocks in its 
 bed were so deafening that men a few feet apart could 
 not hear each other shout. Work had to be directed 
 
290 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 by signs. This was too " skookum " for the Indians, 
 so they resigned. 
 
 The experience of Engineer E. W. Jarvis, who 
 late in the autumn of 1874 received orders to explore 
 a pass through the Rocky Mountains, is a fair sample 
 of the life of the engineers who searched out the route 
 for the railroad through an unknown mountain wil- 
 derness. 
 
 Jarvis left the mouth of the Quesnelle River on the 
 Pacific coast, December 9, 1874, taking with him 
 C. F. Hannington as assistant, Alec McDonald as 
 dog-driver, and an Indian boy as cook. They went 
 first to Fort George, a Hudson Bay Company post, 
 where they were to get dogs and supplies. 
 
 On January 14, 1875, the expedition started. 
 There were three white men, three Indians, and three 
 dog teams of four dogs each, carrying provisions cal- 
 culated to last two months. Some of the men and 
 teams were to turn back after they had transported 
 supplies well up into the mountains. 
 
 Their outfit consisted of a pair of snow-shoes and 
 one pair of blankets to each man, with some extra 
 moccasins and a piece of light cotton sheeting for a 
 tent, canvas being too cumbersome to carry. This 
 airy structure was to be their sole shelter, when they 
 had any, throughout a winter in which the tempera- 
 ture averaged thirty-nine degrees below zero for the 
 season, and often dropped to fifty-three degrees be- 
 low. The provisions were bacon, beans, flour, and tea 
 for the men and dried salmon for the dogs. 
 
 They were to traverse an unexplored country 
 many miles to the northward of the present line of 
 the road. Two men always had to go ahead to break 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 291 
 
 a trail by packing down the snow with their snow- 
 shoes to enable the dogs to get through. Then came 
 the lightest team with the others following, with a 
 driver to each. 
 
 Lastly came Jarvis or Hannington to make a track 
 survey of the route. Bearings were taken with a 
 pocket compass. Distance was measured by pacing, 
 forty paces to the chain. The whole weary distance 
 to Lake St. Anne, fifty miles above Edmonton, was 
 measured in this manner. 
 
 Noses and ears were frequently frozen in the in- 
 tense cold. There was no comfort in camp, for when 
 a roaring fire was built the men only succeeded in 
 roasting the side nearest the blaze while the other side 
 was rendered more susceptible to the cold. The dogs' 
 toes were frozen so badly that it was necessary to 
 make moccasins for them. 
 
 On halting at noon on the third day out, Marquis, 
 the leader of one of the teams, lay down. He tried to 
 rise, failed, gave a spasmodic wag of his tail, and 
 rolled over dead. Upon examination, his legs were 
 found to be frozen stiff to the shoulder. A thermom- 
 eter exposed to the sun on top of a sled at the time 
 registered forty-six degrees below zero. 
 
 Six days after leaving Fort George, a cache made 
 the previous summer was reached. Here Hanning- 
 ton turned back with two of his teams to bring up 
 some dried fish for dog feed, while Jarvis, taking 
 McDonald with him, went on up the north fork of 
 the Fraser to explore and break a track. 
 
 Six days later the party reunited at the cache. 
 Three more teams from Fort George came up with 
 provisions and fish, swelling the party to eight men 
 
292 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 and six teams of dogs, part of which were to turn 
 back at the summit. 
 
 One day McDonald went to a small brook which 
 tumbled down a rock into the river to get a drink. 
 The water of the brook had kept the river ice thin so 
 that when he stooped down to drink he suddenly 
 dropped beneath the ice. Fortunately an Indian was 
 near enough to grab him by the hair when he popped 
 up to the surface. 
 
 The only damage was a soaking in ice water when 
 the temperature was forty degrees below zero. In 
 the next few days nearly all the rest had a similar 
 experience. 
 
 Jarvis himself went down where the current was so 
 swift that it caught his snow-shoes and tugged at him 
 so desperately that it required the united efforts of 
 the entire party to drag him back to safety. Had he 
 not been fortunate enough to throw his arms out and 
 get a support on firm ice he would have gone under 
 for good and all. 
 
 About the 1st of February the snowstorms became 
 almost continuous. The snow was so deep that when 
 they shoveled down to the moss for a place to sleep 
 they could not see over the edge of the hole. 
 
 In traveling, the snow-shoes would sink into the 
 snow a foot and come up with a small avalanche on 
 the toes at each step. This caused many blisters and 
 frequent attacks of mal de raquette, which is a com- 
 bination of paralysis and cramp in the legs, due to 
 constant traveling on snow-shoes. When night came 
 all hands were utterly exhausted. 
 
 Finally the valley took a sharp turn to the north, 
 the stream divided, and the explorers were confronted 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 293 
 
 by impassable barriers of rock. There was nothing 
 for it but to return to the forks and try the south 
 branch of the Fraser. They reached the forks Feb- 
 ruary 12, where they rested a day. 
 
 Then sending two of the Indians with two teams 
 back to Fort George, they set out to explore the south 
 branch of the north fork of the Fraser, the object 
 being to find a pass by which the Smoky River, flow- 
 ing southeast from the eastern slope of the Rocky 
 Mountains, could be reached. The woods here 
 swarmed with moose and other game, but they had no 
 time for hunting. 
 
 The party was hardly out of sight of the forks 
 when the canon closed in and the rocks overhung the 
 trail so much that Hannington, who was in the lead, 
 was obliged to take off his snow-shoes and crawl on 
 hands and knees for fifty yards, where he was halted 
 by a waterfall. Turning back, he started a snowslide, 
 which thundered down to the river, leaving him cling- 
 ing to the rocks like a fly on a wall. However, he 
 crawled back in safety. 
 
 Going through the woods, they made a long port- 
 age, as every detour from the river was called. At 
 the south end of the portage the descent to the river 
 was so steep that Jarvis, though he turned the sled on 
 its side and sat on the bow as the only way of apply- 
 ing brakes, was thrown off, and team and sled plunged 
 into the open water. Fortunately no harm beyond 
 breaking some traces was done. 
 
 Hannington took a hitch around a tree with his 
 trail rope and lowered his sled in splendid shape until 
 the end of the rope was reached. When he tried to 
 pass the rope to a tree lower down, the sled and team 
 
294 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 shot down the mountainside until they came to a sap- 
 ling. 
 
 The team went one side, the sled the other, bending 
 the sapling down until the traces slid some twenty 
 feet up its trunk, when it flew back, dangling the out- 
 fit in the air. A few blows with an ax ended this 
 difficulty. 
 
 On finally reaching the river, the sight of a clear 
 sheet of ice caused the men to shout and the dogs to 
 bark with joy at the prospect of a stretch of easy 
 traveling. There was a general scamper to get to it. 
 
 The first team promptly went down, for the ice was 
 only a quarter of an inch thick, having evidently just 
 formed. The water happened to be only two feet 
 deep, so the team was fished out safely. 
 
 One evening they had just picked out a nice spot 
 to camp when they were startled by the thunder of an 
 avalanche above them. While they were discussing 
 the chances of its passing near them, a bowlder of 
 perhaps ten tons' weight, loosened by the avalanche, 
 came hurtling 'down the mountain straight toward 
 them. 
 
 By good luck a bunch of large pines turned it 
 aside just before it reached the group, or that par- 
 ticular survey would have ended right there. 
 
 This valley, like the other, came to an abrupt end. 
 By climbing two thousand feet a pass could be 
 reached, so Jarvis decided to go on to Edmonton. 
 The second morning, after crossing the divide to the 
 eastern slope of the Rockies, they came suddenly to 
 the brink of a fall two hundred and ten feet high. 
 
 There was no sound of falling water to warn them. 
 If the morning had been misty, as the mornings 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 295 
 
 usually were, they must inevitably have walked over 
 the edge of the abyss. As it was, they discovered 
 later, on looking up from below, that the whole party 
 had stood on a projecting ledge of ice and snow only 
 two feet thick. 
 
 A little farther on in this same canon, in going 
 down a precipitous descent, one of the sleds became 
 unmanageable, and shooting down the mountain 
 struck a log, crushing one of the dogs to death and 
 splintering the sled. 
 
 By the time they were fairly out of the mountains 
 the dogs were giving out. All six men had to go 
 ahead and break track. Even then the dogs had to 
 wallow up to their bodies in snow. 
 
 Their course in following the valley was northeast, 
 instead of southeast as it should have been if the 
 stream they had struck was the Smoky River. They 
 began to fear that they were following the Pease 
 River toward Hudson Bay and starvation. 
 
 Nearly every day the dismal howls of the dogs an- 
 nounced that another had dropped dead of hunger 
 and exhaustion. It was now March 6, and their sup- 
 plies were almost gone, and there was no game to be 
 seen. 
 
 So they cached two of the sleds and the instruments 
 and taking one sled struck across country in the 
 direction they thought Jasper House, a Hudson Bay 
 Company post, lay. Each man carried his blankets 
 and share of the provisions, leaving the worn-out dogs 
 only fifteen pounds of fish each to drag. 
 
 It was now a scramble for life over an exceedingly 
 rough country, with the certainty of death staring 
 them in the face if they failed to find, within a short 
 
296 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 time, the one place where there was help. Every 
 morning one or more of the dogs was too weak to 
 rise and had to be shot to cut his sufferings short. 
 
 One night the Indians gave up in despair and de- 
 clared, with tears and great lamentation, that they 
 were lost. It required all the eloquence of the white 
 men to reassure them, particularly as the white men 
 were by no means sure themselves that they would get 
 out of the scrape. 
 
 On March 20 the exhausted party stumbled upon 
 Fiddle River depot on Lac a ,Brule, which had been 
 established by the survey and left in charge of some 
 Indians. Here they found that Jasper House had 
 been abandoned, and that Lake St. Anne, the nearest 
 Hudson Bay Company post, was eleven days' travel 
 away. 
 
 As the Indians were nearly out of provisions, and 
 the dogs too exhausted to go any further, Jarvis and 
 his party were obliged to struggle on with their out- 
 fits on their backs. The last three days before reach- 
 ing Lake St. Anne they had to flounder through the 
 snow without a morsel of food. 
 
 They became so exhausted that at times they were 
 unable to push one snow-shoe before another, but 
 stood still, feebly marking time. They finally reached 
 the post in a dazed condition April 1, after a journey 
 of nine hundred miles on snow-shoes in a temperature 
 that averaged thirty-nine degrees below zero for the 
 four months they were out. 
 
 There was a vast amount of work of this character 
 to be done. To say nothing of the routes that proved 
 to be hopeless upon first examination, every foot of 
 the long route through the mountains which was 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 297 
 
 finally selected had to be gone over six times before 
 the graders arrived. 
 
