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AN AMERICAN RAILEOAD
BUILDER
JOHN MURRAY FORBES

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AN AMERICAN RAILROAD
BUILDER
JOHN MURRAY FORBES
BY
HENRY GREENLEAF PEARSON

BOSTON AHD NEW YOEK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1911

COPYRIGHT, 191 1, BY HENRY GREENLEAF PEARSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published October igij

Cc2S.B32,

PREFACE
THE present volume differs from the " Let
ters and Recollections of John Murray
Forbes," published in 1899, not only in being
an abridged biography, but in having been
¦written toteU the story, merely outlined there, of
the part played by Forbes in the development of
the railroad system of the Middle West. He was
president of the Michigan Central Railroad from
1846 to 1855 ; of the Chicago, Burlington, and
Quincy Eailroad he was director from 1857 to
1898, and president from 1878 to 1881. In these
positions his work was preeminently that of ob
taining capital and of maintaining a sound finan
cial policy ; the matters, to-day so important, of
rate-making and relations with state and federal
government practically never came within the
scope of his control. The reasons why his labors
were almost entirely within the field of finance
are : first, that in the period before the Civil War
these operating problems were on such a small
scale that they could be dealt with by the general
superintendents in the West; and second, that
after the war, though granger difficulties and
questions of pooling and rebates were assuming
more and more importance, officials in the East^

vi PREFACE
while vaguely feeling their significance, were de
void of experience therein. Forbes had been
among the first to see the shadow of coming
events and to realize what manifold quahfications
the railroad president of the new age must pos
sess ; but now the weight of years and the bur
den of financial responsibility were heavy upon
him, and in matters of operating management
he was guided by the judgment of Charles E.
Perkins, already a master in that field. After
Forbes's victory in securing the reorganization
of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, in 1875,
he contributed work and wisdom for many years
but no act that was individually dynamic. The
story of his railroad career thus belongs almost
entirely to the world of finance between the years
1846 and 1881 ; it is distinguished there by its
qualities of imagination, of daring, and of mili
tant honesty.
The materials for this study have been chiefly
the immense mass of Forbes's correspondence as
preserved in his letter-press books, — a maze to
which his unpublished Reminiscences have served
as a clue. Except for the annual reports of the
Michigan Central and the Chicago, Burlington,
and Quincy Railroads, and pertinent state and
national documents, contemporary matter in print
is meagre and throws light, if at all, on things
done rather than on ways by which they were

PREFACE vii
brought to pass. The numerous theses and mono
graphs on railroad subjects are for the most
part devoted to the study of conditions since the
passage of the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887,
dealing with earlier history only in the most gen
eral terms. A compensation for these deficiencies
has been the fulness, the accuracy, and I may
add, the vivacity of Forbes's letters. Their graphic
power and their revelation of personality put
them in the class with letters written by masters
in the art ; under the spell of his pen the ways
of railroad finance become paths of pleasantness.
Scanty as are the selections here given, they
should, like the originals from which they are
taken, show better than anything else the power
of their writer to vitalize and to humanize every
thing that he touched.

CONTENTS
I. Beginnings  1
II. The Building op the Michigan Central Bail-
BOAD  17
III. Bailroad Building in Illinois and Beyond . 66
IV. Public Service  107
V. A Bailroad Battle  154
VI. The End  181
Appendix  187
Index  193
MAPS
Bailboads in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois,
IN 1852  30
Bailroads in Illinois or which the C. B. & Q. Sys
tem WAS composed, 1852-1856  74
C. B. & Q. System in 1882  162

AN
AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
CHAPTER I
BEGINNINGS
THE family into which John Murray Forbes
was born was well known in Boston in the
early years of the nineteenth century, in connec
tion with the maritime commerce that was the
foundation of the town's prosperity. His mother,
Margaret Perkins, had three brothers, James,
Thomas Handasyd, and Samuel G, all worthy
merchants, the first two being connected with
one of the most flourishing houses in the China
trade ; his father, Ralph Bennet Forbes, had
traveled much about the world as a supercargo.
When the course of business kept him in France,
his wife joined him, taking with her the two
oldest sons, Thomas Tunno, born in 1803, and
Robert Bennet, born in 1804. At Bordeaux, on
February 23, 1813, John Murray, the sixth of
their eight children, was born. Soon after their
return to this country the father's health broke
down, aud, as he had not prospered iu business,

2 AN AMEBICAN BAILROAD BUILDEE
bis family was maintained through the assistance
of his brother and his wife's brothers.
At the earliest possible moment the two older
sons went to work. Thomas was put in training
to be the agent at Canton of the firm of J. and
T. H. Perkins ; Bennet, at the age of thirteen,
was sent to sea before the mast, to become a
sailor. The rapid rise of these two young fellows
shows what ability and opportunity, when joined
together, could accomplish in those days. At
eighteen Tom was in China ; and when he was
twenty-six was in full charge of the business of
the firm there. At twenty Bennet sailed for China
as captain of the ship Levant. At thirty, gray-
haired and with a comfortable fortune, he left
the sea and settled down as a merchant in Boston.
The careers of the older brothers had a marked
influence on the life of John. In the years of
his boyhood he saw, as the consequence of his
father's sickness, the straitened circumstances of
the family, their dependence on the benevolence
of others, and the unselfish efforts of Tom and
Bennet to contribute to the family income. Even
before his father's death, in 1824, it had been
possible, through their earnings, for him to go
away to school; and from ten to fifteen he had
the advantage of the best education that boys in
the United States at that time could obtain. The
Round Hill School, at Northampton, to which

BEGINNINGS 3
the first families of Boston sent their sons, is
famous in the educational annals of the country
for the sound and varied training which it
provided and for the stress which it laid on
physical development and healthy out-door life.
To the fine quality of its head-master, Joseph
G. Cogswell, was largely due the success of the
school. Looking back on this life in later years,
and comparing it with the college life of the
boys whom he knew, Forbes was inchned to think
that at fifteen he had received better training for
the world than they were getting. " Five years
of drill," he writes, " had given me a pretty
good foundation in Latin, French, Spanish,
Arithmetic, Book-keeping, and perhaps Algebra
(though my studies in the higher mathematics
were only beginning), besides the education in
riding, dancing, and gymnastics ... to which
perhaps I owe my long-continued health. Be this
as it may, I bade adieu to school life with a fair
reputation for scholarship and good behavior,
and pretty well equipped for beginning my com
mercial training,"
The testimony of Cogswell, given at the time
when John left school, is to the same purport,
and is stronger still concerning the pupil's char
acter and ability and the affection which existed
between him and his master.
In October, 1828, John entered his uncles'

4 AN AMEBICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEB
counting house in Boston to prepare himself as
speedily as possible to help his brother Tom, who
was about to be made head of the branch house
at Canton. Though, as youngest clerk, his first
duties were the usual tasks of sweeping the store,
making the fire, closing up at night, copying
letters, and running errands, his advance was
rapid. At the end of ten months he writes to his
brother Tom that he has already mastered the
minutise of business more quickly than he has
ever learned anything else, and that he is im
patient for the next move. From childhood he
had lived in the atmosphere of business and had
opportunities to exercise his natural aptitude for
trade. It was the custom of the day for clerks to
be given a small space in the vessels belonging
to the firm, for trading ventures on their own
account. Part of Tom's space was shared with
his youngest brother, who at eight years of age
had written : " My adventure " — tea, or silk, or
possibly Chinese toys — " sells very well in the
village." At seventeen he had by these ventures
accumulated a thousand dollars. He thus early
justified the expectations which the success of
his brothers had raised, and his chances were the
better because, as it happened, neither of the sons
of the partners showed great interest in the busi
ness of the firm.
The opportunity for which John Forbes was

BEGINNINGS 6
waiting came unexpectedly and on the wings of
disaster. In February, 1830, news reached Boston
of the drowning of his brother Thomas six months
before. As he had been the sole representative
in Canton of the firm, the affairs of the branch
house were in confusion. In July, in company
with Mr. Augustine Heard, John sailed for China
in a ship commanded by his brother Bennet. On
their arrival at Canton in November an arrange
ment was made whereby the business of J. and
T. H. Perkins was turned over to another Amer
ican house, that of Russell and Company, on
condition that Mr. Heard be received into the
firm as a partner. Another article in the agree
ment was to the effect that if at the end of three
years John Forbes was still a clerk for the firm,
he should be admitted to partnership for a terra
of three years. This understanding, however, was
not at the time communicated to the person most
concerned. Here, then, was a young man, not yet eight
een, in a position of great trust, with plenty of
opportunities to show his superiors what stuff
was in him, and also with good openings to make
money on his own account. The most remark
able of these openings came through his acquaint
ance with the Chinese mandarin, Houqua. One
of the richest merchants in China, with a fortune
of fifteen or twenty milhons of dollars, he was

6 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
the head of the Hong, or company which man
aged the foreign trade of China, and through
which all diplomatic affairs were then conducted.
For him Thomas Forbes had acted as confiden
tial agent, and the position now came as a sort
of legacy to the younger brother. The swiftness
with which the newcomer justified this mark of
confidence shows what remarkable powers lay
within him, ready to manifest themselves at the
first chance. He conducted Houqua's foreign
correspondence, writing the answers to letters in
which pubhc affairs and diplomacy were min
gled with business; he chartered ships, loaded
them with tea and silks, and gave instructions
as to the disposal of the cargoes, using his own
name, as if he were managing his own property.
For this work he received ten per cent of the
profits of the trade. Thanks to such extraordi
nary opportunity, he was, when a youth of eight
een and nineteen, known to Baring Brothers
and other great banking houses as a China mer
chant who not infrequently had as much as half
a million dollars afloat at one time.
At length the climate told on the young man's
health, and in June, 1833, he was at home again,
after an absence of three years. Though he was
only twenty years old, his baldness and his ma
ture bearing made people credit him with another
decade. In business he had already done well. A

BEGINNINGS 7
year before, he had sent home money for the
purchase of a square mile of land in Ohio, — the
first of many signs of his passion for ownership
in the soil; and now, finding his old school
master, Cogswell, in financial difficulties, he
made him a generous loan of money, — the sign
of another trait no less characteristic and persist
ent. "Love was in the next degree." In writing
home from Canton, he had jestingly threatened
to "get married within a week after arrival,"
and had bidden his sisters to make the pre
liminary selection for him. His meeting with one
of their friends, Sarah Hathaway of New Bed
ford, turned the jest to earnest, and engaged all
his intensity of feeling and energy of action.
The courtship was short, and on February 8,
1834, the two were married. Forbes in his Remin
iscences notes that there was some doubt as to
the legality of the ceremony, for at the last mo
ment it was discovered that the banns had not
been made out in the form necessary when the
bridegroom was a minor!
Unluckily for a man who had accepted the
conditions of married life, Forbes's knowledge
gained in China was the only immediate means
by which he could earn a living. He thus found
himself bound to accept the offer of a place as
supercargo on a vessel going to Canton, and

8 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDER
obliged, since his wife was a very bad sailor, to
leave her behind. In less than a month from the
day of his wedding he embarked on the Logan
for Gibraltar and China. Reaching Canton in
August, 1834, he found himself caught ; for he
then first learned of the arrangement made in
November, 1830, by virtue of which, on the first
of January, 1834, he had become a member of
the firm of Russell and Company. His share in
its profits was already fourteen thousand dollars,
and with him in the firm, Houqua would con
sent to turn his business over to it. In comparison
with the position thus offered, his opportunities as
a supercargo were insignificant. He hesitated,
nevertheless, and agreed to stay only when he
found that Mr. Heard, whose wretched state of
health made his return to America most import
ant, refused, on account of a quarrel with one
of the partners, to leave the helm to any one but
himself. Then he accepted the fate of his three-
years' partnership.
The period of Forbes's second stay in China
was one of unique opportunity. The East India
Company had just relinquished its monopoly, and
a house of such high reputation as Russell and
Company was able to secure the trade of a con
siderable number of privately owned English
ships which came to Canton. Through Forbes's
connection with the firm it also had the manage-

BEGINNINGS 9
ment of Houqua's business. Of this combination
of advantages Forbes had the capacity to avail
himself to the utmost. Instinctively he made
every situation yield up its essence to the last
drop, and nothing in this Chinese experience
did he allow to lie useless in later years. The
business ties formed with Baring Brothers lasted
for a lifetime; his understanding of Chinese
character not only served himself, but was more
than once put at the disposal — and in no dilet
tante fashion, either — of uninstructed state
officials at Washington. And so it was in respect
to everything that came within the range of his
apprehending brain and will.
One matter here deserves special mention, be
cause Forbes later built it so completely into the
structure of his social life. During his first stay
in China, in the dearth of other forms of recrea
tion, he took to the river and soon made of him
self a skilful yachtsman. During his second stay,
when there were more Englishmen in the place,
a club was formed and out-door sports were in
troduced. Forbes, accustomed to the prevailing
American fashion of keeping up dignity " by a
grave demeanor and consequential deportment,"
was astounded to see English judges and high
officials of the East India Company playing
cricket and leap-frog. "They esteem nothing
childish which gives zest to exercise." He was

10 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
near enough to his own Round Hill days to rel
ish this revelation, particularly when " the East
India Company, instead of getting over Russell
Sturgis's back, stuck fast, and both rolled to
gether down the hill into an empty tomb" ; and
with the enterprise of a true Yankee boy he was
soon organizing boat-races and instructing the
English in base-ball.
In December, 1836, having faithfully com
pleted his term of active partnership and made
arrangements for a moderate share in Russell and
Company's profits, in return for attending to
their interests in the United States, having also
discharged his numerous social obhgations by
giving a fancy-dress ball, Forbes left China for
good, making a quick run to New York in one
hundred and twenty days. " The next forenoon,"
he writes, "found me snugly harbored at my
aunt James Perkins's in Pearl Street, where my
wife . . . met me after an absence of a httle
over three years."
John M. Forbes, twenty-four years of age, es
tablished in Boston as a merchant who had already
proved his energy and prudence by accumulating
a good fortune, was a remarkable man in remark
able circumstances and destined for a remarkable
career. The faculty of making money was the
least noteworthy of his powers. By inheritance
the best traditions of the best Boston families were

BEGINNINGS 11
his ; yet the narrow means in the midst of which
he had grown up kept him from the inertness
which comfort brings. Thus he had learned to
accept ungrudgingly the necessities of hard work,
and at the same time he valued and was able to
obtain the ease and stimulus that social inter
course of the best sort can give. By reason of
his clear head and self-control he paid no toll to
the passions that mar and burden youth. Yet
he was highly charged with feeling, which was
never mere emotionalism but always an impulse
to action. Whatever was fine in man, woman, or
child, awakened his enthusiasm and stirred him
to some deed of recognition ; thus there was an
endless outpouring of generosity from his purse.
So, too, whatever was mean or untrue roused his
wrath and the desire to punish or crush, and the
check which he put upon his feelings made their
every manifestation full of significance. When
his anger at last broke forth it was volcanic in
force, and as relentless as the lava stream. He
loved intense and exciting work, and loved it best
of all when it was devoted to some form of pub
lic utility through which he could fulfil his duty
to his country and to his fellow men.
Those who saw the operation of this energy
wondered at the continuing vitality of the man.
An illness that his wife called his "box fever"
shows how close he ran to the wind. He had

12 AN AMEBICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
brought it on by overwork in loading a small
barque and in getting her to sea in a hurry, and
in his delirium his mind ran on the necessity of
finding small boxes to fill up the chinks under
her decks. Notwithstanding the fact that this
was his characteristic way of working and that
he suffered from bronchial weakness, he main
tained his health marvellously. The foundation
laid at the Round Hill School was strong, and
in China he had acquired the habit of daily ex
ercise. This was supplemented by periods of real
recreation, when he plunged into play with the
same vigor with which he plunged into business,
emerging refreshed where many a man would
have come out exhausted.
As Forbes had learned from his English com
panions at Canton, the best play is out-door act
ivity in good company. To this end his social
life was arranged. For the first fifteen years or
so after his return from China he lived in a cot
tage on Milton Hill, six miles from Boston, where
the outlook on one side is over the Neponset
marshes to the harbor, and on the other side toward
Blue Hill. Then he moved to a larger house
close at hand, in a still more commanding situa
tion. He never had a house in town. In 1843,
he purchased, jointly with his wife's uncle, W.
W. Swain, the island of Naushon, at the entrance
to Buzzard's Bay, and in 1857 acquired full pos-

BEGINNINGS 13
session of it. In these two places he and his
wife exercised a hospitality expressive of their
ideal of simple, wholesome living and so ordered
that it revealed at their best both guests and
hosts. Into this atmosphere pervaded with the reali
ties of life Forbes's six children were born. Al
though, as a busy man, the time which he had
for companionship with them was limited, he en
tertained characteristically definite ideas concern
ing their bringing-up. He saw that he could give
them every advantage which had been his own
except that of poverty, and he did his best to
circumvent the consequences of this one defect.
His careful thought for their welfare is shown
in the directions about their education which he
wrote out for their guardians in case he and his
wife should die while the children were still
young. The document is full of his far-sighted
ness and strong feeling, as the following extracts
will show.
" If possible, I should prefer Milton Hill -for
their residence, because it is healthy, and secondly
because, with their rich circle of acquaintance
in Boston, and with their probable wealth, they
would, if in the city, be liable to get injurious
ideas of their own consequence, and their own
duties. ... I would by no means wish them kept

14 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
^from other young people, but I would like to
have their circle formed among families of mod
erate means where children are being brought
up to labor, and not among the rich alone. . . .
" Their physical education is of immense im
portance; a simple diet and a habit of looking
upon a great deal of daily exercise in the open air
as of equal importance with good food and cloth
ing, form the staples of my plan in this respect.
In regard to their moral and mental culture, our
leading ideas would be to try to give them happy
views of religion, and of life and death ; also in
all of them a habit of feehng that it is their duty
to be useful to their fellow creatures, and in or
der to be able to do this, to improve their time
by acquiring habits of industry and appUcation.
As to accomplishments, and to learning generally,
I consider them entirely secondary to the above
great leading ideas. As to their fortune, if they
have common sense, they will with the help of
judicious friends soon learn that it is not theirs
to enable them to roll in luxury and self-indul
gence, but rather a trust to be judiciously used
to assist their other efforts in doing good. Such
is my theory and my belief. God help me, for
my weakness in practice, which (as a warning I
here say it) I attribute mainly to my want of
habits of industry. . . ."

BEGINNINGS 15
Another extract is from a second letter of in
structions written some years later, when his old
est children were nearing maturity.
"I wish them to see and know their fellow
creatures, but would especially have them avoid
Boarding Schools and fashionable watering-places
and resorts. I would have their home made cheer
ful and attractive by trying to have the best sort
of people attracted there.
" For this I would trust more to books, pic
tures, music, and the sympathy which a nucleus
of cultivated society always exerts to draw others
to it, rather than by fine dinners and entertain
ments and shows, fashionable balls and parties.
The natural beauties of their two homes, if these
can be kept, will, I hope, help to draw around
them better people than epicures and fashion
ables." Firm in his own beliefs though Forbes was,
even to the point of prejudice, he was utterly
without that tendency to magnify himself which
so often accompanies such firmness. In truth, to
think of himself in any light, except now and
then for humorous purposes, was foreign and
abhorrent to his nature. Thus there was found
in him the paradoxical combination of strong
will and dominating personality, with deference
to others and genuine democratic sympathy. Of

16 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDER
impatient men, declared one who knew him well,
he was the most patient. With a whole-hearted
belief in the plain people, he was singularly fit
ted for leadership in a democratic community.
These were the qualities that drew Emerson
to him and supphed the material for a famihar
passage in "Letters and Social Aims."
" Never was such force, good meaning, good
sense, good action, combined with such domestic
lovely behavior, such modesty and persistent pre
ference for others. Wherever he moved he was
the benefactor. It is of course that he should ride
well, shoot well, sail well, keep house well, ad
minister affairs well ; but he was the best talker,
also, in the company ; what with a perpetual prac
tical wisdom, with an eye always to the working
of the thing, what with the multitude and dis
tinction of his facts (and one detected continually
that he had a hand in everything that has been
done), and in the temperance with which he par
ried all offence and opened the eyes of the person
he talked with without contradicting him. Yet
I said to myself. How little this man suspects,
with his sympathy for men and his respect for
lettered and scientific people, that he is not likely,
in any company, to meet a man superior to him
self. And I think this is a good country that can
bear such a creature as he is." ^
> Letters and Social Aims, Biverside Edition, p. 103.

CHAPTER II

THE BUILBING OP THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL
EAILROAD

IN the spring of the year 1842, Charles Dick
ens, being then in the course of his Ameri
can travels, hired a four-horse stage-coach to carry
him from Columbus, Ohio, north to Tiffin, where
he expected to take the railroad for Sandusky.
His description of the journey epitomizes the dif
ficulties of travel by land in the Middle West of
those days.
"At one time we were all flung together in a
heap at the bottom of the coach, and at another
we were crushing our heads against the roof.
Now, one side was down deep in the mire, and
we were holding on to the other. Now, the coach
was lying on the tails of the two wheelers ; and
now it was rearing up in the air, in a frantic state,
with all four horses standing on the top of an
insurmountable eminence, looking coolly back at
it, as though they would say, ' Unharness us. It
can't be done.' The drivers on these roads, who
certainly get over the ground in a manner which

18 AN AMEBICAN RAILROAD BUILDEB
is quite miraculous, so twist and turn the team
about in forcing a passage, corkscrew fashion,
through the bogs and swamps, that it was quite a
common circumstance on looking out of the win
dow, to see the coachman with the ends of a pair
of reins in his hands, apparently driving nothing,
or playing at horses, and the leaders staring at
one unexpectedly from the back of the coach, as
if they had some idea of getting up behind. A
great portion of the way was over what is called
a corduroy road, which is made by throwing
trunks of trees into a marsh, and leaving them
to settle there. The very slightest of the jolts
with which the ponderous carriage fell from log
to log, was enough, it seemed, to have dislocated
all the bones in the human body. It would be im
possible to experience a similar set of sensations
in any other circumstances, unless, perhaps, in
attempting to go up to the top of St. Paul's in
an omnibus. Never, never once that day was the
coach in any position, attitude, or kind of motion
to which we are accustomed in coaches. Never
did it make the slightest approach to one's expe
rience of the proceedings of any sort of vehicle
that goes on wheels." ^
This description of the roads of Ohio, touched
with caricature though it is, discloses the reason
why the development of the Middle West waited
' A-merican Notes, chap. xiv.

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 19
for the day of railroad transportation. Commerce
could creep along its borders, — the Great Lakes
on the north, the Ohio on the south, the Missis
sippi on the west ; but the richness and stickiness
of the soil which could produce such wonderful
crops made the business of raising them hopelessly
unprofitable, for the cost and the difficulties of
getting them to market were almost prohibitive.
An old resident of Galesburg, Illinois, thus de
scribes conditions at this time : —
"Money was scarce beyond conception. Values
for farm products were very low: corn sold at
eight cents per bushel and dressed pork at f 1.50
per hundred ; everything was hauled thirty to
fifty miles to market. Hogs raised near Galesburg
were driven to Warsaw, packed there and shipped
by water to New York. The land was almost val
ueless. My father entered large amounts of Gov
ernment land, with warrants, in 1852, at eighty
cents per acre, within twenty miles of Gales
burg."^ It is easy to give other examples. " Many in
stances are recorded of five dollars a barrel being
paid for hauling flour from Milwaukee to Madi
son [eighty-two miles], and it is little wonder,
when two yoke of cattle were required for mov
ing ten to twelve hundred weight of goods. Be-
^ Same Features in the History of the Burlington Road, by W.
W. Baldwin, p. 27.

20 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
fore the road . . . was laid out each teamster
went where he pleased, and he usually tried a
new route, knowing that a change must necessa
rily be an improvement."^
" It should not be forgotten," said the Ohio
Canal Commissioners in their report for 1833,
" that at this time wheat was selling at from
twenty to thirty cents per bushel, and corn at from
ten to twelve and a half, and in many instances
at prices even lower than these ; and while the
farmer could, with difficulty, raise money to pay
his taxes, produce of his farm was literally rot
ting in his yard from want of a market."^ More
over this lack of transportation, which often
drove the farmers to the expedient of burning
their corn, kept them from supplying themselves
with salt, glass, nails, axes, ploughs, and other
such necessaries. Under their double privation
it is not strange that their progress towards
prosperity was slow.
These obstacles, however, only put the pioneer
spirit of the inhabitants to higher proof. In
emulation of the successful pohcy of the State
of New York, they endeavored to connect by
canals the streams flowing into the Lakes and the
streams flowing into the Ohio and the Missis
sippi. These inland waterways, however, though
* History of Agriculture in Dane County (Wis.), p. 116.
' Quarterly Journal of Economics, November, 1902, p. 123.

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 21
they reduced astonishingly the cost of transport
ation, were far from meeting all the needs of the
situation, for besides being frozen in winter they
were likely to be dry in summer. On land the one
sure means of communication was the Cumber
land Road, or National Pike, finally completed
in 1838, which ran from the East through
Wheeling, Columbus, Indianapolis, and , Terre
Haute, to Vandalia, Ilhnois. From this a few
well-built branch roads extended to important
places on the Lakes or the Ohio, over one of
which, that running from Cincinnati to Colum
bus, Dickens sped in a coach at the rate of six
miles an hour. Such meagre lines of communica
tion, however, were far from meeting the needs
of this vast region, and it was only with the
coming of the steam railroad that the Western
pioneers saw the day of their salvation. Here at
last was a means of transportation which, being
unaffected by rain or drought, was both rapid
and reliable ; through it the development of the
inert regions of the interior should be speedy.
Since the inhabitants of the states to be served
by these roads, canals, and railroads were them
selves absolutely without financial resources and
in their ignorance looked upon the ways of
finance as a mystery full of golden promise, they
naturally sought to raise the money required by
pledging the credit of the state. In this rosy

22 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDEB
belief they received delusive encouragement, for
not only Eastern but also English capital, trust
ing to the guarantee of the state, bought readily
the bonds and " internal-improvement warrants "
of Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois.^ Indeed,
up to the year 1838 these four states had been
able to borrow for such purposes no less than
$30,000,000.2 When the crisis of 1837 brought everything
to a standstill, the inhabitants of the Middle West
paid the full penalty for this over-confidence
and ignorance. Not only was the completion of
eagerly awaited canals and railroads indefinitely
postponed, but the money needed by the state
to pay the interest on its bonds could not be
obtained. Its credit was gone ; to raise money by
increased taxation was out of the question, for
1 " The whole period from 1815 to 1840 [in England] was . . .
one iu which the pressure of surplus capital was felt with great
intensity ; . . . Moreover, the enterprises for which capital was
required in America were favorably regarded by the English
public . . . American Canals . . . did not seem at all visionary
enterprises, and the financial success of the early ones created
great confidence in them. . . . More and more, therefore, her
capitalists after 1815 turned to this country; and by 1830 they
seemed ready to supply us with all the capital necessary to com
plete our system of canals and railways, as well as to assist in the
development ofour agriculture." — "The Early Transportatiou
and Banking Enterprises of the States in Eelation to the Growth
of Corporations " ; G. S. Callender, in the Quarterly Journal of
Economics, November, 1902, pp. 142, 143.
' Bogart's Economic History of the United States, p. 195.

