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 RAILROADS: 
 
 THEIR ORIGIN AND PROBLEMS. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 182 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 1878.
 
 COPYRIGHT BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 1878.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE GENESIS OF THE RAILROAD SYSTEM i 
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. . 80
 
 THE GENESIS 
 
 RAILROAD SYSTEM 
 
 THERE are not many stories that are either 
 more interesting in themselves or better worth 
 telling for the lesson they convey, than the story of 
 George Stephenson and his invention of the locomo- 
 tive engine. It has been told, too, in a manner 
 which upon the whole leaves little to be desired ; and 
 the great and long continued popularity of Smiles' 
 biography is one of the most encouraging symptoms 
 of the better and healthier education of the times. 
 In the course of his narrative the author describes 
 with great literary skill the genesis of the locomo- 
 tive. In doing so he carries his readers along with 
 him through episodes of opposition, discourage- 
 ment, disappointment, almost defeat, the interest 
 in the narrative and the fortunes of its hero continu- 
 ally growing until it exceeds that of any work of fiction 
 of the day, even though Walter Scott himself was 
 then a living author, until at last the great dramatic
 
 2 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 climax is reached in the memorable pageant of Sep- 
 tember 1 5th, 1830. That day, the day of the formal 
 opening of the Manchester & Liverpool railroad, 
 was for Stephenson more than an ovation, it was liter- 
 ally a triumph. Guiding his locomotive, the Northum- 
 brian, at the head of the train, not only was he, even 
 though the Duke of Wellington himself was there, 
 the conquering hero observed of all, but there were 
 also many circumstances about the occasion suggest- 
 ive of other and less attractive features of the classic 
 triumphs. Reminders of public distress and private 
 want, of the fickleness of popular favor and of sud- 
 den death itself, all were there. The season was 
 favorable, the skies were clear, the occasion great ; 
 but things would not move smoothly. It was a day 
 of contre-temps ; a day to be remembered and de- 
 scribed, but one which nevertheless must ever after 
 have left a bitter taste in the mental mouths of those 
 who took part in its observances. Unfortunately, 
 when he came to giving an account of it, Smiles' 
 appreciation of the dramatic fitness of things proved 
 too strong for his fidelity to facts. He thought his 
 hero deserved a day of triumph unalloyed, and so he 
 gave it to him as nearly as he could. The terrible 
 episode of Mr. Huskisson's death it was not possible 
 to wholly pass over ; but whatever else was there to 
 mar the pleasure of the day could be ignored, and was 
 ignored accordingly. The liberty with facts which 
 Smiles thus allowed himself to take, was long since 
 pointed out by Jeaffreson, in his excellent life of
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 3 
 
 Robert Stephenson ; and in that work will be found 
 a much more correct account than is given by Smiles 
 of the events of the Manchester & Liverpool open- 
 ing. Even Jeaffreson's account is, however, not 
 wholly satisfactory. It was written too long after the 
 event. He sees what he undertakes to describe with 
 eyes accustomed to railroads and locomotives anti 
 trains of cars. He has with great industry gotten 
 all his details together and woven them into a skilful 
 narrative, but it is, after all, not the narrative of one 
 who himself was there. Now the great peculiarity 
 of the locomotive engine and its sequence, the rail- 
 road, as compared with other and far more important 
 inventions, was that it burst rather than stole or 
 crept upon the world. Its advent was in the highest 
 degree dramatic. It was even more so than the dis- 
 covery of America. Of this last we know every detail, 
 and nothing is wanting which could lend an interest 
 to the event. Picturesque and absorbing as the 
 story is, however, the climax did not work itself out 
 before the very eyes of an astonished world. Co- 
 lumbus and his crew alone on the morning of the I2th 
 October 1492, saw the shores of the new world. And 
 yet, next to the locomotive engine, this was probably 
 the most dramatic of all those discoveries which have 
 marked epochs in human history. The mariner's 
 compass, far more momentous in its consequences, 
 crept silently on a world which to this day does not 
 know when or from whence or how it came. It was 
 much the same with gun-powder. In the case of
 
 4 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 printing it is somewhat different, for though its in- 
 vention has been a fruitful source of controversy, 
 something at least is known of it. Hallam, indeed, 
 in his Literature of Europe, indulges in a flight of 
 rhetoric somewhat unusual with him and which 
 reads queerly, as he speaks of Fustenburg's Mazarin 
 fSible, the first printed book. " It is," he says, 
 " a very striking circumstance, that the high-minded 
 inventors of this great art tried at the very out- 
 set so bold a flight as the printing of an entire 
 Bible, and executed it with astonishing success. 
 It was Minerva leaping on earth in her divine 
 strength and radiant armor, ready at the moment of 
 her nativity to subdue and destroy her enemies. . . . 
 We may see in imagination this venerable and 
 splendid volume leading up the crowded myriads of 
 its followers, and imploring, as it were, a blessing on 
 the new art by dedicating its first fruits to the ser- 
 vice of Heaven." " In imagination " perhaps, " we 
 may see " all this, but assuredly the cotemporary 
 world neither saw nor dreamed of it ; on the contrary, 
 imaginary processions apart, few things less inspiring 
 can be conceived than the unnoticed homely toil of 
 those poor German mechanics at Mentz, who four 
 centuries ago launched upon an unconscious world the 
 great motive power of all modern life. So with the 
 loom, the steam engine, and electricity. Each arid all, 
 they struggled into existence slowly and painfully. 
 The world never stopped to look, much less to wonder 
 at them. We cannot know what people's sensations
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. $ 
 
 were when they first realized that a new power had 
 appeared, for there was no particular moment at 
 which they ever realized it. The locomotive engine 
 alone as soon as it was seen was acknowledged ; for 
 it must be remembered that its one essential feature 
 the multitubular boiler, was first used in Stephen- 
 son's experimental locomotive, the Rocket, on 
 the Rainhill trial course in October, 1829, and never 
 after that time was the importance of the new dis- 
 covery denied, while the interest felt in its further 
 development each day widened and became more 
 engrossing. 
 