 First there was the exploration. Next came the 
 exploratory survey; then the revised survey; the trial 
 location; the location survey; and lastly the revised 
 location. 
 
 Seven years these surveys lasted, with twenty to 
 twenty-five parties in the field, winter and summer. 
 In that time the engineers examined forty-six thou- 
 sand miles of territory, most of which had never be- 
 fore been seen by a white man, at a cost of three 
 million five hundred thousand dollars. 
 
 When at last their great task was done, it was well 
 done, for they had found passes through the moun- 
 tains three thousand feet lower than those on any of 
 the American lines. In only three places on the line 
 were there heavy grades, and in each of these places 
 they were compressed within twenty miles instead of 
 being scattered over hundreds of miles as on the 
 American lines. 
 
 Some idea of the difficulty of the work may be 
 gathered from the fact that for a long time it seemed 
 impossible to find a way across the Gold Range, the 
 third range of mountains from the plains, until Major 
 Rogers one day followed an eagle which led him to 
 the only practicable pass in the entire range. 
 
 The news of this discovery seemed too good to be 
 true. Chief Engineer Fleming would not believe it 
 until he had been personally conducted through the 
 pass by the triumphant Major Rogers. Afterwards 
 the board of directors voted a present of five thousand 
 dollars to the Major in recognition of the great serv- 
 ice he had performed. A like reward was voted to 
 
298 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 Engineer Sykes, who laid out a loop by which some 
 steep grades and heavy rock cuts were avoided. 
 Good work by other engineers was rewarded by a 
 number of lesser bonuses. 
 
 Before the surveys were completed the work of 
 construction was begun. Instead of undertaking a 
 continuous line, though, the Mackenzie government 
 pursued a makeshift, haphazard policy of building 
 short stretches of railroad to connect lakes and navi- 
 gable rivers. That did not suit the people, and the 
 Mackenzie administration gave place to Sir John 
 Macdonald, who was for building a transcontinental 
 railroad without any more nonsense. 
 
 The Macdonald government accepted the offer of 
 a syndicate composed of Donald Smith, governor of 
 the Hudson Bay Company, who began life as an 
 employee of the company in Labrador at a salary of 
 one hundred dollars a year; George Stephen, his 
 cousin, president of the Bank of Montreal; James J. 
 Hill, with whom the two had been associated in the 
 conversion of the abandoned streak of rust in the 
 Minnesota woods into the vigorous and profitable 
 St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad ; Dun- 
 can Maclntyre, the head of the Intercolonial Rail- 
 way, who had been a Montreal mechant; R. B. An- 
 gus, and two other firms of bankers, one in London, 
 and the other in Paris. 
 
 Under the terms of the contract which was signed 
 October 20, 1880, the syndicate undertook to have a 
 railroad in operation from Montreal to Vancouver 
 ten years from that date in consideration of $25,- 
 000,000 cash, 25,000,000 acres of land, and 712 miles 
 of railroad in various stages of completion. No duty 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 299 
 
 was to be levied on material imported, and the com- 
 pany was to be free from taxes and competition for 
 twenty years. 
 
 Construction was begun by the company the fol- 
 lowing spring, but only one hundred and sixty-five 
 miles were built that season. This was too slow for 
 the syndicate, so they turned to the United States for 
 help. W. C. Van Home, of Illinois, who had risen 
 from telegraph operator to the presidency of the Chi- 
 cago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, then the largest rail- 
 road system in the country, was engaged as general 
 manager. 
 
 An American firm, Langdon & Shepard, of St. 
 Paul, was induced to undertake the contract for 
 building the six hundred and seventy miles from Flat 
 Creek, which is one hundred and seven-five miles west 
 of Winnipeg, to Calgary, and another American, 
 James Ross, was installed by the contractors as gen- 
 eral manager of construction. 
 
 Then ensued the most spectacular bit of railroad 
 building ever seen. March 11, 1882, the day the con- 
 tract was signed, Langdon & Shepard advertised for 
 three thousand men and two thousand teams. Sixty 
 sub-contractors were set to work on sections of one 
 mile or more, according to their means and ability. 
 
 By the time the grass was green an army of ten 
 thousand men was at work on the great prairie. The 
 work was done on the English plan; that is, the con- 
 struction was solid and substantial as it was possible 
 to make it, and not a rough temporary track. It was 
 heavy work, averaging seventeen thousand cubic 
 yards per mile of earth removal across the prairies. 
 
 As soon as a sub-contractor finished his job he 
 
300 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 moved forward one hundred to one hundred and fifty 
 miles, where he began on another section. In an- 
 other six weeks he was pretty sure to hear the loco- 
 motive behind him. In advance of the track-layers 
 were bridge gangs, as large as could work to advan- 
 tage, divided into day and night shifts. 
 
 As every stick of timber had to be hauled from 
 Rat Portage, one hundred and forty miles east of 
 Winnipeg, the bridge-builders could not work more 
 than eight or ten miles ahead of the track-layers. 
 Timber was unloaded at night and hauled to the 
 front so as not to interfere with other work. 
 
 Where not a sign of preparation or a stick of tim- 
 ber could be seen one day, the next day would show 
 two or three spans of a nicely finished bridge, and on 
 the second day trains would be running over it. 
 
 Following the bridge-builders came the track-lay- 
 ing gang, the most picturesque feature of railroad 
 building. This gang consisted of three hundred men 
 and thirty-five teams, working in as perfect accord 
 as a fine machine. Floods in Red River Valley, the 
 only route over which supplies could come, delayed 
 work so much that by the end of June only seventy 
 miles of track had been laid. 
 
 But in the next six months 349 miles were laid. 
 Next year 376 miles were laid, making a total for the 
 syndicate's three years of 962 miles of main line and 
 66 miles of siding. The record month was July, 
 1883, when 92 miles were laid. 
 
 The biggest day's work, 6.38 miles of track, was 
 done on July 28, 1883. That day 2,120 rails weigh- 
 ing 604 tons were laid. To accomplish this feat re- 
 quired twelve men to unload rails, twelve to load 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 301 
 
 them on dump cars, and ten men, five on each side, 
 to lay the rails in place. 
 
 Two distributors of angle-bars and bolts handled 
 4,240 plates and 8,480 bolts. Following them fifteen 
 bolters put in an average of 565 bolts each. Thirty- 
 two spikers, with a nipper to each pair, drove 63,000 
 spikes distributed by four peddlers. 
 
 The lead and gauge spikers each drove 2,120 spikes 
 with an average of four blows each, which required 
 an average speed of 600 blows per hour for fourteen 
 hours. 
 
 Sixteen thousand ties were unloaded, loaded on 
 wagons, and hauled to place by thirty-two men and 
 thirty-two teams. On the grade eight men unloaded 
 and distributed the ties, four others spaced them, two 
 spaced the joint ties, while still another two men ad- 
 justed the misplaced ties immediately ahead of the 
 leading spikers. 
 
 Four iron-car boys and two horses hauled the iron 
 to the front. The side track gang put in a siding 
 2,000 feet long that day. 
 
 To handle the commissariat for so large an army 
 distributed over one hundred and fifty miles of ter- 
 ritory and constantly on the move was no small task. 
 The horses required 1,600 bushels of oats, and the 
 men two carloads of provisions a day, all of which 
 had to be unloaded and hauled where it was needed. 
 The men were fed on the best that money could buy. 
 There were ham, bacon, corned beef, and spiced 
 rolls from Milwaukee, while a butcher's outfit sup- 
 plied the camps with fresh meat at least three times 
 a week. There were blacksmiths, wagon and harness 
 makers, shoemakers, and tailors, a dispensary and five 
 
302 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 doctors to be supplied and moved forward with their 
 outfits every time the camp moved. 
 
 In one important particular the building of the 
 Canadian Pacific was very different from the build- 
 ing of any other railroad in the wilderness. There 
 was no rowdyism, no drunkenness, no gambling, no 
 daily murder. As one of the delighted American 
 sub-contractors enthusiastically expressed it, this was 
 due: 
 
 " Not to rough usage and old-fashioned Western 
 lynch law, but to law made by the Queen and lived 
 up to and enforced by her people. No liquor is al- 
 lowed in the country, and under no pretext can any 
 be smuggled in. 
 
 " There are none of the roughs and rowdies hang- 
 ing around the camp so common on the other side of 
 the line. There are no dance houses, no saloons, 
 nothing to inflame and brutalize men and fleece them 
 out of their money. 
 
 ' When a man breaks the law here justice is dealt 
 out to him a heap quicker and in larger chunks than 
 he has been accustomed to in the States, and he has a 
 small show when the guilt is once fastened home. All 
 trains are examined, and every arrival is known. If 
 a man's reasons for being in camp are not satisfac- 
 tory, his stay is very brief. 
 
 " For the first offense of bringing in liquor there 
 is a fine of fifty dollars and costs, and the liquor is 
 destroyed. Next time he pays two hundred dollars 
 and heavier costs ; the third time he gets a fine of four 
 hundred dollars, and, what is worse, six months in a 
 fort with the inconvenience of a ball and chain riv- 
 eted to his leg. 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 308 
 
 " The moment a complaint is made of a dealer hav- 
 ing liquor under any of its aliases, three or four 
 mounted police make their appearance at Mr. Deal- 
 er's shanty, and if there is any truth in the complaint 
 he is provided with a conveyance to a fort, perhaps a 
 hundred miles off, where in the absence of friends and 
 free from outside influence or interference he takes his 
 dose without fear or favoritism, and the medicine is 
 generally a certain cure. I tell you there is a way 
 to do it, and they are doing it right from the scratch." 
 
 Langdon & Shepard reached the summit of the 
 Rocky Mountains in December, 1884. Their men 
 were employed by another contracting firm, and the 
 work went forward without interruption. 
 
 While the Langdon & Shepard forces were mak- 
 ing their remarkable dash toward the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, some extraordinarily difficult work was being 
 done along the northern shore of Lake Superior. To 
 get through this wild country, 2,500,000 cubic yards 
 of the hardest rock known to engineers, syenite and 
 trap, had to be removed. 
 
 To do this required the ceaseless efforts of 12,000 
 men and 2,000 teams working day and night, winter 
 and summer, for three years. 
 
 The task of supplying this great force the year 
 round in a region so nearly inaccessible was one of 
 extraordinary difficulty. The severe cold of winter, 
 which greatly increased the difficulties of transporta- 
 tion, also acted as a tonic which so sharpened the ap- 
 petites of the men that they consumed an average of 
 five pounds of food a day, or a total of four hundred 
 and twenty thousand pounds a week for all the 
 camps. 
 
