The Railroad Builders | Page 5

be
buried under the snow for a considerable period, thus stopping all
communication. The champions of artificial waterways would point in
contrast to the beautiful packet boats on the Erie Canal, with their fine
sleeping rooms, their restaurants, their spacious decks on which the fine
ladies and gentlemen congregated every warm summer day, and would
insist that such kind of travel was far more comfortable than it could
ever be on railroads. To all these pleas the advocates of the railroad had
one unassailable argument--its infinitely greater speed. After all, it took
a towboat three or four days to go from Albany to Buffalo, and the time
was not far distant, they argued, when a railroad would make the same
trip in less than a day. Indeed, our forefathers made one curious
mistake: they predicted a speed for the railroad a hundred miles an
hour--which it has never attained consistently with safety.
If the American of today could transport himself to one of the first
railroad lines built in the United States it is not unlikely that he would
side with the canal enthusiast in his argument. The rough pictures
which accompany most accounts of early railroad days, showing a train
of omnibus-like carriages pulled by a locomotive with upright boiler,
really represent a somewhat advanced stage of development. Though
Stephenson had demonstrated the practicability of the locomotive in
1814 and although the American, John Stevens, had constructed one in
1826 which had demonstrated its ability to take a curve, local prejudice
against this innovation continued strong. The farmers asserted that the
sparks set fire to their hayricks and barns and that the noise frightened
their hens so that they would not lay and their cows so that they could
not give milk. On the earliest railroads, therefore, almost any other
method of propulsion was preferred. Horses and dogs were used,
winches turned by men were occasionally installed, and in some cases
cars were even fitted with sails. Of all these methods, the horse was the
most popular: he sent out no sparks, he carried his own fuel, he made
little noise, and he would not explode. His only failing was that he
would leave the track; and to remedy this defect the early railroad
builders hit upon a happy device. Sometimes they would fix a treadmill
inside the car; two horses would patiently propel the caravan, the seats
for passengers being arranged on either side. So unformed was the

prevalent conception of the ultimate function of the railroad, and so
pronounced was the fear of monopoly that, on certain lines, the roadbed
was laid as a state enterprise and the users furnished their own cars, just
as the individual owners of towboats did on the canals. The drivers,
however, were an exceedingly rough lot; no schedules were observed
and as the first lines had only single tracks and infrequent turnouts,
when the opposing sides would meet each other coming and going,
precedence was usually awarded to the side which had the stronger arm.
The roadbed showed little improvement over the mine tramways of the
eighteenth century, and the rails were only long wooden stringers with
strap iron nailed on top. So undeveloped were the resources of the
country that the builders of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1828
petitioned Congress to remit the duty on the iron which it was
compelled to import from England. The trains consisted of a string of
little cars, with the baggage piled on the roof, and when they reached a
hill they sometimes had to be pulled up the inclined plane by a rope.
Yet the traveling in these earliest days was probably more comfortable
than in those which immediately followed the general adoption of
locomotives. When, five or ten years later, the advantages of
mechanical as opposed to animal traction caused engines to be
introduced extensively, the passengers behind them rode through
constant smoke and hot cinders that made railway travel an incessant
torture.
Yet the railroad speedily demonstrated its practical value; many of the
first lines were extremely profitable, and the hostility with which they
had been first received soon changed to an enthusiasm which was just
as unreasoning. The speculative craze which invariably follows a new
discovery swept over the country in the thirties and the forties and
manifested itself most unfortunately in the new Western States--Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. Here bonfires and public meetings
whipped up the zeal; people believed that railroads would not only
immediately open the wilderness and pay the interest on the bonds
issued to construct them, but that they would become a source Of
revenue to sadly depleted state treasuries. Much has been heard of
government ownership in recent years; yet it is nothing particularly
new, for many of the early railroads in these