 It was this element of spontaneity, therefore, 
 the instantaneous and dramatic recognition of suc- 
 cess, which gave a peculiar interest to everything con- 
 nected with the Manchester & Liverpool railroad. 
 The whole world was looking at it, with*, full realizing 
 sense that something great and momentous was im- 
 pending. Every day people watched the gradual 
 development of the thing, and actually took part in it. 
 In doing so they had sensations and those sensations 
 they have described. There is consequently an, ele- 
 ment of human nature surrounding it. The com- 
 plete ignoring of this element by both Smiles and 
 Jeaffreson is a defect in their narratives. They de- 
 scribe the scene from a standpoint of forty years later. 
 Others described it as they saw it at the time. To 
 their descriptions time has only lent a new freshness. 
 They are full of honest wonder. They are much 
 better and more valuable and more interesting now
 
 6 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 than they were fifty years ago, and for that reason 
 are well worth exhuming. 
 
 To introduce the contemporaneous story of the 
 day, however, it is not necessary even to briefly review 
 the long series of events which had slowly led up to 
 it. The world is tolerably familiar with the early life 
 of George Stephenson, and with the vexatious obsta- 
 cles he had to overcome before he could even secure 
 a trial for his invention. The man himself, however, 
 is an object of a good deal more curiosity to us, than 
 he was to those among whom he lived and moved. 
 A living glimpse at him now is worth dwelling upon, 
 and is the best possible preface to any account of his 
 great day of life triumph. Just such a glimpse of the 
 man has been given to us at the moment when at 
 last all difficulties had been overcome, when the 
 Manchester Si-Liverpool railroad was completed ; and, 
 literally, not only the eyes of Great Britain but those 
 of all civilized countries were directed to it and to him 
 who had originated it. At just that time it chanced 
 that the celebrated actor, John Kemble, was ful- 
 filling an engagement at Liverpool with his daughter, 
 better known in this country as Mrs. Frances Kemble 
 Butler. The extraordinary social advantages the 
 Kemble family enjoyed gave both father and daugh- 
 ter opportunities such as seldom came in the way 
 of ordinary mortals. For the time being they 
 were, in fact, the lions of the stage, just as George 
 Stephenson was the lion of the new railroad. As 
 was most natural the three lions were brought
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 7 
 
 together. The young actress has since published 
 her impressions, jotted down at the time, of 
 the old engineer. Her account of a ride side 
 by side with George Stephenson, on the seat of 
 his locomotive, over the as yet unopened road, is 
 one of the most interesting and life-like records we 
 have of the man and the enterprise. Perhaps it is 
 the most interesting. The introduction is Mrs. 
 Kemble's own, and written forty-six years after 
 the experience : 
 
 " While we were acting at Liverpool, an experimental trip 
 was proposed upon the line of railway which was being con- 
 structed between Liverpool and Manchester, the first mesh of 
 that amazing iron net which now covers the whole surface of 
 England, and all civilized portions of the earth. The Liverpool 
 merchants, whose far-sighted self-interest prompted to wise lib- 
 erality, had accepted the risk of George Stephenson's magnificent 
 experiment, which the committee of inquiry of the House of 
 Commons had rejected for the government. These men, of less 
 intellectual culture than the Parliament members, had the ad- 
 venturous imagination proper to great speculators, which is the 
 poetry of the counting house and wharf, and were better able to 
 receive the enthusiastic infection of the great projector's sanguine 
 hope than the Westminster committee. They were exultant 
 and triumphant at the near completion of the work, though, of 
 course not without some misgivings as to the eventual success of 
 the stupendous enterprise. My father knew several of the gen- 
 tlemen most deeply interested in the undertaking, and Stephen- 
 son having proposed a trial trip as far as the fifteen-mile viaduct, 
 they, with infinite kindness, invited him and permitted me to 
 accompany them : allowing me, moreover, the place which I felt 
 to be one of supreme honor, by the side of Stephenson. All 
 that wonderful history, as much more interesting than a romance
 
 8 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 as truth is stranger than fiction, which Mr. Smiles' biography of 
 the projector has given in so attractive a form to the world, I 
 then heard from his own lips. He was rather a stern-featured 
 man, with a dark and deeply marked countenance ; his speech 
 was strongly inflected with his native Northumbrian accent, but 
 the fascination of that story told by himself, while his tame dragon 
 flew panting along his iron pathway with us, passed the first 
 reading of the Arabian Nights, the incidents of which it almost 
 seemed to recall. He was wonderfully condescending and kind, 
 in answering all the questions of my eager ignorance, and I lis- 
 tened to him with eyes brimful of warm tears of sympathy and 
 enthusiasm, as he told me of all his alternations of hope and 
 fear, of his many trials and disappointments, related with fine 
 scorn, how the " Parliament men " had badgered and baffled 
 him with their book-knowledge, and how, when at last they- had 
 smothered the irrepressible prophecy of his genius in the quak- 
 ing depths of Chat Moss, he had exclaimed, ' Did ye ever see a 
 boat float on water ? I will make my road float upon Chat 
 Moss ! ' The well-read Parliament men (some of whom, per- 
 haps, wished for no railways near their parks and pleasure- 
 grounds) could not believe the miracle, but the shrewd Liver- 
 pool merchants, helped to their faith by a great vision of immense 
 gain, did ; and so the railroad was made, and I took this mem- 
 orable ride by the side of its maker, and would not have ex- 
 changed the honor and pleasure of it for one of the shares in the 
 speculation." 
 
 " LIVERPOOL, August 26th, 1830. 
 