304 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 To supply current needs and to lay in a supply 
 that would last through the seven months of winter, 
 when communication with the outer world was cut off, 
 twelve steamers were kept busy while navigation was 
 open. The northern shore of Lake Superior is so 
 wild and rough that it was impracticable to build 
 good wagon roads; so small boats had to be used 
 whenever possible to distribute supplies. Michipico- 
 ten would have been the most convenient point for a 
 central depot, but it was so exposed that the wharf 
 and warehouse were twice washed away. Then the 
 landing was moved to a point four miles west. 
 
 In order to reach the line of the railroad it was 
 necessary to make a portage road seven miles in 
 length to a small lake six and a half miles long, 
 which was navigated by a steamboat that had to be 
 built on the spot. At the farther end of this lake 
 the supplies were again transferred from a boat to 
 wagons for a sixteen-mile haul over an extremely 
 rough road, which had been made passable only by 
 an immense expenditure of labor and dynamite. A 
 second lake, eleven miles long, was navigated by an- 
 other steamboat, then came a stretch of two and a 
 half miles of exceedingly bad road to the third lake, 
 which was traversed by still another steamboat that 
 had to be built out in the heart of the wilderness. 
 This third steamboat, by making a voyage of twenty- 
 six miles, could land the supplies at a point from 
 which they could be distributed to the camps. Every 
 pound of provisions and other supplies required in 
 building the road for a hundred miles east and west 
 from this last landing had to be handled through this 
 laborious routine of six transfers from boat to wagon 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 305 
 
 and wagon to boat again. In the winter three hun- 
 dred dog teams were kept busy distributing supplies. 
 
 A shelf twenty feet wide and eleven miles long had 
 to be blasted through the living rock along the coast 
 in one stretch of this difficult road. Five tunnels were 
 driven, and ten rivers, one of them a stream one hun- 
 dred and fifty yards wide, had to be diverted from 
 their natural courses through rock tunnels. 
 
 This tremendous amount of blasting required one 
 hundred tons of dynamite a month for fifteen months. 
 It was all manufactured on the works with such care 
 that not a single life was lost in the making or the 
 handling. 
 
 When it was all over it was found that ninety miles 
 of road had cost two million dollars. The worst mile 
 cost seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But 
 the work was so well done that the maximum grade 
 was fifty-two feet to the mile, and there was no curve 
 greater than six degrees. 
 
 The first use to which this stretch of road was put 
 was to transport troops west to help put down the Biel 
 rebellion in April, 1885. The road not being com- 
 pleted, the soldiers were hauled over the unballasted 
 track in construction trains, and picked their way as 
 best they could over the gap. Their unexpected ap- 
 pearance at the front did much to quell the uprising. 
 On returning in the fall, the soldiers found sleeping 
 and dining cars running regularly over as fine a road- 
 bed as there was in the Dominion. Bancroft Library 
 
 Still another army of 6,000 men, principally China- 
 men, were working eastward from Kamloops, 250 
 miles east of Vancouver, the end of the Pacific section 
 of government-built road, under Contractor Onder- 
 
306 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 donk. But the Chinamen spent most of their time 
 around fires in cold weather. Only white men were 
 of any use when real hard work was to be done. 
 
 Some wonderful engineering work was required to 
 carry the road through the mountains. In the sixty- 
 two miles from the summit of the Rocky Mountains 
 to the valley of the Columbia River, the Kicking 
 Horse River, which the line follows, falls two thou- 
 sand seven hundred and seventy-eight feet. The 
 river had to be crossed nine times, while there were 
 three hundred and seventy thousand cubic feet of 
 rock to be removed, exclusive of tunnel work. All 
 drilling had to be done by hand, because it was not 
 possible to get machinery over the long and difficult 
 trail. 
 
 On the Pacific slope of the Selkirks the descent is 
 two thousand three hundred and fifty feet in forty- 
 two miles. The Cascade Range was passed by fol- 
 lowing narrow ledges along the Fraser River through 
 an endless succession of tunnels and over some of the 
 highest timber trestles ever constructed. One of these 
 was two hundred and ninety-six feet high and four 
 hundred and fifty feet long. All food, material, and 
 supplies had to be transported long distances through 
 a wilderness, and finally through mountains which 
 Sir Edwin Arnold declared surpassed the Alps, the 
 Himalayas, and the Andes in magnificence. And it 
 must not be forgotten that the more attractive a 
 mountain is to the aesthete, the more troublesome it is 
 to the engineer and to the humbler mortals upon 
 whom devolves the necessary duty of getting bags of 
 flour and sides of bacon over it. 
 
 Some curious obstacles were encountered at various 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 307 
 
 places which worried the engineers and cost the com- 
 pany money. For instance, two hundred and seven- 
 teen miles east of Winnipeg the line crosses the Bar- 
 clay muskeg, which is the Indian name for bog. This 
 muskeg is a huge basin filled to a depth of two hun- 
 dred feet with material dense enough to support the 
 track, but which quivers like a bowl of jelly whenever 
 a train strikes it. The surface is thrown into waves 
 five or six inches high by the passage of a train. This 
 jelly-like quivering causes the rails to creep, in some 
 instances as much as two feet four inches under a sin- 
 gle train. Track bolts were frequently sheared off 
 by the creeping movement, and it was found neces- 
 sary to station watchmen at the muskeg day and night 
 with short pieces of rail to repair the gaps left by the 
 creeping until the engineers could find a way to an- 
 chor the track securely. 
 
 Again, in going down the western slope of the 
 Rockies, the engineers wanted to tunnel a mountain 
 spur, but the mountain proved to be of quicksand 
 which filled up the tunnel as soon as it was finished. 
 After the third attempt the engineers decided to go 
 around. 
 
 On the Thompson River, two hundred miles east 
 of Vancouver, irrigation on some mountain terraces 
 had caused a series of extraordinary landslides before 
 the railroad was built. In the largest of these a mass 
 of earth one hundred and sixty acres in area and four 
 hundred feet in depth slid down into the river until it 
 was stopped by the opposite mountain wall, damming 
 the river to a height of one hundred and sixty feet 
 and forming a lake twelve miles long. As soon as the 
 river rose to the height of the dam it began flowing 
 
308 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 over the top, and in due time scoured out its bed 
 again. There were a number of smaller slides in the 
 same locality. 
 
 When the railroad builders came along they found 
 to their astonishment that they could not make the 
 track stay where they put it. The whole surface of 
 the earth, lubricated by the continual seepage from 
 the irrigating ditches, was steadily sliding toward the 
 river over the slippery substratum of clay silt. One 
 morning they found the track had moved toward the 
 river eight feet and had sunk four feet below grade 
 during the night. Watchmen had to be stationed day 
 and night to watch the wandering track until the 
 engineers could find a way to outwit the elusive moun- 
 tainside. 
 
 Indeed, the building of the Canadian Pacific Rail- 
 way was one long struggle with natural obstacles as 
 formidable as they were unique. Like the pioneers 
 who first grappled with the problems of the railroad, 
 the engineers of the Canadian Pacific had no prece- 
 dents to guide them, and not even any facts on which 
 to base their plans, for the whole of the route lay 
 through an unknown wilderness. It was evident, 
 for example, that the precipitation in the Selkirk 
 Mountains was enormous, and that snow-slides, or 
 avalanches, were frequent and appallingly destruc- 
 tive. In order to learn just how formidable these 
 snow-slides were and to determine the position, 
 character, and extent of snow-sheds required to pro- 
 tect the line from them, parties of engineers, well pro- 
 vided with meteorological instruments, snow-shoes, 
 and dog trains, passed a winter in the mountains. 
 
 The snowfall was found to be tremendous, amount- 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 309 
 
 ing in one winter to an aggregate of forty-three feet 
 six inches. In a single storm of six days' duration 
 eight and a half feet of snow fell. Owing to the 
 warm Chinook winds and winter rains the snow in 
 these mountains packs down into dense, heavy masses, 
 a cubic foot of it weighing from twenty-five to forty- 
 five pounds. The slightest disturbance, such as a 
 man or an animal walking across the lower edge of a 
 steep slope, or even the vibrations of the atmosphere 
 caused by talking in a loud voice, was sufficient to set 
 a slide, sometimes amounting to a quarter of a million 
 cubic yards, in motion. Usually the slides started by 
 their own weight. With a crash and a roar the great 
 mass, weighing from a hundred thousand to a hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand tons, would dart down the 
 mountainside in a great white flash, sweeping trees, 
 loose bowlders weighing several tons, and everything 
 else down to the solid granite of the mountain core, 
 with it. So great was the force of these slides that 
 they would cross the valleys and be carried up the 
 opposite slope a hundred feet or so. 
 
 The most remarkable effects were caused by the 
 cyclones induced by the tremendous velocity of these 
 enormous masses. These cyclones, extending for a 
 distance of a hundred yards on each side and in front 
 and for a hundred feet above the slides, were called 
 " flurries." Huge trees, several feet in diameter, that 
 happened to be caught in the vortex of these flurries, 
 would be uprooted; others outside the vortex would 
 be cut off as by a chain shot. A man who had the mis- 
 fortune to be caught in a flurry was picked up and 
 whirled and twisted spirally and finally dropped, a 
 limp mass, without a bruise or break in skin or cloth- 
 
310 WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 ing, yet with every bone in his body broken or dislo- 
 cated. 
 
 The information gathered by the observers led to 
 the building of seven miles of snow-sheds, in which 
 26,000,000 feet of timber was used, at a cost of 
 $3,000,000, to protect the tracks. The sheds were 
 built of large square timbers, with their roofs on a 
 level with the mountain slope, so they would offer the 
 least possible resistance to the snow-slides. As a fur- 
 ther precaution magazines of provisions, oil and coal 
 for the coaches were established at intervals of ten or 
 twelve miles, throughout the Selkirks, so that if a 
 train should have the misfortune to be detained by 
 snow blockades it would never be more than six miles 
 from supplies. These magazines have proved, how- 
 ever, to be of little use except for such moral support 
 as they may provide, for the engineers who planned 
 the snow-sheds did their work so skilfully that the 
 Canadian Pacific has experienced even less trouble 
 from snow blockades than lines farther south. 
 
 Nor were the engineers and the contractors the only 
 ones who were having a hard time building the Cana- 
 dian Pacific. The men behind the engineers were 
 ensconced in comfortable offices away back in Mon- 
 treal, where they never had to give a thought to the 
 chances of the next instalment of bacon and beans 
 getting through in time to keep them from starving 
 to death; but they had to study very hard upon prob- 
 lems scarcely less vital. In 1884, when the great 
 work was well along toward completion, there came a 
 crisis that cost the officers and directors some sleep- 
 less nights, and very nearly swamped the undertak- 
 ing with all hands involved in it. 
 