THE MICHIGAN CENTBAL BAILEOAD 23
the people had no money. To the agricultural
legislators in their wrath and desperation, repudia
tion of state obligations in one form or another
seemed a clever act of reprisal for the disaster
which unholy finance had brought upon them.
Then, having repudiated their debts and thus
outraged the only people who could come to their
relief, they sat down and lamented their unhappy
plight. In this state Dickens found them in 1842 ;
and when in "Martin Chuzzlewit" he satirized
their malarial Edens and their hatred of every
thing British, their outcries against him were but
the sign that the galled jade winced.
What happened in Michigan was typical of the
whole Western situation. In the early days of its
statehood it had planned and partly built two
lines of railroad across its lower peninsula, from
east to west. So severely, however, was the state
shaken by the panic that in spite of its heroic
efforts to meet its obligations the word Michigan
became a scarecrow to Eastern capital. As the
years went on and there proved to be no possi
bility of completing the roads or even of procur
ing the money necessary to keep them in repair,
it grew plain that the state must get rid of them.
One, the Michigan Central, one hundred and forty-
five miles long, ran from Detroit to Kalamazoo.
The other, the Michigan Southern, also ran no
where, but achieved the same result with less

24 AN AMEBICAN BAILEOAD BUILDER
effort, being only seventy-five miles long. The
roads together had cost |3,500,000. Accord
ingly, placing its dilapidated property on the bar
gain-counter, the state waited for customers.
At last, in 1845, the railroads attracted the
attention of two young men, both Easterners who
had gone West, and both persuaded not only that
the day of prosperity for the West was about to
dawn, but that, if the right means were taken.
Eastern capital could be brought to look upon a
Western road with favor. One of the men was
James F. Joy, a graduate of Dartmouth College
and the Harvard Law School, who had come to
Detroit and was waiting for his practice to grow.
The other was John W. Brooks, the superin
tendent of the Auburn and Rochester Railroad in
New York. They believed that if the Michigan
Central could be rehabihtated and completed
for the remaining third of the distance to Lake
Michigan, it would prove a profitable investment.
It would open up the rich farming land of Mich
igan ; better still, it would constitute a hnk in
the shortest route from the East to Chicago and
the Mississippi Valley. At that time the traveller
left the cars at Buffalo, where he took a steamer
which conveyed him, by the roundabout way of
Lake Huron and the Straits of Mackinaw, to the
head of Lake Michigan. If he had good luck,
his boat reached Chicago iu four days and a

THE MICHIGAN CENTBAL BAILEOAD 25
half; not infrequently six days were needed.
With the railroad completed across Michigan,
the time from Buffalo could be reduced to thirty-
six hours. Of course. Brooks reasoned, it was
conceivable that as yearswent on a railroad might
be built along the southern shore of Lake Erie to
Toledo, and from there to Chicago ; but the cost
of such an undertaking would be so stupendous
and the returns so uncertain that he dismissed
the possibility from his calculations. The Michi
gan Central was, it is true, a railroad in the wil
derness ; nevertheless its strategic position was
such that it could hold its own against the cir
cuitous water route. With Eastern capital and
Eastern control, it was practically certain to suc
ceed. Filled with this conviction Brooks, then
twenty-six years old, set forth in the winter of
1845^6 to make the acquaintance of men of
means in Boston and New York in the hope
of interesting them in his scheme.
Good luck led Brooks, in the course of his
labors, to the counting-room of John M. Forbes.
Forbes had already made experiments, most of
them financially unsuccessful, in the application
of steam to ocean transportation ; ^ but he was
1 For the most part the vessels-used steam only as auxiliary
power, having hinged propeller-shafts, by means of which, in
good sailing weather, the propeller could be turned up out of
harm's way. The Midas, built and owned by the Forbes bro
thers, was the first steamer to navigate Chinese waters; the

26 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
ready to listen to possibilities more promising in
connection with steam transportation on land.
In those days, of course, there was nowhere any
expert knowledge of railroading; yet, judged
even by the standards of that time, his notions
of the problems of railroad management were,
as he took delight in recalling in later years,
naively rudimentary. He reasoned, for example,
that in all probability the presidency of a rail
road company was like that of an insurance
company, — a dignified office which, at that
time, was given to " honest and reliable though
unsuccessful merchants," the work being done
by a secretary. Such a position he wished to
find for his elder brother Bennet, whose daring
and brilliant career as a sea captain had not
proved the best preparation for success in mer
cantile affairs.
Drawn on partly by this fraternal motive and
partly by the fascination of the enterprise itself,
Forbes went so far as to employ Daniel Webster
to draft a charter embodying the wisdom that
had been gleaned from Eastern railroad expe
rience, and to send Brooks back to Michigan to
secure the passage of the charter by the legisla
ture.Massachusetts was one of tbe earliest ocean steamers on the
Atlantic. The Iron Witch, an iron paddle-wheel steamer, de
signed for fast service on the Hudson, was an expensive failure.

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 27
The discussion of this bill, with its momentous
consequences to the exhausted treasury of Mich
igan, was naturally the chief event of the legisla
tive session of 1846. But so ignorant were both
the public at large and the legislators themselves
concerning railroad charters that the point on
which local interest centred was the danger that
the pagan capitalists of the East should attempt
to run trains " on the Sabbath " ; and every day
petitions bearing on this point were presented.
When, however, the time came for voting on
this section, amendments were offered requiring
that the corporation should observe the other
nine commandments also, and that the directors
should attend church at least twice every Sunday,
and the section was laughed to defeat.^ The true
guardian of the state's interests proved to be the
governor, Alpheus Felch, an able and honest ex
ecutive, who more than once during this session
had to restrain the legislature from giving away
to corporations the property of the people. Thus
the charter as passed retained for the state a meas
ure of legislative supervision and control.^ Yet
1 Journal of the Senate of Michigan, 1846, pp. 274, 275.
' By the act of incorporation (Laws of Michigan, 1846, pp.
37-64) the Michigan Central Railroad was granted the property
of the road forever ; bat the state might repurchase it after a
lapse of twenty years, and after thirty years the legislature
might alter, amend, or repeal the charter. For the first four years
the road was to pay a tax of one-half of one per cent, after that,

28 AN AMERICAN BAILROAD BUILDEE
even so. Brooks and Joy knew that, with the
price of the road fixed at $2,000,000, they had
not the worst of the bargain.
Everything now depended on the skill and
force of the man who took hold of the financier
ing. Boston capital, which had been principally
invested in the China trade, was now beginning
to be put into mills in Massachusetts and New
Hampshire ^nd into short lines of railroad along
of three-fourths of one per cent on the capital stock and loans
for construction purposes. Its annual report to the secretary of
the state was to contain tables showing its flnancial condition,
its physical condition, and the amount and character of its busi
ness. The amount of the capital stock was set at five million dol
lars, with permission to increase it to eight million.
The rates existing under state management were to continue
in force until July 1, 1848, from which time a reduction of twenty-
five per cent was to be made on flour and grain ; the tariff for
no article was to be higher than the average of the tariffs charged
for that article on the Boston and Lowell, the Boston and Provi
dence, and the Boston and Worcester railroads, during Septem
ber and October of 1845. An exception might be made if the
secretary of state of Michigan, the auditor, and the attorney-
general gave their consent. There was provision for a commission
to determine what was the average rate on the New England
railroads, and in case of disagreement a flnal decision was to be
rendered by the court of chancery. Furthermore, not oftener
than once in ten years the legislature might require such a com
mission to review all the rates of the road. The road was required
to " transport merchandise and property .... without showing
partiality or favor, and with all practical despatch." The max
imum passenger tariff was flxed at three cents per mile. No pub
lication of rates was required ; nevertheless, for eight years, from
1850 to 1857 inclusive, these schedules were given in the annual
report of the railroad.

THE MICHIGAN CENTBAL BAILEOAD 29
the Atlantic coast. In New Bedford, owing to
the decline in profits from the whaling industry,
there was also a considerable amount of capital
that might be drawn into new projects. Through
family connections in these two cities Forbes
could make a good beginning, and in New York
he got a large measure of help from his former
partner in China, John C. Green. Moreover, he
was sure of aid from the forlorn holders of Mich
igan bonds and internal-improvement warrants,
who were only too glad to jump from their pre
sent fire into the frying-pan of railroad stocks.
As one person after another looked into the facts
about this worn-out railroad in the wilderness,
it became plain that it was, indeed, a bargain.
Brooks's report showed that there had been an
increase of one hundred per cent in the receipts
within the past year, and there was every prospect
of even more satisfactory returns when the road
should be built across the state and properly
equipped. Finally, there was the assurance that
it was to be controlled by Eastern capitahsts of
proved honesty and ability. Advantages such as
these did not suffer when presented by a man like
Forbes, who had vision, will, and above all the
faculty of " pitching in " ; and as the six months
allowed for the formation of the company drew
to an end, his tense and tireless efforts brought
success. " I shaU, I hope," he wrote when it was

30 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
all over, " have cause to look back upon this Sep
tember as one of the best spent months of my
life." He had, indeed, opened the door upon his
true career.
On September 23, 1846, the Michigan Central
Railroad took possession of its property. Forbes
was president, having consented to take the office
only because he found that otherwise the neces
sary capital could not be secured ; but he arranged
to put the burden of his work on the treasurer,
George B. Upton, to whom he made over his
salary. John W. Brooks, at Detroit, was to have
charge of the running of the road.
Promising as were the prospects of the Michi
gan Central, the road itself, as Brooks's report
made clear, was a shabby piece of property. The
one hundred and forty-five miles of track from
Detroit to Kalamazoo were in bad condition, and
fifty-six miles more were needed to complete the
line to the nearest point on Lake Michigan. There
were only four passenger " depots " along the line,
and at Detroit nothing but a small freight depot
and an engine-house, both inconveniently situ
ated at some distance from the water front. The
value of the rolling stock was $68,000, the larg;^
est single item being $4000 for a locomotive of
twelve tons.
The track, like that of all early railroads, con
sisted of beams of wood six inches square, to

THE MICHIGAN CENTBAL RAILROAD 31
which were fastened strips of iron half an inch
thick by two and a quarter inches wide. The
beams were fastened to cross-ties laid three feet
apart, which in turn were laid upon under-sills,
" the whole being supported upon short blocks
of different lengths, varying according to the
distance between the bottom of the under-sills and
a firm foundation," ^ On the first thirty miles out
of Detroit the wooden part of the track, which
had been in use for eight years, had never been
renewed, and was naturally much decayed. The
iron, worn out and broken, curved up at the
ends ; and when one of these up-springing pieces
thrust itself through the floor of the car between
the feet of a passenger, it was expressively known
as a " snake-head." Such a form of track, best
described by the phrase " a barrel-hoop tacked
to a lath," was already passing ; and the charter
of the new company required the road to be
laid with a heavy H rail of iron, weighing sixty
pounds a yard.^
When the directors held their first annual
meeting at Detroit in June, 1847, the road had
already proved prosperous enough to justify them
in beginning at once to build toward Lake Michi
gan. They accordingly sanctioned expenditures
1 Brooks's Report upon the Merits ofthe Michigan Central Rail
road as an Investment for Eastem Capitalists, p. 4.
" The present weight of the heaviest steel rails is more than
one hundred pounds a yard.

32 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
amounting to over two million dollars, which
should give them a road fully equipped to handle
its rapidly growing business. The actual cost, it
may be added, was more than four milhon dol
lars. It was at the time of this meeting that Forbes
and some of his associates received their first
lesson in practical railroading. They travelled on
the road, explored so-called harbors on Lake
Michigan in the search for a western terminus,
went on to Chicago, and returned by steamer
through the Straits of Mackinaw. Forbes, a born
traveller, with a keen eye and a zest for every
experience, described the trip in a journal let
ter to his wife, which deserves a place here for
the picture it gives of the rawness of the coun
try which the railroad was to do so much to
develop. Steamer Empire, Mackinaw, June 11, 1847.
We reached Detroit 1.30 in the night and
landed in the mud, slept an hour or two, and had
to get up and go to find T. Howe ; Brooks, our
mainstay, having gone West. We decided to
follow, and started at eight or so on our raU
road. . . .
For the first few miles the country was dreary ;
flat, with a great deal of surface water, through
forests mostly, but dense and melancholy ones,
water under foot and huge decaying trees lying

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 33
about ; the trees generally tall and with no foU
age until near the top.
We found the road in a most deplorable condi
tion, the iron broken up often into pieces not a
foot long, and sometimes we could not see any
iron for some feet, only wood ; in other places
short pieces of iron, almost athwartships, but our
protection was in its being so short that no snake-
heads could reach the cars. This bad road lasted
about eighty miles, the bad country about thirty,
when we came to a little drier soil and passed
through several flourishing villages.
Here we began to see the faraous oak openings,
— noble oak trees just far enough apart to let
each take its handsorae natural shape, just as a
park should be ; but, sad to tell, we seldom saw
the openings in their beauty, for the trees had
generally been girdled and stood naked and dead
(some of them dying, having been cut this year),
and fine fields of wheat growing right up to their
trunks, and fields varying in size from twenty to
two hundred acres each; but few flowers to be
seen, and the houses far from our New England
houses in neatness. At night we reached a dirty
country tavern at Kalamazoo, where the road
terminates. . . .
At K. we found Brooks was gone to Niles ;
and we resolved to follow him, and arranged to
start with a barouche and four horses at 4 A. M.
We sat up till half-past eleven talking with our
engineers, whom we sent for to get information
from them about our routes, and then turned in.
In an hour Brooks arrived, and came to my room,

34 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
and after one hour's talk we decided to take him
with us and push for the celebrated city of St.
Joseph, fifty-six miles distant, which we accord
ingly did at 4 A. M. With few exceptions, our
ride was like that of the day before, the roads
execrable, full of deep holes and gullies, where
we had a right to expect a capsize; but the
weather was lovely beyond measure, and on the
whole we enjoyed our drive, excepting that, not
daring to drink the water, our tongues were
parched like fever patients.
At four we reached the marsh which surrounds
St. Joseph. Figure to yourself a pestilential
black mud, quivering and shaking under its own
weight, with tufts of grass, rank and uneven, a
deep river in the midst, and sand-banks where
the mud ceases. . . . Rising up from this was a
steep but small bluff, extending into the lake, on
which the city stands. Two handsome houses
built in 1837, and I believe now empty, two large
wooden taverns, one now untenanted, and a few
other indifferent looking palaces, with some stray
houses along the river, complete the coup d'cdl
of this famous city, which sprung up in a night
and withered next day. The only pleasant thing
was the fine view of Lake Michigan, blue, like
the ocean, and wide.
We started out to make our observations, ac
companied by pretty much all the town, some
half-dozen people, who took care we should not
be alone a moment for fear we should not ap
preciate fully the beauties of the place. We went
over to Uncle Sam RusseU's " Eden," which has

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 35
a fine map of land laid out into cities, and is
called North St. Joseph. Drifting sand near the
lake and the aforesaid marsh in shore. Nothing
would induce me to visit this place again, un
less I could carry Mr. Russell with me and wit
ness his first interview with his domain. Ju-ne 12.
. . . We left [St. Joseph] on Sunday A. M.
for NUes, 26 miles, and arrived there to dinner;
the country dull for 12 miles, then tolerable. . . .
We started at 7 along the lake shore for Michigan
City ; a beautiful day, the lake just like the ocean,
plenty of deer tracks. Got there at 11 and ex
amined the harbor to our satisfaction, and at
2 p. M. embarked in the steamer for Chicago,
taking leave of Brooks who was bound back to
Detroit. Pound Mr. Ogden [WiUiam B. Ogden,
first Mayor of Chicago] on board, a very agree
able man who came to Chicago 12 years ago,
when it was a wUderness, and now there are 15,-
000 to 20,000 people there. Arrived at Chicago
at 5 p. M. — hotter than Tophet. Established our
selves at an immense hotel, and the pangs of
thirst being unbearable, we here broke into lake
water astonishingly, and happily without bad
effect. Mr. Ogden came for us at 6 or 7 in his
carryall, and took us to drive about the town.
Some of the houses are on a bluff (like that at
Brooklyn) looking out on the blue lake, and it
was lovely at sunset beyond imagination; few
trees, however, and the ground under foot damp
ish, being called " Wet Prairie." Mr. 0. offered

36 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
to drive us next day to the "Grand Prairie," 20
miles distant, but the roads were bad, the weather
hot, and after a week's train we did not think it
worth while.

Ogden's attentions, it soon appeared, were by
way of inducing the Eastern capitalists to buy
land for which he was the agent. The "wet
prairie," within a mUe of the hotel, he offered
at $1.25 an acre. " Sheltered by our absurd pre
judices against land," wrote Forbes thirty-five
years later, "we were proof against Ogden's se
ductions, and I do not think any of us ever
bought a foot of land in Chicago for ourselves
while the road was in course of construction.
My hotel bill of one hundred and twenty-five
dollars would have bought one hundred acres,
now worth $8,000,000 to $12,000,000."
This rawness of the land which the Michigan
Central was to serve was matched by the inex
perience of the settlers in the obligations of a
railroad public. Having had things pretty much
their own way in the days when the road be
longed to the state, they did not take kindly to
the regulations that were necessary to put the
road on a business basis. The turbulent element
which is found in every frontier community, be
ing here well organized and determined to rule
or ruin, precipitated a fierce struggle which was

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL BAILROAD 37
the precursor of the granger difficulties of later
decades. In the early days of the road the locomotives
had proceeded with such obliging caution that
live-stock could browse between the rails in en
tire safety. Naturally, when under the new man
agement the speed was accelerated, with the con
sequent destruction of cattle, the outcry was at
first great. But the balm of damages easily ob
tained opened the eyes of the settlers to new tac
tics, and soon they took their pigs to the raUroad
track as to a market. As a counter move, when
the line of track had been properly fenced in,
Brooks issued notice to the effect that hereafter
the road would pay only one-half the value of
any animal kiUed. The contest was then joined.
Trains found their progress blocked by logs on
the track, and on grades the rails were often
greased, so that the passengers had to get out
and work their passage. In his Reminiscences
Forbes tells the story of the struggle.
In the country next west of Detroit the law
breakers were so strong that itwas said no judge
or jury dared to convict any of the prominent
men among them ; and it was soon evident that
here was the battle-ground between order and
disorder. Mr. Brooks at once took his measures
with his characteristic foresight and decision.
When almost powerless, he maintained the best

38 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEB
truce possible, protecting his property and trade
by special police raised from his own men, and
usually running a hand car ahead of every train,
as I remember was still done the first time my
wife and I went over the railroad. But Brooks
laid his plans for more thorough work. His
shrewd lawyer sent on colonists to settle on the
line of road in that county as farmers, and at the
same time to get evidence against the conspira
tors, who had determined either to destroy or
control our road. He also quietly took measures
to get the legislature to change the general law,
so that criminals could, when circumstances jus
tified it, be tried in counties other than those in
which their offences were committed. WhUe thus
accumulating evidence and getting ready for en
forcing his rights, he went on extending and re
building the road with vigor. The conspirators
were led by a man named Fitch, supposed to be
quite rich for the country, who boasted that no
court would give a verdict against him or his
men. Misled perhaps by Brooks's quiet methods,
he extended his operations from putting obstruc
tion on the track and firing upon trains, to burn
ing wood-piles and depots, destroying at one fire
$75,000 worth of property. . . .
When in due time Mr. Brooks's plan was ripe,
he one night sent out a train-load of special of
ficers, chiefly enlisted among his own men, and
captured [thirty-five] of the conspirators without
a blow being struck or any resistance attempted.
They expected to be carried only to their county
town, there to be bailed out ; but, when they ap-

THE MICHIGAN CENTBAL BAILEOAD 39
proached Detroit, they found for the first time
that the law had been changed, and that they
could be tried in a place where justice was pos
sible. They hired William H. Seward to come
from New York and defend them, which he did
in a speech worse than any made by himself or
any other demagogue in this country. The trial
lasted aU summer. Fitch and one or two others
dying in jaU, it was said in consequence of medi
cine taken to produce illness and prolong the trial
in hopes of a disagreement of the jury. Mr.
Brooks's measures for getting evidence and work
ing up his case were so good that in spite of
Seward's help and of all the disadvantages of a
great corporation prosecuting individuals and
farmers, all the worst members of the gang were
• . . convicted. ... It was the great railroad
trial of this century, and settled many practical
questions for aU Mr. Brooks's successors in raU
road buUding and management.
In the operation of the road. Brooks, as this
episode makes clear, was the guiding spirit. Be
sides being an experienced engineer, he was an
executive full of energy and resource. For very
little of what he was called upon to do was there
any precedent; conditions were so exceptional
that his inventive genius was heavily drawn upon.
It was, in fact, a typical instance of the way in
which mother wit and Yankee ingenuity can save
a situation and establish order out of chaos.

40 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
Such success as Brooks achieved in his own
department, however, would have been impossible
if the financial management of the road also had
not been masterly. The older railroads in the
East yielded every six months a wreckage of em
barrassments and disasters, all due to the mental
or moral incompetence of the men who undertook
to guide them through the uncharted waters of
raUroad finance. To find and to keep the chan
nel under such circumstances required a remark
able measure of alertness, faith, and courage.
Railroading is preeminently an enterprise in
which men must think in decades and scores of
years ; yet at this time the oldest road in Massa
chusetts had been running barely fifteen years.
So it was that, in these hobble-de-hoy days of
railroads, the Michigan Central owed no httle of
its brUliant success to the fact that its financial
affairs were guided by a man so sound and reso
lute as John M. Forbes,
In the first three years of Forbes's presidency
more than $6,000,000 were required for the pur
chase, construction, and equipment of the road.
It was his business to secure this money, and the
limits within which he could work were narrow
enough. With Baring Brothers and with bankers
in Europe, it is true, he was in close touch through
his ventures in the China trade, and to such men
he was constantly expressing the hope that the

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 41
high rates of interest prevailing in the United,
States might prove more tempting than the three
or four per cent they could get at home. " You
are probably aware," he wrote in March, 1849,
to a merchant in Hamburg, " that for 18 months
past the hest paper, such as that, for instance,
of my good uncle, T. H. Perkins, Esq., with
other names on the notes, has been selling here
at from 10 to 18% per annum," But foreign
bankers, making no distinction between enter
prises backed by poor and irresponsible Western
states, and those financed by reliable Eastern
merchants, were proof against his allurements;
and in these first years, except for one small
loan obtained at the very beginning, not a cent
of foreign capital went into the Michigan Cen
tral Railroad. On the other hand, the continuing
dechne of the China trade and the whaling in
dustry in New England was an opportunity of
which Forbes made the most. By his persistent
and persuasive application to his friends, and by
the action of the directors in applying to con
struction the eight percent dividend of $176,000,
earned in 1848, and issuing a dividend of stock,
the cash needed to complete the road was raised..
Thus, thanks to the faith and works of Brooks
and Forbes, when, in the spring of 1849, the
line was completed from Detroit to New Buffalo
on Lake Michigan, the stockholders had every

42 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
reason to be satisfied with their investment. Not
only was the road well constructed: it was ade
quate in its provisions for increase of traffic.
Moreover, the company had built the Mayflower,
one of the largest and fastest steamers in the
country, to run between Buffalo and Detroit,
and thus it controlled the only quick route to
the West. With the assurance of a large amount
of through traffic to be added to its already profit
able and rapidly growing business, the road pro
mised to become without further delay a highly
remunerative investment, Forbes and Brooks, to
be sure, perceived that their very success, taken
with the quickened development of the West,
was bringing the danger' of competition nearer
and nearer. They could not expect to keep their
advantage much longer to themselves. But the
conservative majority looked upon any such pos
sibility as chimerical; and the directors, confident
that the road would never need to go beyond
the western boundary of the state, even rejected
a chance to obtain for a song a railroad charter
which had been granted by the Indiana legisla
ture. They had made their investment; the raU
road was finished; they now wanted the profits
to come in. II
Within a year, however, these illusions of
security were dispeUed. A group of New York

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 43
capitalists bought the Michigan Southern, the
straggling zigzag bit of hne, once the property
of the state, which has already been mentioned,
snapped up the Indiana charter which the Michi
gan Central had rejected, and prepared to build a
cheap railroad from Toledo to Chicago, At the
same time it became apparent to the most conserva
tive minds that the construction of a raUroad along
the southern shore of Lake Erie was only a few
years distant. If the Michigan Central were not
to become an isolated piece of road, picking up
what business it could between its two lake ter
minals, it must extend its influence both east and
west. Its owners must, in fact, double their in
vestment if they were to save what they had al
ready put in.
Among the causes that accounted for the
extraordinary development of the period upon
which the Middle West was just entering were
such obvious ones as the steady increase of the
population, particularly after 1848, by immigra
tion from Germany, and the general introduction
of the McCormick reaper, which made possible
the increase of the grain harvest twenty or thirty
fold. Furthermore, commerce between this region
and the cotton-raising states had outgrown the
capacity of the rivers and demanded a railroad
from the Lakes to the Gulf, So imperative was
this last need, that in 1850 Congress granted aid

44 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
from the public lands along the line of the pro
posed route. With this magnificent gift, the roads
that were to compose the system — the Ilhnois
Central and the Mobile and Ohio — could make
a successful appeal for capital.
But perhaps the chief reason for the rapid
development of these years, especially as regards
railroads, was the call of the Far West. With
the discovery of gold in California in 1849, the
nation took a continental view of itself. Its first
thought was to abridge the journey, long and
wearisome whether by land or by sea, to the Pacific
coast, and every railroad in the Mississippi Valley
entertained schemes of laying its track westward
over the prairies, " The discoveries of gold,"
wrote Forbes in 1854, " have been the direct cause
of the construction of four-fifths of the Western
railways begun since 1849, The success of a few
which had been previously constructed gave con
fidence, it is true, and the West had been fast
developing ; but not much faster than it had been
in four years previously, when hardly anything
was done in railways there. This sudden success
of Western enterprises was also in the face of the
failure or the depreciation of the Eastern rail-
" 1
ways. By the year 1850 Eastern financiers were fully
awake to these marvellous opportunities for the
> February 20, 1854.