 " MY DEAR H : A common sheet of paper is enough 
 
 for love, but a foolscap extra can only contain a railroad and my 
 ecstasies. There was once a man born at Newcastle-upon- 
 Tyne, who was a common coal-digger ; this man had an im- 
 mense constructiveness, which displayed itself in pulling his 
 watch to pieces and putting it together again ; in making a pair 
 of shoes when he happened to be some days without occupation ;
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 9 
 
 finally here there is a great gap in my story it brought him 
 in the capacity of an engineer before a committee of the House 
 of Commons, with his head full of plans for constructing a rail- 
 road from Liverpool to Manchester. It so happened that to the 
 quickest and most powerful perceptions and conceptions, to the 
 most indefatigable industry and perseverance, and the most ac- 
 curate knowledge of the phenomena of nature as they affect his 
 peculiar labors, this man joined an utter want of the ' gift of gab ;' 
 he could no more explain to others what he meant to do and 
 how he meant to do it, than he could fly, and therefore the 
 members of the House of Commons, after saying, ' There is a 
 rock to be excavated to a depth of more than sixty feet, there 
 are embankments to be made nearly to the same height, there 
 is a swamp of five miles in length to be traversed, in which if 
 you drop an iron rod it sinks and disappears ; how will you do 
 all this ?' and receiving no answer but a broad Northumbrian, 
 ' I can't tell you how I'll do it, but I can tell you I will do it,' 
 dismissed Stephenson as a visionary. Having prevailed upon a 
 company of Liverpool gentlemen to be less incredulous, and 
 having raised funds for his great undertaking, in December of 
 1826 the first spade was struck into the ground. And now I 
 will give you an account of my yesterday's excursion. A party 
 of sixteen persons was ushered into a large court-yard, where, 
 under cover, stood several carriages of a peculiar construction, 
 one of which was prepared for our reception. It was a long- 
 bodied vehicle with seats placed across it back to back ; the one 
 we were in had six of these benches, and was a sort of uncov- 
 ered char a bane. The wheels were placed upon two iron bands, 
 which formed the road, and to which they are fitted, being so 
 constructed as to slide along without any danger of hitching or 
 becoming displaced, on the same principle as a thing sliding on 
 a concave groove. The carriage was set in motion by a mere 
 push, and, having received this impetus, rolled with us down an 
 inclined plane into a tunnel, which forms the entrance to the rail- 
 road. This tunnel is four hundred yards long (I believe), and will 
 1*
 
 10 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 be lighted by gas. At the end of it we emerged from darkness, 
 and, the ground becoming level, we stopped. There is another 
 tunnel parallel with this, only much wider and longer, for it ex- 
 tends from the place we had now reached, and where the steam 
 carriages start, and which is quite out of Liverpool, the whole way 
 under the town, to the docks. This tunnel is for wagons and 
 other heavy carriages ; and as the engines which are to draw 
 the trains along the railroad do not enter these tunnels, there is 
 a large building at this entrance which is to be inhabited by 
 steam engines of a stationary turn of mind, and different con- 
 stitution from the traveling ones, which are to propel the trains 
 through the tunnels to the terminus in the town, without going 
 out of their houses themselves. The length of the tunnel par- 
 allel to the one we passed through is (I believe) two thousand 
 two hundred yards. I wonder if you are understanding one 
 word I am saying all this while ! We were introduced to the 
 little engine which was to drag us along the rails. She (for 
 they make these curious little fire horses all mares) consisted 
 of a boiler, a stove, a platform, a bench, and behind the bench 
 a barrel containing enough water to prevent her being thirsty 
 for fifteen miles, the whole machine not bigger than a common 
 fire engine. She goes upon two wheels, which are her feet, and 
 are moved by bright steel legs called pistons ; these are pro- 
 pelled by steam, and in proportion as more steam is applied to 
 the upper extremities (the hip-joints, I suppose) of these pis- 
 tons, the faster they move the wheels ; and when it is desira- 
 ble to diminish the speed, the steam, which unless suffered to 
 escape would burst the boiler, evaporates through a safety 
 valve into the air. The reins, bit, and bridle of this wonderful 
 beast, is a small steel handle, which applies or withdraws the 
 steam from its legs or pistons, so that a child might manage it. 
 
 " The coals, which are its oats, were under the bench, and 
 there was a small glass tube affixed to the boiler, with water in 
 it, which indicates by its fullness or emptiness when the creature 
 wants water, which is immediately conveyed to it from its reser-
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. ' II 
 
 voirs. There is a chimney to the stove, but as they burn coke 
 there is none of the dreadful black smoke which accompanies 
 the progress of a steam vessel. This snorting little animal, 
 which I felt rather inclined to pat, was then harnessed to our 
 carriage, and Mr. Stephenson having taken me on the bench of 
 the engine with him, we started at about ten miles an hour. 
 The steam horse being ill adapted for going up and down hill, 
 the road was kept at a certain level, and appeared sometimes to 
 sink below the surface of the earth and sometimes to rise above 
 it. Almost at starting it was cut through the solid rock, which 
 formed a wall on either side of it, about sixty feet high. You 
 can't imagine how strange it seemed to be journeying on thus, 
 without any visible cause of progress other than the magical 
 machine, with its flying white breath and rhythmical, unvarying 
 pace, between these rocky walls, which are already clothed with 
 moss and ferns and grasses ; and when I reflected that these 
 great masses of stone had been cut asunder to allow our pas- 
 sage thus far below the surface of the earth, I felt as if no fairy 
 tale was ever half so wonderful as what I saw. Bridges were 
 thrown from side to side across the top of these cliffs, and the 
 people looking down upon us from them seemed like pigmies 
 standing in the sky. I must be more concise, though, or I shall 
 want room. We were to go only fifteen miles, that distance 
 being sufficient to show the speed of the engine, and to take us 
 to the most beautiful and wonderful object on the road. After 
 proceeding through this rocky defile, we presently found our- 
 selves raised upon embankments ten. or twelve feet high ; we 
 then came to a moss, or swamp, of considerable extent, on which 
 no human foot could tread without sinking, and yet it bore the 
 road which bore us. This had been the great stumbling-block 
 in the minds of the committee of the House of Commons ; but 
 Mr. Stephenson has succeeded in overcoming it. A foundation 
 of hurdles, or, as he called it, basket-work, was thrown over the 
 morass, and the interstices were filled with moss and other elas- 
 tic matter.
 