ROMANCE OF A GREAT RAILROAD 311 
 
 All the money obtained from the government and 
 from sales of stock had been spent. Stephen, Smith, 
 and the other members of the syndicate had pledged 
 all their earthly possessions upon which money could 
 be raised, and the Bank of Montreal was deeply in- 
 volved. It should have been easy to raise money 
 since so much of the road had been built, and the man- 
 agement had been energetic and economical, but it 
 wasn't. The somewhat numerous class which had 
 known all along that the road could never be built 
 now had the public ear, and all attempts to raise 
 money were viewed askance. The fate of the Do- 
 minion, as well as of the railroad company, hung in 
 the balance for a time. 
 
 As a last resort the government was asked for a 
 loan of twenty-two million five hundred thousand dol- 
 lars. It hesitated. Public opinion was intensely 
 wrought up, and the government could not count on 
 its stanchest supporters. Finally a secret loan was 
 advanced by the government, and the crisis was 
 passed. The syndicate proved itself worthy of this 
 mark of confidence by repaying every dollar of all 
 the government loans before they were due. 
 
 All obstacles, natural and financial, were over- 
 come at last, however, and on the 1st of November, 
 1885, a train bearing some of the directors and rail- 
 road officials left Montreal while the eastern and west- 
 ern ends of the road were still several miles apart. 
 When the train reached Craigellachie, 2,553 miles 
 from Montreal and 351 miles from Vancouver, only 
 one rail remained to be put in place in the track. 
 
 The celebration attending the driving of the last 
 spike on transcontinental lines across the border had 
 
WHEN RAILROADS WERE NEW 
 
 always been an elaborate and expensive one. The 
 admitted cost of the ceremony on the Northern Pa- 
 cific was one hundred and seventy-five thousand dol- 
 lars; the real cost was probably more. But in Can- 
 ada they managed it differently. 
 
 ' The last spike," said General Manager Van 
 Home, " will be just as good an iron one as there is 
 between Montreal and Vancouver. Any one who 
 wants to see it driven will have to pay full fare." 
 
 Such inhospitable terms as these had the effect of 
 limiting the party who witnessed that historic event 
 to barely a dozen railroad officials and the workmen 
 who finished the job. On November 7, 1885, Don- 
 ald Smith, a Scotchman who had begun life in the 
 wilderness at a salary of one hundred dollars a year, 
 drove the last spike which completed the Canadian 
 Pacific five years before the time specified in the con- 
 tract. 
 
 There was no speechmaking, no banquet, no any- 
 thing. When Smith had delivered the last blow he 
 threw down the spike maul and then the little party 
 went fishing. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Accommodation train, 193 
 "Actual operation," railroad in, 
 
 193 
 
 Aid to railroads, 82, 15T, 195 
 Alleghenies, crossing the, 134 
 Allen, Horatio, 12 
 Allen, Nehemiah, 213 
 Ames, Oakes, 241 
 Angus, R. B., 298 
 Anti-friction journal, Winans, 49 
 Armed forces race for a pass, 
 
 271 
 
 Army, railroad building, 252, 299 
 Army, railroad, maintained, 280 
 Arnold, Sir Edwin, 306 
 Aspinwall, W. H., 68 
 Atchison, Topeka and Santa F6, 
 chartered, 260 
 
 completed to Colorado, 264 
 
 dividends stopped, 282 
 
 extension to the Pacific, 281 
 
 first car into New Mexico, 272 
 
 first section built, 260 
 
 first conception of, 260 
 
 land grant to, 261 
 
 leases Denver and Rio Grande, 
 276 
 
 lynch law on, 262 
 
 plans for Colorado, 268 
 
 receivership, 283 
 
 ridiculed by financiers, 260 
 
 seizes Grand Canyon of the Ar- 
 kansas, 274 
 
 Southern Pacific outmaneuvered, 
 
 270 
 
 Auction, railroad at, 186 
 Ayers, Conductor Henry, 85 
 
 Bailey, James, 237 
 Baldwin, M. W., 115, 199 
 Baltimore, commercial supremacy, 
 
 33 
 
 Baltimore, valuation of, in 1827, 2 
 Baltimore and Ohio, Baring Broth- 
 ers, buy bonds, 60 
 
 chartered in Pennsylvania, 143 
 
 cost, 2 
 
 extension to Cumberland, 57 
 
 Baltimore and Ohio: 
 
 extraordinary engineering on, 60 
 
 first discussed, 34 
 
 first traffic boom, 50 
 
 how traffic grew, 65 
 
 incorporated, 38 
 
 McLane, Louis, president, 58 
 
 new line to the Ohio, 66 
 
 opened to Parkersburg, 66 
 
 opening to Piedmont, 60 
 
 opened to Wheeling, 62 
 
 rebuilding, 58 
 
 remarkable grades surmounted, 
 62 
 
 Swann, Thomas, president, 60 
 
 switchback terrifies passengers, 
 64 
 
 banquet, remarkable, at Balti- 
 more, 72 
 
 Bargains in charters, 207 
 Barrier car, 25 
 Beach, George K., 260 
 Bell cord, origin of, 84 
 Benton, Thomas, 229 
 Benton, town of, 249 
 Bernard, Gen. Simon, 33 
 Berth, proper charge for, 176 
 Best Friend of Charleston, 24 
 Binney, Horace, 114 
 Blackmail of Union Pacific, 242 
 Board of canal commissioners, 
 
 Pennsylvania, 117 
 Boats on railroads, 139 
 Boiler, wooden, 3 
 Brakemen, hardships of, 223 
 Bridal tour, first railroad, in- 
 fluence of, 75 
 Bridge across Mississippi, first, 
 
 224 
 
 " Brigade of cars," 42 
 Broad gauge route to the Mississ- 
 ippi, 109 
 
 Brooks, John W., 205 
 Brown, George, 34 
 Bryant, Gridley, 13 
 Buchanan, president, 68, 74 
 "Buffalo Railroad," the, 156 
 Buffalo-Cleveland, rail route, 214 
 
 315 
 
316 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Buffalo road, completed piece- 
 meal, 168 
 
 Buying railroads without capital, 
 205 
 
 Cabs, origin of locomotive, 126 
 
 Cameron, Simon, 102 
 
 Campbell, Henry R., 117 
 
 Canadian Pacific Railway, audac- 
 ity of project, 285 
 Cascade Range, passage of, 306 
 dangers of survey, 287 
 difficult construction on, 303 
 dissensions over, 285 
 eagle reveals pass, 297 
 engineering, wonderful, 306 
 forest fires, surveyors burned in, 
 
 287 
 
 grievances of British Colum- 
 bians, 286 
 
 Indians assist in surveys, 288 
 landslides, extraordinary, 307 
 Liberals oppose, 285 
 loan, secret government, 311 
 obstacles, curious, 306 
 project overthrows governments, 
 
 286 
 
 provision magazines on, 310 
 public opinion wrought up over, 
 
 311 
 
 quicksands fill tunnels, 307 
 rails, creeping, 307 
 remarkable winter survey, 290 
 Selkirks, descent of, 306 
 summit of Rockies reached, 303 
 snowsheds on, 310 
 supplies, transporting, in wilder- 
 ness, 304 
 
 survey, remarkable winter, 290 
 surveys begun, 287 
 surveys, hardships of, 289 
 syndicate to construct, 298 
 tracklaying on, fast, 300 
 wagon road as a substitute for, 
 286 
 
 Canal boats on railroad, 189 
 
 Canal commissioners oppose rail- 
 roads, 117 
 
 Canal, Delaware and Hudson, Co., 
 12, 19 
 
 Canal, Erie, 5 
 
 Canals, Gen. Bernard's report on, 
 33 
 
 Canal period, 5 
 
 Canals, earliest plans for, 5 
 
 Captain of industry, early, 76 
 
 * Captains of trains" elected, 
 
 Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, 40, 
 
 42 
 
 Cars, attempts to introduce sleep- 
 ing, 171 
 
 barrier, 25 
 
 "brigade of," 42 
 
 capacity of, in 1843, 204 
 
 "Cribs," 170 
 
 dining, introduced, 178 
 
 discomforts of early, 170 
 
 " Dromedary," 53 
 
 early, described, 163 
 
 eight wheeled, Stevenson & Co., 
 164 
 
 evolution of, 52 
 
 first eight wheeled, 52 
 
 freak, 53 
 
 high enough to stand up in, 170 
 
 " Hyenas," 170 
 
 Meyers " Revolver train," 134 
 
 parlor, introduced, 178 
 
 passenger, torture chambers, 163 
 
 " Pioneer," first Pullman, 173 
 
 "Pleasure," 193 
 
 "Possum Belly," 124 
 
 "Rattlers," 170 
 
 sleeping, 23 
 
 "Sea Serpents," 53 
 
 sent to the Czar, 43 
 
 " Splendid," early, 115 
 Casement, D.C., 252 
 Casenent, Gen. Jack S., 252 
 Celebrations, at San Francisco, 257 
 
 on completion of Cumberland 
 Valley, 141 
 
 Great Railway of 1857, 68 
 
 on completion of the Brie, 95, 
 100 
 
 on opening B. & O. to Wheeling, 
 62 
 
 on opening Mohawk and Hud- 
 son, 150 
 
 on completion of first transcon- 
 tinental, 257 
 
 on opening road to Philadelphia, 
 119 
 
 on opening line to Washington, 
 55 
 
 on opening to Worcester, 8 
 Central Pacific, first shipment of 
 rails for, 238 
 
 grading begun, 238 
 
 organized, 237 
 
 outwits Union Pacific, 255 
 
 struggle with natural obstacles, 
 250 
 
 tunneling under difficulties, 250 
 Change of gauge, 102 
 
INDEX 
 
 317 
 
 Charleston and Hamburg R. R., 15, 
 
 22 
 
 Charter, first railroad, 38 
 Charters, applications for, in New 
 
 York, 156 
 
 Chase, Gov. Salmon P., 69 
 Cheap excursions, first, organized, 
 
 231 
 Cheap sleeping cars not wanted, 
 
 177 
 
 Chevalier, Michel, 31 
 Cheyenne, Wyo., founded, 244 
 Chicago, first depot in, 200 
 Chicago's first railroad, 197 
 Chillicothe, celebration at, 70 
 Chinese, as railroad laborers, 251 
 Cincinnati, celebration at, 70 
 "Classification bill," famous, 148 
 Clay, Henry, 161, 233 
 Clement, W. H., 222 
 Cleveland perceives dangerous 
 
 rivalry, 222 
 Cobden, Richard, 197 
 Colfax, Schuyler, 208 
 Collisions, between teams, 137 
 Consolidations, Chicago and North- 
 western, 202 
 first important, 181 
 Lake Shore and Michigan 
 