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 45
investment of capital. Their own resources being
still inadequate, they again appealed to Europe.
*' As money seems to be a drug on your side,"
wrote Forbes, in May of 1852, to the merchant in
Hamburg to whom three years before he had
turned in vain, " while we have still use for it
here at a fair price, I cannot help repeating the
suggestion which I then made for your consider
ation. When I see quotations on your side and
on ours for money, I feel just as you would if old
Java Coffee were selling here at four cents, and
a drug at that, while fifteen days distant it was
worth eight cents in your market."
And to Russell Sturgis in London he wrote in
September, 1851, concerning the prospects of
railroad building in Illinois: "Imagine a deep
black soil, almost every acre of which can be en
tered at once with the plough, and an enormous
crop secured the first season, but where the very
fertility and depth of the soil make transportation
on common roads almost impracticable at the sea
son when produce ought to be sent to market,
and this region now for the first time opened to
a market by railroad. The farmer himself in the
interior of the state wiU be nearer New York in
time and even in cheapness of transporting his
produce than the fertile Genesee valley was be
fore the Erie Canal was made, and where poorer
land is now worth one hundred dollars per acre

46 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
and upwards — nearer in time than many parts
of the interior of New York and Ohio now are."
The result of this constant hammering and of
such a fact — patent to all — as the success of
the Michigan Central, was that the Enghsh threw
their hesitation to the winds, and after it their
discretion too. The same British lack of discrim
ination which, after the panic of 1837, had lumped
together all investments in the Middle West as
bad, now lumped them all together as good.
Whatever the remote danger from this state of
things, — and, as will presently appear, it was a
danger that Forbes saw clearly, — the immediate
advantage to the Michigan Central was the as
surance of an adequate supply of money for its
westward extension. Its first move was to build
some ten miles of track, from New Buffalo, in
Michigan, to Michigan City, in Indiana. There
remained fifty-five miles to be constructed to
Chicago, — work which had to be done under
conditions of irritation and excitement, for their
rival in the race, the Michigan Southern, proved
to be both alert and slippery. To build in In
diana, the Michigan Central put money into the
New Albany and Salem road, a local affair which
had thirty-five miles of track in the southern
part of the state and a charter conveniently
vague, and which, in return for the grateful in
flow of Eastern capital, consented to begin build-

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 47
ing at once a " branch " around Lake Michigan,
in the northwestern corner of the state. The
" Southrons " protested, and persistently sought
injunctions ; the Michigan Central men, to prove
their good faith, had to put their hands deeper
into their pockets, with the result that the New
Albany and Salem achieved the glory of becom
ing the first line to connect Lake Michigan and
the Ohio River.
In buUding the twenty miles of track in Illi
nois between the state line and Chicago, even
greater difficulties were in the way. Partly from
proper reasons of economy, but chiefly because
it had no charter and the legislature would not
meet for a year and a half, the Michigan Central
desired to build and use a track in common with
the Illinois Central ; and a secret agreement was
made between the two companies by which the
Illinois road, in buUding its branch from Chi
cago, was to deflect its line some half a dozen
miles to the east, touching the Indiana boundary
at the point where the Michigan Central stopped.
In return for this favor, the Illinois Central, as
yet barely organized, acquired the universal de
sideratum. Eastern capital, and could begin to
bmld at once.
At the mere suspicion of such plans, Chicago
burst into wrath. Hitherto its isolation had
greatly retarded its growth. Islanded in "wet

48 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
prairie " and Illinois mud, it was practically in
accessible by land ; by water the route from the
East was long and roundabout, while from the
West the Illinois and Michigan Canal had been
open for only a few years. Thus in 1850, though
it had increased by 10,000 in the preceding
decade, its population was still under 30,000, a
pitiable showing when compared with the great
river cities of Cincinnati with 115,000, and St.
Louis with 78,000, Through railroads it hoped
for salvation ; and yet even here there was dan
ger. Lying fifteen miles to the north of the south
ern end of Lake Michigan, it had fears lest the
main line of traffic to the west and the southwest
might pass it by altogether ; and it shuddered
at the prospect of becoming a mere way-station
on a branch. Therefore, when in the spring of
1851 the city discovered that three railroad com
panies were making plans for entering it, it as
sumed an attitude of aggressive sensitiveness, —
perhaps not unknown since, — and sought to
dictate terms. Newspapers, city officials, and
business men insisted that no through passen
gers or freight should be transferred at any
junction-point outside the city, but that all should
be brought within its gates for tribute. Further
more, the hack-drivers and teamsters, fearing
that their prospective trade might be nothing
but a Tantalus glimpse, raised a cry that each

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 49
railroad must enter the city on its own tracks
and have its own station.
These matters all came to a head in July,
1851, when two "railroad conventions" were
held in Chicago, at which the plans of the roads
for reaching the city were made known to the
public. The commotion, it is true, never reached
the intensity of the "Erie War," that famous
contest for a break in gauge in order that the
piemen of Erie, Pennsylvania, might sell their
wares to passengers changing cars; but it is
amusingly characteristic of this period in railroad-
building. Indeed, for a season the lustre of even
the great Judge Douglas was dimmed in Chicago
by reason of his attitude on the railroad question.
The Michigan Southern smoothed its way di
plomatically. Having secured the charter of a
plank-road company which was alleged to have
railroad privileges, it proposed to come into the
city on its own track, thus making sure of a
gracious reception by the Chicagoans and of a
generous subscription from thera to its stock.
The Illinois Central and the Michigan Central,
for proposing to come in together, were looked
upon with disfavor. The directors of the lUinois
road accordingly did not dare to carry out their
agreement to swing their track eastward to the
Indiana line and there connect with the Michi
gan road. The nearest that they would consent

60 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
to come left a gap of six and a half miles, over
which Brooks and Joy proposed to build with
out a charter, trusting to the next legislature to
legalize their action.
Forbes protested. "Going without a charter
a quarter-section is as bad as the Atlantic would
be." Unused prairie though the land was, he
argued, their enemies would be sure to buUd a
highway across their proposed line to block
them. Nevertheless, as the -months went on this
unsatisfactory scheme proved to be the only basis
on which it was possible to go ahead.
Meanwhile in Indiana each company was racing
to get its hne completed first. The Michigan
Southern men had the advantage of agood start,
and were not retarded by scruples as to building
solidly, but the seasons in their courses fought
against them. The rails for the last section of
their track reached Dunkirk, on Lake Erie, after
the lake was closed to navigation, and, as luck
would have it, in the following spring the lake
was not clear until a month later than usual. So,
although the Chicago end of the line was com
pleted, in Indiana passengers and freight must
be transported a distance of thirteen miles over
a plank road. The Michigan Central, on the
other hand, having ordered its iron in good sea
son from England, built steadily and achieved
the triumph of beginning its regular through

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 51
service on May 21, 1852, a day ahead of the first
through train on the Michigan Southern, and a
week before that road was in regular running
order. A month later, at a special session of the
Illinois legislature, the six-mile bit of track in
Illinois was legalized.
In the midst of this struggle to extend its road
to the west, the Michigan Central was forced to
look also to the matter of Eastern connections.
A line of roads between Buffalo and Toledo con
necting with the Michigan Southern was already
under construction. Therefore the Michigan Cen
tral stockholders were urged, in the most per
suasive of circulars, to subscribe to the stock
of the Canada Great Western, which was to run
from Windsor, opposite Detroit, through Ontario
to Niagara FaUs, there crossing the river by a
suspension-bridge. Although the scheme had
many advantages, notably in the shortness of the
route, Forbes and his friends were hampered by
the necessity of working with a foreign corpora
tion. First, the Canadian road insisted on a dif
ferent gauge of track from that of the Michigan
Central. Then, at the instigation of sharp citi
zens of Detroit, with an eye for making a penny
out of delayed traveUers, it attempted to locate
its station in Windsor at a point as remote as
possible from the station of the Michigan Central.
A later and more serious cause of trouble was

62 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
the attempt of its Canadian directors to sell the
road to the Grand Trunk. Journeys to Canada
on the part of Forbes and other American direc
tors were constantly necessary " to kill off some
rascals"; but as troubles continued and multi
plied, and as it was found inexpedient to make
an appeal to the English government, the Michi
gan Central men, after a few years, withdrew
altogether. In these labors to make the Michigan Central
a link inan all-raU route from the East to Chicago,
the directors of the road had assumed heavy bur
dens and run great risks. Besides adding a mil
lion and a half to the cost of their own road, they
had been obliged to purchase bonds of the lUi
nois Central and the Indiana roads to the amount
of $600,000 and $800,000 respectively, and they
had contributed no less heavily to the Canadian
line. But they had been face to face with the
emergency of competition. Not to have accepted
the challenge would have been to throw away all
the money and labor that they had put into the
road — a mocking of their visions. And from
the competition which they had spent so much to
enter there lay a further danger, in that their
rivals were unscrupulous.
For the next five years operating expenses
were heavily increased by the necessity of more
frequent and more rapid passenger trains, and of

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 63
" runners " at various Eastern passenger stations,
and earnings were cut into by reduced freight
rates. Every truce made in the shape of an agree
ment as to rates was secretly violated by the
Michigan Southern, and then followed open war.
This state of things continued until the Michi
gan Southern was wrecked in the panic of 1857.
After that, with a new management in control,
an arrangement that proved permanent was made
between the two roads by which the steamboat
hnes of both on Lake Erie were withdrawn, the
number and the speed of the through passenger
trains were reduced, and the freight earnings
pooled on a basis of fifty-eight per cent for the
Michigan Central and forty-two per cent for the
Michigan Southern. In this fashion these finan
ciers discovered the laws of competition and
combination in the field of railroading.
In spite of the weight of the burdens caused
by construction and competition, the prosperity
of the Michigan Central in the years from 1852
to 1857 was sufficient to carry thera easily. In a
resume of the history of the road made by Forbes
in December, 1855, after nine years of operating
under private ownership, he told the story of its
success in striking figures.
The history of raUroad enterprise in the West,
up to that time [1846], was one of almost univer-

64 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
sal failure, and we were entering upon ground
that was worse than untried ; it had been prema
turely tried under the auspices of the state gov
ernments, and isolated embankments at various
points stood as monuments of disaster. ...
With very good management it [the Michigan
Central] was capable of earning as a maximum
$400,000 per annum; it has now grown to be
269 mUes long, with a power of earning over
$2,500,000. During our first winter, say December, Janu
ary and February, 1846-47, our total receipts
were about $53,000, For the first winter after
our completion to Chicago, say December, Janu
ary and February, 1852-53, our receipts had
grown to be $164,000, While we have earned
during the first two weeks of this month, De
cember, 1855, $114,000.
The present termini of our road then claimed
to have, Detroit and Chicago, each about 14,000
inhabitants, the former now claims 49,600, and
the latter 80,000. . . .
The whole number of miles of raUroad west
of Buffalo and north of the Ohio River was only
about 500 miles, and these laid with a flat rail ;
where there are now over 7300 mUes of road
finished with heavy raUs, besides a large amount
of unfinished roads.
Detroit was then three days' journey from the
seaboard in the summer, and five or six days in
winter. It can now be reached in about twenty-
seven hours.

THB MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 65
With an addition to construction of thirty-
eight per cent, the business of the road had grown
one hundred and forty per cent. The increase
in gross earnings in 1855 over 1854 was forty
per cent, and the limit of its capacity as a single-
track road was fast being reached. Moreover,
the increase of traffic from the new roads in Il
linois which were in alliance with the Michigan
Central — the Illinois Central and the Chicago,
Burlington, and Quincy^ — was only just begin
ning to be felt.
In this period of feverish expansion and fierce
competition the management of the raUroad re
mained unchanged. The burden of responsibility
borne by Brooks and Forbes had, of course, in
creased enormously ; and their long toil was filled
with diverse activities and charged in the highest
degree with excitement. It was not within the
power of either man to hold himself to the strict
letter of his proper duties. Thus Forbes busied
himself with a comprehensive scheme of railroada
for the State of lUinois, and even of lines beyond
the Mississippi, at a time when there were not
a hundred miles of track west of Chicago ; thua
also he took hold of the company which, with
Brooks as constructor, built the " Soo " canal.
The thousand and one possibilities which his
nimble imagination was continually starting up,
1 See pp, 73-78,

66 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDEE
his relentless habit of action drove him to carry
into execution. No detail escaped him. Having
noted the character of the land in southwestern
Michigan, he tried to have the cultivation of beet-
sugar begun there; he sent fir and spruce trees
to be planted on the station grounds of the raU
road ; he suggested improvements in passenger
cars; he threw himself with ardor into the detaUs
of construction and equipment of the company's
boats on Lake Erie, Moreover, with all these af
fairs on his hands, he was supposed to have
enough time to hear the complaints of dissatis
fied patrons, " One of our large stockholders,"
he wrote to a correspondent, "wants to bring a
friend to let me know how badly we manage, A
white-gloved, mustachioed youth is shewn up, who
is in the habit of going from Detroit twenty miles
west, and he telths me in a lithping voith I can't
contheive of the ungentlemanly conduct of the
conductorth — often and often he could not get
a theat exthept alongthide of thome rough Ul-
drethed fellow and onth he had paid a doUar to
a fellow to get up !
"Well! I tried to hire the young gentleman
at double his entire value per annum to go every
where and abuse us, as being the type of a con
siderable clan of complainants who want RRd
Companies to send along twenty tons of cars to
carry the number of passengers that ten tons of

THE MICHIGAN CENTBAL BAILEOAD 67
cars are made to carry, and this without the in
evitable consequence of such waste, viz,, the
charging the Passenger with this additional cost
of his transportation,"
Then, too, the conditions under which Forbes
did his work would, to the business man of to
day, seem appalling. Not only was there no tele
phone, but even the telegraph was used sparingly.
Furthermore, since Brooks and Joy were at De
troit, and two of the leading directors. Green
and Corning, were in New York and Albany
respectively, the discussion of every important
matter had to be through correspondence, and
almost all Forbes's letters were written with his
own hand. At the end of a day in which he had
filled thirty-one pages of his letter-press book,
he wrote : " Y'rs in great haste, hunger, and all
uncharitableness, having been here at my desk
since 8 J A. M,, now 6 p. m., living upon crackers!
but still. Yours Truly."
The pace of such a life was naturaUy great.
Though at the age of thirty-eight he described
himself as having " the appetite of a horse, the
digestion of an ostrich, and legs up to eight
hours' walk per diem without fatigue," yet the
strain was too much even for his constitution.
In 1855, after a trip to England, whither he had
been ordered for rest, he wrote, urging a vaca
tion on a fellow director: " With my rude health

58 AN AMEBICAN BAILEOAD BUILDER
and strength I find that I cannot stand the wear
and tear of constant thought and I am deter
mined not to sacrifice myself to it. On my out
ward passage to England I found the railroada
had made such inroads upon my brain that the
moment I got asleep I was harder at work upon
them than when here ; and until I got on shore
and amid new scenes I could not get rid of the
cursed nightmare of a railroad horse riding me."
With his return home his worries came back,
and he was given strict orders to reduce his bur
den of responsibility, " Being of a nervous, anx
ious temperament, it takes me down and may
take me off," Accordingly, in December, 1855,
after nine years' service as president, he sent
to the directors of the Michigan Central his re
signation. Thus lightened of his chief burden,
Forbes expected to be able to give time to newer
railroad interests which had developed farther
west, and yet have enough leisure and freedom
from care to piece together his broken health.
This hope, however, was not to be fulfilled.
The new management of the Central was natu
rally more versed in ways and means for securing
effective service on the road than in the mainte
nance of a sound financial policy. It immediately
launched forth into large expenditures for cars
and locomotives and for the improvement of
station-lands and buildings at Chicago and De-

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 59
troit, and it purchased another steamer to run on
Lake Erie, To this end it borrowed money heav
ily and, despite the mild protests of conservative
directors, at the same time continued to pay semi
annual dividends of five per cent. Furthermore,
trusting that there would be no break in the suc
cession of prosperous years, it neglected Forbes's
parting word of advice that a sinking fund should
be established for future contingencies. The
natural result was the appearance in the report of
June, 1857, of a large floating debt. At sight of
this Forbes roused himself to urge that it should
be funded by an issue of stock or bonds, and that
the semi-annual dividends should be reduced to
four per cent. Nothing was done at the time,
however, and Forbes, busy at his island home of
Naushon, where he was trusting to complete his
recuperation by a suraraer spent in " eating, sleep
ing, talking, and wearing out old clothes," let
the matter go.
In spite of the summer calm prevailing both
in the financial world and at Naushon, the dis
aster which Forbes had foretold — " an awful
smash-up in raUways from ill management, dis
honesty, overdoing" — was at hand. Yet, as is
always the case with panics, the weather-wise
saw little cause for alarm in the small cloud that
towards the end of August appeared above the
horizon, and predicted only a squall. On August

60 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
25, 1857, Forbes's agent in Boston wrote to his
correspondents in China: "The specie in the
New York banks has fallen off to about ten mil
lion, and we have in prospect a good deal of a
contraction in loans with a consequent tight
money-market. There is quite a panic to-day in
New York, arising out of the failure of the Ohio
Life and Trust Company and several large oper
ators in Western railroad securities, and prices
of stocks (generally railroad) have tumbled down
so much as to give cause for a great deal of un
easiness as to the extent of the damage to other
interests. . . , As soon as the rotten railroad con
cerns are out of the market as borrowers, an im
provement in the general tone will probably take
place." This scare, the beginning of the panic which
made the year 1857 memorable, roused the man
agement of the Michigan Central to action ; but
they had delayed too long, and the course of
events was soon beyond their control. " We are
in such a crisis," Forbes wrote,^ " as only those
who went through 1837 can conceive of — New
York Central Railroad has run down from 87 to
55, and Michigan Central from 95 to 45, while
the weaker concerns are clear out of sight —
Erie 10, Southern Michigan 10-15,
1 September 28. Lettera and Recollections of John Murray
Forbes, vol. i, p. 167.

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 61
" Having taken in saU, not expecting a storm,
but out of pure laziness, I am very easy unless
other people swamp me; but I don't beheve
W, Appleton's note indorsed by W, Sturgis
would bring $100,000 here within forty-eight
hours, at three per cent per month, — such
is the panic."
For the unfortunate Michigan Central it
seemed as if all were lost ; but to Forbes such
an emergency was a call that summoned all his
stores of courage, loyalty, and resourcefulness
to do the impossible. He appealed to a New
York director • —
Brooks writes me that you talk of resigning.
Such a step at this crisis would have the worst
possible effect upon our own friends and also on
the public. Jno. Thayer [the Boston banker] is
sick, and this throws a great weight on his bro
ther ; Livermore nervous and tiraid. Brooks over
worked, and inexperienced in finances, ... If
you and I give up, I see nothing for it but panic.
As far as I ara personally concerned, perhaps
it will be best for us all to give in and leave it
to the stockholders to fill our places, but to de
sert our post just now does not seem to be the
thing, and when you look at it in its practical
aspect I hope you will agree with me that we had
better hold on at least through the squall, and
when we go leave the ship in a safe place. ^
> September 26, 1857.

62 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
To J. N. A. Griswold, another of the direct
ors, he wrote as follows : —
Jno. E, Thayer is dying or dead, banks and
money-lenders scared into panics and I am called
up to a meeting of the Mich. Central to advise
what to do about carrying their floating debt
(1400 n [thousand] and over the last report)
and meeting bonds maturing, G  shows some
signs of backing out (but I hope to induce him
to act with us) just in the midst of this storm,
from his share of responsibUity, just when the
company must take the conservative measures
which his cautious disposition has always pointed
to, but which he failed to advocate strongly at
a time when they were opposed by others. Now
caution and foresight are the order of the day.
I can myself see no way but to advertise for
proposals for a new loan, make it safe with sink
ing-fund, tempting in its terms, and accept a low
price, shut off construction, and in fact take any
steps (not suicidal) that money-lenders may die-
Supposing we publish proposals for $2,000,-
000, payable through several months. Do you
feel disposed to make one of a party to make a
bid for those bonds, at a low rate, so that if
others don't give more we can get them at a rate
that will make us very safe ? They will probably
be eight per cent bonds convertible, 20 to 25
years, with a sinking-fund large enough to pay
them all before they mature ; each year the sink
ing-fund to be applied by commissioners to buy-

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 63
ing this issue of bonds by public proposals, so
long as they can be had at par or perhaps 110.
I think Barings will take hold of it. Thayers
must take a large slice. Holders of bonds matur
ing ($800,000 or more within 10 months) wUl
naturally come in to a certain extent, and the
smaller capitalists wUl do something, , , ,
With a conservative Board on the Southern
Road and a general tendency towards reducing
speed and raising prices, the Co. ought to be
worth more than it ever was before.
Though these exhortations put an end to talk
of resigning, matters otherwise grew worse. The
squall proved to be a " treraendous hurricane,"
with suspension of specie payraents a near prob
ability. If any succor were to be obtained for
the Michigan Central it must come from abroad,
and Forbes himself must go to get it, though
there was smaU chance that the Barings would
listen to his proposals. Such a scherae received,
as he wrote afterwards, " nothing but discourage
ment from aU my conservative friends; they
looked upon our plan as desperate, indeed, as
being only a 'forlorn hope.'" Still, as, in the
demoralization of the panic, he was the only one
who kept a cool head and a resolute will, there
was nothing for him to do but pack his trunk at
a day's notice and take the first steamer for
England.

64 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
Soon after his departure the general suspen
sion of specie payments became a fact, and the
Michigan Central declared itself unable to pay
the interest on its floating debt. Nevertheless,
through the personal appeals that Forbes had
made before he went, the subscriptions, when
the bids were opened on November 10, were
adequate ; and, with what he obtained in Eng
land, though the terras were not easy, the whole
sum was made up. Though the first bonds went
for 70, within two months' time they were worth
93, In short, thanks to this heroic effort, the
Michigan Central was in a better position than
ever before. Writing on December 9, after his
return to America, to an English correspondent
in Calcutta who had been prompt to help, Forbes
summed up the story thus : —
The rival road has now made a combination
with M, Central as an experiment which destroys
competition, and, with a better chance than ever
for reduced expenses, its future looks very well
to those who are not depending on this year's
dividends, which will go to clear off old scores.
Its credit will hardly he touched, considering
the power it has shown of recovering from the
sudden flaw which capsized it ; and many men
think better of it than before, because in the
midst of panic, the Co. shewed pluck and protected
old bonds and new alike by its mortgage. Any

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD 66
road, they say, may get caught, but this one haa
not only shewn capacity to pay, but a sense of
mercantile honesty to its bondholders and other
creditors which begets more confidence than the
mere capacity to pay.
With this signal act of courage and devotion
to the interests of the road for which from the
beginning he had been responsible, it may be
said that the days of Forbes's railroad education
were completed. So far as money went, his profit
had been small. The only direct return was a sura
of $20,000 which the board of the Michigan
Central had voted to him at the end of his term,
to replace his salary ; the opportunity at the time
of the crisis of purchasing stocks and bonds at
a low figure he had been too hard pressed to take
much advantage of ; and when a few years later
the great rise in Michigan Central came, he had
sold the larger part of his holdings. But in rail
road financiering he had received an invaluable
training. He had taken the road through all
the stages from " promotion " to bankruptcy, and
had brought it out triumphant. This fact was
generally recognized, and the increased confi
dence which was everywhere felt regarding the
safety of the Michigan Central was in effect a
recognition of the honesty of its first president.

CHAPTER III
RAILROAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS AND BEYOND
KAILROAD enterprises inevitably quicken
in those who plan and manage them an
attitude of mind that is not local but national.
The business of transportation is founded on large
geographical relationships ; the point of view of a
railroad builder cannot be narrower than that of a
statesman. Though in comparison with the under
takings of the present day the task of planning
railroads for the single state of Illinois may seem
sufficiently local, the conditions in the eariy fif
ties were such as to involve operations of national,
and even of international, extent. To obtain
the capital for getting these enterprises under
way appeal must be made to England ; to provide
the necessary population for the broad prairies
immigration from Europe must be stimulated and
directed ; from the Middle West, in return, the
countries of the Old World must be taught to
buy their breadstuffs. With problems of no less
scope than these the Western railroad-builders
of those days must be able to grapple, and in
masterful fashion.
Forbes's views on the question of immigration

RAILROAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 67
illustrate the point. In 1852, his attention was
drawn to the investigations made by Edward
Everett Hale, then a young minister of thirty,
concerning the abuses that had already sprung up
in connection with the introduction of European
labor. Writing to Hale, Forbes pointed out the
extent to which immigrants travelling west by rail
and boat were fleeced by "scalpers"; and lie
urged the importance of some organization which,
by combining business methods with philanthropy,
should bring the foreigner to his new home un
attended by robbery and deceit. The penalty for
the evils he condemned we are paying in our own
generation. I have long been of the opinion [he wrote]
that the subject of Emigration opened the widest
field of this century for a scheme of practical
benevolence, and indeed for carrying into prac
tice the theories of political economy ; but it wiU i
require a combination of practical mercantUe i
wisdom with a spirit of patience and even qf
martyrdom that we can hardly hope to see. I \
know of no elements that offer more inducement (
to the economist to bring them together than
the strong hands and empty storaachs of Europe, I
and the rich Dollar-an-acre Prairies of the West.,
California is a cypher in comparison, a mere pro
ducer of the measure of value, not of value it
self. The railroads which are at last checkering
the West in all directions will give a new element

68 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
of certainty to the transit of the Emigrant which
has been hitherto wanting, and when steam or
some other motive power shall make one or two
more steps onward so that you can count the
hours which it will take to carry your starving
Celt or German from his old home to the new
one, it seems to me that Philanthropy must take
up Emigration and deal with it on commercial
firinciples, and that we shall then see such an
exodus as nothing but the iron hand of despot
ism can check, and that how long ? . . .
""If you want to change things and fight the
abuses you must make your scheme of bene
volence a profitable one or it will only go a
inile while the enemy is traversing the globe 1
Benevolence may point the way and law may and
must help to regulate the abuses which have
grown up ; but when you are dealing with an
Emigration of 400,000 people who, I will venture
to say, are fleeced $10 each to bring them from
their hovels in the old world to their houses in
the new, here is a premium of four millions per
annum for the DevU to fight with.
Shew John Bull with his capital and Bro.
Jonathan with his energy how they can make
$4,000,000 out of the emigrant by starting him
at the right time and place and putting him down
at a prepared spot where he can earn his $ 10 a
piece or more during the time he is now starving
in cities, lingering in canal boats, and changing
from place to place seeking work or seeking land.
Do this, and it is a low statement of what in
telUgence and knowledge may do for the hordes

RAILROAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 69
now swarming out here, and you soon establish
a systera that pays its way and will grow from
year to year.
You will say Commerce must regulate itself
— true — but from the benevolent suggestion of
Las Casas, which substituted the whole race of
Africans for Indians, down to the ice trade in
vented by Tudor, great comraercial changes have
been effected by individual men's pointing the
way and demonstrating by experiment how things
may be done.^
The possibUity of getting a European market
for the grain of the West was another matter
that engaged Forbes's thoughts. He was full of
schemes for articles in American jnagazines and
for letters in the London " Tiraes " showing how
much lower the price of grain would be when
the West was provided with adequate railroad
transportation. Nothing came of these plans, it
is true, for it was obvious that such articles, if
they found their way to Illinois, would not ad
vantage the railroad in the eyes of the farmers.
Curiously enough, though, toward the end of the
Crimean War, Forbes was employed as agent in
the purchase of large supplies of breadstuffs to
be sent to France. Though the orders came
through Baring Brothers, it was known that the
buyer was Louis Napoleon. Plainly, the time was
1 June 24 and 30, 1852.

70 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
near at hand for bringing together " the strong
hands and empty stomachs of Europe and the rich
dollar-an-acre prairies of the West."
Last, and by no means least, Forbes was deeply
interested in the project for a railroad frora the
Mississippi to the Pacific. Ever since the begin
ning of the gold fever in California he had made
ventures with clipper ships, " practically yachts
from 1500 to 3000 tons measurement, racing
day and night around the Horn, making wonder
ful passages and getting wonderful prices for
their goods ; " and his brother - in - law, Robert
S. Watson, had established a comraission house
in San Francisco, From Forbes's knowledge of
conditions in California he felt strongly the po
litical and military as well as the economic im
portance of a raUroad to the Pacific; and he
repeatedly urged upon members of Congress
the necessity of Federal aid for it, and the
desirability of its being buUt, — as in our day
it has proved necessary to build the Panama
Canal, — by the military arm of the govern
ment. General considerations such as these were ever
present with Forbes, Though for the most part
dwelling in the back of his mind, they none the
less gave breadth and direction to his day's work,
which was the task of building railroads first
across lUinois and then beyond the Mississippi

RAILROAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 71
River, always under abnormal conditions and at
a forced rate of speed.
Illinois, like her sister states in the Middle
West, possessed the rich soU that at the same
time produced a marvellous crop and prevented
its being hauled to market. As in their case, too,
her early efforts at " internal improvements" had
come to naught in the distressing years follow
ing the panic of 1837. Even as late as 1850, all
that she had to her credit were a canal connect
ing the Illinois River with Lake Michigan, a few
miles of isolated railroad in the middle of the
state, and a number of unused raUroad charters.
In 1850, however, the first waves of the return
ing tide, bearing both population and capital,
reached Illinois, and at the same time success
rewarded the efforts of the state to obtain aid
from the national government for railroad de
velopment. The waterways between Lake Mich
igan and the Gulf were, as has already been
noted, far from adequate to provide for the great
volume of north and south traffic; and thus,
for the sake of establishing a better bond be
tween West and South through the construction
of the Illinois Central and the Mobile and Ohio
railroads, the Thirty-First Congress reversed
the policy of its predecessors, and in September,
1850, passed the first of the acts granting public v
lands to aid railroad development.

72 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
' By the terms of this act the Ilhnois Central was
to receive a right of way two hundred feet in
width, and on each side of it every other square
mile or "section" of land to a depth of six
miles. These lands, unsalable at $1,25 an acre,
would by the buUding of the raUroad be sure of
purchasers, and by doubling the price per acre
the government would be provided from the half
of the land which it retained with a sum equal
to the price at which it had held the whole. If
the road were not completed within ten years, the
lands unsold by it were to revert to the govern
ment, which in that case was to receive also the
value of the lands sold. Furthermore, — a pro
vision which in later years has been used to the
disadvantage of the railroads, — the rate for car
rying the mails was to be fixed by Congress.^
Finally, the charter granted by the state provided
that, in consideration of payment to the state of
7 per cent on its gross earnings, the road was to
be exempt from taxation, and it put the rate-
making power into the hands of the directors
without reservations,'^ On these terms the Illinois
Central acquired a right to 2,600,000 acres, which,
' U. S. Statutes at Large, 31 Cong., 1st session, pp. 466,
467. " Private Laws of Illinois, 1851, pp. 61-74. The payment of
7 per cent was not to begin for six years. For two years before
that time, on completion of the main line, the payment was to
be 6 per ceut.

RAILROAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 73
at the minimum price of $1.25 per acre, were
worth $3,250,000.
A gift so munificent and so adequate as secur
ity to attract English and American capital in
abundance, meant that the work of railroad-build
ing in Illinois was to receive wonderful accelera
tion. It will be remembered that the men of the
Michigan Central at once saw their chance to
enter Chicago, and the first construction done
by the Illinois Central was in pursuance of an
arrangeraent according to which it was to lay a
dozen miles of track out of Chicago to connect
with the Michigan Central,^ In return, the latter
road agreed to supply as much as $2,000,000 in
ready money ; but a $5,000,000 loan which was
presently secured by the Illinois Central through
Baring Brothers made it unnecessary for the
Michigan Central to furnish more than $800,000.
The Illinois Central, however, although it waa
sure to bring a large amount of business to the
older road, could not be an adequate outlet for the
expanding energies of the Boston capitalists, since
it was under New York control. Yet go ahead
the Michigan Central must, for the Michigan
Southern had no sooner reached Chicago than
its owners began the construction of the Chicago
and Rock Island Railroad, and, building with in
credible rapidity for those days, accomplished the
» See pp. 47-60.