 12 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 Upon this the clay and soil were laid down, and the road 
 does float, for we passed over it at the rate of five and twenty 
 miles an hour, and saw the stagnant swamp water trembling on 
 the surface of the soil on either side of us. I hope you under- 
 stand me. The embankment had gradually been rising higher 
 and higher, and in one place, where the soil was not settled 
 enough to form banks, Stephenson had constructed artificial 
 ones of woodwork, over which the mounds of earth were heaped, 
 for he said that though the wood-work would rot, before it did 
 so the banks of earth which covered it would have been suffi- 
 ciently consolidated to support the road. We had now come 
 fifteen miles, and stopped where the road traversed a wide and 
 deep valley. Stephenson made me alight and led me down to 
 the bottom of this ravine, over which, in order to keep his road 
 level, he has thrown a magnificent viaduct of nine arches, the 
 middle one of which is seventy feet high, through which we saw 
 the whole of this beautiful little valley. It was lovely and won- 
 derful beyond all words. He here told me many curious things 
 respecting this ravine ; how he believed the Mersey had once 
 rolled through it ; how the soil had proved so unfavorable for 
 the foundation of his bridge that it was built upon piles, which 
 had been driven into the earth to an enormous depth ; how while 
 digging for a foundation he had come to a tree bedded in the 
 earth, fourteen feet below the surface of the ground ; how tides 
 are caused, and how another flood might be caused ; all of which 
 I have remembered and noted down at much greater length 
 than I can enter upon it here. He explained to me the whole 
 construction of the steam-engine, and said he could soon make 
 a famous engineer of me, which, considering the wonderful 
 things he has achieved, I dare not say is impossible. His way 
 of explaining himself is peculiar, but very striking, and I under- 
 stood, without difficulty, all that he said to me. We then re- 
 joined the rest of the party, and the engine having received its 
 supply of water, the carriage was placed behind it, for it cannot 
 turn, and was set off at its utmost speed, thirty-five miles an
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 1 3 
 
 hour, swifter than a bird flies (for they tried the experiment 
 with a snipe). You cannot conceive what that sensation of cut- 
 ting the air was ; the motion is as smooth as possible, too. I 
 could either have read or written ; and as it was, I stood up, 
 and with my bonnet off ' drank the air before me.' The wind, 
 which was strong, or perhaps the force of our own thrusting 
 against it, absolutely weighed my eyelids down. 
 
 " When I closed my eyes this sensation of flying was quite 
 delightful, and strange beyond description ; yet strange as it 
 was, I had a perfect sense of security, and not the slightest fear. 
 At one time, to exhibit the power of the engine, having met 
 another steam-carriage which was unsupplied with water, Mr. 
 Stephenson caused it to be fastened in front of ours ; moreover, 
 a wagon laden with timber was also chained to us, and thus 
 propelling the idle steam-engine, and dragging the loaded wagon 
 which was beside it, and our own carriage full of people behind, 
 this brave little she-dragon of ours flew on. Farther on she 
 met three carts, which, being fastened in front of her, she pushed 
 on before her without the slightest delay or difficulty ; when I 
 add that this pretty little creature can run with equal facility either 
 backwards or forwards, I believe I have given you an account of 
 all her capacities. Now for a word or two about the master of 
 all these marvels, with whom I am most horribly in love. He is 
 a man from fifty to fifty-five years of age ; his face is fine, though 
 careworn, and bears an expression of deep thoughtfulness ; his 
 mode of explaining his ideas is peculiar and very original, strik- 
 ing, and forcible ; and although his accent indicates strongly his 
 north country birth, his language has not the slightest touch of 
 vulgarity or coarseness. He has certainly turned my head. Four 
 years have sufficed to bring this great undertaking to an end. 
 The railroad will be opened upon the fifteenth of next month. 
 The Duke of Wellington is coming down to be present on the 
 occasion, and, I suppose, what with the thousands of spectators 
 and the novelty of the spectacle, there will never have been a 
 scene of more striking interest. The whole cost of the work (in-
 
 14 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 eluding the engines and carriages) will have been eight hundred 
 and thirty thousand pounds ; and it is already worth double that 
 sum. The directors have kindly offered us three places for the 
 opening, which is a great favor, for people are bidding almost 
 anything for a place, I understand." 
 
 Even while Miss Kemble was writing this letter, 
 certainly before it had reached her correspondent, 
 the official programme of that opening to which she 
 was so eagerly looking forward was thus referred to 
 in the Liverpool papers : 
 
 " The day of opening still remains fixed for Wednesday the 
 fifteenth instant. The company by whom the ceremony is to be 
 performed, is expected to amount to eight or nine hundred per- 
 sons, including the Duke of Wellington and several others of the 
 nobility. They will leave Liverpool at an early hour in the fore- 
 noon, probably ten o'clock, in carriages drawn by eight or nine 
 engines, including the new engine of Messrs. Braithwaite and 
 Ericsson, if it be ready in time. The other engines will be those 
 constructed by Mr. Stephenson, and each of them will draw about 
 a hundred persons. On their arrival at Manchester, the com- 
 pany will enter the upper stories of the warehouses by means of 
 a spacious outside wooden staircase, which is in course of erec- 
 tion for the purpose by Mr. Bellhouse. The upper story of the 
 range of warehouses is divided into five apartments, each meas- 
 uring sixty-six feet by fifty -six. In four of these a number of 
 tables (which Mr. Bellhouse is also preparing) will be placed, and 
 the company will partake of a splendid cold collation which is to 
 be provided by Mr. Lynn, of the Waterloo Hotel, Liverpool. A 
 large apartment at the east end of the warehouses will be re- 
 served as a withdrawing room for the ladies, and is partitioned 
 off for that purpose. After partaking of the hospitality of the 
 directors, the company will return to Liverpool in the same order 
 in which they arrive. We understand that each shareholder in
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 1 5 
 