 Southern, 218 
 Michigan Southern and Northern 
 
 Indiana, 213 
 New York Central and Hudson 
 
 River, 184 
 
 Conspiracy against a railroad, 210 
 Conspirators arrested, 212 
 Construction, Canadian Pacific, 
 
 described, 299 
 early, described, 28, 41, 126, 132, 
 
 160, 165 
 
 extraordinary, 251 
 period of active, 202 
 race, 209 
 rapid, 202 
 spectacular, 299 
 first syndicate, 93 
 Union Pacific, described, 253 
 Contest for supremacy, 203 
 Contractors, dishonest, 49 
 murdered by workmen, 55 
 Dodge, Lord & Co., 260 
 Langdon & Shepard, 299, 303 
 Page & Bacon, 67 
 Sheffield & Farnam, 202 
 Conventions, New York, railroad, 
 
 78, 158, 180 
 
 San Francisco, Pacific Railroad, 
 235 
 
 Cooper, Peter, 45 
 
 Cornerstone, railroad, laid, 40 
 
 Corruption on state railroads, 142 
 
 Cost to kill Indians, 258 
 
 Credit Mobilier, 241 
 
 Credit stopped on railroad, 209 
 
 Creeping rails, 307 
 
 Crittenden, J. J., attorney-general, 
 
 95 
 
 Crocker Brothers, 236 
 Czar gets idea of railroads from 
 
 America, 44 
 
 Darrell, Nicholas W., 24 
 Davis, Phineas, 49 
 Death of T. D. Judah, 239 
 Death in the wilderness, 287 
 Delaware and Hudson Canal, 19, 
 
 92 
 
 Delight over railroads, 141 
 Depot, first, in Chicago, 200 
 Designer of first locomotive, 24 
 Destitute settlers carried free, 267 
 Development, origin of modern 
 
 railroad methods, 265 
 Dickens, Charles, rides on Portage 
 
 railroad, 138 
 
 Directors borrow chairs, 213 
 Discipline, need of, recognized, 144 
 Discomforts of travel, early, 169 
 Diven, A. S., 93 
 Dividends limited by law, 114 
 Dix, Gen. John A., 240 
 Dodge City, 261 
 Dodge, Gen. G. M., 240 
 Dodge, Lord & Co., contractors, 
 
 260 
 
 Dodge, W. E., 92 
 Dodsworth's band, 96 
 Dorchester wants no railroads, 11 
 Douglas, Stephen A., 196 
 Downing, George, caterer, 96 
 Drought in Kansas, 267 
 Duer, John, 79 
 Dunlap, James, 195 
 Durant, T. C., 240 
 Dust washing device for coaches, 
 
 89 
 
 Early railroading in Illinois, 193 
 Elgar, John, inventor of switches, 
 
 53 
 
 Ellsworth, L. C., 279 
 Emigrant traffic, early, 166 
 Engineers, early, dissipated, 125 
 Engineer on first locomotive, 24 
 Engineer, ready made, 219 
 Engineers assaulted, 279 
 
318 
 
 INDEX 
 
 English railroads, early, described, 
 
 15 
 
 Erie Canal traffic, 36 
 Erie, resists change of gauge, 214 
 Erie "war," 214 
 Erie Railroad, the, 75 
 appeal for state aid, 81 
 celebration at Dunkirk, 100 
 change of gauge, 101 
 chartered, 79 
 completion celebrated, 95 
 connections forbidden, 101 
 contemporaneous tribute to, 107 
 continued West, 108 
 cost of, to Dunkirk, 105 
 deplorable condition of, 101 
 difficulties in raising money, 84 
 flag presentations, 99 
 finished to Dunkirk, 94 
 first iron bridges, 93 
 first passenger train, 83 
 first president, 80 
 forced to change eastern termi- 
 nus, 102 
 grading, 83 
 
 great Genesee bridge, 94 
 ground broken for, 81 
 hampered by politicians, 79 
 last spike, 94 
 learns to issue bonds, 94 
 opened to Goshen, 83 
 origin of, 76 
 
 opening revolutionizes travel, 106 
 plans for state to build, 83 
 public meetings to discuss, 78 
 remarkable fast run on, 98 
 riots on, 91 
 
 stockholders ruined, 81 
 subscription plan to build, 82 
 surveys begun, 80 
 syndicate construction, 93 
 termini, 80 
 
 victimized by farmers, 90 
 wrecks numerous, 101 
 Excitement over first train, 160 
 Excursions, cheap, first organized, 
 
 231 
 
 Excursion to Washington, 56 
 Expensive construction, 305 
 Experimental railroad in 1809, 113 
 Explosion of the Best Friend, 25 
 Extraordinary episode at Erie, 214 
 Evans, Oliver, 3, 7 
 
 Fare limited to one cent a mile, 
 
 115 
 
 Fares, early, 138, 182 
 Fargo, W. G., 162 
 
 Farmers blockade railroads, 122 
 Farmers let stock be killed, 210 
 Farmers stone trains, 211 
 Featherstonhaugh, Geo. W., 157 
 Fiat railroads, 189 
 Fillmore, President, 95 
 Fire, great New York, 81 
 First bridge across Mississippi, 
 
 224 
 
 freight conductor, 163 
 impressions of railroads, 30, 63, 
 
 75 
 
 locomotive explosion, 25 
 man killed asleep on track, 50 
 passenger service, 25 
 private car lines, 120 
 Pullman car, 172 
 railroad meeting in Ohio, 218 
 telegraphic train order, 103 
 trip by a locomotive in America, 
 
 20 
 
 trip of a Pullman car, 174 
 vestibuled cars, 178 
 wheat shipped to Chicago, 200 
 woman to ride on New Jersey 
 
 R. R., 140 
 
 Fisk, James, holds up Union Pa- 
 cific, 242 
 
 Flags presented to Erie R. R., 99 
 Flanges changed outside to inside, 
 
 41 
 
 Fleming, Sandford, 286, 297 
 "Flurries" caused by snowslides, 
 
 309 
 
 " Flurry," man killed by, 309 
 Force used to end railroad com- 
 petition, 224 
 Fortifications built by railroads, 
 
 280 
 
 Four wheeled truck, 26 
 Fourth of July excursion, famous, 
 
 161 
 Freight conductor, first in New 
 
 York, 163 
 Freight, first New York R. R. to 
 
 carry, 162 
 Freight, how handled in early 
 
 days, 194 
 
 Fuel famine of 1856-7, 222 
 Future of Chicago predicted, 207 
 
 Gauge, changes of, 102 
 five feet recommended, 23, 24 
 fixed by first whistle, 222 
 six feet, 68 
 
 broad, route New York-St. 
 Louis, 109 
 
 Girard, Stephen, 114 
 
INDEX 
 
 319 
 
 Gould, Jay, 147, 280, 282 
 
 Grade, discovery that locomotive 
 can climb, 128 
 
 "Graduation," 54 
 
 Graham, W. G., secretary of the 
 navy, 95 
 
 Grand Canyon of the Arkansas 
 fortified, 275 
 
 Grand Canyon, spectacular strug- 
 gle for, 272 
 
 Grasshopper raids, 266 
 
 Grasshoppers stop trains, 125, 266 
 
 Great .number of railroad schemes, 
 225 
 
 Half rates to ministers, origin of, 
 
 86 
 
 " Hell-on-Wheels," 247 
 Heroes, passengers on first train 
 
 as, 156 
 
 Heroine of the Central Pacific, 256 
 Hill, James J., 24, 298 
 Holliday, Cyrus K., 259, 283 
 Hopkins, Mark, 236 
 Horsepower on railroads, 23, 30, 
 
 44 
 Horses, frightened by first train, 
 
 155 
 
 prohibited on railroads, 124 
 substituted for locomotives, 224 
 Hunt, Gov. A. C., 277 
 Huntington, C. P., 236, 282 
 
 Illinois, first railroad in, 191 
 Illinois Central, 196 
 Imlay, Richard, 52 
 Impressions, first, of railroads, 30, 
 
 63, 75 
 
 Inclined planes, 127, 134 
 Indians, atrocities, 245 
 
 cost per head to kill, 258 
 
 declare war, 243 
 
 hunt, a favorite joke, 263 
 
 learn to wreck trains, 246 
 
 to exterminate whites, 244 
 
 drive Dodge to find pass, 243 
 
 help in surveys, 288 
 Internal improvements, Illinois, 
 189 
 
 Indiana, 203 
 
 Michigan, 203 
 
 Pennsylvania, 117 
 Iron Bridges, first, 93 
 Irving, Washington, misses ex- 
 cursion, 69 
 
 James, J. H., 221 
 Jarvis, E. W., 290 
 
 Jealousy of Pennsylvania cities, 
 
 108 
 
 Jervis, J. B., 12, 151 
 Joy, James F., 205 
 Judah, Mrs. T. D., 235 
 Judah, Theodore D., 234 
 
 Kent, Marvin, 108 
 
 Kentucky, first railroad in, 223 
 
 Kidnapping of public officials, 280 
 
 King, J. G., 81 
 
 Krudener, Baron, 43 
 
 Land grants, 196 
 
 to A., T. & S. F., 261 
 
 to Canadian Pacific, 298 
 
 to Illinois Central, 196 
 
 to Pacific railroads, 241 
 Last spike, Canadian Pacific, 312 
 
 Erie, 94 
 
 first transcontinental railroad, 
 256 
 
 cost of, 312 
 Latrobe, B. H., 54, 61 
 Law and order maintained, 302 
 Lawlessness, 248, 261 
 Lazenby, Mrs. C. E., diverts rail- 
 road, 191 
 
 Lease, D. and R. G., canceled, 281 
 Legislation to prohibit competition, 
 
 181 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 208, 224 
 Litchfield, E. C., 205 
 Lobby, at Albany, 159 
 
 holds up railroads, 108 
 
 railroad, hottest fight by, 208 
 Locomotive, climbs grades, 128 
 
 first advocated, 23 
 
 first built in America, 24 
 
 first explosion, 25 
 
 first in America, 12, 19, 22 
 
 first in Illinois, 192 
 
 first order for, 12, 19 
 
 first trip by American built, 46 
 
 first trip in America, 20 
 
 first with a whistle, 221 
 
 Peter Cooper's, 45 
 
 prize for best, 48 
 
 trailed by hunters, 194 
 
 with horizontal drivers, 133 
 Locomotives, individual, *' Best 
 Friend of Charleston," 76 
 
 " Black Hawk," 119 
 
 "De Witt Clinton," 151 
 
 "Howe," 167 
 
 "Hoodoo," 167 
 
 "John Bull," 140 
 
 " Jupiter," 256 
 
INDEX 
 
 Locomotives: 
 