74 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
distance of one hundred and eighty-one miles to
the Mississippi River in twenty-two and a half
months. True gamblers, they borrowed recklessly
and built lightly, at the same time forcing men
more prudent and more honest into the game.
Thus it came to pass that, early in 1852, the
Michigan Central men began to look into lUinoia
railroad charters. There were plenty of these in
the hands of the local capitalists, who, having
been unable to make use of them, were ready to
sell out. Of the Chicago a^d Aurora thirteen
miles had been built ; beyond that, stretching to
the southwest and touching the Mississippi at
two points, had been planned the Central MUitary
Tract Road, the Northern Cross Road, and the
Peoria and Oquaqua or Oquawka — "Phoebus,
what a name!" exclaimed Forbes as he wrote
it. In order to make the charters acceptable to
Eastern capitalists, amendments were secured at
a special session of the lUinois legislature in
June, 1852, which permitted the extension of
the lines to make necessary connections, and
which put the roads on an equal footing with
the Ilhnois Central in respect to the clear pos
session of rights to establish rates for passengers
and freight.
Forbes's work now began. Here is his appeal
to one of his New Bedford supporters. .

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BAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 75
Our friends at the West have taken hold of a
piece of new road which they think very highly
o/, and have absorbed it in ^arp-eZois, . . . They
have reserved a small part for us at the East, and
I suppose N. Bedford can have five or ten thou
sand dollars if you speak quick.
It looks to rae very well ; but I have not tirae
to exaraine it closely, and if I take it, it will be
in following the lead of Brooks, Corning, and
other men who ought to know and who will have
a large interest in looking after it. So I cannot
recommend it, but only offer it.
It is the Aurora R, R,, which is to travel off
from the Galena, 30 miles west of Chicago, and
run westerly to the lUinois Central — 44 and 13
= 57 miles, where it will meet one or more roads
projected from the Mississippi and get their con
tributions, as well as those of the 111, Central
from south and north for the East. It runs
through a fertile and easy country to build, and
has no expensive ends, as it runs over the Galena
to Chicago under a very favorable contract for
30 years. Pray understand that I don't endorse,
recommend, or urge it, and you can judge about
as well as I can whether its local business aided
by such feeders and a cheap construction will
counterbalance the disadvantage of taking up a
new thing at par.
Thirteen miles are in operation with a flat rail
and doing a good local business, so I hear.
Brooks takes $25,000, Capt. Ward $40,000,
Corning $30,000, Davidson, his partner, $10,000,
Joy and Porter $10,000 or $12,000, Chas. WU-

76 AN AMEBICAN BAILEOAD BUILDER
liams of Stonington (now out West) takes some
thing. Only $90,000 is reserved for N, York and
Boston and will I think go like hot cakes even if
it does burn the takers' fingers.
N, B. I doubt about letting the grumbling
Governor have any — he always wants perfect
security like Bank of England and 20 per cent
interest, too !
In such fashion Forbes went from one man to
another, confident in the validity of his large vis
ion of the future, and yet never losing his sense
of precisely what could be attempted and accom
plished at any given moment, men and things be
ing what they were. By his aid the first amounts
were raised without much trouble, — for the Chi
cago and Aurora was an undoubted bargain ; but
in the next few years, as it became plain that
the road was destined to be, not a local feeder
of the Michigan Central, but part of a trunk line
between Chicago and the Mississippi, he was
drafted for heavier work than that of "foUow
ing the lead" of others. It was the story of the
Michigan Central over again, only the pace was
more rapid. The Chicago and Aurora and the
connecting road to the west — the Central Mili
tary Tract — were in 1856 combined ^ under
the narae of the Chicago, Burhngton and Quincy,
' The Chicago and Aurora had become the Chicago, Bur"
lington and Quincy in 1856,

RAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 77
the Western management being in the hands of
James F, Joy, It presently became clear that the
roads farther west, buUding from Galesburg
toward Burlington and toward Quincy, could
not, with local management, command the neces
sary resources to enable them to reach the Mis
sissippi in any sort of season. The C, B. & Q.
directors, therefore, in order to hold their own
against the Rock Island, which had already
crossed the state, voted money to complete the
construction of the two roads. The whole thing
was so much in the future, and to outsiders ap
peared so vast and so uncertain, that the addi
tional sums had to come chiefly from the men
who were already involved. Thus, in order to
take his director's share in one of these loans,
Forbes sold at 70 $100,000 of manufacturing
stock which he had bought at par. At another
time he had, alone, to endorse notes to the amount
of $60,000 to pay for the first ten locomotives
needed by the Peoria and Oquawka and the
Northern Cross.
Fortunately the return on this heavy invest
ment was both large and immediate. Plenty of
business was waiting for the new road at the
Mississippi River, and until the completion of the
Chicago branch of the Illinois Central it also
served as the connecting link between the main
Une and Chicago. It is small wonder, then, that

78 AN AMEBICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
in six months of 1856 the Central Military Tract
paid fifteen per cent dividends in cash and stock,
and that Forbes was able to write of the C. B.
& Q, : " Their earnings are so large that if they
accumulate them and then divide largely, it may
have a bad effect among the country people who
pay them freight,"
This, indeed, was the time of glad, confident
morning, never again to occur in the history of
railroad-building in the United States, None the
less, while no one exceeded Forbes in faith in the
future of western railroads, yet the loose man
agement invited by such rapid buUding consti
tuted a danger which few saw so clearly as he.
Extracts from letters written during this period,
chiefly to foreign investors, reveal how large a
part this danger played in his view of the situa
tion as a whole.
You may mark out projects without number
(in the free states), all of which, if honestly and
carefully managed, will be profitable ; but while
there are a hundred good projects, you will find
it hard to choose ten men to manage them who
are free from some back interest, which they are
likely to consult before that of their company, or,
if you find honest men, how few skilful, good
business men will there be in the hundred ? I
must try to find a cutting from our papers show
ing a sharp trick put upon some of your iron men,

BAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 79
it is said by the Rock Island Co. (a kind of bas
tard child of the Southern Michigan). The story
is this. Your iron men wanted half cash and half
bonds. So the Rock Island bought double quan
tity of iron and sold half of it, to raise the cash
to pay for the other half. If not true, 't is very
Ukely to be.
My wonder has been, not that your conserva
tive people would not trust Michigan Central and
the few such companies, but that they would
trust others of whom they know so little, I am
naturally sanguine, and I fully appreciate the
growth and capabilities of the West ; but if I
had money seeking investment at two per cent,
I would not touch some of the six or eight per
cent things that your cautious Enghsh houses
have taken hold of.^
There are two ways of getting stock taken here.
One is to convince people that a road will pay
handsomely and that all the stockholders will pay
up in cash, and share alike. The other is to get
victims (cities or individuals) to subscribe a cer
tain amount of stock which is bound to be sacri
ficed, and then, in the shape of contracts, at
double what the work is worth, payable in stock,
bonds, etc, get people to take hold who expect
to get so much advantage in the price of their
work or materials as to enable them to sell out
their stock at a sacrifice, and still get off with
some profit,^
> April 1, 1853. 5 July 11, 1861.

80 A^ AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDER
^ Whether such a crisis [bankruptcy] wUl ever
come with the Erie I cannot judge. I know
they must want a good deal of money to stock
and to finish it after it is nominally done ; and
through the wild parts of the country it will not
at first pay current expenses and repairs. For
data, you may, I suppose, rely upon the gross
receipts ; but whether you can tell anything of
the net earnings depends entirely upon the kind
of people who manage it. They may be blunder
ing and stupid, or theoretical and experimental ;
they may be sharp people who manage economi
cally, but who don't think the stockholders and
the public ought to know how much it costs to
keep a road and its equipment up, and who for
the present conceal some of the running expenses
under the head of construction, trusting to a
great rush of business when the road is through
to cover up all weak spots,
I know nothing at all about the managers ; but I
do know that a judicious, economical, square-sided
management is as rare as a first-rate commission
agent ; and rather more so, for the pay of rail
road people is fixed, while the commission mer
chant has a direct interest in being prompt and
careful. So much for a treatise on raUroads, and which
is in reply to your remark that the first seven or
eight millions of Erie ought to be good.*
In this experimental state of things, a final
obstacle to the orderly upbuilding of a system of
» March 26, 1851.

RAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 81
Western railroads was the lavish extension of
Federal aid ; for with the land grants in 1850 to
the Illinois Central and the Mobile and Ohio,
Congress had let down the bars. The need of
developing the interior of Iowa and Missouri,
to say nothing of the importance of building a
" Pacific Railroad" from this or that insignificant
town on the Mississippi, could be urged plausibly,
and any application to aid such a scheme Con
gress was now likely to act on favorably.
These prospects of railroad-building made easy
portended serious things to the men interested
in the Michigan Central and the C. B, & Q,
Having constructed roads successfully with their
own resources, they could not but object to a
scheme which would force them into ruinous
competition with roads having the advantage of
government aid. The perils to roads of the
former class are put with some energy in a re
monstrance addressed by Forbes in February,
1853, to Charles Sumner, United States senator
from Massachusetts.
There are now about 7500 miles of new raU
road in course of construction, which when pro
perly equipped with machinery, shops, and depots,
and finished with proper ballast and bridges, will
not cost under $20,000 per mile, or say $150,
000,000 — one hundred and fifty millions —
(and this is a low estimate), most of which has

82 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
to be borrowed and the whole expended within
two years. These are chiefly in the West through
a sparse population.
Is not the experiment enough for one while?
and, however sound the policy may be of giving
lands to make railways, is it wise to stimulate enter
prise in this direction any further, at a time when
it is clear that too many roads are under way
without any such stimulus ?
If the western states go much further or faster
into railways, we shall inevitably have another
1837-38, as well as an 1835-36; and, like that
epoch, the stimulated, overstrained effort will
be followed by a state of reaction that will be
very unfavorable to the real interests of the West.
By stimulating the building of roads, where they
are not wanted, and where the leading cause for
building them is the gift of public lands, we
shall throw such discredit (when the break-down
comes) on our western roads, that the building
of useful roads wUl be retarded or indefinitely
postponed. Foreign capitalists, as I happen to know, are
already frightened by the immense extent of the
new railroads begun, and the time is very near
at hand when the enormous issues of raUway
bonds will glut the home market. . . .
It is possible that I may be influenced by my
connection with western roads that have been
buUt by dint of hard work in hard times, when
it was a word of reproach to be concerned in
western enterprises, and that these considera
tions induce me to look unfavorably upon other

BAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS S3
roads getting help from the public Treasury or
domain. To avoid such suspicion, I mark this letter
private and do not wish my name mentioned in
the matter ; but you, I know, will have candor
enough and acuteness enough to give due weight
to any of my reasoning that is good, and to make
the needful allowance for any selfish bias, as
against the weight that might otherwise be due
to the opinions of one who has had some expe
rience in western railroad-building.*
In the midst of the clamor of the West for
more land for more railroads, such a protest
naturally received little heed. Yielding to this
clamor, Congress passed land-grant acts in 1852,
1853, 1856, and 1857, on an increasing scale of
lavishness. Nothing short of a panic, with its
imperative " thus far andno farther," could avaU
to stay its reckless hand.
Clear as had been the interest of Forbes and
his friends in preventing, if possible, these dona
tions, they could not afford to bend over back
wards by refusing to have anything to do with
the lines thus favored. Since roads were now
sure to be built across Missouri and Iowa which
would connect with their roads at Quincy and at
Burlington, it would be folly to let these enter-
* For the rest of this letter, which gives at length Forbes's
views on the general principle of Federal aid to railroads, see
Appendix.

84 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDER
prises fall into rival hands. The first of the roads
for which Boston capitalists were thus forced to
find money was the Hannibal and St. Joseph
RaUroad, a line some two hundred miles long,
planned to cross the northern part of Missouri
from the Mississippi to the Missouri River, Be
sides having a land grant of over 600,000 acres,
it possessed the guarantee of the state for its
bonds to the amount of $1,500,000. In spite of
its auspicious beginning, however, the road for
some years made little progress in construction.
Its local management was ineffective, its East
ern interests were in the charge of Forbes who,
overloaded with raUroad work, was beginning to
break down ; finally, the contract under which
the work of construction was to be done was a
preposterous agreement which enabled the con
tractor to have his own way about everything all
the time. For a number of years all that this
costly investment meant was that Missouri was
safe from the control of any rival of the C. B.
&Q, Again, in 1856, the bounty of Congress com
pelled the men in the Chicago, Burlington,
and Quincy to bestir themselves to find capital.
Stretching westward from their terminal at Bur
lington, Iowa, was the Burlington and Missouri —
a little road for building which bonds bearing
ten per cent interest had been sold at sixty cents

BAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 85
on the dollar, and which, after four years of
effort, had succeeded in strugghng twelve miles
toward the goal of its ambition, the western
boundary of the state. Now it leaped to fame by
being one of four railroads in Iowa to receive
land grants, its allotment, the smallest of them
all, being 350,000 acres, ^ With this dowry it
awaited the overtures of the East.
Early in 1857 Joy appeared in Boston, eager
to demonstrate to the C. B, & Q, directors the
importance of this Iowa road as a feeder to their
line, Forbes himself needed no convincing. As
far back as the summer of 1853, only a year after
the Michigan Central had entered Chicago, his
railroad-building imagination, leaping westward
a state at a tirae, had seen the value to the Michi
gan road of this route across Iowa, and at a con
siderable expense he had had preUrainary surveys
made over the whole line. Now, after four years
of feverish "development" in Illinois, Iowa's
turn had come. But however great the oppor
tunity here, in the East Forbes's prophecy of evil
days was beginning to be fulfilled. The market
was glutted with railroad securities, and the
Boston banking-house of John E, Thayer and
Brother, on which he had always relied, failed
him. Discouragement and opposition, however,
^ The amount proved to be 389,989 acres. — Report for 1897
ofthe Commissioner ofthe General Land Office, p. 226.

86 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDEE
always an effective stimulus to Forbes, spurred
him to put the thing through with a rush.
To Erastus Corning he wrote on May 11,
1857 : —
... I had vowed a vow to touch nothing
new ; but the Iowa Road with its rich and popu
lous country, and its 300,000 acres of Free Soil
seems to me so very important an extension of
our Unes that I cannot help taking rather more
than my share there. . . ,
Personally I should not be sorry to see it
dropped, as it may lead to some care and thought
— although I will not anyhow nor for any con
sideration risk my health. Jby taking part in the
management of it; but it would be as bad a mistake
for the companies to let it go to the enemy as it was
for us , . . to Igt the road round the foot of Lake
Michigan go to warm the Southerners into Ufe !
as bad a mistake as itwould have been to let the
Military Tract and Aurora become tributaries to
the Rock Island, which we barely escaped mak
ing under similar circumstances.
I have been astonished at the blindness and
lukewarmness of some of our large stockholders
about it. The smaller ones have come forward
very well and some outsiders, but Thayer's de
lay to put his name down has made others delay
too and so it is stiU hanging by the eye-lids !
"Don't be discouraged," was his message to
Joy, " because John E. Thayer has been upset.

BAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 87
* there shall still be cakes and ale, and ginger
shall be hot in the mouth,' I have in my eye
another person in Boston, and one in New York,
who can put the thing through. One man in
New Bedford would do it if he would examine
it. In short, it is too good to let go without a
try!"^ This driving energy resulted in a subscription
of a million and a half of dollars on the part of
the C. B, & Q. stockholders, thanks to which the
construction of the Burlington and Missouri
went on rapidly until the panic brought every
thing to a standstill.
Beyond question, the financing of Western
railroads in the fifties was to be classed among
occupations as " extra hazardous." Not only were
these undertakings on a larger scale than had
been known in this country and in a field of in
dustry the laws of which were imperfectly worked
out, but the greed of the people had not per
mitted for them a normal and even development.
The clamor for national aid had increased in
inverse proportion to the justifiable need of the
district which made the demand ; and Congress,
misguidedly enacting the will of a misguided
people, had committed the supreme act of de-
morahzation in its lavish gifts of land. Thus
Eastern capitalists interested in Western rail
roads were obliged to risk their credit stUl fur-

88 AN AMEEICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
ther and to make great sacrifices in protecting
their earlier investments, "I confess," wrote
Forbes in the summer of 1856, " to being over-
involved and somewhat troubled ! They say eels
get used to being skinned ! If so, I wish I was
an eel, for every time I give my name out the
worse I feel instead of the better," It is not
remarkable that under the strain his health broke
down. Hazardous for the men involved such business
was, but no less hazardous for the nation. In
1853 Forbes's estimate of tbe cost of 7500 miles
of road then under construction was $150,000,-
000, According to-James Ford Rhodes, " Nearly
21,000 miles of railway were constructed from
January 1, 1849, to January 1, 1858, This was
seven ninths of the total mileage of the coun
try. The capital and indebtedness of the rail
roads was about $900,000,000, so that in nine
years $700,000,000 had been invested in rail
way construction," * The day of reckoning was
inevitable ; and when it came in the late sum
mer of 1857, nothing in the country suffered
more severely than the railroads themselves.
Of the roads in which Forbes was interested, the
C. B, & Q., two hundred and ten mUes long,
which had eost comparatively little, and which
had been paying semi-annual dividends of any-
' History of the United States, vol. iii, p. 53,

RAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 89
where from five to fifteen per cent, was the only
one that was unshaken.
Forbes's success in putting the Michigan Cen
tral on its feet after the panic of 1857, the story
of which has already been told, completed the
demonstration of his mastery of railroad finan
ciering. When others were sore and disheart
ened, he had shown himself cool, resourceful,
and inspiring. There had been no doubting his
power or resisting his leadership. Naturally
enough, then, he was presently called upon to
help other roads in their times of trouble.
For example, soon after the panic the C. B, &
Q. began to negotiate for the complete control
of the two western parts of its line, extending
from Galesburg to Burlington and Quincy, In
neither case had the smaller road, with its local
management, worked amicably or dealt fairly
with the larger ; and when they both met with
disaster and the bondholders pressed their claims,
such a consolidation was obviously the best way
out of the situation. In bringing this result to
pass Forbes labored long and hard. Although
legal delays deferred the completion of the work,
yet at the outbreak of the Civil War these roads
formed an important and efficient unit in the
Illinois railroad system.
In connection with the Hannibal and St,
Joseph, however, Forbes's power as a railroad re*

90 AN AMEEICAN EAILROAD BUILDEE
organizer was more brilliantly shown. When after
the panic he was suraraoned to set things going
again, he found himself engaged in a contest
with a " self-made man, shrewd, hard, and rich,"
— " the very type of a railroad contractor," —
who wished to build a " cheap contractor's road
to sell," while Forbes was determined to have "a
solid one, adapted to being held and used for
business purposes," Finally, in desperation after
a " four-months' nightmare," Forbes threatened
to throw over the enterprise altogether, under
which pressure the contractor gave in.
The consequence of this success was the ob
ligation to raise the mUlion and a half of money
necessary to complete the road. This task Forbes
set about after much the same fashion in which
he had achieved the sale of Michigan Central
bonds six months before. With aU raUroads suf
fering from the depression attendant on the
panic, it was a matter of some delicacy to put
the thing in such shape aS to make it appeal to
investors. Nevertheless, as Forbes pointed out to
the men whom he urged to join him in making
up the sum, the prospects of the road, when once
it should be finished, were exceedingly favor
able. As to the Hannibal [he wrote to John C.
Green], I made settlements and arrangements
(or the basis thereof) with the contractor, which

BAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 91
I think will take the concern out of the fancies
and put it among the solids — provided the re
maining land-bonds can be sold at a fair price.
It will then look like another Michigan Cen
tral, only running through a richer country and
endowed with lands which prudent people value
at $6,000,000, and which, at Illinois Central
land prices, wiU bring 600,000 X $14 ^ $8,400,-
000. To get the lands, however, the road must be
built and this without unreasonable delay, for
with such a large interest account and such a
moderate amount of land-bonds left it might get
embarrassed. I have satisfied myself that if the bonds now
offered can be sold at a fair price the road can,
with the proceeds, be opened through probably
in nine months, certainly in twelve, and can
provide for such part of its interest as the earn
ings will not take care of.
The business of Kansas and Nebraska must
come over the road for years, and from the
moment it is opened a very large traffic will pass
over it.
To compare it with the Michigan Central. You
must suppose that it has no railroad competition
at present and none near in prospect, while in
stead of the three or four days of fair lake navi
gation which the M. Central had to compete with,
it has the Missouri River, with its five mUe [an
hour] current, its snags and sand-bars, which
make the passage from St. Jo to St. Louis a
very uncertain one, varying from three days, in

92 AN AMEBICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
a good stage of water, to seven days at other
times.* Appeals such as these, made to "the right
people," had their effect. With the help of
Baring Brothers and of his ever-reliable Quaker
friends in New Bedford, sure to have money to
invest in a good thing at a low price which he
might have to offer, Forbes's hst was made up.
The bonds were taken at 60, and under the
strong management which he had provided, with
John W. Brooks at the head, Forbes felt that
the road could now be left to take care of itself.
Early in 1859 it was successfully completed ; the
other raUroad in Missouri, aided at the same time
by a land grant, was ten years longer in getting
across the state.
With the Burlington and Missouri RaUroad,
too, Forbes's special talent was called into play.
A time when the Iowa farmers were hauling
their grain twenty-five miles to the Mississippi
River because they were too poor to pay the rail
road for carrying it, and when the business of the
road was at a standstill, was for him precisely the
time for action. No sooner was the loan for
the Hannibal and St. Joseph accompUshed in
the summer of 1858, than he bestirred himself
to form a group to subscribe for the Iowa road.
> June 30, 1858.

BAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 93
His now assured financial leadership made this
third attempt an easy matter, and the bonds were
taken at the same rate as those of the second loan.
With the money thus obtained, the road was built
the seventy -five miles to Ottumwa, that being the
distance necessary to secure the land grant.
For lack of simUar resources in courage and
cash, the other three Iowa roads aided by Con
gress at the same tirae as the Burhngton and
Missouri, and aided much more munificently,
were forced to the wall, and two of them for
feited their land grants. Thus, thanks to Forbes,
both the Hannibal and St, Joseph and the Bur
lington and Missouri had all the advantage of
having been built in a period of low prices, —
labor in Missouri was worth from seventy to
eighty cents a day, — and were ready to profit
by the very beginnings of the prosperity which
had already set in when the CivU War broke out.
These long labors of rehabilitation and reor
ganization after the panic of 1857 constitute the
best commentary on the value of Forbes's warn
ing in 1853 concerning the evil of land grants.
It is true that the grants accelerated the develop
ment of certain states; and if acceleration of
development is in itself a benefit, that much is
to be put to their credit. As for the aid to the
railroads, the need of which was so plausibly
urged, whatever gain accrued there was confined

94 AN AMEEICAN BAILROAD BUILDEE
chiefly to those systems that were large and
powerful enough to have got along without it.
The many local roads that the grants brought
into existence or maintained in a semblance of
life could not command men of sufficient ability,
honesty, and financial resources to avail them
selves of the advantage thus given them. Even
the Illinois Central, with its auspicious beginning,
encountered misfortune twice in the first seven
years of its life. When, on the other hand, as in
the case of the roads dominated by the C. B, & Q,
interests, the land grants were managed with care
and foresight, they ultimately sold at prices av
eraging nearly ten times the original value of
the land. So in the end the result was exactly
the opposite of what Congress had intended.
Nevertheless, for this advantage at the start
the ./railroaas that benefited have since paid
heavily. In 1907, the Illinois Central had, ac
cording to the terms under which the grant was
made, turned into the state treasury $27,000,000,
representing seven per cent on its gross earnings.
Its annual payment was $1,200,000,* Moreover
since 1875, by act of Congress, the compensation
of the "land-grant" railroads, for carrying the
mails has been only eighty per cent of the regu
lar rates for that service. Thus for the 390,000
1 Address of William C. Brown to the Commercial Club of
Boston, December 7, 1908, p. 6.

RAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 95
acres of land in Iowa received by the Burlington
and Missouri, there has been paid out between
three and four tiraes the original cost of the land,
and the annual loss on the carrying of the mails
is nearly $100,000, It is such facts as these that
have made the raUroad problem in the Middle
West so persistently complicated.
With his success in putting into good condi
tion the roads which constituted western exten
sions of the C, B, & Q, system, the first period of
John M, Forbes's career as a railroad builder
came to an end. Covering the years from 1846
to 1860, it was, in its general limits, coincident
both in time and in place with an important
epoch in the development of the railroad system
of the country. The Western roads built in these
years were, in the nature of things, speculative
undertakings, for which men would not risk
money except in the hope of large profits. Some
times these profits came through participation
in generously estimated construction contracts,
sometimes in ways still less creditable, even to
downright dishonesty. On the other hand, when
men of integrity were in charge, their returns
must come from high rates of interest on money
lent, and from the earnings of the road. Con
sequently it was their policy to build out into
regions where competing lines were not for some
years likely to be constructed, and where the

96 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
tariffs could be kept at a remunerative figure. Ic.
this latter class, John M. Forbes was among the
few foremost.
Successful as speculations though Forbes's
railroad undertakings proved, this fact should
not so occupy the foreground that his great quali
ties of imagination and leadership are not seen
in their true proportion. Filled with the vision
of a land made populous and rich through a
means of transportation as yet in its infancy,
he was also endowed with the personal qualities
which could help largely to bring that vision to
pass. Furthermore, in the excitement of that era,
he was among the few men who by their cool
ness and resoluteness could command the con
fidence of others ; thus, when the crash came and
the land was strewn with wrecks of railroads, his
undertakings stood out, not only undamaged,
but sounder than ever before.
To comprehend fully the character of Forbes's
railroad work, one must not lose sight of the fact
that he came in touch with the actual property
not oftener than once a year, when he journeyed
to the annual stockholders' meeting at Detroit or
Chicago, To be sure, with his remarkable fac
ulty of observation, he probably saw more in ten
days than most men would have taken in in three
months' time ; but even so the nature of his work

BAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 97
made this kind of knowledge comparatively un
important. His task was, first of all, to stand for
such principles and policies, to show such alert
ness and energy, as shoidd win him the aid of
the men whose money was needed to finance his
schemes; and, second, to choose and, having
chosen, to keep in touch with the executive offi
cials on whose steady courage and skill the pro
sperity of the enterprise depended. The material
that he wrought with was therefore first, last, and
always men. A railroad is in so imposing a fashion
a mechanism of things, that one is all too likely
to forget the mind and spirit which are needed
to inforra it. With Forbes that was never the
case. For all its complicated body, a railroad was
to him a mighty discipline, requiring and re
sponding to the human touch of a master hand.
He felt the system of which he was a part, with
its bodies of stockholders, bondholders, directors,
its administrative officials, and the thousand
subordinates in charge of the details of its oper
ation, — he felt it aU as a huge piece of human
machinery, and with him the stress was always
on the adjective.
This sense of the fitness of men, which is might
ily more satisfying than the sense of the fitness
of things, showed itself in a hundred cases, of
which one of the earliest and most interesting is
that of his relations with John W. Brooks, the

98 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
first superintendent of the Michigan Central.
From the time when, an unknown young engineer
of twenty-six, he made his first report to Forbes
on the value of the property as an investment.
Brooks shouldered each new responsibUity with
ease and success. Without him at Detroit, full of
resoluteness, a master of detail, the road could not
possibly have prospered. To the value of Brooks's
work Forbes was never weary of bearing witness,
" The more I see," he wrote in 1852, "of the diffi
culty of getting good managers for other roads
and other large things, the more am I satisfied
with Brooks. He doubtless has his faults, and
one of them is to want to do too much himself, in
stead of throwing off detaUs upon a subordinate,
and thus giving him more tirae for the general
management ; but he makes up for it by his in
dustry and decision, and certainly combines aU
the qualities we want, more nearly than anybody
else in this country. In fact, if we could have
the best railroad president and the best superin
tendent, — each picked out among all the raU
road companies here, I think Brooks would be
worth the two."
Again, in December, 1854, Forbes tells the
story of Brooks's victory in finishing the Sault
Ste, Marie Canal, — an undertaking for which
the contractors were paid with 750,000 acres of
the richest lumber and mineral land in the State

BAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 99
of Michigan valued at $1.33 an acre, "He is a
perfect Napoleon in his way and has had more
to contend with, a hundred times raore difficulty
this summer than Raglan and Canrobert [in the
Crimea] put together. With 1500 men of the
roughest sort in the wUderness, nobody to lean
on, the cholera raging round him, and the work
of two years to be driven through in six months.
He lost more than a tenth part of his force by
cholera, but by dint of will he has got the canal
so far on that it can be done amply within the
time required."
Forbes's power of appreciating men was not
limited to praising them for what they had done
brilliantly ; he could reach their sympathy by
putting himself on common ground with them
in difficulties and disappointments. Here are
extracts from a letter written to a young man
who, sent out to Hannibal to watch the construc
tion of the Hannibal and St. Joseph, had been
condemned to do little but mark time.
I can easily conceive of your disappointraent,
after two years of waiting, at any further delay,
and your chief mistake has been in not putting
the blame where it really belongs, on my shoul
ders/or the two years instead of expecting Mr. C.
in the few days he was out there to apply the axe
to the root and remedy the evils of two years' in
action at a blow. He does not do things exactly

100 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
in my way but it is a blessed thing in this world
that people are not all alike. , . .
I think you were too quick in taking offence
because Mr, C. would not within 24 or 48 hours
after he had engaged one man who was not there
ready to take hold, get rid of your drunken
friend whom we by Mr, Duff's advice had en
dured for many months. Had you kept cool then
until the Directors could act, it wonld have
been better, instead of insisting as a right upon
instant action in the direction which you thought
expedient, - , .
But let bygones be bygones! I have no time
for useless argument and you must be content
with the assurance that all of us, including Capt,
Swift, have the highest appreciation of your char
acter and motives, without expecting us to be
lieve that you may not have been and may not
be again more impetuous than the Capt, himself
would be under like circumstances.
Pray do not think of turning your hand from
the plough now ! no great enterprise ever goes
without great discouragements and perplexities.
I fully appreciate the fact that we cannot man
age H. and St, Jo, by telegraph. But with you
there in whom we have perfect confidence we
can. , . .
I protest however against your plan of having
every thing ahead settled now. Remember the
fable of the clock that thought it was overworked
because it began to calculate the immense num
ber of ticks to be struck in a year ! There are
only 60 seconds in a minute. Let us get our ma-

BAILEOAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 101
chinery a-going and then if it won't tick the 60
we must apply the remedy after a fair trial. Hunt
may not be the man, and after aU it depends on
the man, , . .
One word more. If things don't go exactly
right, remember that with new men at the head
and with my help rather weak, it is not so easy to
remedy any evils as if we were all near together ;
but our interests are as nearly coraraon as it is
possible to be, and if we at this end are not so
rapid as lightning, we are persevering and have
sorae experience, and with honest aims we shall
get things right after a while.
It is not difficult to imagine the feelings of
the recipient of this letter as he read its mingled
praise and blame ; it is impossible not to beheve
that he set to work with a warmer heart and re
newed loyalty for the chief who could also be a
counsellor and friend.
As the course of years showed more and more
plainly the complicated nature of railroad work,
Forbes was always on the lookout for young men
of promise who, by starting at the bottom and
growing up with the business, would be masters
of its detaUs, Concerning "young Choate, who
thinks of settling in the West," Forbes wrote to
the president of the C, B, & Q,, "he is nephew
or cousin of the Choate, and is said to be a fine
fellow; graduated high in his class two or three
years ago ; and I have thought it possible that

102 AN AMEBICAN EAILROAD BUILDER
you might consider it good policy to encourage
him to settle in Chicago, and try to train him up
to be useful to us,"
" There is great need of good trustworthy
business men for the management of our rail
roads," he wrote to a young relative of nineteen,
recommending him to apply for a place on the
Burlington and Missouri, " If you can fit your
self to manage such matters well, you can be
more useful in that line than any other,"
The motive of policy which was behind these
offers is stated in a letter to a friend in which he
asked for help in finding a place for " young Mr.
Higginson," " Sometimes these educated boys
who have to work with their hands turn up
trumps. At any rate they are a cheap experiment
when willing to work for a small pay, I think
the mistake we have made on our R, Rd, lines
was in not bringing up youngsters we know some
thing about as foremast hands, for the chance of
picking out good mates and captains just as the
old-fashioned shipowners used to do in taking
green hands at six dollars a month. It is true
they were called the 'owner's hard bargains with
sharp teeth and soft hands,' but out of them we
used to get enough good men to pay for the larger
portion of good-for-nothings."
Rarely, however, was Forbes's judgment of
men in error. " Young Choate" has won a fame

RAILROAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 103
which, though not connected with railroads, is
none the less distinguished. The lad of nineteen,
Charles E. Perkins, who went to Burlington as
clerk with a salary of thirty dollars a month, sur
passed every expectation. He became Forbes's
right-hand man in the second period of his rail
road career, and succeeded hira as president of
the great C. B. & Q, system. And so in dozens
of other cases Forbes fitted the man to the
work. One other instance of Forbes's keenness in
searching out young men of promise and his
power of attaching them to himself by the bonds
of human sympathy and interest in a common
work is especially moving, Charles Russell
Lowell, who had graduated from Harvard in
1855 at the age of twenty, first in his class, waa
employed after his graduation by Forbes in his
office in Boston. From the beginning the two
men were drawn to each other. Though Lowell's
bringing up and his natural tastes drew him
toward the culture of which his famous uncle is
the best Araerican type, the energy of his spirit
drew him to action in the world of industry. Hav
ing proved himself, he was sent to be assistant
treasurer of the Burlington and Missouri Rail
road, then just achieving its seventy-five miles of
length. The rough river town of Burlington waa
his home for two years, a period long enough for

104 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
him to study and to master the business of rail
roading, and to make his clearness and force felt
everywhere in the service. In his leisure he read
Kant and the recently published writings of
Darwin, Such an impression of promise and ability did
Lowell make upon George Ashburner, an English
capitaUst travelling in the West whom Forbes
had asked him to entertain, that the young man
found himself face to face with an alluring offer
of a place in Calcutta, Resisting this for family
reasons, and yielding to what he himself named
the " call of iron," he went to take charge of the
Mount Savage Iron Works, a difficult piece of
property in the mountains of Maryland, in which
Forbes had an interest. Here the opening of the
war found Lowell, and yielding himself to the
higher call of the nation, he served with distinc
tion as a cavalry officer. After a brilliant cam
paign in the Shenandoah Valley he fell in Sher
idan's charge at Cedar Creek.
The point here, however, is not the career
which this young man made for himself in his
twenty-nine years of life, but the sure instinct
and strong feeling with which the older man re
garded the younger. Writing to Ashburner just
after Lowell's death, Forbes was able to put this
feeling into words: "One of the strange things
has been how he magnetized you and me at

RAILROAD BUILDING IN ILLINOIS 105
first sight ! We are both practical, unsentimen
tal, and perhaps hard, at least externally, yet
he captivated me just as he did you, and I came
home and told my wife I had fallen in love; and
from that day I never saw anything too good or
too high for him, — more knowledge confirming
first impressions. But he is gone, and leaves us
only memory of a genius departed,"
Such a sense of human relationship is best
understood when we see the strength of the re
turn current which it created. This is expressed
in a letter of the young soldier's to his fiancee,
who was a relative of Forbes, " Do you kuow
that after Chancellorsville he [Forbes] wrote
[from London] that he had more than half a
mind to come home at once to help to raise a
new army, and if necessary to take a musket him
self ? , . . I wonder whether my theories about
self-culture, etc, would ever have been modified
so much — whether I should ever have seen what
a necessary failure they lead to — had it not
been for this war : now, I feel every day, more
and more, that a man has no right to himself at
all ; that indeed he can do nothing useful unless
he recognizes this clearly; nothing has helped
me to see this last truth more than watching Mr.
Forbes, I think he is one of the most unselfish
workers I ever knew of ; it is painful here to see
how sadly personal motives interfere with most

106 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
of our officers' usefulness. After the war how
much there will be to do ; and how little oppor
tunity a fellow in the field has to prepare himself
for the sort of doing that will be required. It
makes me quite sad sometimes ; but then I think
of cousin John, and remeraber how much he al
ways manages to do in every direction without
any previous preparation, simply by pitching in,
honestly and entirely — and I reflect that the
great secret of doing after all, is in seeing what
is to be done."*
These instances constitute further evidence to
prove how completely with Forbes the value of
the deed lay in the quality of the man behind it.
In the power to perceive and to act upon this
truth dwelt the secret of his success as a railroad
financier. ^ Life and Letters of Charles Russell LoweU, p. 258.

CHAPTER IV
PUBLIC SERVIOB
THE exigencies of the business undertakings
in which Forbes engaged raade it from the
first impossible for him to accept a mercantile
career which should consist merely of travelling
his own chosen road, wearing the blinders of self-
interest. His training under Houqua, with its
mixture of commerce, politics, and diplomacy,
had taught him, before he was twenty, to see the
bearing of each act of private enterprise from
the public as well as from the individual point
of view ; and the story of his early railroad work
has shown how habitual it was with him to look
around as well as ahead. As a consequence of
this habit, there is to Forbes's credit a record of
disinterested participation in national affairs for
a period of over thirty years. It includes four
years of intense activity during the Civil War,
to the exclusion of almost all private business ;
after that a long term of service in the councUs
of the Republican party; and finally, a sturdy
declaration of independence of machine politics.
As he himself saw it, all this was merely a con
tribution of necessary work from a plain citizen.

108 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
who did his duty, as Charles Lowell said of him,
"simply by pitching in, honestly and entirely,"
From the external point of view, it is a concrete
showing of the important part played, in the sum
total of events that make up history, by the im
pulse of individual initiative.
Forbes, on his return from China, took his
place among Boston business men as a Whig
reverencing the name of Webster. Though this
aUegiance ended with the Seventh of March
speech, he did not at the time form new poUtical
ties. He belonged to the group of men who were
stirred to action not so much by anti-slavery agi
tation as by the defiances of Southern leaders,
" We are of course all anti-Nebraska here, but
most of us (myself among the number) are too
busy to take much part in politics," Not untU
the campaign of 1856 was he roused ; thenceforth
he saw a cause to work for, and no claira made
by it found hira unwilling to respond,
Forbes was what may be called an Emersonian
democrat. The ideal to which instinctively he was
loyal was that in which
Fishers and choppers and ploughmen
Shall constitute a state.
A form of government which perpetuated and
transmitted inequality, so that the individual
was denied opportunity to count for all that he
was worth, whether such a government produced

PUBLIC SERVICE 109
aristocrats or slaves, was abhorrent to hira. The
body of principles which he formulated from this
faith is important enough to be given at some
length in his own words. Extracts from two
letters written in 1864 to an English merchant
show how he applied it specifically to the issues
of the CivU War.
The fact is, I ara not good enough to be an
abolitionist, which demands a certain spirit of
martyrdora, or at least self-sacrifice, and devotion
to abstract principle, which I ara not yet up to,
I ara essentially a conservative ; have rather a
prejudice against phUanthropists, and have been
anti-slavery more because slavery is anti-repub
lican, anti-peace, anti-material progress, anti-civ
ilization than upon the higher and purer ground
that it is wicked and unjust to the slave ! I have
no special love for the African, any more than
for the low-class Irish, but don't want to see
either imposed upon. You cannot steal one man's
labor or any part of it bylaw without threatening
to steal, when you get strong enough, every man's
labor, and property and life ! Hence to be anti-
slavery is to be conservative,*
I never had any right to call myself a member
of the abolition party, but I fancy no one ever
was stronger for abolishing slavery the first mo
ment it CQuld be attempted, without the danger
1 To William Evans, October 18, 1864.

110 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
of failing and bringing on a still worse state of
things by putting the North in the attitude of
breaking its contracts and opposing both the
Constitution and the rule of the majority ; in
short putting itself in a hostile attitude to popu
lar institutions, which form now the barrier be
tween despotic or aristocratic governments, and
the rights of the masses. Thus I was always for
resisting slavery to the last gasp within the law,
and meantime so reforming our people that the
law might be altered at the earliest possible mo
ment. The abolitionists proper took the higher
and nobler, but totally impractical, ideal ground
of not tolerating the abuse anywhere for a mo
ment. You can judge now, after the fight the
planters have made, what sort of a chance a few
abolitionist states would have had in rebelling
against the rule of the majority, and trying to
destroy slavery outside of the existing law, and
by authority solely of the divine or higher law.
They had not a hundredth part either of the
logical right or of the chance of success which
you English had, and have, to rise up and assert
the right of your six-sevenths of non-voters to
come in and govern Great Britain.*
My particular hobby has been and is, true
democracy, which I consider broader than anti-
slavery and to include it ; and to-day, in view of
this and of the evils of war and of the prejudice
which still exists among our working (especially
i See note on page 126.

PUBLIC SERVICE 111
our foreign) population against the word aboU
tion, my policy would be to carry on the war, not
for the abolition of slavery eo nomine, but for
the assertion of the democratic principle, and
especially for the suppression of the class which
is attempting to establish an aristocratic- govern
ment over the North and South, The head and
front of this class is the plantation interest, but
it is aided by certain demagogues at the North
who have usurped the name of Democrat, and
under its false guise have been luring on the
laboring men of the North to help the party
which seeks to destroy the rights of free labor ;
just as the planters marshal the poor whites of
the South to fight against their own manifest
interests,* The beginning of Forbes's real participation
in public affairs was in the summer of 1856, when,
free from railroad work, and kept at Naushon by
reasons of health, he fell upon politics as a sub
ject on which to expend his restless energy. Pre
vented by his connection with the construction
of the Hannibal and St, Joseph Railroad through
Missouri from taking public part in the campaign,
he resolved himself into a correspondence school
for the benefit of personal friends, members of
Congress, and newspaper editors. He put his
own convictions in terse and teUing form, with
great insistence on their being the common-
1 To William Evans, November 27, 1864.

112 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
sense views of a business man. He gave money
to have the editorials frora the New York " Even
ing Post" printed in German and distributed in
Pennsylvania and the West, The force of feel
ing, too, he recognized. He offered a prize of
two hundred dollars for words to the music of
"Suoni la Tromba," from " I Puritani," " the
Italian song of Uberty which is prohibited in all
despotisras, and which always brings down the
house here," All the detaUs attendant upon put
ting through this scheme and getting the songs
sung, he superintended in a fashion as remark
able for carefulness as for enthusiasm. In Octo
ber, in a business letter to Joy he wrote : " Why
would not a set of Fremont concerts do well now
in the cities, to keep the popular enthusiasm
up ? with good singers and good songs, and with
'Hail Columbia' and other music of the Union
mixed in ! It seems to me they would pay and
do good too,"
Forbes's alliance with the young RepubUcan
party in this its first presidential campaign, be
sides separating hira frora his former associates,
the merchant Whigs, gave him, through sympa
thetic activities, new friends among Abolitionists
and Free-Soilers, men outside the pale of Boston
conservatism. It is curious and significant to read
letters to hira from that knight of the radicals,
Dr. S. G. Howe, proposing a meeting between him

PUBLIC SERVICE 113
and John Brown ; it is still more curious and sig
nificant to know that the meeting actually took
place. Brown, coming to Forbes's house in Mil
ton, filled a long evening with a recital of the
deeds in Kansas that make the word Ossawatomie
so memorable, and departed the next morning
not without aid. On the following night, says
the host in his Rerainiscences, with an eye for
contrasts, raUroad business brought to Milton
Hill as an occupant of the sarae guest-roora the
pro-slavery governor of Missouri, who had set a
price of three thousand dollars on John Brown's
head ! When the Senate investigation into the
Harper's Ferry raid caused a flurry among Mas
sachusetts Abolitionists, Forbes stood by them, at
this time becoraing fast friends with the radical
and philanthropic lawyer, John A, Andrew, His
value as an asset to a radical party fighting in a
conservative community was publicly recognized
in the presidential campaign of 1860 when, being
free of his railroad entanglements in Missouri, he
allowed his narae to be used on the Republican
ticket for the position of elector at large.
The election of Andrew as governor of Mas
sachusetts put upon the anti-slavery wing of the
Republican party a responsibUity for which it had
had no experience, and after his inauguration, in
January, 1861, Forbes becarae particularly active
in the councils of the party. Full of a sense that

114 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
a crisis was at hand, these men, during the last
torturing weeks of Buchanan's administration,
wished to guide the state so that, whether peace
or war were the outcome, she should take her
rightful place. If it were to be war, Massachu
setts must be ready to dispatch her militia to
Washington without loss of time. That possi
bUity meant for Forbes the study of routes by
land and by sea, inquiry into the loyalty of Bal
timore in case troops should go through by rail,
quiet arrangements for chartering transports if a
sea-route should be chosen, and plans for rapid
mobilization of the militia regiraents. On the other
hand, when Virginia proposed the raeeting known
as the " Peace Conference," it was vital that the
delegates representing Massachusetts should un
compromisingly stand by the principles for which
the commonwealth had thrown her majority vote
in November. So he took the lead among the
delegates who early in February set out for Wash
ington in the forlorn hope of " saving the Union,"
In the intervals between the discussions, which
were prolonged so as to kill as much of the time
as possible before the fourth of March, he per
fected a plan for reenf orcing Fort Sumter, Here
he had his first taste of the irrepressible conflict
that exists between the business and the political
way of getting a thing accomplished. With his
friend W. H, AspinwaU of New York, he obtained

PUBLIC SERVICE 115
the consent of General Scott to a private expe
dition to be managed with the greatest secrecy
and commanded by Lieutenant Fox, afterwards of
the Navy Department, for the purpose of throw
ing raen and provisions into the beleaguered fort.
After a long night of telegraphing and writing,
he went in the morning to Scott's headquarters,
only to find that the Navy Department had some
how got wind of the scheme and was pressing its
own claims to conduct the movement. As Toucey,
the Secretary of the Navy, was of doubtful loy
alty, Forbes saw at once that the game was up.
"Had the 20th of February, 1861," he wrote
afterwards, "opened with the news that a suffi
cient garrison, well supplied with powder and pro
visions, had been thrown into Fort Sumter, it
might have changed the history of the war." *
When the call for troops came, on April 15,
it was the work done in February, the knowledge
of conditions in Baltimore, and the plans made
for hiring transports, that raade it possible for
Massachusetts to win the distinction of being
first to reach Washington with armed troops. As
a result of the isolation of the capital, the group
of men at the State House in Boston took things
into their own hands, and in a tirae of such
stress it was of the highest value to the inexperi
enced governor to have at his right hand a man
^ Letters and Recollections, vol. i, p. 198.

116 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
thoroughly versed in maritime transportation.
There was no one in Boston to whom it was a
simpler affair to charter a vessel, to find a mas
ter, to write the orders, to load her with men
and supplies, and to send her off in the shortest
possible number of hours. This Forbes did with
such sureness and authority that he was called
the " Secretary of the Navy of Massachusetts,"
But he also had a hand in everything, from pur
chasing the first press-copy books for the gov
ernor's correspondence, to making suggestions at
Washington as to the general conduct of the war.
There were a thousand things to be done, and
the man whose genius consisted in "pitching in"
was in his element.
Such loyal service as this on the part of indi
viduals, the fruit of vigorous democracy, was a
striking characteristic of our Civil War, James
Ford Rhodes, in speaking of Forbes and men
who did like work in other Northern cities, says :
" These citizens helped to raise troops and carry
elections and were relied upon by their govern
ors and mayors for counsel and support. They
were men of high moral and business standing
whose advice was always disinterested and often
of great value. Their example in their commu
nities kept the fires of patriotism burning, and
their encouragement of others who despaired of
the outcome was a considerable factor in the

PUBLIC SERVICE 117
prosecution of the war. Themselves often sick
at heart, they warded off despondency by sheer
pluck, feeling that we should win because we
must." *
Even although these men had much at stake,
their first care was not to protect their business
and their property. At the news of the attack
on Sumter, it is true, Forbes, with his habit of
prompt and efficient action, hurried an agent to
Norfolk, Virginia, where a vessel of his was lying
for repairs, and in the nick of time had the vessel
rescued and brought north of Mason and Dixon's
line; the Federal Government, it may be re
membered, for lack of such promptness and effi
ciency, lost there a week later property worth
millions of dollars. But this was almost the last
act of direct oversight which Forbes gave to his
own affairs until after Lee had surrendered at
Appomattox. Devoting hiraself to the larger
issue, he permitted his business to fall altogether
into abeyance.
It was the inestimable service of these business
men that they put relentless pressure on men
having the bureaucrat's or the politician's point
of view. Cameron, Secretary of War, soon proved
his incompetence, and Forbes was one of those
who bestirred themselves to have hira supplanted.
He worked actively, too, for reorganization in
• History ofthe United States, vol. v, p. 243.

118 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
the primitive medical department of the army,
and in instituting the Sanitary Commission and
promoting its work. On the subject of navy con
tracts he wrote letter after letter, making plain
to lukewarra Congressraen by concrete cases how
much " graft " cost the government, not only in
money but in time. With the affairs of the Navy
Departraent he was especially conversant, and
his intimacy with the Assistant Secretary of the
Navy, G, V, Fox, and with Charles B, Sedgwick,
chairman of the House Coraraittee on Naval Af
fairs, made it possible for him to urge his views
with telling effect. In season and out of sea
son, he pressed on officials the priceless value of
efficiency. Besides the motive of patriotism as a stimulus
to action, there was also the stake in human life.
Young soldiers whom Forbes loved, — his eldest
son William, Henry S. Russell, who in 1863 be
came his son-in-law, Charles Russell Lowell,
whose death in the glorious charge at the battle
of Cedar Creek was the heaviest blow dealt him
during the war, Robert Gould Shaw, Henry Lee
Higginson, Norwood P. Hallowell, — these were
hostages, to redeem whom he strained every nerve.
No sacrifice of toil was too great if it promised
to bring the end of the war one day nearer, or to
spare these devoted ones from any of the need
less dangers to which they were exposed by in-

PUBLIC SERVICE 119
competence, corruption, or half-heartedness at
Washington. For several raonths, in the spring
of 1862, he lived near his son's carap at Port
Royal, South Carolina. Later in the year, when
his son and young Russell were given commands
in the new cavalry regiment that Massachusetts
was raising, he made it for a time his chief busi
ness to secure recruits for the regiment. The
bounty system was already corrupt, brokers and
bounty-jumpers were names of offence. As the
only way of clearing up the situation, Forbes and
Amos A, Lawrence became brokers, and sent
through the Northwest and even into Canada in
the search for recruits who could be trusted to
stay recruited. In December, 1862, Forbes wrote
to Sedgwick : " I am busy on our new regiment of
cavalry, in which Master Will has a company now
nearly raised. I eat, and drink and sleep recruits.
No slave-trader is more posted on the price of
men ! " At one time, with a business man's con
tempt for diplomatic delicacy, he turned his at
tention to getting men from over seas. On his
way to England in 1863 he wrote to his daugh
ter : " What do you say to getting married and
bringing Harry out here to recruit a Gerraan
legion? They say no war ever went on without
there being a German legion bought up for It ! "
Also a plan of bringing men from England,
ostensibly to work in Massachusetts mills and

120 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
factories, was the subject of much correspond
ence with Charles Francis Adams and others
in England, and came perilously near fruition.
Every scheme was worth trying. If only It pro
mised to be effective.
In such labors, Forbes was merely one among a
thousand ; in two Instances, however, a unique act
of service made him one out of a thousand. The
secret mission to England In 1863 was an enter
prise which in conception and in execution was
aU his own ; so, too, was his method of develop
ing public opinion In the North on the great Issue
of the war.
An owner of vessels and long familiar with
the conditions of ocean trade, Forbes saw frora
the first the train of International comphcatlons
started by the Queen's ministry, which, inter
preting the neutrality laws with extreme liter
alness, allowed the Confederate pirate cruisers
Florida and Alabama to leave England In order
to prey upon the commerce of the North. The
best method of retaliation, he was sure, was for
the United States Government to Issue letters of
marque to privateers to ravage England's com
merce In return. When the news came that In
the Laird shipyards at Birkenhead were building
two Ironclad rams almost certainly designed for
the Confederacy, this greater danger stirred him
to action. In December, 1862, he proposed to

PUBLIC SERVICE 121
Pox to " send some merchant untrammelled by
naval contractors and such nuisances to Eng
land, and there under guise of buying for Siam,
or China, buy the best of the war steamers now
under construction for the rebels."
From the business point of view the scheme
was humorously simple. The English ship-buUd-
ers were out for large profits ; the law permitted
the vessels to be sold to belligerents ; the nation
with the longest purse should by all rights get
the ships. In an affair so full of diplomatic pit
falls, the plain business man, strange to say, was
authorized by the Navy and the Treasury De
partments to try his scheme, even although it
ran directly counter to the high moral ground
that the State Department was taking with the
British Government, Perhaps it was not strange,
for the case was desperate. Nothing can tell the
story of the fears at Washington better than a
letter written by Fox, the man who best knew the
resources of our navy, and received by Forbes
soon after his arrival In England.
Earl Russell [the Foreign Secretary] has writ
ten a letter to our government (received yester
day) which, In plain English, Is this : " We have
a right to make and sell. We are merchants ; we
sell to whoever will buy ; you can buy as well as
the South, We do not ask any questions of our
purchasers. We shall not hound down our own

122 AM AMERICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
industry. We are not responsible for anything.
You can make the most of It,"
We infer frora this bombsheU that the gov
ernment would be glad to have the South get
out these ironclads, and that they wUl not afford
us any aid. You can act accordingly. You must
stop thera at all hazards, as we have no defence
against thera. Let us have thera In the United
States for our own purposes, without any raore
nonsense, and at any price. As to guns, we have
not one in the whole country fit to fire at an iron
clad. If you dispose of their ironclads, we wUl
take care of the whole Southern concern ; and it
depends solely upon your action In this raatter; and
if you have the opportunity to get them, I hope
you will not wait for any elaborate Instructions.
It Is a question of Ufe and death.*
The instructions from the Secretary of the
Navy, drawn up by Forbes himself, which he
took with him when he set sail in March, 1863,
empowered him to buy vessels " buUding in Eng
land or elsewhere for war purposes." As security
for the loan of a mUlIon pounds sterling which
he was to try to obtain from Baring Brothers, he
was given ten milhons of the 5-20 government
bonds which were just being prepared for issue
to the public. These, as soon as they could be
countersigned, were to be brought to hira by his
friend Aspinwall, who was associated with him
1 April 1, 1863 ; Letters and Recollections, vol. ii, p. 22,

PUBLIC SERVICE 123
in the enterprise. The voyage In the slow-saiUng
Arabia — "not/eZix," he wrote to his wife —
must have afforded hira many opportunities for
reflection on the extraordinary task which he had
undertaken. Through his constant correspond
ence with English friends he felt that he under
stood the prevaUing tone of opinion In Great
Britain, and he had an armory of arguments with
which to assail it. Confident that. In the Issue
between the two governments, England was in
the wrong, he believed that he could do sorae
thing to raake the English realize the peril of
their obstinacy. Congress had, on March 3, em
powered the President to issue letters of marque
to privateers, and Forbes had already busied him
self with plans to fit out a vessel in Boston to
check the career of the Alabama, He had stud
ied the holes In the British neutrality laws, and
was primed with Illustrations of the danger to
English commerce In the next war between Great
Britain and some other power. Such a war, he
reasoned, was sure to come soon, and when It
came England, thanks to the precedent she was
now establishing, would find the shipyards of
the United States supplying commerce-destroy
ers to the other belligerent. Finally, he believed
that Englishmen had no comprehension of the
mighty reserves of the North, both in moral en
durance and in material resources.

124 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
Yet with all the enthusiasm engendered by a
daring scheme and a resolute purpose, Forbes
none the less could perceive the risks of his ven
ture. Without the utmost caution and shrewd
ness he might easily embroil himself with the
British public and his own government. Active
enemies and lukewarm friends would lay pitfalls
for hira at every step. He had to work alone, and
independently of the State Department, and ran
the risk In case of accident of being disowned
and discredited by the very government which
he was trying to serve. Altogether it was a cam
paign to test his generalship.
To no man, however. Is It granted correctly to
estimate British opinion apart from physical con
tact with it. Few, without such contact, can give
due weight to that characteristic of the English
which Goethelndlcated with brutalfrankn ess when
he remarked that they " lack intelligence." Land
ing in Liverpool, Forbes called upon Barings' re
presentative there, "I enraged him to the boiling
point by suggesting that the encouragement by
England, while a neutral, of foreign cruisers, was
sure to be followed by similar operations when Eng
land was (as usual) a belligerent, 'Do you mean
to threaten us?' said the choleric Price. I saw that
argument was useless with him, and so talked of the
weather and of the cotton market, which was about
the height his brain was capable of reaching."