 the railway will be entitled to a seat (transferable) in one of the 
 carriages, on this interesting and important occasion. It maybe 
 proper to state, for the information of the public, that no one will 
 be permitted to go upon the railway between Ordsall lane and 
 the warehouses, and parties of the military and police will be 
 placed to preserve order, and prevent intrusion. Beyond Ord- 
 sall lane, however, the public will be freely admitted to view the 
 procession as it passes : and no restriction will be laid upon them 
 farther than may be requisite to prevent them from approaching 
 too close to the rails, lest accidents should occur. By extending 
 themselves along either side of the road towards Eccles any 
 number of people, however great, may be easily accommodated." 
 
 It only remained to successfully carry out on the 
 the 1 5th the programme thus carefully laid down. 
 Of their ability so to do the directors of the company 
 probably entertained little doubt. Yet there were 
 circumstances connected with the then condition of 
 public affairs which might well have occasioned them 
 some uneasiness. Never in modern times had Eng- 
 land passed through a sadder or more anxious period 
 than that during which the Manchester & Liver- 
 pool road was built. The great reaction which nat- 
 urally followed the close of the long Napoleonic wars 
 was coming to a close, and the patience of all, and the 
 endurance of many, were thoroughly worn out. The 
 suffering of the poorer classes, especially in the manu- 
 facturing districts, was extremely severe, and the con- 
 sequent popular discontent so great that even the 
 semblance of order was with difficulty preserved. 
 Half the counties in England were nightly illum- 
 ined by incendiary fires. A fierce political agitation
 
 1 6 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 was also raging. The Duke of Wellington was prime 
 minister. The cry for parliamentary reform was 
 loud, and against any compliance with that cry the 
 prime minister had set his face like a flint. From 
 being the most popular man in the kingdom, he had 
 become the most unpopular. He lived in constant 
 danger of being hustled wherever he showed himself, 
 even if he escaped mobbing. And now this man, 
 hard, ungracious in manner, unyielding as iron, the 
 object of intense popular odium, was coming down 
 into the very hot-bed of suffering and agitation to take 
 the prominent part, to be the guest of honor upon 
 an occasion which was sure to call out the entire 
 mass of the population. Whether the directors of 
 the company realized it or no, the experiment was a 
 perilous one. In spite of every precaution the day 
 might not improbably end in a riot, possibly in a 
 revolution. At last it came, and the contemporane- 
 ous reporter has left of it the following account : 
 
 " The town itself [Liverpool] was never so full of strangers ; 
 they poured in during the last and the beginning of the present 
 week from almost all parts of the three kingdoms, and we be- 
 lieve that through Chester alone, which .is by no means a prin- 
 cipal road to Liverpool, four hundred extra passengers were 
 forwarded on Tuesday. All the inns in the town were crowded 
 to overflowing, and carriages stood in the streets at night, for 
 want of room in the stable yards. 
 
 " On the morning of Wednesday the population of the town 
 and of the country began very early to assemble near the rail- 
 way. The weather was favorable, and the Company's station 
 at the boundary of the town was the rendezvous of the nobility
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. I/ 
 
 and gentry who attended, to form the procession at Manchester. 
 Never was there such an assemblage of rank, wealth, beauty, 
 and fashion in this neighborhood. From before nine o'clock 
 until ten the entrance in Crown street was thronged by the splen- 
 did equipages from which the company was alighting, and the 
 area in which the railway carriages were placed was gradually 
 filling with gay groups eagerly searching for their respective 
 places, as indicated by numbers corresponding with those on 
 their tickets. The large and elegant car constructed for the no- 
 bility, and the accompanying cars for the Directors and the 
 musicians were seen through the lesser tunnel, where persons 
 moving about at the far end appeared as diminutive as if viewed 
 through a concave glass. The effect was singular and striking. 
 In a short time all those cars were brought along the tunnel into 
 the yard which then contained all the carriages, which were to 
 be attached to the eight locomotive engines which were in read- 
 iness beyond the tunnel in the great excavation at Edge-hill. 
 By this time the area presented a beautiful spectacle, thirty- 
 three carriages being filled by elegantly dressed persons, each 
 train of carriages being distinguished by silk flags of different 
 colors ; the band of the fourth King's Own Regiment, stationed 
 in the adjoining area, playing military airs, the Wellington Har- 
 monic Band, in a Grecian car for the procession, performing 
 many beautiful miscellaneous pieces ; and a third band occupy- 
 ing a stage above Mr. Harding's Grand Stand, at William the 
 Fourth's Hotel, spiritedly adding to the liveliness of the hour 
 whenever the other bands ceased. 
 
 " A few minutes before ten, the discharge of a gun and the 
 cheers of the assembly announced the arrival of the Duke of 
 Wellington, who entered the area with the Marquis and Mar- 
 chioness of Salisbury and a number of friends, the band playing 
 "See the conquering Hero comes." He returned the congratu- 
 lations of the company, and in a few moments the grand car, 
 which he and the nobility and the principal gentry occupied, and 
 the cars attached to it, were permitted to proceed ; we say per-
 
 1 8 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 mitted, because no applied power, except a slight impulse at 
 first is requisite to propel carriages along the tunnel, the slope 
 being just sufficient to call into effect the principle of gravitation. 
 The tunnel was lighted with gas, and the motion in passing 
 through it must have been as pleasing as it was novel to all the 
 party. On arriving at the engine station, the cars were attached 
 to the Northumbrian, locomotive engine, on the southern of the 
 two lines of rail ; and immediately the other trains of carriages 
 started through the tunnel and were attached to their respective 
 engines on the northern of the lines. 
 