 "Old Ironsides," 115 
 
 " Pioneer," 199 
 
 " Robert Fulton," 153 
 
 "Rocket," 47 
 
 "Stourbridge Lion," 20, 22 
 
 " Syracuse," 162 
 
 "Tom Thumb," 46 
 
 "Washington," 128 
 
 "West Point," 26 
 
 " William Cooke," 57 
 
 "Wyoming," 16T 
 
 "York," 49 
 Locomotives, "Camels," 61 
 
 English, worthless, 153 
 
 purchased by Pennsylvania, 121 
 
 to burn soft coal, 201 
 Loder, Benjamin, 96 
 Lord, Eleazer, 76, 79 
 
 Macdonald, Sir John, 298 
 Mail transportation, begun, 56 
 Mania, internal improvement, 203 
 "Marriage Act," of 1831, 140 
 Mason, Roswell B., 196 
 Mason, S. T., 204 
 Massachusetts, transportation sys- 
 tem, 27 
 
 " Master of transportation," 150 
 Masterson, Bat, 278 
 Mattison, Joel, 195 
 Meigs, Henry, 8 
 Mennonites brought to Kansas, 
 
 265 
 Michigan Southern, first train into 
 
 Chicago, 209 
 Militia to stop railroad riots, 
 
 55 
 
 Miller, E. L., 24 
 Ministers, origin of half rates to, 
 
 86 
 Minot, Supt. Charles, first train 
 
 order, 104 
 Mob, breaks up railroad meeting, 
 
 229 
 
 tears up track, 216 
 " Model Road," the, 222 
 Monopoly feared by the people, 
 
 120 
 
 Moore, James, 117 
 Morgan, Richard P., 193 
 Morley, W. R., 273 
 Murat, Mme., 140 
 McHenry, James, 109 
 McLane, Lewis, 58 
 McMahon, J. V. L., 38, 42 
 McMurtrie, J. H., 271 
 
 Newington, Conn., protests against 
 railroads, 11 
 
 New route between east and west, 
 106 
 
 New York aid to railroads, 157 
 gets railroad fever, 156 
 -St. Louis, through route, 66 
 
 News carrying, fast, 56 
 
 Nickerson, Thomas, 257 
 
 Norris, William, 128 
 
 Obstacles, struggle with natural, 
 
 308 
 
 Ogden, W. B., 198, 206 
 Ogle, Gen. Alexander, 111 
 Ohio in a hurry for railroads, 218 
 Operation, railroad, 30, 43, 50, 120, 
 135, 145, 162, 167, 193, 204, 
 214, 222 
 
 Opposition to railroads in Pennsyl- 
 vania, 111 
 
 Oratory in great vogue, 71 
 Origin of bell cord, 84 
 of half rates to ministers, 86 
 Pullman cars, 171 
 pass system, 142 
 ticket punch, 88 
 
 Palmer, Gen. W. J., 273 
 
 Panic of 1857, 202 
 
 Pass, Evans, 251 
 
 Passenger service, first, 25 
 
 Passengers, profit on transfer of, 
 159 
 
 Passengers walk home, 193, 224 
 
 Passes become an intolerable evil, 
 
 169 
 origin of, 142 
 
 Patapsco bridge, 54 
 
 Pennsylvania opposes railroads, 
 111 
 
 Pennsylvania railroad, buys State 
 
 railroads, 147 
 extension westward, 147 
 first to use airbrake, 149 
 first block signal system, 149 
 first steel rails, 149 
 great service to nation, 147 
 leases New Jersey lines, 147 
 organized, 144 
 
 Perham, Josiah, 230 
 
 Persecution threatens ruin of rail- 
 road, 212 
 
 Peter, T. J., 260 
 
 Pierson, Jeremiah, 76 
 
 Pierson, Mrs. H. L., 75 
 
 Pile construction, 160, 219 
 
 Planes, inclined, 127, 134 
 
INDEX 
 
 321 
 
 Plumbe, John, 227 
 
 "Plunder Law," 219 
 
 Politics, 79, 142, 210, 285 
 
 Popular excursions, origin of, 231 
 
 Portage Railroad, 144 
 
 Post roads, 4 
 
 Poverty, Michigan Southern, 213 
 
 President Fillmore, at Erie cele- 
 bration, 95 
 
 Van Buren, rides on railroad, 
 161 
 
 Private car lines, first, 120 
 
 Profitable railroad, 214 
 
 Public eager for railroads, 39 
 
 Pullman, George M., 171 
 
 Pullman, sleeping car, origin of, 
 171 
 
 Punch, ticket, origin of, 88 
 
 Quarrels ruin a railroad, 220 
 
 Race, horse against locomotive, 
 
 273 
 
 for Raton Pass, 271 
 Raids of ex-Gov. Hunt, 277 
 Rail making, early, at Scranton, 
 
 92 
 
 Railroad, aid in New York, 157 
 at auction, 186 
 
 bridge not an obstacle to navi- 
 gation, 225 
 
 building by statute, 189 
 building, remarkable, 219 
 consolidation, first important, 181 
 conspirators confess, 212 
 demonstration, 43 
 development, origin of modern 
 
 methods, 265 
 fever in New York, 156 
 first bridal trip on, 75 
 first east from Cleveland, 213 
 first operated in Ohio, 220 
 first man killed sleeping on, 50 
 first west of Alleghenies, 188 
 how it impressed early travelers, 
 
 63 
 
 "in actual operation," 193 
 opening of the first Illinois, 192 
 operation, early, 30, 43, 50, 120, 
 
 135, 145, 162, 167, 199, 204, 
 
 214, 222 
 
 organization in the west, 225 
 remonstrances against, 11 
 schemes, early, 188 
 torn up by farmers, 194 
 to Washington, 53 
 travel extraordinary, 169 
 trip in 1832, 30 
 
 Railroads, individual, Allegheny 
 
 Portage, 127 
 Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, 
 
 259 
 Atlantic and Great Western, 
 
 109 
 
 Atlantic and Pacific, 206, 282 
 Auburn and Syracuse, 162 
 Baltimore and Ohio, 33 
 Baltimore and Washington, 53 
 Boston and Lowell, 27 
 Boston and Providence, 29 
 Boston and Worcester, 8 
 Buifalo and Erie, 218 
 Buffalo and State Line, 218 
 Camden and Amboy, 139 
 Canadian-Pacific, 284 
 Central Pacific, 237 
 Charleston and Hamburg, 22 
 Chicago and Alton, 172 
 Cincinnati and Indianapolis, 67 
 Chicago and Northwestern, 202, 
 
 244 
 
 Chicago and Vincennes, 190 
 Chicago, Rock Island and Pa- 
 cific, 202, 282 
 Chicago, St. Paul and Fond du 
 
 Lac, 202 
 
 Cincinnati, Hamilton and Day- 
 ton, 109 
 Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati 
 
 and St. Louis, 222 
 Cleveland, Painesville and Ash- 
 tabula, 218 
 
 Cumberland Valley, 141 
 Denver and Rio Grande, 269 
 Detroit and St. Joseph, 203 
 Erie, The, 75 
 
 Erie and Kalamazoo, 203, 209 
 Erie and Northeast, 214 
 Franklin and Warren, 108 
 Galena and Chicago Union, 172, 
 
 197 
 
 Great Western, 195 
 Hudson River, 180, 182 
 Illinois Central, 195 
 Lake Erie, Wabash and St. 
 
 Louis, 195 
 
 Lexington and Ohio River, 223 
 Little Miami, 222 
 Mad River and Lake Erie, 220 
 Marietta and Cincinnati, 66 
 Mauch Chunk, 14 
 Michigan Central, 197 
 Michigan Southern and Northern 
 
 Indiana, 218 
 
 Mississippi and Missouri, 240 
 Missouri Pacific, 233, 282 
 
INDEX 
 
 Railroads : 
 
 Mohawk and Hudson, 151, 157, 
 185 
 
 New York and Harlem, 180, 182 
 
 New Jersey, 141 
 
 New York Central, 181, 183, 184 
 
 Northern Cross, 186 
 
 Northern Indiana, 207 
 
 Northern Pacific, 232 
 
 Ohio and Mississippi, 66, 109 
 
 Ohio, The, 219 
 
 Painesville, Ashtabula and Gene- 
 va, 214 
 
 Paterson and Hudson, 29, 102 
 
 Pennsylvania, The, 144 
 
 People's Pacific, 232 
 
 Philadelphia and Columbia, 118, 
 119 
 
 Philadelphia, Germantown and 
 Norristown, 114 
 
 Pittsburg and Erie, 108 
 
 Pittsburg, Ft. Wayne and Chi- 
 cago, 148 
 
 Quincy Granite, 13 
 
 Ramapo and Paterson, 102 
 
 Rochester and Niagara Falls, 234 
 
 Sacramento Valley, 234 
 
 St. Louis and San Francisco, 282 
 
 Southern Pacific, 270 
 
 Syracuse and Utica, 159 
 
 Toledo and Illinois River, 195 
 
 Union Pacific, 240 
 
 Wabash, The, 188, 195 
 
 Winchester and Potomac, 52 
 Railroads, as competitors of Erie 
 Canal, 180 
 
 as toll roads, 50 
 
 as turnpikes, 120 
 
 early methods of construction, 41 
 
 earliest predictions concerning, 7 
 
 fantastic objections to, 10 
 
 fiat, 189 
 
 first in Illinois, 191 
 
 France studies American, 31 
 
 great number of early, 68 
 
 horses prohibited on, 124 
 
 no right to compete with canal, 
 181 
 
 not built by capitalists, 9 
 
 opposition to, 8 
 
 supremacy of American, 31 
 
 that levied war, 259 
 
 to compete with steamers, 213 
 Rail route, Buffalo-Cleveland, com- 
 pleted, 214 
 Railway, great celebrations of 
 
 1857, 68 
 Rapid growth of railroads, 225 
 
 Raton, pass, 271 
 Redfield, W. C., 77 
 Remarkable railroad building, 219 
 Reorganization of New York Cen- 
 tral, 185 
 
 " Revolver train," 134 
 Rewards for engineers, 297 
 Ridgley, N. H., 186, 195 
 Ridicule for railroad builders, 9 
 Rifles for railroad builders, 280 
 Rio Grande River, troublesome, 
 
 281 
 
 Rio Grande war, 277 
 Riots at Erie, Penn., 216 
 
 on Baltimore and Ohio, 54 
 
 on Erie Railroad, 91 
 " Rippers," 217 
 Roberts, S. W., 137 
 Robinson, A. A., 271 
 Robinson, Moncure, 227 
 Roebling, John A., 135 
 Rogers, Major, 297 
 Romeyn, Theodore, 204 
 Roumfort, Gen. A. L., 144 
 Route, New York-St. Louis, 66, 
 