PUBLIC SERVICE 125
At Barings' office in London, where Forbes
had a staunch ally in the American partner,
Joshua Bates, he nevertheless found that he
could not negotiate a loan of half a million
pounds for six months without the proviso that,
in case of the Issuing of letters of marque to
privateers intending to cruise against British ves
sels, the British bankers should have a right to
claim prompt reirabursement of their advance.
" The existing agitation of the public mind," he
reported to Secretary Chase, " both In and out of
Parliament, rendered this condition a shie qua
non, and we may safely express our doubt If any
other house would have undertaken the loan;
certainly not on terms so liberal," * By the next
mail, therefore, he must rush off messages urg
ing that no letters of marque be granted. " Our
spies in the enemy's camp say they openly dis
cuss among themselves the great value of their
prevalency [i. e. of letters of marque] as being
[likely] to get us into a row with England. We
must take care not to play Into their hands. The
letters of marque, too, are. In our paucity of fast
steamers, chiefly valuable as a reserved force
rather than a blow struck ! " ^
In still another respect Forbes found that his
prearranged tactics must be abandoned. He
1 April 18, 1863 ; Letters and Recollections, vol. ii, p. 41.
a To Governor Andrew, April 1, 1863,

126 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
called upon the minister, Charles Francis Adams,
his old friend and neighbor, the man to whom
he had chiefly looked for advice in the dark
months before Lincoln's inauguration. Adams's
warning now was equaUy sagacious. " We had
come," writes Forbes, " prepared to do some
thing in the way of enUghtening the British
public as to the real strength of the North and
the certainty of our ultimate success, but Mr.
Adams thought it doubtful whether such a
course would be wise; for if successful in our
argument it might show the governing class in
Europe that their only chance for breaking up
the Union was in active interference ; so that he
thought it safer for them to be kept neutral by
the belief that we were sure to break up," *
In point of fact, Forbes had landed in England
at one of the most acute of the numerous crises
during the war in the relations of England and
the United States. He wrote home : " I find all
the mercantile and upper classes entirely against
us, but the eraancipation movement is coming to
our rescue, and the people are with us and are
moving in their strength, and the vicious London
' Times ' shakes to hear them." As a result of
the movement among the six-sevenths * of non-
1 Letters and Recollections, vol. ii, p. 37.
° " The total number of electors in Great Britain was abont a
million, but the flgures appear to iudicate that only four-fifths

PUBLIC SERVICE 127
voters in favor of the North, and of the ship
load of food sent from New York to the idle cot
ton operatives of Lancashire, the one-seventh of
voters and their representatives In the House of
Uommons were In the unpleasant mood of men
beginning to fear the necessity of owning that
they had been in the wrong. In the debate in
the House a night or two before Forbes's arrival
their temper had been unmistakably shown.
From the hazard of conducting his negotiations
in such a situation, however, he was relieved by
the turn of events. Since the Confederates had
at length succeeded in floating in London a loan
of three million pounds (taken by Erlanger and
Company, at 77), from which the builders of
the Ironclads could be paid, at least In part, it
was clearly irapossible to approach the English
firra with an offer frora the United States gov
ernment. Furthermore, after the seizure of the
blockade-runner Alexandra on April 5, by Earl
RusseU's orders. It seemed advisable to wait for
the decision of the Lord Chief Baron of the Ex
chequer in her case. The most that Forbes could
of those ever voted, while in the general election, in 1859, which
chose the existing House of Commons, the whole number of
votes registered was under 370,000, the falling off being largely
for the reason that many members were returned from bor
oughs and counties without a contest. There were, according to
John Bright, five to six million men who did not possess the
franchise." — Rhodes, History of the U. S., vol. iii, pp. 358, 359,

128 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
do, therefore, at the moment, was to provide
Adams and the consuls at London and Liver
pool with the ready money of which they stood
greatly In need for working up legal evidence
against the Ironclads. His sense of the danger
that might result from extra-official action he
expressed to Governor Andrew : —
At the end of a hard day's work I have just
time to say that. In my opinion, it will take but
little to bring on another excitement similar to
that upon the Trent, and that the British Premier
would be likely to act In the same way — try to
get British pride up to back him, and then insist
on our fighting or backing down. ... It needs
infinite caution and firmness to avoid a war, by
avoiding further irritation, and even then a spark
may blow It up. . . .
My idea of the situation is that we ought to
set our teeth and not allow those bullies to goad
us Into a war with their people, who are our
friends and whom they wish to crush,*
Forbes's stay in England, which, with the ex
ception of a brief trip to the Continent, covered
three months, resolved Itself, therefore, on the
one hand, into something like an endurance
run, and on the other. Into an attempt to use In
England the methods of Influencing public opin
ion of which In America he was past master,
> April 18, 1863.

PUBLIC SERVICE 129
From policy he went to breakfasts and dinner
parties, meeting men of weight In business and
in public life, and steeling himself against their
insolence of opinion. In Adams's Icy courtesy
of demeanor he found a model which he fol
lowed, sed longo intervallo. His Reminiscences
describe one of these occasions with the humor
of retrospect.
Our best friends, with a very small circle ex
cepted, were only with us in feehng, and la
mented that we should approve of continuing
the bloody contest instead of letting the "erring
sisters go in peace," as many on both sides at
first wished. I especially recall one dinner-party
given me by my good friend, Mr, Russell Scott,
to meet some of these sympathizing friends.
Among the guests was the Rev. James Mar
tineau, who, with the rest, could see no good in
prolonging the "fratricidal contest." The sub
ject of the Chancellorsville defeat, the news of
which had just been received, of course chiefly
absorbed our attention, and led to many chilly
remarks as to the folly ©f protracting the useless
struggle to save the Union, all meant for my
especial benefit, and having the effect of pouring
very cold water upon a volcano covered with a
thin layer of snow, I listened with the cold out
side manners of good society to all tbe stuff, but
simmering internally like the aforesaid Vesuvius,
until my patience fairly gave way. In one of
the pauses which all dinner-parties experience.

130 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDEE
our host appealed to me for Information as to
the truth of the sad, heart-rending rumor that
the hero, Stonewall Jackson, had been killed by
his own soldiers on the evening of the rebel
attack, and at the most critical period of the
whole battle. With a hesitating voice, under
the boiling feelings which had been aroused by
the sentimental stuff which had been uttered, I
replied, " I don't know or care a brass farthing
whether Jackson was killed by his own men or
ours, so long as he Is thoroughly klUed, and
stands no longer In the way of that success upon
which the fate of everybody and everything I
care for depends ! " Had a naked Indian in war
paint, with tomahawk and scalping-knife, ap
peared at the dinner-table, the expression of
horror and dismay at my barbarous utterance
could hardly have been greater; but anyhow we
heard no more that evening about the wisdom
of concession to the " erring sisters," and their
chivalrous heroes and lamented leaders.*
Of course no one realized more keenly than
he that this method of enlightening the Brit
ish mind was neither ingratiating nor conclu
sive. To Influence public opinion effectively he
went to work In his campaign fashion. First
of all, naturally, he sought out such well-known
sympathizers with the North as John Bright,
Richard Cobden, and William E. Forster, These
1 Letters and Recollections, vol. ii, p. 17.

PUBLIC SEEVICE 131
men he saw repeatedly, and long conversations
with them brought a better mutual understand
ing of the situation on both sides of the Atlan
tic, Through them he met editors of the liberal
journals, and raen like Goldwin Smith and
Thomas Hughes, Fanny Kemble, a friend of
long standing, he enlisted In his cause, Where-
ever he heard of a raan of influence who was
sympathetically inclined, he counted no time
wasted which was spent In hunting him up and
talking to him. Through his wife's Quaker con
nections, he procured letters to the chief men
of the English Society of Friends, and pre
pared a paper to read to thera at their May
meetings In London, After their own fashion
of uncomproralsing speech, he set before them
the consequences of the British course, and be
sought them to use their influence to restrain
the headstrong ministry.
Yesterday [he wrote to his wife] I attacked
the broad-brim phalanx and at first made no im
pression, but after my letters were read, I found
a change of tone. The Brethren said to each
other, " This friend Is accredited by our regular
correspondents In America ! " etc. But to-day
they are so busy with their religion and politics,
etc., etc., that it is hard to make any irapression
upon them, and unluckily one of the leaders,
Josiah Forster, lies quite sick. I went to their

132 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDER
place of meeting yesterday and to-day, and stood
round in the courtyard, a stranger and alone,
watching the crowd ! What a strange sensation
It Is, to one accustomed to social life and to be
among acquaintances, to stand alone, unknown,
and have only to watch the coming and going
of the multitude, each occupied with his or her
plans and thoughts ! *
Some years later he quoted from memory
to a correspondent the reply made by the chair
man when he had finished reading his address.
" Friend, I believe every word thou hast said Is
true, but I must say that thy words about my
country stir up the ancient Adam even in me,
and I do not think it expedient to circulate
them at this time." In such an atmosphere one
is trebly " a stranger and alone."
Other resolute Americans, however, had In
vaded England, and they held up each others'
hands. For the most part, they fell Into one or
other of the groups, — " roving, poaching, and
volunteer diplomats," — named by Mr, Charles
F. Adams In his life of his father, William M,
Evarts had come to give legal assistance In
working up the case against the rams; Robert
J. Walker, of Mississippi, Secretary of the Treas
ury under Polk, " a most useful man just now,
as he can mark Jeff Davis as the repudlator,"
1 May 22, 1863.

PUBLIC SERVICE 133
had been sent by Secretary Chase " to acquaint
European capitalists with the actual circum
stances and resources of our country," In the
hope of selling to them United States bonds, or
at least of raaking the holders of Confederate
bonds uncomfortable; Bishop Fitzpatrick, "as
good an American, as agreeable a companion,
and doubtless as sound a Catholic as lives," la
bored In his own field; Henry Ward Beecher,
dauntless on the platform, raastered the rowdies
who came to bait him. In fact, in the spring
and summer of 1863 one of the decisive cam
paigns of the CIvU War was being fought on
British soil under the generalship of Charles
Francis Adams; and these men, gallant fighters
all, bore no mean part in the contest. With
Earl Russell's order, Iq September, that the rams
should be detained, the victory was won.*
This secret mission to England, which was
1 One other piece of business which occupied much of Forbes's
time in England shows how thoroughly the men in Massa^
chusetts did everything that they undertook. Not only was it
true, as Fox had already written to Forbes (see page 122), that
there was not oue gun in the country fit to fire at au ironclad;
but the Federal Government, in response to Governor Andrew's
insistent demands for the protection of Boston Harbor, de
clared itself helpless. From the Massachusetts legislature, ac
cordingly, Andrew obtained funds for the purchase of guns in
England, and Forbes was charged with the business. It meant
unlimited time spent in inspection of gun-factories, negotiations
with manufacturers, and letter-writing, — all, as the event
proved, wasted.

134 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
concluded by the end of June, though it fell
short of what its projector had designed, was
not without its effect on him. At the end of it,
Forbes had no Illusions concerning aristocracy
as a human institution. He knew it, surface and
depth, and with aU the power of an Intense and
single nature, abhorred its far-reaching conse
quences. " War is the game of princes and aris
tocrats," he wrote of this experience, "and al
most always at the expense of the masses." " I
have seen enough of the English nobiUty and
gentry, and of the trading classes there, who
act as flunkeys to their masters, to make me
hate the whole raft of them, with so deep a
hatred that I will never lift my hand to Indulge
them In a war, until I see an occasion when it
wUl disenthral their people, instead of riveting
the chains which now bind six-sevenths of their
population." The other original contribution made by
Forbes to the cause of the North remains to be
described. It constituted a most striking expres
sion of his individuality, and he was not wrong
in thinking it the most valuable service that he
rendered. Having a New Englander's religious
belief In education, he developed an organization
to form public opinion on the main issues of the
war, and to bring this opinion to bear on the

PUBLIC SERVICE 135
men in Washington who waited for its voice.
Such work he undertook neither In the politi
cian's spirit, with tongue in cheek, nor on the
chivalrous Impulse of noblesse oblige. To him
the spirit of citizenship was the spirit of frater
nity. His effort, therefore, was based on the sim
ple assumption that other men, having the same
plain and straightforward democratic creed as
his own, would. If they could be brought to see
the thing as he saw it, act as he was acting. His
means of enforcing his views were those he had
already used, now applied on a much wider scale.
Personal Interviews and letters, comraunicationa
signed " Audax " and " Senex " In leading jour
nals, articles for the " Atlantic Monthly " worked
up at his suggestion, — all these he employed as
a matter of course. The establishment of the
Union Club of Boston, in line with a movement
in the principal cities of the North, was another
enterprise that took rauch of his time.
What was distinctively his, however, was the
New England Loyal Publication League, This
was an organization the management of which
was entrusted to Charles Eliot Norton and to
James B. Thayer, afterward professor in the
Harvard Law School, which carried on in sys
tematic fashion the work that Forbes had been
doing irregularly in his own office. To some
nine hundred newspapers in the North there

136 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
was sent free a weekly broadside made up of
representative articles that were worth a wider
circulation than they would get from their ori
ginal publication. By such means the attention of
busy editors was called to comments friendly and
unfriendly of the English press, — for instance,
Carlyle's savage "Illas Americana in Nuce,"
— to characteristic utterances In the Southern
newspapers, a significant speech, an Interesting
experiment such as that of the cultivation of
cotton by free negroes In the Sea Islands, Im
portant reports of government officials, sound
doctrine on finance, and the contemporary verse
inspired by the war. Above all, the broadsides
kept before the press of the country as cardinal
doctrines, vigorous prosecution of the war. Eman
cipation, and the arming of the blacks. The yearly
cost of this enterprise was less than four thou
sand dollars, and It was estimated that by it at
least one million readers were reached. The jus
tice of Forbes's valuation of this work will be
confirmed by all who know by practical expe
rience the prevalence of lazy thinking and the
formative power of Ideas well put.
The value of the tool which Forbes had thus
forged and which none knew better than he how
to use was not for him expressed In any such
general terms. It was devised for the special
work of pushing on the administration at Wash-

PUBLIC SERVICE 137
ington to prompt and bold measures. Lincoln,
in order to secure the backing of a united North,
was under the necessity of advancing slowly, by
means of conciliation and compromise. The ad
vantage of decisive action could never be his,
for he must Usten In turn to the voice of the
Border States, of the West, and of New Eng
land, and then must plot a path of progress
which should represent the equilibrium of these
forces. Public opinion was the only influence to
which he would respond, and Forbes therefore
sought to bring It to pass that the desire of
himself and his friends for an aggressive pohcy
should be so widely spread and so vigorously
asserted as to constitute a body of opinion fairly
irresistible. The whole plan was logically con
ceived, efficiently executed, and amazingly suc
cessful. In thus working for the developraent of an
aggressive war sentiment throughout the North,
Forbes came more and more into sympathy and
alUance with the radicals In Massachusetts and
in New York. Originally Free-Soilers or Aboli
tionists, they were now derisively called "Black
Republicans," and to a conservative business
man Uke Forbes many of them must have proved
strange company. But their logic was his, and
together he and they stood fast in demanding
first Emancipation, and then the arming of the

138 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
negro. Moreover, Forbes, the man of action as
weU as the man of ideas, was among the fore
most of them in getting these principles trans
muted into deeds. When popular sentiment con
cerning the negro as a soldier ranged aU the
way from amused skepticism to rabid antipathy,
Forbes was one of the sraall coramittee of "be
Uevers" appointed by Governor Andrew to or
ganize the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry,
He had a large share, too, in raislug the Fifth
Massachusetts Cavalry, another negro regiment,
of which his son-in-law, Henry S. RusseU, was
made colonel. When recruiting of the blacks
lagged In Missouri, he seriously considered going
there to lend a hand. He took a vigorous part
in the trying controversy as to whether negro
troops should be paid as soldiers or as laborers ;
he pushed measures for recruiting negroes in the
rebel states; and again and again importuned
the government to insist that negro soldiers,
when captured, should be treated as prisoners of
war. This determination, grim and dour, that the
war must be put through to the very end, en
countered a baffling obstacle in the offers of
peace, real or bogus, which Lincoln felt bound
at least to entertain during the summer of 1864.
As the President, who was fighting for nothing
more than a united North would fight for, could

PUBLIC SERVICE 139
not afford to ignore these overtures, so the no-
comproralse men must perforce oppose them as
involving certain and complete disaster to all
that they were contending for. Thus It befell
that Forbes played a part in that curious cam
paign within a campaign, — the movement for
securing the withdrawal of Lincoln and Fremont
from the field and the nomination of a new
candidate on a war platform. Never were high-
minded men more desperately In earnest than
the group which met In New York at the house
of David Dudley Field, on August 30, to can
vass this possibility. But they were not self-
seekers; and when their consultation made It
plain that Lincoln was after all the only man
available, they recognized their own obligation
to put their shoulders to the wheel and carry
hira through. By force of their disinterestedness
and of the body of public opinion behind them,
they must bring him to separate himself from
men who counselled peace and to put himself
squarely at the head of the war party. Fortu
nately the stars in their courses fought with them.
" The war Is a failure," declared the Democratic
convention at Chicago ; and Sherman and Far
ragut frora Atlanta and Mobile flung back the
lie triumphantly.
Meanwhile this group of civilians worked no
less valiantly in the North to crystaUize the war

140 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
sentiment and to make it an unanswerable argu
ment with which to go to Lincoln.
I have everything at stake in the army [wrote
Forbes to his friend Fox]; my son and my son-in-
law are there — my younger son training to go.
All the young men that I love or value are there
or Incapacitated. I want peace for their sakes; I
hate war for Its own sake; but I solemnly protest
against crying " Peace " when there Is no peace.
It only means a short truce, defeat at the election,
and then prolonged war with an invigorated en
emy, perhaps strengthened with foreign aUiances.
If I had any political position or any eloquence,
or had any power of moving the President, I
would go and tell him this; but situated as I
am, I feel that It would be a mere waste of his
time and mine. If, however, you agree with me,
you have his ear, and our combined voices might
reach him. In that case, pray read hira this let
ter, telling hira It coraes frora one who has no
political aspirations, and who only wants safety
for free institutions, and a true peace ; one who
has no ism,s, and who Is willing to trust to the
negro's getting his rights, if we can only estab
lish a true democracy ; for the greater involves
the lesser.*
For weeks every day was lived on this high
level of feelmg and every moment was precious
for action ; " the most exciting. If not the most
^ September 6, 1864 ; Letters and Recollections, vol. ii, p. 102.

PUBLIC SERVICE 141
depressing period of the war," Forbes afterwards
called it, "If I can do any good as a drummer-
up I will go to the world's end," were his words
of promise at the time ; and the story of one ad
venture, told In later years, preserves the elation
of spirit that came to the workers as they saw
that the tide In the affairs of men was at Its flood,
and leading them on to fortune.
I pushed on again to New York to see what
could be done, and the first step was to see our
Nestor, Peter Cooper, not then so well known out
side of Manhattan Island as he has been since.
When asked for advice and letters of introduc
tion to leading men, he curtly replied, " There Is
no time for letters or palavers ; get with me Into
my buggy," The horse was soon at his office
door, or already there tied to a lamp-post or to
a weight, and away trotted the vigorous old mer
chant, with his queer hat and his keen eye, whip
in hand, ready even then, after all our blunders,
to take the war by contract and " put It through
by daylight," as the old stage-drivers used to ad
vertise their routes ! From door to door we drove,
through the crowded streets, stirring up one
timid friend, holding back the next who wanted
some other method, and insisting against delay,
or doubt, or change of plans; and in half the time
anybody else would have taken, he (with the big
Cooper Institute open at his nod) settled the great
meeting of the period, when the brains and force
of New York gave the key-note to the voices of the

142 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDEB
country for making no compromise, no step back
ward while such a contest at the polls was going
on, until by hard knocks the back of the Rebel
lion should be broken and a real peace secured.*
The one unfortunate and yet almost inevitable
result of this warfare to keep up war was that
Forbes grew to have less and less respect for
Lincoln as a real leader of the nation. Again and
again the President was seen by Forbes to do the
right and wise thing only after tremendous pres
sure had been put upon him ; frequently, too,
his next act, done In response to Influence from
another quarter, seemed to one of the Massachu
setts radicals far from either right or wise. It
must be remembered that Forbes was always ar
dently for action ; his watchwords of promptness
and efficiency could not sort with Lincoln's watch
words of coraproraise and conciliation. Moreover,
Forbes, exceptionally well informed though he
was for an outsider, could not possibly have the
knowledge necessary to interpret Lincoln's ad
vances and retreats from week to week, and to
discern the course of his persisting policy. We,
detached students of a later age, to whom this
knowledge is accessible, can read from it the
leadership of the will that, though subtle.
Bent like steel.
To spring again and thrust,
* Letters and Recollections, vol. ii, p. 106.

PUBLIC SEEVICE 143
To Forbes, whose convictions were bound and set
by the mould of actual experience, this under
standing was not vouchsafed.
During the entire period of the Civil War,
Forbes, though holding no office, Uved In effect
the life of a public servant. On affairs of private
business he spent little time ; he was ready at an
instant's notice to answer any eraergency caU for
the public good. The service thus given taxed
his strength as severely as any matter of ships or
railroads had done. More than once his health
was threatened, and he had to give his head a
rest. Then he was up and at It again. It goes
without saying that four years of such effort
gave him a commanding position in the councUs
of the party which had been In control. Though
henceforth business affairs resumed the first place
in his life, he was called upon pretty steadily untU
1884 for public service. Such participation in
public life on the part of a disinterested man of
business, though it should be as normal as it is
necessary to democratic efficiency, is In fact the
exception. Well worth presenting as such a rec
ord is, what he did during the Civil War never
theless takes the place of first importance because
it speaks more clearly to the imagination. For
that reason the diffused work of nineteen years
must here be given short space.

144 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEB
To understand Forbes's position on the import
ant issues of Reconstruction and the Alabama
Claims, It must be remerabered that he was a
good hater. In his opinion, the Southern aristo
cracy, having been conquered, must suffer the un
mitigated consequences of defeat; by the same
token, the British aristocracy, having, in egre
gious folly, created a body of public opinion
which permitted the escape of the pirate cruisers,
must now pay to the uttermost farthing for the
damage done to American commerce. Even if
payment should be required of the sweeping
claims for Indirect damages, England should
consider, he felt, that she had been let off easily.
He therefore took his stand with the radicals in
the measures related to these two subjects, and
his opinions probably drew nearer those of Sum
ner than at any other tirae in the life of either.^
The plan which was set forth by Andrew In his
valedictory address to the Massachusetts Legis
lature, and which proposed that the leaders in
rebellion should be trusted to become the leaders
In reconstruction, seemed to Forbes as nothing;
in negro suffrage, maintained by military power,
he saw the only hope of preserving what the
North had fought for so hard. He went the
' In 1872 he went beyond Sumner in insisting on the need of
military control in the South in order to keep the blacks in
power.

PUBLIC SERVICE 145
whole distance with the Congressional party in
its quarrel with Johnson, Here, as everywhere
with Forbes, belief was always followed up by
action, whether in helping to found the New
York " Nation " to give expression to the best
Union sentiment, or in organizing a Reconstruc
tion Association, or In reviving the New England
Emigrant Aid Society of Kansas days, for the
sake of encouraging Northerners not of the car
pet-bag variety to settle in Florida,
One incident of this period is strongly charac
teristic of Forbes's sense of retributive justice
and his determination to have a hand in dispens
ing It. Coraing back from England in 1863 hot
with wrath at British obtuseness In the matter
of their neutrality laws, and casting about for a
means of concrete deraonstration against which
not even British obstinacy could be proof, he
induced a number of other men to join him in
building a ship of war, the Meteor. She was to
have an arraaraent similar to that of the Kear-
sarge, and was to be faster than anything In our
navy. She should therefore be able to overtake
and capture the Alabaraa; but that was only one
of the expectations with which she was built.
"Should our beloved Uncle Bull get Into a
fight," Forbes wrote to Charles Francis Adams,
on September 20, 1864, when the vessel was
nearly ready for sea, " one use I should make of

146 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
her would be to advertise her most extensively
for sale In his enemy's dominions, warranting her
superiority over the Alabama in speed, strength,
size, etc, but, of course, only for sale in conforra
ity with the law of nations, three miles outside
American jurisdiction, but armed and equipped,
in fact, a mere Minie-rlfle contraband of war and
liable to seizure at sea, but not in any way break
ing our neutral obligations. In such case an ap
propriate name for her would be the ' Neutral
Lamb,' or the ' British Neutral.' "
The gusto with which he threw himself into
this expensive game of tit-for-tat appears from
the imaginary advertisements which he wrote
out and sent to Professor Goldwin Smith as illus
trations of what would be Inserted in French
papers in case of a war between France and
England, "For Sale: the steamers Per fide Albion,
Vengeance, Flambeau, etc, now lying in Bos
ton ready for sea, — feet long, — wide, — deep ;
warranted to steam 15 knots and to carry —
days' coal, admirably suited for a privateer ; for
further Information apply to  & Co., who,
be It said, can easily arrange with any promising
customers to have said steamers at any given
point outside of neutral waters for sale where
they can be examined, and if approved, pur-

PUBLIC SERVICE 147
chased." — " The seUer will take care," Forbes
adds, " not to complete any contract. He wIU
trot his horse out into neutral ground, there to
show his paces and, if liked, to be sold ; and It is
my solemn belief that in case of a French war
there would be five hundred dangerous ships at
sea originating in American ship-yards within
the first eighteen months," *
The episode of the Meteor terminated in a
manner peculiarly bitter for one who had done
so much to strengthen our navy. When the ves
sel was ready for sea, the war was so nearly at an
end that the Navy Departraent refused to buy
her. Since she could not be used for mercantile
purposes, her owners consulted lawyers eminent
in matters of International law, and found that
she could properly be sold from a neutral port
if she was provided with no warlike equipraent.
War had then just been declared between Spain
and Chile, and on the chance that she might be
purchased by Chile, she was about leaving New
York for Panama, when she was detained by
Seward, on complaint of the Spanish minister.
The Secretary of State, it appeared, with an eye
to his case against England on account of the
Alabama's ravages, was wiUing to snatch at any
excuse for giving a practical demonstration of
the superior virtue of the United States in en-
1 November 25, 1864.

148 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
forcing Its neutrality laws. In other words, as
Forbes reraarked, Seward had made of him a
whetstone for the grinding of his own diploma
tic knife. In the detention there may also have
been personal animus, for Forbes's contempt for
the Secretary had been as outspoken as It was
profound. The long delays of the trial that en
sued went far, at any rate, to justify this supposi
tion. In the end the owners of the vessel had
the satisfaction of winning their case against
the governmei\t, but the daraages which they
obtained wiped out only a sraall part of their
heavy loss. In such a terraination there was, for a
man who had responded to the call of patriotism
as Forbes had responded, a good deal of Irony,
to be tempered, as best might be, by reflection
on the proverbial ingratitude of repubhcs.*
Among all the fields of activity which Forbes
entered in the course of his public service, the
one In which he was naturally most at home was
that of finance. Here he worked not " without
any preparation, simply by pitching in, honestly
and entirely," but as an adept. His comprehen
sive and far-seeing vision, his resourcefulness,
his knowledge of detail, his honesty, — in short,
aU the qualities that had made him so successful
1 See article by J. T. Morse, Jr., iri the American Law if*-
view, vol. iii, p. 234, on the legal aspects of the case ; and R. B.
Forbes's Personal Reminiscences, second edition, p. 271,

PUBLIC SERVICE 149
as a railroad financier, were brought to bear upon
the financial problem of the nation. At the be
ginning of the war he fought sturdily against
the proposal to make the Issue of fifty million
greenbacks legal tender ; and when that fight
was lost did all that he could to mitigate the
troubles that were bound to follow. Once en
gaged In this work, there was for hira no with
drawing of his hand; and as the finances of the
war became more and raore Involved, his aid was
more and more frequently sought. As always,
his method was that of the " plain citizen," who
through correspondence and conversation en
forced his views upon those responsible for legis
lative or executive action and those charged with
the framing of public opinion. Thus he was in
close touch with the successive secretaries of the
treasury, particularly Fessenden and McCuUoch,
with merabers of comraittees of Congress, and
with numerous editors. Again and again he
urged some merchant to make a visit to Wash
ington to press the necessity of a special raeas
ure, or In a letter to some meraber of the admin
istration he presented the point of view of one
of his foreign correspondents. So it was also
through the perilous days of " green-backisra "
after the war. The distinction of his work lay In
his thorough understanding of finance in Its re
lation to politics and the general public welfare.