 " We had the good fortune to have a place in the first train 
 after the grand cars, which train, drawn by the Phoenix, consisted 
 of three open and two close carriages, each carrying twenty-six 
 ladies and gentlemen. The lofty banks of the engine station 
 were crowded with thousands of spectators, whose enthusiastic 
 cheering seemed to rend the air. From this point to Wavertree- 
 lane, while the procession was forming, the grand cars passed 
 and repassed the other trains of carriages several times, running 
 as they did in the same direction on the two parallel tracks, 
 which gave the assembled thousands and tens of thousands the 
 opportunity of seeing distinctly the illustrious strangers, whose 
 presence gave extraordinary interest to the scene. Some soldiers 
 of the 4th Regiment assisted the railway police in keeping the 
 way clear and preserving order, and they discharged their duty in 
 a very proper manner. A few minutes before eleven all was ready 
 for the journey, and certainly a journey upon a railway is one of 
 the most delightful that can be imagined. Our first thoughts it 
 might be supposed, from the road being so level, were that it must 
 be monotonous and uninteresting. It is precisely the contrary ; for 
 as the road does not rise and fall like the ground over which we 
 pass, but proceeds nearly at a level, whether the land be high or 
 low, we are at one moment drawn through a hill, and find our- 
 selves seventy feet below the surface, in an Alpine chasm, and 
 at another we are as many feet above the green fields, traversing 
 a raised path, from which we look down upon the roofs of frame
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 19 
 
 houses, and see the distant hills and woods. These variations 
 give an interest to such a journey which cannot be appreciated 
 until they are witnessed. The signal gun being fired, we started 
 in beautiful style, amidst the deafening plaudits of the well- 
 dressed people who thronged the numerous booths, and all the 
 walls and eminences on both sides the line. Our speed was 
 gradually increased till, entering the Olive Mountain excavation, 
 we rushed into the awful chasm at the rate of twenty-four miles 
 an hour. The banks, the bridges over our heads, and the rude 
 projecting corners along the sides, were covered with masses of 
 human beings past whom we glided as if upon the wings of the 
 wind. We soon came into the open country of Broad Green, 
 having fine views of Huyton and Prescot on the left, and the hilly 
 grounds of Cheshire on the right. Vehicles of every description 
 stood in the fields on both sides, and thousands of spectators 
 still lined the margin of the road ; some horses seemed alarmed, 
 but after trotting with their carriages to the farther hedges, they 
 stood still as if their fears had subsided. After passing Whiston, 
 sometimes going slowly, sometimes swiftly, we observed that a 
 vista formed by several bridges crossing the road gave a pleasing 
 effect to the view. Under Rainhill Bridge, which, like all the 
 others, was crowded with spectators, the Duke's car stopped until 
 we passed, and on this, as on similar occasions, we had excellent 
 opportunities of seeing the whole of the noble party, distinguish- 
 ing the Marquis and Marchioness of Salisbury, the Earl and 
 Countess of Wilton, Lord Stanley and others, in the fore part of 
 the car ; along side of the latter part was Mr. Huskisson, stand- 
 ing with his face always toward us ; and further behind was Lord 
 Hill, and others, among whom the Mayor of Liverpool took his 
 station. At this place Mr. Bretherton had a large party of friends 
 in a field, overlooking the road. As we approached the Sutton in- 
 clined plane the Duke's car passed us again at a most rapid rate 
 it appeared rapid even to us who were travelling then at, prob- 
 ably, fifteen miles an hour. We had a fine view of Billings hill 
 from this neighborhood, and of a thousand various colored fields.
 
 2O THE GENESIS OF 
 
 A grand stand was here erected, beautifully decorated, and 
 crowded with ladies and gentlemen from St. Helen's and the 
 neighborhood. Entering upon Parr Moss we had a good view 
 of Newton Race Course and the stands, and at this time the 
 Duke was far ahead of us ; the grand cars appeared actually of 
 diminutive dimensions, and in a shorMime we saw them gliding 
 beautifully over the Sankey Viaduct, from which a scene truly 
 magnificent lay before us. 
 
 " The fields below us were occupied by thousands who cheer- 
 ed us as we passed over the stupendous edifice ; carriages filled the 
 narrow lanes, and vessels in the water had been detained in order 
 -that their crews might gaze up at the gorgeous pageant passing 
 far above their mast heads. Here again was a grand stand, and 
 here again enthusiastic plaudits almost deafened us. Shortly, 
 we passed the borough of Newton, crossing a fine bridge over 
 the Warrington road, and reached Parkside, seventeen miles 
 from Liverpool, in about four minutes under the hour. At this 
 place the engines were ranged under different watering stations 
 to receive fresh water, the whole extending along nearly a half a 
 mile of road. Our train and two others passed the Duke's car, 
 and we. in the first train had had our engine supplied with water, 
 and were ready to start, some time before we were aware of the 
 melancholy cause of our apparently great delay. We had, most 
 of us, alighted, and were walking about, congratulating each 
 other generally, and the ladies particularly, on the truly delight- 
 ful treat we were enjoying, all hearts bounding with joyous ex- 
 citement, and every tongue eloquent in the praise of the gigan- 
 tic work now completed, and the advantages and pleasures it af- 
 forded. A murmur and an agitation at a little distance beto- 
 kened something alarming and we too soon learned the nature of 
 that lamentable event, which we cannot record without the most 
 agonized feelings. On inquiring, we learnt the dreadful par- 
 ticulars. After three of the engines with their trains had passed 
 the Duke's carriage, although the others had to follow, the com- 
 pany began to alight from all the carriages which had arrived.
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 21 
 