 106, 109 
 Russian railroads, origin of, 44 
 
 Safety chains, origin of, 125 
 Sailing car, 23, 43 
 St. Louis, celebration at, 71 
 Sample railroad rides, 161 
 Sand box, origin of, 126 
 San Francisco, celebration at, 257 
 Sargent, A. A., 237 
 Sargent, J. W., 222 
 Scandal over transcontinental rail- 
 road, 258 
 Schemes, railroad, great number 
 
 of, 225 
 
 Schmidt, C. B., 265 
 Scott, Thomas A., 146 
 Scranton, G. W., 92 
 Scranton, Penn., founded, 92 
 Second-hand material for Illinois 
 
 roads, 199 
 
 Sectional boats on railroads, 139 
 Sensation caused by first train in 
 
 N. Y., 155 
 Sensation caused by Pullman car, 
 
 175 
 
 Settling Kansas, 165 
 Seward, W. H., 213 
 "Shanghais," 217 
 Sheffield & Farnam, contractors, 
 
 202 
 Shops, first R. R. in Pennsylvania, 
 
 125 
 
INDEX 
 
 Siege of Pueblo, 278 
 
 Singular experience of Michigan 
 
 Central, 210 
 
 Smith, Donald, 298, 312 
 " Snakeheads," 165 
 Snow ends an experimental trip, 
 
 223 
 
 Snowshoes, surveying on, 292 
 Snowslides, 293, 294, 308 
 Snow in the Sierras, 250 
 Snowstorm stops " Pleasure " cars, 
 
 193 
 
 Special trains on B. and O., 69 
 Spectacular railroad construction, 
 
 299 
 
 Speed, average, in 1853, 182 
 Spike, last, on Canadian Pacific, 
 
 312 
 
 on transcontinental line, 256 
 Stage companies stop railroad 
 
 competition, 224 
 Stagecoach, fast trips, 3 
 Stanford, Leland, 236 
 State railroads a failure, 142 
 Station, first, in New York City, 
 
 180 
 
 "Steam motive power," 223 
 Stephen, George, 298 
 Stevens, Col. John, 7, 114 
 Stevens, Thaddeus, 121, 137, 143 
 Stock herded on track to be killed, 
 
 210 
 
 Storms in the Sierras, 250 
 Strange home market for stock, 
 
 210 
 
 Strong, Wm. B., 268 
 Struggle for Grand Canyon, 272 
 Strowbridge, Mrs. S. W., 256 
 Stryker, John, 205 
 Subscriptions for railroad stock, 
 
 39 
 
 Surveying, on snowshoes, 292 
 Swann, Thomas, 60 
 Switchback, first, 63 
 Switching with horses, 163 
 Syndicate construction, origin of, 
 
 93 
 
 Tariif, freight, by wagon, 4 
 Taverns in stagecoach days, 112 
 Teamsters, railroad, hard to man- 
 age, 136 
 Telegraph, incredulity concerning, 
 
 6 
 
 Telegraphic train order, first, 103 
 Telescope in railroad operation, 
 201 
 
 Temperance on railroad, beginning 
 
 of, 54 
 
 Thomas, Evan, 43 
 Thomas, P. E., 34 
 Thomson, John, experimental rail- 
 road, 113 
 
 Thomson, J. Edgar, 113, 118, 144 
 Threat to kill passengers, 211 
 
 to tear up track, 223 
 Throop, Gov., advocates railroads, 
 
 158 
 Through ticket introduced in N. 
 
 Y., 169 
 
 Ticket punch, origin of, 88 
 Tolls, on Pennsylvania State rail- 
 roads, 120 
 
 on railroad traffic, 181 
 Toughest towns, 261 
 Touzalin, A. E., 265 
 Track across Muskeg, waves in, 
 307 
 
 will not keep still, 308 
 Tracklaying, contest, 254 
 
 how done, 301 
 
 world's record, 254 
 Traffic, early emigrant, 166 
 
 extraordinary, under difficulties, 
 223 
 
 heavy, in early days, 166 
 
 heavy, into Chicago, 201 
 
 jealousy over, 108 
 
 over the Alleghenies, 33, 37 
 
 profitable, early, 182 
 
 under difficulties, 214 
 Train, first in New York, 150 
 
 in Pennsylvania, 115 
 
 from Utica, excitement over, 160 
 Trains, stoned by farmers, 211 
 
 uncertainty of early, 169 
 Transcontinental railroad, first, 226 
 
 a subject of deification, 233 
 
 bill for, becomes law, 237 
 
 building described, 252 
 
 California aid for, 238 
 
 Congressional oratory over, 233 
 
 curbs Indian atrocities, 258 
 
 first attempt to build, 232 
 
 first memorial for, 228 
 
 first promoters, 228 
 
 first proposed, 227 
 
 first public meeting, 227 
 
 growth of the idea, 233 
 
 joy over completion, 257 
 
 last spike, 256 
 
 pass, through Sierras, 236 
 
 prodigies in construction, 251 
 
 progress in building, 251 
 
 building army, 252 
 
324 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Transcontinental Railroad : 
 
 rivalry for eastern terminus, 233 
 San Francisco refuses funds for, 
 
 236 
 
 subsidy for, doubled, 241 
 survey begun by T. D. Judah, 235 
 T. D. Judah the authority on, 
 
 235 
 
 the man to build, 234 
 Whitney plans defeated, 229 
 
 Transporters, individual, 47, 135 
 
 Travel, difficulties of, in New York, 
 
 179 
 
 extraordinary, 169 
 new route revolutionizes, 106 
 New York-Chicago, time of, 210 
 New York-Philadelphia, 141 
 Pittsburg-Philadelphia, 138 
 swamps early railroads, 170 
 vicissitudes of early, 123, 168 
 
 Treaty of Boston, 281 
 
 Trial trip, Best Friend, 24 
 
 Turner, John B., 201 
 
 Truck, four wheeled, litigation 
 over, 26 
 
 Tunnel, Board Tree, 63 
 Kingwood, 62 
 Raton, 272 
 
 Turnpike, National, 4 
 
 Uncertainty of trains, early, 169 
 Uniforms, on Pennsylvania rail- 
 road, 145 
 Union Pacific, a financial outcast, 
 
 241 
 desperate struggle to raise 
 
 money for, 239 
 
 Dodge, G. M., finds pass for, 244 
 foes of, 242 
 
 forced to sell material, 241 
 ground broken for, 240 
 Indians cause great trouble, 244 
 laborers demand pay in advance, 
 
 243 
 
 organized, 240 
 prey of plunderers, 242 
 tremendous obstacles, 243 
 tribulations of, 240 
 Unique railroad war, 214 
 
 Van Buren, President, ride on a 
 
 railroad, 161 
 
 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 182 
 Vanderbilt, system, 185 
 Van Home, W. C., 299, 312 
 Van Rensselaer, Stephen, 157 
 Vestibules introduced, 178 
 Vestibuled train, first, exhibited, 
 
 179 
 Volunteers punish Indians, 247 
 
 Wages, railroad, in 1837, 191 
 
 Wages on Portage Railroad, 
 135 
 
 Walkem, Premier, G. A., 286 
 
 Watchmakers, as locomotive build- 
 ers, 115 
 
 Wagoners end railroad competi- 
 tion, 224 
 
 War, Rio Grande, 277 
 
 Washouts, trouble A. T. and S. F., 
 281 
 
 Webster, Daniel, 13, 95 
 
 Weitbrec, R. F., 278 
 
 Well as a jail, 262 
 
 West Point foundry, 24, 26 
 
 Wheat, first shipment to Chicago, 
 200 
 
 Wheat, early rate on, in Michigan, 
 204 
 
 Whistle, first locomotive, effect of, 
 221 
 
 Whiskey causes riots, 54 
 
 Whitney, Asa, 228 
 
 Williams, Cyrus, 219 
 
 Williams, Uncle Nat, first freight 
 conductor, 163 
 
 Wilderness, perils of, 287 
 transporting supplies in, 304 
 
 Winans, Ross, 40, 49, 52, 61 
 
 Woman, first, to ride on New 
 Jersey road, 140 
 
 Wooden bridge, famous, 94 
 
 Worcester, railroad celebration, 
 8 
 
 Wreck on early iron bridge, 
 
 93 
 of an unlucky locomotive, 167 
 
McPherson's Freight Tariffs and Traffic 
 
 An Elementary Study of the Freight Rates of the Railroads of the 
 
 United States in their Economic Relations, 
 
 By LOGAN G. MCPHERSON, author of " The Working of the 
 Railroads." 8vo. With maps, tables, and a full index. Probable 
 price, $2.00 net. 
 
 While the author's earlier book is, in a sense, a primer of rail- 
 road organization; this study of the freight rate structure is so 
 comprehensive and thorough as to be exceedingly valuable to any 
 one having to do with railroad freight traffic either as a railroad 
 official or as a large shipper. For younger men it is the only 
 means of knowing how the present system has been evolved. 
 
 The contents include: The Channels of Traffic ; The Prepara- 
 tion of Foodstuffs ; The Distribution of Foodstuffs ; The Dis- 
 tribution of Raw Material and Merchandise ; The Transportation 
 Charge and Prices ; The Regional Rate Structures ; Commodity 
 Rate Structures; Early Tariffs and Classifications; Early Rivalries 
 and the Beginnings of the Through Service, Rate Wars, and 
 Traffic Agreements ; Secondary Freight Services ; Incidental 
 Developments of the Freight Service; The Freight Traffic Depart- 
 ment of Railroad Administration ; The Basis for the Transportation 
 Charge; Public Sentiment and the Hepburn Bill ; The Influence 
 of the Commission toward Uniformity of Procedure ; Traffic 
 Experts in the Employ of Shippers; The Commerce of the Cities; 
 The Comparison of the Railroads with the Agricultural and 
 Manufacturing Industries; The Progressive Achievement of the 
 Railroads ; Summary. 
 
 McPherson's The Working of the Railroads 
 
 By LOGAN G. MCPHERSON, Lecturer on Transportation at 
 Johns Hopkins. 12mo. $1.50 net, by mail $1.63. 
 
 " Simply and lucidly tells what a railroad company is, what it 
 does, and how it does it. Cannot fail to be of use to the voter. Of 
 exceeding value to the young and ambitious in railroad service." 
 The Travelers' Official Railway Guide. 
 
 " The most important contribution to its branch of the subject 
 that has yet been made." The Dial. 
 