150 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
and in his willingness to give time and thought
without limit.,
Forbes's connection with party poUtics con
sisted of his attendance as a delegate at the Re
publican conventions of 1876, 1880, and 1884,
and his raerabership in the RepubUcan National
Committee during the same period. He repre
sented the group of Massachusetts independents
who, by protesting year after year against the
growth of corruption and boss rule within the
party, were preparing themselves for the revolt
of 1884. His position as a man who had no ex
pectations of office and no constituents to con
ciliate, and who, moreover, could raise large sums
for legitimate campaign expenses gave him a
strategical advantage which he made the most
of. He held the money-bags tight, particularly
in the campaign of 1880, when the notorious
Dorsey was secretary of the coraraittee. Natur
ally, his position was far from corafortable. The
fight with the bosses was a losing one. As the
machine became perfect in Its organization and
set at naught one attempt after another at re
form within the party, honesty in politics be
came as vital an issue with him as had been the
great questions of the Civil War. Thus when in
1884 the machine eleraent secured the noraina
tion of Blaine, there was but one course open to
him. An independent within the party must now

PUBLIC SERVICE 151
logicaUy become an independent outside the
party, and Forbes announced his support of
Grover Cleveland. His position among the Mug-
wuraps of Massachusetts was conspicuous be
cause few men of his generation had the alert
ness and courage to leave the party of their
early faith. To the younger men with whom he
found himself associated he was full of wise
counsel ; but at the age of seventy-one his days
of hard fighting were over,
Forbes's career of public service, looked at as a
whole, reveals two remarkable characteristics. In
the first place, he went out of his way to keep his
acts for the common welfare concealed from the
general knowledge. " I pray you not to embalm
my name In print," was the burden of frequent
postscripts In his letters to journalists ; and men
in public office received sirailar warnings. In thus
being a hidden source of Influence, an unrecog
nized power behind the throne, he escaped a raulti
tude of iraportunities that otherwise would have
driven him to distraction ; but a deeper reason for
his steady self-obliteration Is to be found In his
thorough-going democratic creed, which made It
unseemly for a plain man to let himself be exalted
above the common people whom he claimed as his
equals. How Indispensable Is Idealism of this type
Stopford Brooke has indicated In a criticism of
the "Idylls of the King," It Is perhaps a far cry

152 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
from Tennyson's conception of the character of
Arthur to John M, Forbes's conception of his
obligations as a citizen of the United States, but
the illustration is apt.
"As to Arthur, the King, he is a man who has
the power of sending his own soul into the soul
of his followers, and making them his own —
images of himself — and this Is the power of a
born ruler of men. It Is the one-man power, that
power of which Carlyle, as well as Tennyson,
made much too much, because the secret of the
progress of mankind, a secret the true ruler
should understand, does not lie In one great in
dividuality devouring all other individualities and
making them Into his pattern, but In his so sac
rificing his natural mastery as to develop Into
vividness the individual forces of all the charac
ters he governs. Carlyle never saw that truth,
nor Ruskin, nor Tennyson."* The story of a
leader of men like Forbes, who thus lives up to
his vision of the truth that he who would really
lead must not dominate, is of profound conse
quence to our national welfare.
In the second place, the standard of citizen
ship which Forbes held up for hiraself was high,
and never suffered abatement at his hands. The
kind of effort for which the average business man
is too much absorbed in profit-making to spare
1 Tennyson, his Art and Relation to Modem Life, p. 362.

PUBLIC SERVICE 153
time, and which, when a crisis comes, he exer*
cises spasmodically and with much hue and cry,
Forbes employed systematically and persistently.
With a people like ours, "who insist upon try
ing their own experiment over again, and ignor
ing past experience of others or their own,"
there is but one hope : " everybody must work,
and agitate, and educate," He knew that, to
gether with self-effacement, tireless vigilance
must be exercised to counteract the constant
tendency of democracy to sink below the level
of safety. To this faith he kept true, and he
did his part in action as long as strength
remained in him.

CHAPTER V
A RAILROAD BATTLE
IN the period after the CivU War, railroad
expansion was carried forward on an even
greater scale than during the years from 1850
to 1858, Even more, too, was it a time of irregu
lar financial methods, — of Erie raids and Credit-
Mobiller scandals, — and of crude business or
ganization. The pioneer work to be done in
this era was in developing methods of manage
ment and control adequate to the size and
complexity which the railroad corporations of
the coming age were clearly destined to attain.
Here, again. It was Forbes's fortune to lead.
Indeed, to bring about the changes that he
deemed requisite for taking the stock and bonds
of the C, B. & Q. out of the "fancies" and
putting them among the "solids," he was in
the end called upon to do battle. The story of
this struggle epitomizes the gropings of the
railroad world at that time toward a better day.
Forbes's passion for sound and sure business
methods, never dormant, had naturally strength
ened with age and with his experience of panics
and resulting railroad reorganizations. The duties

A RAILROAD BATTLE 155
of a trustee, which he had undertaken for a
nuraber of people, also had a powerful Influence
in strengthening his deterraination that his roads
should be of such character that other trustees
should look upon thera as safe Investments.
" When I get mounted on my hobby of conserv
ative business management," he wrote to one of
the men for whom he was thus acting, " I can
not always help treading on the corns of dear
friends who will not be satisfied with what such
an old Gradgrind as I am thinks essential to
business character and foresight."
Another Influence with Forbes that made for
conservatism was his definite and practical know
ledge of the raany ways In which a railroad raan
may find hiraself In the Janus attitude of being
both buyer and seller. When one of his raU
roads found It desirable to purchase rails from
a company of which he was an official, he refused
to be responsible for the negotiations. "I am
unwilling to run the risk of having the impu
tation of buying from a company in which I
am Interested, unless others who have no such
interest first examine the subject and decide that
the terms are fair." Such an instance, of course,
might seera so siraple as to be hardly worth raen-
tionlng, except that his practice was not always
followed by other railroad meu. For example,
many a road, as has already been shown, found

166 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDEE
it difficult to make Its arrangements for building
without assuring large profits to the contractors
who were to undertake the work. The bonuses
of stock which these contractors demanded put
them In control of the road, and thus enabled
thera to pass, as buyers, upon the work for which
they were being paid. Forbes's "four-months*
nightmare " with the man who had the contract
for buUding the Hannibal and St. Joseph Rail
road had been the result of such conditions. He
was thus somewhat out of sympathy with a
Credit-Mobllier age of railroad-building, being
himself content with the old-fashioned maxim
that It Is Impossible to run with the hare and
hunt with the hounds.
Finally, Forbes's public services during the
war gave him this special and Inestimable ad
vantage, that he was among the first men In the
business world to recognize and to measure the
force that was to play such an important part In
the new period of railroad development — the
power of public opinion, A raUroad, dependent
for Its prosperity on the welfare of the extended
community which it serves, could not, he felt,
continue to expect to deal with the members of
that coraraunity merely as individuals; sooner or
later It must reckon with the coraraunity as a
whole. That these deaUngs might be on equal
terms, it was essential that the pubUc should un-

A RAILROAD BATTLE 167
derstand the nature of railroad operations, that
it should have some insight Into the economic
laws that govern them.
From bis success with the Loyal Publication
League during the war, he was convinced that
it Is possible to transform what Is too often a
wlU-o'-the-wIsp of Ught into a true beacon, and,
after his wont, he made of this belief a personal
duty. One out of many instances of such action
was his course in connection with the Ill-fated
Boston, Hartford, and Erie Railroad, It had been
planned for the purpose of giving Boston a
much-needed communication with the West by
means of a line connecting with the Erie Rail
road at Newburg on the Hudson, the river to be
crossed by ferry. When money had been squan
dered to the extent of making the road cost over
one hundred thousand dollars a mile, and the
State of Massachusetts was appealed to for fur
ther aid, Forbes was aroused. He bestirred him
self with such success that the facts brought out
at the legislative hearing prevented the Common
wealth from throwing away good money to get
back bad.
Later, at the time when the prairie farmer's
discontent with the railroads expressed Itself In
the first crudities of granger legislation, Forbes
was full of schemes for systematically putting
forth in readable shape information from which

168 AN AMERICAN RAILEOAD BUILDEE
the hostile grangers might receive enlightenment.
But here he was ahead of the times : the West
ern railroad managers, with their " hands off "
attitude toward state legislatures, were in no
mood to heed public opinion until they had been
disciplined by decisions of the Supreme Court.
A man whose business methods were thus
dominated by conservatism and a sense of public
responsibility, and who himself possessed a hard-
won experience In the management of Western
roads, could not long stand aloof, particularly in
tirae of trouble. In the sraooth waters of the
years from 1864 to 1872 Forbes was a care-free
passenger; but in 1873, with Its storm of panic,
his place, as In 1857, had to be at the helm.
To understand the situation which required
the help of his skill and force In reorganization,
it Is necessary to review the history of the C. B.
& Q. In the period preceding the panic.
The result of the rapid railroad expansion
after the war was seen as early as 1870 in the
existence of three lines — of which the C, B, &
Q, and the Burhngton and Missouri in Iowa con
stituted one — connecting Chicago and Omaha,
and In the formation of the " Omaha pool " for
the purpose of dividing equally the profits of the
business done between the two cities. Though
the evils of competition were checked here, they
cropped out elsewhere In the constant tempta-

A BAILEOAD BATTLE 159
tions offered to the trunk lines to purchase small
branch roads. The usual method was for a group
of towns considering themselves worthy of the
privileges of a railroad to vote for Its construction
sums which often ran as high as ten thousand
dollars a mile, and then to take their proposed
line to market. The trunk line which they first
approached rarely refused to pay the sum, how
ever large, which might be needed to attach the
new road to Its system; little as It might be
able to afford the expense, — for these branches
usually proved " suckers " Instead of " feeders,"
— It could still less afford to see the branch
grafted upon a rival trunk. Eastern directors
had as yet hardly heard of pools, such things
being minor mysteries, with which Western
managers alone were concerned; but the pro
posals for the purchase of branch roads came
within their cognizance, and they were Inclined
to suspect that these schemes were often sheer
imposition, Forbes's certainty on this point
was pithily put at the time In story fashion,
and he was fond of telling the anecdote In later
years. It had become quite common [he writes in
his "Reminiscences"] for [the President] to
corae frora the West with a plan for a hundred
or two miles of new road, which then meant
about $30,000 of seven or eight per cent bonds

160 AN AMEBICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEB
per mile ; and on one occasion, when such a
branch was about being authorized, I related a
story of my Naushon experience. We had been
troubled with cats, which destroyed our birds,
and so we put a bounty on killing them of so
much for every cat's taU brought In ; which
amount proving Insufficient we raised the price
until we found, or thought we found, that they
were raising cats to bring in to sell to us, " Now,"
said I to the directors, " I am convinced that the
contractors and speculators are buUding roads
merely to sell to us, and the more we buy of
them, the more cats' tails will be brought in to
us ! " That cat was not bought ; the story got
around, and In Boston circles the Chicago, Bur
lington, and Quincy branches were known as the
C. B. & Q, cats' taUs.*
Still another difficulty connected with raUroad
management in these years was the insistent
need of pushing out into new territory at a rate
and in a direction that should prove far enough
and yet not too far ahead of the oncoming flow
of population. Here was a problem containing
so many chances for error in Its solution that
the interests of the company as a whole must
be considered from every point of view before
it was safe for the road to commit itself. The
B. & M. in Nebraska, organized as a separate
corporation to build from the Missouri River at
' Letters and ReeoUections, vol. ii, p. 213,

A BAILEOAD BATTLE 161
Plattsmouth to the recently completed Union Pa
cific at Kearney, besides having a land grant of
2,365,864 acres, easily justified itself as being
certain to obtain a good share of business from
and to the Union Pacific, Another plan for
building, a road up the west bank of the Missis
sippi River Into what was then the far North
west, that Is to say, southern Minnesota, was
agreed to by the C, B, & Q, board, and was put
into execution in similar fashion by the organ
ization of two independent corapanies known as
the Dubuque, or River, Roads. The directors of
the C. B. & Q. recoraraended to their stockhold
ers the bonds of these roads to the extent of some
four and a half millions of dollars, and took a
considerable share for themselves. The bonds
bore six per cent interest and were sold at 90.
In this case, however, the caution of the Eastern
directors had given way too easily before the en
thusiasm of the Western officials : the promise
of local aid and a land grant of 40,000 acres
could not make up for the fact that the roads
were built nearly ten years too soon. Charles E.
Perkins, Forbes's cousin, who had been associ
ated with the B, & M, in Iowa since 1859, showed
his clearer understanding of the situation at the
moraent In the Ironical reraark that the directors
of the C. B. & Q. might as well have endorsed
the bonds of a railroad to be built in the vaUey

162 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
of the Red River of the North,* Frora this error,
as will presently appear, carae a train of disas
trous consequences.
Consolidation naturally went hand in hand
with rapid physical development. On January 1,
1873, the C. B, & Q,, with Its 825 mUes of track,
and the B, & M, In Iowa, with Its 443 miles, were
united, the new corporation, which held property
worth more than fifty millions of dollars, being
one of the largest In the country. But this waa
only a first step. Though the new C, B. & Q.
stood high In the financial world and commanded
the services of able men In its several depart
ments. Its organization was extremely haphazard.
It had no definite raethod for securing harmoni
ous and united action between the financial man
agement in Boston and the operating management
in Chicago, and Its system of auditing belonged
to ante-bellum days. Furthermore, as with the di
rectors In Boston the care of C, B, & Q. interests
was only one of several irons in the fire, so the
executive officers In Chicago gave to the road only
a portion of their time. Nowhere was there a man
of experience and force In high position devoting
himself exclusively to the service of the road.
The dangers of such a situation came upon
Forbes with cumulative effect in June, 1873,
after his return frora a yachting trip to the
1 MS. EecoUections of C. E. Perkins.

3230 miles
C. B. & q. System _\,
in 1882 O

A BAILEOAD BATTLE 163
Azores and a visit to California which had kept
him away from Boston and business for a year
and a half. Long trusted as his co-workers and
fellow counsellors had been, their acquiescence In
the methods and routine of sraaller days contin
ued under the new conditions becarae a trouble
that he could not shake off. Reports from his
sharp-eyed and critical cousin In the West, who
now, as vice-president of the B. & M. In Ne
braska, could speak more freely of C. B. & Q,
men and measures, helped to make Forbes feel
that matters should no longer be allowed to
drift. The bonded Indebtedness of the combined
roads needed badly to be got Into satisfactory
shape, and there was a floating debt of a million
and a half dollars. His uneasiness is expressed
in a letter written to a fellow director not long
after his return.
I do think we need more control at this end
over our 50-raUlIon property.
We know next to nothing and we trust the
administration of this mammoth enterprise 1000
miles off to a man who has no experience in the
details of R. R, business, and who represents- at
least two other companies, whose Interests may
be conflicting : 1st, the coal co. of whom we buy
our fuel ; 2d, a R, Road which, with or without
his fault, has managed to get largely into a debt
to us which It cannot pay,
I don't know how many other things he may

164 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEB
be in, which are suckers instead of feeders, but
if the stockholders ever look Into their affairs
and find that In one way and another — with
the Board's assent and without it — the present
administration have used over a million of their
money for the protection of other enterprises In
which some of the Directors are concerned, and
all the stockholders are not, we shall find our
selves in a very awkward position. It was only
at the June meetmg of the Board that I knew
of this accumulation of Indebtedness. It was my
fault that I did not know and try to prevent it,
but I don't feel like going on in the same road
much farther.
Anybody may make one such blunder in trust
ing others' management, but the man that makes
it a second time with his eyes thus opened be
comes a party to the mismanagement, and I con
fess I see nothing to prevent the same sort of
thing being done right over again — except that
our credit is not quite so good.*
The disquiet here expressed was not allayed
when Forbes learned of the pass to which the
two River Roads had been brought. From the
outset misfortune had attended them. The Chi
cago and Northwestern, which owned the rail
road bridge over the Mississippi at Clinton, act
ing with pardonable consideration for its own
interests, refused to permit the lower of the two
to make connection over It with the C. B. & Q. ;
> July 13, 1873.

A RAILROAD BATTLE 165
and thus a portion of the additional traffic ex
pected went to increase the profits of a rival
trunk line. As if this were not bad enough, ex
travagant construction and careless manageraent
had done their worst, and early in 1873 the
River Roads were In such condition that they
were unable to pay the Interest on their bonds.
In this emergency, the directors of the C, B, &
Q, undertook to save the situation by voting the
sum necessary for this payment from the funds
of their company. When Forbes discovered where
the cash for his coupons came from, his first im
pulse waste express his disapprobation and disgust
by returning the money. To one of the directors
who protested against this course he wrote : —
Not wishing to do anything In haste which so
wise a man as you disapproves of, I withdraw
my letter , . , for the moment ; but when you
get time I wish you would give me in ten lines
the grounds upon which you expect to justify
the payment of the Dubuque Bonds coupons.
That it will eventually come out and be chal
lenged Is just as sure as that we live, and now Is
the time for any of us who were not responsible
for the transaction to take their ground.
I am open to conviction ; but while I can guess
at many good reasons for paying out such a large
sum to outsiders, I am utterly at a loss for rea
sons justifying our voting it to ourselves.*
> August 7, 1873.

166 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
On this point Forbes yielded for the moment.
In the meantime, his passion for having things
sound and right, and his sense of responsibUity,
now thoroughly awakened, drove him to work
over plans for getting the Indebtedness of the
road Into shape by a large Issue of mortgage
bonds which Baring Brothers might be induced
to take. This, of course, they would not do
"without giving C, B, & Q, a good sifting,"
and thus the reforms In the management which
Forbes desired could be accomplished. In such
manner the summer wore away.
The panic of September, 1873, with Its wide
spread wrecking of railroads, when the River
Roads went completely under, and the C, B, & Q.
stood firm chiefly through the strength brought
to It by the B. & M., was to Forbes a trumpet-
call to action. As of old, nothing roused him so
completely as the threat of disaster. Within a
week he was off for the Mississippi Valley, im
patient and relentless, to do a little "sifting"
on his own account. With him went John N. A.
Griswold, who had lately been added to the
Board and on whora he relied implicitly, A
batch of telegraras scattered notice of their com
ing. " If we cannot do any good we can say we
have tried!" he wrote.
The investigation Included a trip over the
River Roads from Clinton to La Crescent, With

A RAILROAD BATTLE 167
the two men from the East were J. K. Graves,
the president of the roads, and various high
officials of the C, B. & Q, system. In the course
of the journey. Graves explained to one member
of the party that the work of buUding the roads,
as yet incomplete, had been undertaken by a
construction corapany, of which several of the
directors of the C. B. & Q. were stockholders,*
Other facts given In the same conversation were
such as to lead Forbes, when It was repeated to
him, to determine on a session of rigid cross-
examination. Here follows. In his own vivid and
vigorous language, the story of the Interview, as
he wrote it out in detail within the next forty-
eight hours for the benefit of one of the direct
ors in Boston.
Returning Friday night frora our survey we
passed the evening at the corapany's offices in
an interview (and a course of inquiries) with the
president, Mr. Graves, the treasurer. General
Booth, and the superintendent, Mr, Hudson,
which developed the most reraarkable condition
of things which I have thus far found upon any
living railroad company. The president Is a sharp
merchant, fuU of various enterprises, from gas
works up to building railroads, pretty bright, but
loose in his notions of administration, loose be
yond the imagination of the ordinary mind to
conceive of. 1 MS. Recollections of C. E. Perkins.

168 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD BUILDER
General Booth, on the other hand, seems
tighter and more technical than any West Point
martinet; his accounts beautifully correct in
form, and (as he says) kept distinct in bank from
his private or from any outside mixings ; but he
Is and professes to be simply an automaton. . . .
To our questions whether he used any discretion
in the application of the funds or any super
vision of their use, he replied frankly : —
"None whatever, I simply pay the money
when called for by the president and the super
intendent." "What has been done with the $140,000,
more or less, earned by the roads since December
1,1872?" "It has been paid to the superintendent's
order for expenses, and the balance has been
paid to the president. What the president does
with It Is no concern of mine,"
Question to the president : " What have you
been doing with the company's money ? "
Answer. " I have been paying the notes
which I have given as president."
" What are the notes ? Where Is the record
of them ? Is it In the treasurer's account ? "
" It Is not in the company's books, but can be
ascertained." " What were the notes given for ? "
Answer, " Chiefly to meet the obUgations of
two construction companies, of which I waa
president also, and which built the roads of each
corapany by contract."
" Then you, as president of the railroad com-

A RAILROAD BATTLE 169
pany, are paying yourself as president of the
construction company, without the supervision
of the treasurer or of any one else, and without
any auditing of your accounts?"
" Yes,"
" Have the construction company received the
full amount of money, of stocks, of lands, for
which they agreed to construct and equip the
roads ? "
"Yes, they have, leaving unfinished about
forty miles of Turkey Branch and twelve miles
on the lower road."
" Have any of your directors besides yourself
been Interested In these contracts ? "
The answer to this was not definite, but left
the impression that sorae of the directors had
been, and he promised to send me a copy of the
contracts, and a list of the stockholders In the
construction company. He asserts that all the
assets of the construction company have been
expended, except a part of the land grant, which
reraains unsold; and to my question whether
this remaining land ought not to be returned to
the corapany, he answered that he thought the
contractors would do whatever Is fair, but that
they had been large cash losers by the contract,
and have nothing but a little land and a good
deal of raUroad stock to show for It.
Exactly how much cash from our earnings
had been paid over to the contractor president,
we had not time to Investigate, but of course
if the superintendent's figures are right, about
$140,000; and the raUroad president seems to

170 AN AMERICAN BAILEOAD BUILDER
be expecting to go on paying to the contractor
president our earnings as they come In, until he
has paid off the debts of the construction com
pany. . . .
What the equities or the elements of expedi
ency are, I know not, but it is perfectly clear to
me that the board, which I now understand is
transferred to Boston, ought at once to direct
the treasurer to apply the earnings, first, to pay
ing off legitimate operating expenses, and next
to hold the balance for such uses as the board
may direct, — or, better still, remit It to Boston,
instead of holding it to the order of Mr, Graves
— an active merchant and the representative,
first, of contractors, and second, of another rail
road, the Iowa Pacific, to whose use he has
already apphed $170,000 of the funds of our
two companies, or of the contractors, which are
all mixed up together. Mr. Graves (to his credit
be it said) seemed to appreciate the absurdity of
his position, and expressed a desire to have his
accounts audited and to have a settlement; but,
in our judgraent (I speak of Griswold and my
self), the blame will be transferred to the board,
if, after knowing this state of things, they allow
the funds of the company to remain a day longer
under the control of a man who has so many
other uses for them, however honest and how
ever rich he may be on paper.
As an Instance of what may happen, the pay
roll was postponed a month in order to pay some
of the debts, but whether It was for the debts of
the raUroad company or for the contractor, or the

A RAILROAD BATTLE 171
Iowa Pacific, or Mr. Graves's personal ones, we
had not time to investigate, and nobody can tell
until an auditor (and a very good and forcible
one) settles what Mr. Graves's account stands
at, and who ought to pay the notes. He has
signed as president, probably without any vote
of the board, and certainly without having them
recorded in the books of the company.*
The director to whom Forbes poured out this
story of mismanagement. In the hope of eliciting
his sympathetic indignation, was himself, such is
the Irony of circumstance In the business world,
one of the members of the construction company,
— a fact which soon came to light. Indeed, It
presently transpired that six out of the twelve
members of the C, B, & Q, board were in this posi
tion, and five of the six were Boston men. Being
persons of Integrity, who had conceived that, in
their two-fold capacity as contractors and direct
ors, they were fully able to deal with themselves
justly, they took offence at Forbes's pointed
questions concerning their acts, and refused to
give Information. This secrecy, based on a natu
ral though mistaken wish not to seem to flinch
under fire, of course aroused suspicion, and led
the way to a demand foran investigation. Finally,
the resentment felt by the contractor^directors
that Forbes should seem to impugn their honesty
1 November 9, 1873.

172 AN AMEEICAN RAILROAD BUILDEE
as well as their judgment had the effect of unit
ing them In defence of the old regime In the C.
B, & Q. board and Its methods.
The point of Forbes's criticism of his associates
is perhaps best seen from a letter written during
the long course of these difficulties to his friend
S, G, Ward, agent of Baring Brothers. " Either
you or George once made a very pertinent re
mark about C, B. & Q., to the effect that we had
honest enough management, everybody said, but
that it took something besides honesty to run a
big raUroad, and that the smart rogues around
us would beat us in net profits to their stock
holders after having stolen aU they wanted ! I
have often thought of It, and recognized the
soundness of your view. SkUl, talent, courage,
honesty are all essential to raUroad management,
and especially so In distant ones which are apt to
be managed after the fashion of the Roman vice
roys," When therefore he found that the con
tractor-directors either could not or would not
see their fault, there was nothing for him but
deliberately to range himself against them. His
clear sense of the welfare of the great corpora
tion, the reorganization of which he now deemed
more Important than ever, and his feeling of
responsibility toward the hundreds of investors
whose money It was using, both drove him on to
action.

A BAILEOAD BATTLE 173
Though he and his supporters were a minority
in the C. B. & Q. board, they, as bondholders
of the River Roads, were able to stir up their
fellow victims. An authorized investigating com
mittee from this group of men made consider
able progress In ascertaining the true condition
of things, and at last unearthed the contract for
building the roads, by the terms of which the
construction company was released frora any
obligation to complete them after it had used up
all its money. It then appeared that the railroad
companies had paid at the rate of $25,000 a
mUe for fifty-five miles of road which had not
been constructed. From time to time Forbes, to
prevent if possible an open breach In the C, B.
& Q. board, had tried to get the directors who
were members of the construction company to
agree to some act of restitution to the bond
holders, proposing to join them as a fellow di
rector in bearing his share of the burden and
the blame ; but now, the bringing to light of this
contract, of the vicious clause in which the Bos
ton contractor-directors declared that they had
been whoUy ignorant, at the same time that it
was further proof of the need of a new dispensa
tion, rendered a peaceful adjustraent highly Ira
probable. Nevertheless, as the following appeal
to one of these men shows, Forbes left nothing
undone to prevent the personal estrangements

174 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
that, to a man of his sense of loyalty, seemed
nothing short of a calamity.
The proposition which I made yesterday would,
I think, preserve sufficient harmony In our circle
to enable us, or most of us, to work together for
the common good. If the investigating commit
tee will agree to accept it and recommend It as the
best thing practicable. It will reUeve them of the ne
cessity of presenting to the bondholders the alter
native ; what blame their report must Involve I
shall, under this proposition, take my just share of.
You who went into the construction company
then holding a contract for getting possession
of aU the bonds and assets of the River Roads,
with a clause added relieving them from any
obligation to build the roads, and under which
the bonds you recommended have scattered ruin
among large numbers of innocent people, have
placed yourselves In a most unfortunate position.
No matter how thoughtlessly you assumed this
position, no matter how Innocent of intended
harm to others, you have done the harm, and
by concealing from me the fact that you had an
interest as contractor behind your Interest as a
bondholder of the River Roads and director of
C, B. & Q., you have led me to join in causing
the mischief,
I have offered to join you in a very slight
measure of reparation for our folly and neglect
— I now once more ask you in the name of our
long tried friendship to accept my offer.*
» February 13, 1875.