 The Duke of Wellington and Mr. Huskisson had just shaken 
 hands, and Mr. Huskisson, Prince Esterhazy, Mr. Birch, Mr. H. 
 Earle, Mr. William Holmes, M. P. and others were standing in 
 the road, when the other carriages were approaching. An alarm 
 being given, most of the gentlemen sprang into the carriage, but 
 Mr. Huskisson seemed flurried, and from some cause, not clearly 
 ascertained, he fell under the engine of the approaching carriages, 
 the wheel of which shattered his leg in the most dreadful man- 
 ner. On being raised from the ground by the Earl of Wilton, 
 Mr. Holmes, and other gentlemen, his only exclamations were; 
 " Where is Mrs. Huskisson ? I have met my death. God 
 forgive me." Immediately after he swooned. Dr. Brandreth, 
 and Dr. Southey, of London, immediately applied bandages to 
 the limb. In a short time the engine was detached from the 
 Duke's carriage, and the musician's car being prepared for the 
 purpose, the Right Honorable gentleman was placed in it, ac- 
 companied by his afflicted lady, with Doctor Brandreth, Dr. 
 Southey, Earl of Wilton, and Mr. Stephenson, who set off in the 
 direction of Manchester. 
 
 " The whole of the procession remained at least another hour 
 uncertain what course to adopt. A consultation was held on the 
 open part of the road, and the Duke of Wellington was soon 
 surrounded by the Directors, and a mournful group of gentle- 
 men. At first it was thought advisable to return to Liverpool, 
 merely dispatching one engine and a set of carriages, to convey 
 home Lady Wilton, and others who did not wish to return to 
 Liverpool. The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel seemed 
 to favor this course ; others thought it best to proceed as origi- 
 nally intended : but no decision was made Jtill the Boroughreeve 
 of Manchester stated, that if ihe procession did not reach Man- 
 chester, where an unprecedented concourse of people would be 
 assembled, and would wait for it, he should be fearful of the 
 consequences to the peace of the town. This turned the scale 
 and his Grace then proposed that the whole party should pro- 
 ceed, and return as soon as possible, all festivity at Manchester
 
 22 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 being avoided. The Phoenix, with its train, was then attached 
 to the North Star and its train, and from the two united a long 
 chain was affixed to his Grace's car, and although it was on the 
 other line of rail, it was found to draw the whole along exceed- 
 ingly well. About half-past one, we resumed our journey ; and 
 we should here mention that the Wigan Branch Railway Com- 
 pany had erected near Parkside bridge, a grand stand, which 
 they and their friends occupied, and from which they enthusi- 
 astically cheered the procession. On reaching the twentieth 
 mile post we had a beautiful view of Rivington Pike, and Black- 
 stone Edge, and at the twenty-first the smoke of Manchester 
 appeared to be directly at the termination of our view. Groups 
 of people continued to cheer us, but we could not reply ; our 
 enjoyment was over. Tyldesley Church, and a vast region of 
 smiling fields here met the eye, as we traversed the flat surface 
 of Chat Moss, in the midst of which a vast crowd was assembled 
 to greet us with their plaudits ; and from the twenty-fourth mile 
 post we began to find ourselves flanked on both sides by spec- 
 tators extending in a continuous and thickening body all the way 
 to Manchester. At the twenty-fifth mile post we met Mr. Ste- 
 phenson returning with the Northumbrian engine. In answer 
 to innumerable and eager inquiries, Mr. Stephenson said he had 
 left Mr. Huskisson at the house of the Rev. Mr. Blackburn, Vicar 
 of Eccles, and had then proceeded to Manchester, whence he 
 brought back medical assistance, and that the surgeons, after 
 seeing Mr. Huskisson, had expressed a hope that there was no 
 danger. Mr. Stephenson's speed had been at the rate of thirty- 
 four miles an hour during this painful errand. The engine being 
 then again attached Jx> the Duke's car, the procession dashed 
 forward, passing countless thousands of people upon house tops, 
 booths, high ground, bridges, etc., and our readers must im- 
 agine, for we cannot describe, such a movement through an 
 avenue of living beings, and extending six miles in length. Upon 
 one bridge a tri-colored flag was displayed ; near another the 
 motto of " Vote by ballot " was seen ; in a field near Eccles, a
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 2$ 
 
 poor and wretchedly-dressed man had his loom close to the 
 roadside, and was weaving with all his might ; cries of " No 
 Corn Laws," were occasionally heard, and for about two miles 
 the cheerings of the crowd were interspersed with a continual 
 hissing and hooting from the minority. On approaching the 
 bridge which crosses the Irwell, the 59th regiment was drawn 
 up, flanking the road on each side, and presenting arms as his 
 Grace passed along. We reached the warehouses at a quarter 
 before three, and those who alighted were shown into the large 
 upper rooms where a most elegant cold collation had been pre- 
 pared by Mr. Lynn, for more than one thousand persons. The 
 greater portion of the company, as the carriages continued to 
 arrive, visited the rooms and partook in silence of some refresh- 
 ment. They then returned to their carriages which had been 
 properly placed for returning. His Grace and the principal 
 party did not alight ; but he went through a most fatiguing 
 office for more than an hour and a half, in shaking hands with 
 thousands of people, to whom he stooped over the hand rail of 
 the carriage, and who seemed insatiable in their desire to join 
 hands with him. Many women brought their children to him, 
 lifting them up that he might bless them, which he did, and 
 during the whole time he had scarcely a minute's respite. At 
 half past four the Duke's car began to move away for Liverpool. 
 " They would have been detained a little longer, in order 
 that three of the engines, which had been to Eccles for water, 
 might have dropped into the rear to take their places ; but Mr. 
 Lavender represented that the crowd was so thickening in upon 
 all sides, and becoming so clamorous for admission into the area, 
 that he would not answer for the peace of the town, if further 
 delay took place. The three engines were on the same line of 
 rail as the Duke, and they could not cross to the other line with- 
 out getting to a turning place, and as the Duke could not be de- 
 layed on account of his keeping the crowd together, there was 
 no alternative but to send the engines forward. One of the 
 other engines was then attached to our train, and we followed
 