 " The author's connection with practical service gives this a 
 value which no other book quite equals. Up-to-date, informing, 
 . . . an excellent piece of work." Wall Street Journal. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 Publishers New York 
 
Hmerican public 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 RALPH CURTIS RINGWALT 
 
 IMMIGRATION : And Its Effects 
 Upon the United States 
 
 By PRESCOTT F. HALL, A.B., LL.B., Secretary of 
 the Immigration Restriction League. 393 pp. $1.50 
 net. By mail, $1.65. 
 
 *' Should prove interesting to everyone. Very readable, forceful 
 and convincing. Mr. Hall considers every possible phase of this 
 great question and does it in a masterly way that shows not only 
 that he thoroughly understands it, but that he is deeply interested in 
 it and has studied everything bearing upon it." Boston Transcript. 
 
 "A readable work containing a vast amount of valuable informa- 
 tion. Especially to be commended is the discussion of the racial 
 effects. As a trustworthy general guide it should prove a god- 
 send."^. F. Evening Post. 
 
 "Earnest and unprejudiced. . . . Cannpt fail to be of great 
 assistance in clarifying and setting on a solid foundation the ideas 
 of people who are now becoming convinced that the problems of 
 immigration in the nation and the municipality will soon reach a 
 more acute stage than ever before." Philadelphia Press. 
 
 "An auspicious omen of the worth of Messrs. Henry Holt and 
 Company's recently announced series on American Public Prob- 
 lems. ... Mr. Hall has been in close touch with the immigration 
 movement and he writes with a grasp and a fullness of information 
 which must commend his work to every reader. ... A handbook 
 ... to which one may turn conveniently for information for which 
 he would otherwise be obliged to search through many a dusty 
 document." The World To-day. 
 
 THE ELECTION OF SENATORS 
 
 By Professor GEORGE H. HAYNES, Author of " Rep- 
 resentation in State Legislatures." 300 pp. $1.50 
 net. By mail $1.65. 
 
 Shows the historical reasons for the present method, and 
 its effect on the senate and senators, and on state and 
 local government, with a detailed review of the arguments 
 for and against direct election. 
 
 "A timely book. . . . Prof. Haynes is qualified for a historical 
 and analytical treatise on the subject of the Senate." 
 
 N. Y. Evening Sun. 
 
 " Well worth reading, and unique because it is devoted wholly 
 to the election of senators and to the deliberations of the Senate." 
 
 Boston Transcript. 
 
 "Able and dispassionate, and ought to be widely read." 
 
 New York Commercial. 
 
 "Of considerable popular as well as historical interest." Dial. 
 
 Henry Holt and Company 
 
 29 WEST 23o STREET NEW YORK 
 
TWO BOOKS ON VITAL QUESTIONS 
 FOR THOUGHTFUL AMERICANS 
 
 THE NEGRO AND THE NATION 
 
 By GEORGE S. MERRIAM 
 
 Probably the first complete history of the negro in his 
 relation to our politics, sd printing 436pp. $1.75 net. 
 By mail $1.92. 
 
 The Rev. EDWARD EVERETT HALE in "Lend a Hand": "Sensi- 
 ble people who wish to know, who wish to form good sound opinions, 
 and especially those who wish to take their hottest part in the great 
 duties of the hour, will read the book, will study it, and will find noth- 
 ing else better worth reading and study." 
 
 "Admirable, exactly the sort of book needed. . .. Enlightened and 
 persuasive discussion of the negro problem in its present phases and 
 aspects. Not a dry history. Human, dramatic, interesting, absorb- 
 ing, there is philosophy ot national and political life back of it a 
 philosophy which not only furnished interpretation of past events, 
 but offers guidance for the future. . . . Impartial and informing. . . . 
 There is much that tempts quotation. . . . Mr. Merriam has given 
 us an excellent, high-minded, illuminating book on the problem of 
 the American negro." Chicago Record-Hetald. 
 
 "A deeply interesting story. . . . An exceedingly readable vol- 
 ume, especially valuable in its analyses of conditions, causes, situa- 
 tions and results; and against his main conclusions no sane person 
 can contend." Boston Transcript. 
 
 STUDIES IN 
 AMERICAN TRADE-UNIONISM 
 
 J. H. HOLLANDER and G. E. BARNETT (Editors) 
 
 Twelve papers by graduate students and officers of 
 Johns Hopkins University, the results of original investiga- 
 tions of representative Trade Unions. There are also 
 chapters on Employers' Associations, the Knights of 
 Labor, and the American Federation of Labor. (380 pp., 
 8vo, #2.75 net. By mail, $2.98.) 
 
 "A study of trade-unions in the concrete. Impartial and thor- 
 ough . . . expertly written.' New York Ttmes Review. 
 
 "Though confined to particular features of particular trade 
 unions, the data dealt with are comprehensive and typical ; so that 
 the result is a substantial contribution to our knowledge of trade- 
 union structure and functions. . . Excellent studies." 
 
 New York Evening Post. 
 
 " It is doubtful if anything approaching it in breadth and co-ordi- 
 nation has yet found its way into print. ... A very useful book." 
 
 San Francisco Chrtniclt. 
 
 Henry Holt and Company 
 
 34 W. 330 STREET (v, '06) NEW YORK 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 
 OUR PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 
 
 By Prof. HENRY PARKER WILLIS 
 A study of American Colonial Policy, ismo, $1.50 net 
 
 (By mail, $1.64) 
 
 A book of vital interest, based on personal investiga- 
 tion in the Philippines by a former editorial writer of the 
 New York Evening Post, who was also Washington 
 correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce 
 and Springfield Republican, and is now a professor in 
 Washington and Lee University. 
 
 "Anyone desiring to inform himself fully as to the history, pol- 
 itics, public questions, in short, everything dealing with the subject 
 of American control of the Philippines from the day Dewey entered 
 Manila harbor to the present, will find Mr. Willis's work a most im- 
 portant book. ... He writes of the Filipinos as he found them, and 
 with the knack of the true investigator, has avoided falling in with 
 the political views of any party or faction. More valuable still is his 
 exposition of the Philippine question in its bearings on American 
 life and politics. A most exhaustive, careful, honest and unbiased 
 review of every phase of the question." The Washington Post. 
 
 "A keen, exhaustive and merciless criticism of the whole Philip, 
 pine experiment. . . . His unsparing analysis of all the departments 
 of Philippine government must (however) command respect as able, 
 honest and sincere ... no other book contains more solid truth, or 
 a greater section of the truth." Springfield Republican. 
 
 AMERICA, ASIA AND THE 
 PACIFIC 
 
 By WOLF VON SCHIERBRAND 
 Author of " Germany of To-day " 
 
 Jonsiders America's relations to all the countries affected 
 V>y the Panama Canal, to those on both coasts of the 
 Pacific, and to the islands, besides analyzing the strength 
 and weakness of our rivals. 13 maps, 334 pp. $1.50 net. 
 By mail, $1.62. 
 
 "A most interesting treatise . . . haying an important bearing 
 upon our future progress." Public Opinion. 
 
 "His observations on the Panama Canal and the future of the 
 Dutch East Indies are particularly interesting and suggestive." 
 
 Review of Reviews. 
 
 "An interesting . . . survey of a broad field . . . contains a great 
 variety of useful information . . . especially valuable to American 
 exporters. 1 ' Outlook. 
 
 Henry Holt and Company 
 
 34 W. 330 STREET (v, '06) NEW YORK 
 
AMERICAN POLITICAL HISTORY 
 
 A POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE 
 STATE OF NEW YORK 
 
 By the HON. DEALVA STANWOOD ALEXANDER 
 2 vols., 8vo. $5.00 net 
 
 A history of the movements of political parties in the 
 Empire State from 1777 to 1861, and traces the causes of 
 factional divisions into "Bucktails" and "Clintonians." 
 "Hunkers "and "Barnburners," etc. If upon any special 
 feature, emphasis has been placed on the astute methods 
 and sources of power by which the brilliant leaders, George 
 Clinton, Hamilton, Burr, De Witt Clinton, Van Buren, Sey- 
 mour and Thurlow Weed, each successively controlled the 
 political destiny of the State. 
 
 A POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 By J. P. GORDY 
 
 4 vols. I2mo. $1.75 net, per vol. (By mail, $1.89.) 
 VOLUME I., 1787-1809 
 
 A well-rounded history of the Federal period. 
 
 "May be read by almost anybody, with profit. Written in a clear 
 and simple style, entirely non-partisan, and makes the causes of 
 early party struggles much clearer than many a more elaborate 
 account/' Nation. 
 
 VOLUME II., 1809-1828 
 
 Much attention is paid to the financial aspect of the 
 War of 1812, and to the curiously similar attitude of the 
 North and the South toward the negro in those early years. 
 
 "Succinct and striking biographical sketches are now and then 
 encountered . . . This admirable work." Ntw York Sun. 
 
 VOLUMES III. AND IV. (In preparation} 
 
 HISTORY OF AMERICAN 
 POLITICS 
 
 By ALEXANDER JOHNSTON i6mo, 90 cents 
 
 " The most useful book alike for teachers and for pupils is John, 
 ston's 'American Politics.' John Fiske's '''Civil Government of tht 
 United States.'* 
 
 Henry Holt and Company 
 
 34 W. 33D STREET <y. '06) NEW YORK 
 
CANADIAN TYPES OF THE OLD 
 REGIME 
 
 By CHARLES W. COLBY, Professor of History 
 in McGill University. With 18 illustrations. 
 357 PP- 8vo - $ 2 -75 net - 
 
 A series of papers that has a peculiar timeliness in 
 view of the Champlain celebration. The history of 
 French colonization is grouped around the personalities 
 of Champlain, the explorer; Brebeuf, the missionary; 
 Hebert, the colonist ; D'Iberville, the soldier ; Talon, 
 the intendant ; Laval, the bishop ; Frontenac, the gov- 
 ernor. There are also chapters on the historical back- 
 ground of the subject and the results of the English 
 conquest. 
 
 THE BUILDERS OF UNITED 
 ITALY 
 
 By RUPERT SARGENT HOLLAND. With 
 eight portraits. 343 pp. $2.00 net. 
 
 There is no history more alternately desperate and 
 hopeful than that of the scattered Italian states in their 
 efforts to form a united nation. The men treated in 
 this book Alfieri, the Poet ; Manzoni, the Man of Let- 
 ters; Gioberti, the Philosopher ; Manin, the "Father of 
 Venice"; Mazzini, the Prophet ; Cavour, the States- 
 man; Garibaldi, the Crusader; Victor Emmanuel, the 
 King represent the most potent forces in this history ; 
 and the reader may follow history from the interesting 
 viewpoints of the great Italian patriots of the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will 
 send information about their new books as issued. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 34 W. 33d St. New York