A RAILEOAD BATTLE 176
Feeling as strongly as he did the pain of a
personal breach, Forbes held back, till alraost
too late, from the alternative of war, — that Is,
a carapaign to oust enough of the opposing di
rectors at the coming annual election of the C.
B, & Q, board to give his party control. But
when fight was at last forced upon him, he flung
hiraself Into the struggle with all his wonted zest
and relentlessness. His two battlefields were the
meeting of the Dubuque bondholders in Boston
on February 17, to hear the report of the inves
tigating committee, and the annual meeting of
the C. B. & Q, stockholders in Chicago on Feb
ruary 24. The story of the contests Is best given
in the animated narrative of the general-In-chlef,
written to a member of his family while the glow
of battle was still on him.
We had on the whole quite a lively tirae, of
which the scraps sent will give you some hints.
Perhaps the most dramatic performance was our
meeting, a week ago Wednesday, of Dubuque
victims (our second Dubuque). At the first one,
two weeks earlier, I had given our associates the
first of the Sibylline leaves, to accept a very soft
path opened to them; but X  the magnificent,
wrapped in his panoply of law and self-suffi
ciency, coolly declined, as If he had spoken and
the world must bow (and no small dog like me
must bow-wow ! ), Well, when the second day of
fate was approaching, I spent Sunday In cooking

176 AN AMEBICAN BAILEOAD BUILDER
another dish which I offered them, a good deal
harder to digest than the first but still emi
nently proper and quite within Umits. This I
begged Y  to accept, adopt and advocate, and
thus avoid [a fight]. This was declined as indi
gestible, but with less confidence, for the skies
had begun to lower and my appeal to Y 
was soleran. They were blinded and obstinate,
so on Wednesday we went to the meeting igno
rant whether they would skulk or fight. In a
room full of some one hundred or one hundred
and fifty Indignant bondholders, we found my
old friend Z  at the front Uke a Uon at bay,
the others deserting him and keeping In the back
ground. Clifford was chairraan; and Charles
Bowdltch, secretary of the investigating commit
tee, read the report, which might weU be caUed
the indictment, and which was very considerably
made up of my testimony — the C. B. & Q. direct
ors having dodged the most Important points.
This brought Z  to his feet, and you have
read his speech, fired directly at me, so that the
chair had frequently to caU him to address the
chair. He is a very powerful speaker, and of
course I was like a small mouse under the whisk
ers of grimalkin, or of a fierce bull-terrier ! You
have had the speeches, so I will only give you
these outlines of the scene, which lasted from
eleven to about three. My best speeches amounted
to two or three words, interjected here and there
in the chinks of Z  's oratory, but which found
the holes In his armor. Getting through this,
wearied and full of bad air, Griswold and Will

A BAILEOAD BATTLE 177
[W. H, Forbes] and I had to take up the ques
tion of what next? Should we go on fighting
from the outside, or should we, with only three
days' time, try to change the Board ? , , .
They had been getting proxies for the annual
meeting of 24th February ever since 20th Janu
ary, while we had Thursday, Friday, and Sat
urday to work our coup d'etat in, as Will and
Griswold had to leave Saturday afternoon for
Chicago, If we were to make the fight ! We de
termined to try It, and at once had to frarae ad
vertisements, choose our list of directors and get
them all into the New York, Albany, and Bos
ton papers by telegraph, also to get the steno
grapher to write out the pithy parts of his Du
buque report and send this off to New York by
telegraph. We did not know then how much the
press were Interested In the subject. We found
afterwards that they had one or two steno
graphers, and the "Tribune" reporter sent on
1000 words by wire that afternoon. Then I had
to write letters and telegrams, and talk, and do
everything but sleep ! In brief we had a good
old war-time. P. W. Chandler says there had
not been so much excitement In Boston any day
for thirty-five years (he meant in business cir
cles) as the day our advertisement came out. On
Wednesday 24th, Will and Griswold In Chicago
had 22,000 majority or say about 90,000 votes
out of 155,000 that were thrown, and carried
our whole ticket except T, J. Coolidge — that
tender-hearted old Green ordering his large batch
of votes thrown for Q  , and thus electing

178 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDER
him. He however is, I guess, docile as a kitten,
and I have no doubt we can now have our own
way on all reasonable things, and you know I
never want any other. Will got back last night,
and now, the fight being over, the work begins,
for with victory will, I fear, come responsibility
and care. It would have been far easier, just to
have stepped out and sold my stock, and had an
easy life ; and I expect to repent not doing so.*
The significance of this victory was shown in
the Immediate appointment of George Tyson as
auditor, "a very good and forcible one," and
with his arrival In Chicago a new era began In
the company's methods of accounting. The River
Roads were sold to the Chicago, Milwaukee, and
St, Paul, and the clairas of the bondholders of
these roads upon the C. B, & Q, directors who
had recomraended the bonds were recognized,
though the araount of money restored to the
victims was necessarily small. Since those of the
contractor-directors who still remained on the
board could not fail to see that the success of
the men and measures that they had opposed
had put their property on a sollder basis than
ever before, it was worth while for them to swal
low their pride for the sake of remaining In the
family and sharing in its prosperity. In the course
of the next five or six years, however, several more
» February 26 and 28, 1875.

A BAILEOAD BATTLE 179
of the older directors gave way to younger men,
among the newcomers being T, Jefferson Cool
idge, Charles J. Paine, and William Endicott,
Jr., of Boston, Peter Geddes of New York, and
Wirt Dexter of Chicago.
But the most far-reaching result of the con
test was the election. In February, 1876, of
Charles E, Perkins as Vice-President and mera
ber of the Western Executive Coraraittee, Ever
since the age of nineteen, when, as has been
told, he had begun his railroad career at Bur
lington, he had been under the eye of Forbes,
and by natural capacity and hard work had risen
from one position of responsibility to another.
Through his knowledge of the conditions of
Western railroading and the confidence placed in
him by the Eastern directors, it at length became
possible to organize the C. B, & Q. on a basis
adequate to the complex needs of a great modern
railroad. Working thus under Forbes for five
years, Perkins proved incontestahly his fitness to
be Forbes's successor.
The effect of these changes in the manage
ment on the growth of the road constitutes a
striking story, which belongs, however, not here,
but in the biography of Charles E. Perkins.
The increase in the length of the road from
1343 mUes in 1876 to 7661 In 1900 Is only one
of the obvious signs of a masterly administra-

180 AN AMEEICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEB
tion which, always alert to extend the road to
meet the needs of the country which it served,
was no less zealous in maintaining a sound fi
nancial policy, and in developing that internal
discipline which a railroad, as a vast piece of
human machinery, cannot safely do without.
The standing which the C, B, & Q, attained
among Araerican railroads In the years of Per
kins's presidency, frora 1881 to 1900, Is the best
testimony to the railroad wisdom of John M.
Forbes. When, In 1881, Forbes, after six years of re
sponsibility for the C. B, & Q., during three of
which he was president, transferred his load to
younger shoulders, he was sixty-nine years old.
As he said at the beginning of that period, it
would have been far easier to have stepped out
and sold his stock. That he had not done so was
due to a high and compelling sense of personal
responsibility. To him a raUroad was not a toy
to be tossed from one financier to another, but
a great public entity like the state, requiring,
like the state, from each generation In turn the
tribute of devoted service.

CHAPTER VI
THE END
FORBES'S relinquishment of responsibility
as president of the Chicago, Burlington, and
Quincy did not raean that he gave up all Interest
in railroad work. To the end of his life he served
as chairman of the board of directors, and the
honor In which he was held by his associates was
shown for all men to read In the annual reports,
where In the list of officers his name led all the
rest. As in former years, his brain was busy with
schemes large and small for the prosperity and
perfection of the road, but now he must content
himself with dashing off " screeds " to Perkins,
to be executed or not according to the wisdom
of the younger generation. He loved to travel
over its hnes, and even as late as 1890 made a
long journey to the Northwest, returning by way
of San Francisco, By such means he kept In per
sonal touch with the widely scattered officials of
the system ; and when all other ties to what had
been the great Interest of his life failed, he was
stIU a part of the road by virtue of the strongest
bond of all, — that of vital human relationship.
This gradual withdrawal from railroad busi-

182 AN AMEBICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
ness was accompanied by retirement from par
ticipation In public affairs. To the Independents
with whom he allied himself In the campaign of
1884 he could bring little in the way of what
he would have called work, though the influence
of his name and the stimulus of his counsels
were contributions of great value. With the
Cleveland administration he was naturally in
touch, and he followed with unflagging interest
the new issues of the day, particularly as the
question of free silver became more and more
acute. Perhaps, however, the subject to which
he gave most continuous effort was the matter
of free ships. Old age, with its many memories
of younger days, had brought back his early in
terest in maritime affairs. He recalled the proud
share which he and his brother had had in the
days when American ships were able "to lead
the world In foreign coramerce, carrying EngUsh
goods from England to the East, covering the
Eastern seas with their flags, and doing abso
lutely the whole packet business between Eng
land and America, so that nobody, however
bigoted his admiration of the mother-country,
ever dreamed of trusting himself to any but an
American packet-ship on the Atlantic " ; and he
felt keenly the mortification of navigation laws
which prevented him from saiUng under the
United States flag such few ships as he owned in

THE END 183
world-commerce. To this feeling he never lost
an opportunity of bearing witness, whether In
the form of testifying before a Congressional
committee, addressing a meeting of the Tariff
Reform League, preparing a pamphlet on free
ships, or writing to the newspapers over his war
time signatures of " Senex " and " Audax,"
In the Intervals between these occupations,
Forbes gave considerable time to writing hia
reminiscences. This task, begun In 1884 at the
instance of his chUdren, occupied him for many
years, and, by helping him to recall the days
when great deeds had been done, broke, as it
were, the faU into his present state of inactivity.
His powers of expression had lost none of their
sprightiiness, force, and humor, and the result
was a record extremely valuable as reminiscences,
and far raore entertaining than most works of
this class. The mass of his correspondence, scru
pulously preserved In letter-press books and files,
was too enormous to be manageable, but it served
as a guide to his memory and a veritable store
house of pungent epistolary examples.
Whatever the pleasure that the preparation of
this story gave him, he took a modest view of
the career which it narrated, " I certainly have
worked to do soraething that would forra my
contribution toward the common welfare, but
think my ambition has rather been to accomplish

184 AN AMEBICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
something worth doing . . . than to appear to
have done great things in my little sphere,"
Thus he continued, even up to the mUestone
of fourscore years, though, as powers of body
and mind slowly faUed, the world of affairs sUd
beyond his ken. In the five years of Ufe that re
mained to him, — that time when
The outline of the vrhole
As round eve's shades their framework roll,
Grandly fronts for once thy soul, —
the love of nature and the affection for friends
and family held him by as strong a tie as ever.
He was keen to revisit scenes that he had loved,
and for certain states of restlessness and for in
somnia travel was still the best remedy; he could
sleep better in boats and on trains than in his
own bed. He took many a cruise in his yacht, the
Wild Duck ; his favorite exercise of riding he waa
able to continue tUl within a few weeks of his
death. DeUght in the island home of Naushon,
the improvement of which had been his recreation
for forty years, was stIU his chief solace, " Dur
ing the summer and autumn of 1897," writes
his daughter, " he drove daily, while at Naushon,
inspecting the tree-planting, and fences, and the
* Sargent treatment ' of old forest favorites whose
lives he wished to prolong. After his inspection
he would get out of the wagon and lie down, with
his head in the shade, and sleep for half an hour

THE END 186
or so. Then his saddle-horse would be brought,
and he would raount and ride back, sometiraes
four or five miles, to the mansion house, — his
man always riding close beside him, however,
for his failing sight made this necessary." *
But the tie that held longest and strongest
was that of human affection. "The ennobling
difference between one man and another is that
one feels more than another," says Mark Patti
son of Milton.^ Forbes's capacity for intense
feeling had ever been his most marked charac
teristic, and now the nature thus ennobled dwelt
with humility and admiration on human good
ness wherever it had touched his life. His cus
tom of giving, an instinct quickened and de
veloped by eighty years of habit, was stUl his
readiest way of expressing this admiration, and
here at least there was no sign of falUng powers.
When further lapse of vitality made the kindUng
of his old self still more fleeting and intermit
tent, the moment in which it rekindled never
failed to reveal his gratitude for having shared
so richly In the best tha^; life has to give. Thus,
sheltered and enfolded in love, he waited the end.
^ On Monday, September the 26th [writes his
daughter], Dr. Stedman and my eldest sister
came to the island to go home with him. The
* Letters and ReeoUections, vol. ii, p. 234.
« Life of Milton, p. 63.

186 AN AMEBICAN BAILEOAD BUILDEE
next day a brisk north wind came up, covering
the bay with white caps ; and bright sunshine
streamed Into the house. My father sat In the
parlor until It was time to go, and then asked to
be taken into each of the ground-floor rooms.
He sat at his writing-table, whence so many let
ters had taken flight, and touched lovingly the
inkstand and pens as if loath to part frora these
old friends. Then my husband led him to the
carriage, where his daughter was waiting for
hira. The little granddaughter was brought out
and held up to hira in the wagon, and he kissed
her lovingly and bade her good-by, and then
said to my sister, as they drove off, looking up at
the old mansion house, " Never again perhaps."
He was driven carefully to the wharf, where the
launch, steered by his faithful Charles Olsen, was
ready for him. The gun of the Wild Duck at her
moorings saluted hira as he stearaed past her down
the harbor ; and so he left the Island.
I feel as If any vivid life ended for hira here,
. , . On Thursday, October the 6th, pneumonia
set In, and he died on the following Wednes
day morning, October the 12th, 1898.
Mrs. Howe's "Battle-Hymn of the Republic"
had been for years the tune that stirred and
moved him most, and It was the last that he
greeted with the old motion of the hand, beat
ing time. At his funeral It was sung; and we
all felt that no truer citizen ever served the re
public which inspired the verse.*
> Letters and Recollections, vol. ii, p. 236,

APPENDIX
Letter of J. M. Forbes to Charles Sumner
CONCERNING LaND GeANTS TO RAILROADS
Boston, Fel. 14, 1853.
Dear Sir : —
I hear privately that a gigantic land scheme is in
preparation to be sprung upon Congress, in such shape
as to conciliate all conflicting interests by giving some
thing to every scheme, and something to the old states,
and to be forced through under the pressure of the last
days. Now, on general principles, I have always advo
cated the right and duty of Congress to give land to
railroads that require it in order to render the other
land remaining more valuable, and perhaps I would
go stUl further, and use the land for the purpose of
increasing facilities for transportation of produce and
passengers, irrespective of the added value of remain
ing lands ; but there is no action of Congress that needs
such deliberation and examination as this giving of
bonuses to individuals or companies. None is so open
to abuse, and I hope you will agree with me that no
hasty log-rolling legislation ought to be permitted on
this subject.
You may say that every law is subject to log-roUing
influences, and that if you oppose one on this ground
you must all, I admit that little is done in the world

188 APPENDIX
from unmixed motives of good, but when we come to
a measure which is manifestly urged by schemers and
speculators and for private ends, of doubtful good even
to the parties who are asking for it, it seems safe to op
pose it, even if it have some elements about it of which
you approve.
If it is expedient or right to give the new states the
public lands, far the safest thing will be to give it to
each state, and allow the state govemments to appor
tion it ; restricting them, if you please, to put such a
share into railroads and plank roads, and canals, such
for education, and such a share for the insane, the
blind, etc., etc.
There are now about 7500 mUes of new railroad in
course of construction, which when properly equipped
with machinery shops and depots, and finished with
proper ballast and bridges, will not cost under $20,000.
per mile, or say $150,000,000, — one hundred and
fifty millions — (and this is a low estimate), most
of which has to be borrowed and the whole expended
within two years. These are chiefly in the West through
a sparse population. Is not this experiment enough
for one while? and, however sound the policy may be
of giving lands to make railways, is it wise to stimu
late enterprise in this direction any further, at a time
when it is clear that too many roads are under way
without any such stimulus ?
If the western states go much further or faster into
railways, we shall inevitably have another 1837-8, as
well as an 1835-6 ; and, like that epoch, the stimulated,
overstrained effort wiU be followed by a state of reac-

APPENDIX 189
tion that will be very imfavorable to the real interests
of the West. By stimulating the building of roads,
where they are not wanted, and where the leading
cause for building them is the gift of public lands, we
shall throw such discredit (when the break-down
comes) on oiu; westem roads, that the building of
useful roads will be retarded or indefinitely post
poned. Foreign capitalists, as I happen to know, are already
frightened by the immense extent of new railroads
begun, and the time is very near at hand when the
enormous issues of railway bonds will glut the home
market. If I could have any influence on legislation, it should
be first, to devise some plan by which the Govemment
should be bound by contract to have the Californian
railroad built, and the administration committed to its
being done promptly and efficiently; that the Execu
tive should be held accountable to the country just as
much as it would for the vigorous prosecution of a
foreign war,
I would then apply all the Govemment lands to that
object first. The West would expect to get, and would
get, die greatest good from it, by finding a market for
their produce, and for their surplus labor (on the Pa
cific side), while the whole country would get the bene
fit of it, by its binding us together, and by the addi
tional guarantee of peace that it would give us. For
what application of money to forts, frigates, and armies
would strengthen our Pa<!ific coast, like a line of rail
way and telegraph, that in four days would bring the

190 APPENDIX
militia of the valley of the Mississippi to the shores of
the Pacific?
A few years ago the western states needed Govern
ment help to build their roads ; now the capacity of the
West to support all the roads that are really needed
is acknowledged, and the great danger is that too many
will be built.
On the other hand, private or state enterprise can
not build the Pacific road, and if it could, it is doubt
ful if it would pay. It is required by the whole coun
try, and there can be no doubt that as an experiment
in political economy it will be eminently successful if
efficiently prosecuted. It will add enormously to the
wealth of the country, and will contribute more to
raising the wages of the working classes, by opening
gold-labor, than any legislative creation can possibly
do in any other way.
A million of people can earn at a low estimate
$600. per annum in California, who now only
earn $300. per annum ; difference $ 300,000,000,
from which deduct expense of carrying them
out with their barrel of flour and barrel of
pork and barrel of groceries each, say from
the Mississippi ; say not over 1800 miles at
3 cents a mile for passengers and 3 cents
per ton mile for merchandise (which in
both cases is large), and you have $54. for
pas.senger and for one third of a ton of mer
chandise $18. = $72. ; throw in for baggage
$28. each, and you deduct 100,000,000
$200,000,000
leaving a gain to the wealth of the country of $200,
000,000, as a return for the $100,000,000, which the

APPENDIX 191
road will surely cost. I don't mean that this would
happen the first year, but I believe 250,000 men would
go out the first year after the road is finished, unless
in the mean time labor has been equalized by the Isth
mus route by the importation of a million of inhabit
ants into California ; in which case the necessity for
binding to us such a populous state, with such elements
of increase in it, wiU be apparent to all,
Excuse this long story, into which I am led by the
largeness of the subject, and by my want of time for
condensation. It is possible that I may be influenced by my con
nection with westem roads that have been built by
dint of hard work in hard times, when it was a word
of reproach to be concerned in western enterprises,
and that these considerations induce me to look un
favorably upon other roads getting help from the public
treasury or domain.
To avoid such suspicion, I mark this letter private,
and do not wish my name mentioned in the matter ;
but you, I know, will have candor enough and acuteness
enough to give due weight to any of my reasoning that
is good, and to make the needful allowance for any
selfish bias, as against the weight that might otherwise
be due to the opinions of one who has had some expe
rience in western railroad-building.
If you have many such long-winded constituents I
offer you my condolences I

INDEX

(All nilroad lines are indexed under the heading Bulsoadi.)

Adams, Charlea Francia, 120, 126,
128, 129, 132, 133, 145.
Adams, Charles F., 132.
Andrew, J. A., 113, 128, 133, 138,
144.
Appleton, W., 61.
Ashburner, Q., 104.
AspinwaU, W. H., 114, 122,
Baring Broa., 6, 9, 40, 68, 69, 73,
92, 122, 124, 125, 166, 172, -
Bates, J., 125.
Beecher, H. W., 133.
Blaine, J. G., 150.
Booth, Gen., 167, 168.
Bowditch, C, 176.
Bright, J., 130.
Brooks, J. W., 24-42, 50, 55, 57,
61, 75, 92, 97-99.
Brown, J., 113.
Buchanan, J., 114.
Cameron, S., 117.
Carlyle, T., 136, 152.
Cats' tails, C. B. & Q., 160.
Chandler, P. W., 177.
Chase, S. P., 125, 133.
Choate, J. H., 101, 102.
CleveUnd, Q., 151, 182,
CUfford, J. H., 176.
Cobden, R., 130.
CogsweU, J. G., 3, 7.
Coolidge, T. J., 177, 179.
Cooper, P., 141.
Coming, E., 57, 75, 86.
Credit Mobilier, 154, 156.
Cumberland Road, 21.
Davis, J., 132.
Dexter, W., 179.
Dickens, Charles, 17, 21, 23.
Dorsey, S. W., 150,
Douglas, S. A., 49,

Emerson, E. W., 16, 108.
Endicott, W., Jr., 179.
Erie Canal, 20, 45.
"Erie War," 49.
Evarts, W. M., 132.
Felch, A., 27.
Fessenden, W. P., 149.
Field, D. D., 139.
Fitch,  , 38, 39.
Fitzpatrick, Bishop, 133.
Forbes, John Murray, birth, 1 ;
Bchooling, 2, 3 ; life in China, 5-
10 ; recreation, 3, 9, 10, 12, 16,
162, 163, 184; marriage, 7 ; ill-
health, 6, 11, 12, 57-59, 143,
184, 186; on the education of
his children, 13—15 ; interest in
ships, 12, 25, 70, 145-148, 182,
183; at Naushon, 12, 59, 111,
160, 184, 186; Emerson's esti
mate of, 16 ; purchase of Mich.
Cent., 25-30 ; first journey to
Chicago, 32-36 ; early financing
of Mich. Cent, 40-42; on Cali
fomia gold fever, 44; appeals
to foreign capitalists, 45, 46;
on building without a charter,
50 ; connection with Great West
em, 51, 52 ; report as president
of Mich. Cent., 53, 54 ; general
railroad activities and responsi
bilities, 55-58; resignation aa
president of Mich. Cent., 58 ; in
panic of 1857, 69-65, 88, 89;
views on immigration, 66-69;
interest in European market for
grain, 69 ; interest in railroad to
the Pacific, 70, 189-191 ; interest
in Chicago & Aurora, 14~IQ;
organization of C. B. & Q., 76-
78; comments on railroad fi
nance, 78-80 ; on landgrants, 81-

194

INDEX

83 ; interest in Hannibal & St.
Joseph, 84, 89-93, 156; interest
in B. & M,, 84-87, 92, 93 ; end
of first period of railroad work,
95, 96 ; interest in human side
of railroad work, 97-103 ; friend
ship with C. R. LoweU, 103-
106 ; early political connections,
108 ; on democracy and anti-slay-
ery, 108-111 ; joins Republican
party, 111-113; aids J. Brown,
113; helps Gov. Andrew, 113,
114 ; member of Peace Confer
ence, 114; plans reinforcement
of Sumter, 114, 115; helps in
forwarding Mass. troops, 115,
116; quality of his patriotism,
116, 117; influence at Washing
ton, 117, 118; helps in raising
troops, 119, 120; mission to
England, 120-134; organization
of Loyal Publication League,
134-137; urges arming of the
negro, 138 ; in presidential cam
paign of 1864, 138-142 ; opinion
of Lincoln, 142 ; on reconstruc
tion and Alabama claims, 144,
145 ; experience with the Meteor,
145-148; labors in connection
with national finance, 148-150;
member of Republican National
Committee, 150; becomes an
Independent, 151 ; standard of
public service, 151-153 ; con
servatism in business methods,
154-156 ; views on public opin
ion in railroad matters, 156-158 ;
opposition to Boston, Hartford,
& Erie, 157; attitude on Gran
ger legislation, 157, 158 ; cats'
tails story, 159, 160 ; on dangers
of C. B. & Q. situation, 162-
166, 172 ; in the Dubuque Roads
fight, 165-178 ; president of the
C. B. & Q., 179, 180; retire
ment from business, 181 ; retire
ment from politics, 182; "Re
miniscences," 183 ; last days at
Naushon, 184-186 ; death, 186.
Forbes, Margaret Perkins, 1.
Forbes, Ralph Bennet, 1, 2.

Forbes, Robert Bennet, 1, 2, 6,
26, 148 n., 182.
Forbes, Sarah Hathaway, 7.
Forbes, T. T., 1, 4, 5, 6.
Forbes, Wm. H., 118, 119, 177,
178.
Forster, J., 131.
Forster, W. E., 130.
Fox, G. v., 115, 118, 121, 133,
140.
Fremont, J. C, 112, 139.
Geddes, P., 179.
Gold, discovery of in Califomia,
44.
Granger legislation, 157, 158.
Graves, J. K., 167, 168, 170, 171.
Green, J. C, 29, 57, 90, 177.
Griswold, J. N. A, 62, 166, 170,
176, 177.
Hale, E. E., 67.
HaUowell, N. P., 118.
Heard, A., 5, 8.
Higginson, H. L., 118.
Houqua, 5, 8, 9, 107.
Howe, S. G., 112.
Howe, T., 32.
Hughes, T., 131.
111. and Mich. Canal, 48, 71.
Immigration, value of, 43, 66-69.
Jackson, Gen. T. J., 130.
Johnson, A., 145.
Joy, J. F., 24, 28, 50, 57, 75, 77,
85, 86, 112.
Kemble, P., 131.
Land Grants, 71, 72, 81-87, 93, 94,
161, 169, 187-191.
Lawrence, A. A-, 119.
Lincoln, A., 123, 126, 187-140, 142.
Lowell, C. R., 103-106, 108, 118.
Loyal Publication League, N. E.,
135-137, 157.
McCuUoch, H., 149.
Martineau, J., 129.
Meteor, the, 146-148.

INDEX

195

Milton, J., 185.
Mt. Savage Iron Works, 104.
Napoleon, L., 69.
National Pike, 21.
Naushon, 12, 59, 111, 160, 184,
186.
New England Emigrant Aid So
ciety, -145.
New England Loyal Publication
League, 135-137, 157.
Norton, C. E., 135.
Ogden, W. B., 35, 36.
Omaha pool, 158.
Paine, C. J., 179.
Panic of 1837, 22, 71, 82.
Panic of 1857, 53, 59-65, 88, 89,
93, 158.
Panic of 1873, 158, 166.
Peace Conference, 114.
Perkins, C. E., 102, 103, 161-163,
167, 179-181.
Perkins, firm of J. and T. H., 2,
4,5.
Perkins, James, 1, 10.
Perkins, S. G, 1.
Perkins, T. H., 1, 41.
Polk, J. K., 132.
Pooling, 53, 64, 158, 159.
Bailboads :
Auburn & Rochester, 24.
Boston, Hartford, & Erie, 157.
Boston & LoweU, 28, n.
Boston & Providence, 28, n.
Boston & Worcester, 28, n.
Burlington & Missouri in Ne
braska, 160, 163.
Burlington & Missouri in Iowa,
84-87, 92, 93, 95, 102, 103,
158, 161, 162, 166.
Central Military Tract, 74, 76,
78, 86.
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy,
55, 76-78, 81, 84, 85, 87-89,
94, 95, 101, 103, 154, 158, 160-
167, 171-181.
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul,
178,

Chicago & Aurora, 74-76, 86.
Chicago & Galena, 75.
Chicago & Northwestern, 164.
Chicago & Rook Island, 73, 77,
79, 86.
Dubuque Roads, 161, 164^178.
Erie, 60, 80, 154, 157.
Grand Trunk, 52.
Great Western, Canada, 51,
52.
Hannibal & St. Joseph, 84, 89,
90-93, 99, 100, 111, 156.
lUinois Central, 44, 47, 49, 52,
55, 71-75, 77, 81, 91, 94.
Iowa Pacific, 170, 171.
Michigan Central, 23-65, 73, 74,
76, 79, 81, 85, 89-91, 98.
MioUgan Southern, 23, 43, 46,
47, 49-51, 53, 60, 63, 73, 79, 86.
Mobile & Ohio, 44, 71, 81.
New Albany & Salem, 46, 47,
52.
N. T. Central, 60.
Northern Cross, 74, 77, 89.
Pacific Railroad, 70, 81 , 189-191.
Peoria & Oquawka, 74, 77,
89.
Union Pacific, 161.
Rhodes, J. F., 88, 116, 117, 127,
Round Hill School, 2, 12.
Ruskin, J., 152.
RusseU, Earl, 121, 127, 133.
RusseU, H. S., 118, 119, 138.
RusseU, S., 34, 35.
RusseU & Co., 5, 8, 10.
Sanitary Commission, 118.
Sault Ste. Marie Canal, 65, 98.
Soott, R., 129.
Seott, W., 115.
Sedgwick, C. B., 118, 119.
Seward, W. H., 39, 147, 148.
Shaw, R. G., 118.
Smith, Q., 131, 146.
Sturgis, R., 10, 45.
Sturgis, W., 61.
Sumner, C, 81, 144.
Swain, W. W., 12, 76.
Tennyson, A., 152.
Thayer, J. B., 135.

196
Thayer, J. E., 61-63, 85, 86.
Toucey, L, 115.
Tyson, G., 178.
Upton, G. B., 30,

INDEX

Walker, R. J., 132.
Ward, S. G., 172.
Watson, R. S., 70.
Webster, D., 26, 108.
WUd Duck, the, 184, 186.

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U , S , A

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