 24 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 the Duke rapidly, while the six trains behind had only three en- 
 gines left to bring them back. Of course, we kept pace with 
 the Duke, who stopped at Eccles to inquire after Mr. Huskis- 
 son. The answer received was that there was now no hope of 
 his life being saved ; and this intelligence plunged the whole 
 party into still deeper distress. We proceeded without meeting 
 any fresh incident, until we passed Prescot, where we found 
 two of the three engines at the 6 mile post, where a turning 
 had been effected, but the third had gone on to Liverpool ; we 
 then detached the one we had borrowed, and the three set out 
 to meet the six remaining trains of carriages. Our carriages 
 were then connected with the grand cars, the engine of which 
 now drew the whole number of nine carriages, containing nearly 
 three hundred persons, at a very smart rate. We were now get- 
 ting into vast crowds of people, most of them ignorant of the 
 dreadful event which had taken place, and all of them giving us 
 enthusiastic cheers which we could not return. 
 
 " At Roby, his Grace and the Childwalls alighted and pro- 
 ceeded home ; our carriages then moved forward to Liverpool, 
 where we arrived about seven o'clock, and went down the great 
 tunnel, under the town, a part of the work which, more than any 
 other, astonished the numerous strangers present. It is, indeed, 
 a wonderful work, and makes an impression never to be effaced 
 from the memory. The Company's yard, from Saint James's 
 street to Wapping, was filled with carriages waiting for the re- 
 turning parties, who separated with feelings of mingled grati- 
 fication and distress, to which we shall not attempt to give ut- 
 terance. We afterwards learnt that the parties we left at Man- 
 chester placed the three remaining engines together, and all the 
 carriages together, so as to form one grand procession, includ- 
 ing twenty-four carriages, and were coming home at a steady 
 pace, when they were met near Newton by the other three en- 
 gines, which were then attached to the rest, and they arrived in 
 Liverpool about ten o'clock. 
 
 " Thus ended a pageant, which, for importance as to its ob-
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 2$ 
 
 ject and grandeur in its details, is admitted to have exceeded 
 anything ever witnessed. We conversed with many gentlemen 
 of great experience in public life, who spoke of the scene as sur- 
 passing anything they had ever beheld, and who computed, upon 
 data which they considered to be satisfactory, that not fewer than 
 500,000 persons must have been spectators of the procession." 
 
 So far from being a success, the occasion was, after 
 the accident to Mr. Huskisson, such a series of mor- 
 tifying disappointments and the Duke of Wellington's 
 experience at Manchester had been so very far re- 
 moved from gratifying, that the directors of the com- 
 pany felt moved to exonerate themselves from the 
 load of censure by an official explanation. This they 
 did in the following language : 
 
 " On the subject of delay which took place in the starting from 
 Manchester, and consequently in the arrival at Liverpool, of the 
 last three engines, with twenty-four carriages and six hundred 
 passengers, being the train allotted to six of the engines, we are 
 authorized to state that the directors think it due to the proprie- 
 tors and others constituting the large assemblage of company in 
 the above trains to make known the following particulars : 
 
 " Three out of the six locomotive engines, which belonged to 
 the above teams, had proceeded on the south road from Man- 
 chester to Eccles, to take in water, with the intention of return- 
 ing to Manchester, and so getting out of that line of road before 
 any of the trains should start on their return home. Before this, 
 however, was accomplished, the following circumstances seemed 
 to render it imperative for the train of carriages, containing the 
 Duke of Wellington and a great many of the distinguished visit- 
 ors to leave Manchester. The eagerness on the part of the crowd 
 to see the Duke, and to shake hands with him, was very great, 
 so much so, that his Grace held out both his hands to the press- 
 
 2
 
 26 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 ing multitude at the same time : the assembling crowd becom- 
 ing more dense every minute, closely surrounded the carriages, 
 as the principal attraction was this particular train. The diffi- 
 culty of proceeding at all increased every moment and conse- 
 quently the danger of accident upon the attempt being made to 
 force a way through the throng also increased. At this junc- 
 ture Mr. Lavender, the head of the police establishment of Man- 
 chester, interfered, and entreated that the Duke's train should 
 move on. or he could not answer for the consequences. Under 
 these circumstances, and the day being well advanced, it was 
 thought expedient at all events to move forward while it was 
 still practicable to do so. The order was accordingly given, 
 and the train passed along out of the immediate neighborhood 
 of Manchester without accident to any one. When they had 
 proceeded a few miles they fell in with the engines belonging to 
 the trains left at Manchester, and these engines being on the 
 same line as the carriages of the procession, there was no alter- 
 native but bringing the Duke's train back through the dense 
 multitude to Manchester, or proceeding with three extra engines 
 to the neighborhood of Liverpool, (all passing places from one 
 road to the other being removed, with a view to safety, on the 
 occasion,) and afterwards sending them back to the assistance 
 of the trains unfortunately left behind. It was determined to 
 proceed towards Liverpool, as being decidedly the most advis- 
 able course under the circumstances of the case ; and it may be 
 mentioned for the satisfaction of any party who may have con- 
 sidered that he was in some measure left in the lurch, that Mr. 
 Moss, the Deputy Chairman, had left Mrs. Moss and several of 
 his family to come with the trains which had been so left behind. 
 Three engines having to draw a load calculated for six, their 
 progress was of course much retarded, besides a considerable 
 delay which took place before the starting of the last trains, 
 owing to the uncertainty which existed as to what had become 
 of the three missing engines. These engines, after proceeding 
 to within a few miles of Liverpool, were enabled to return to
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM, 2J 
 
 Parkside (in the neighborhood of Newton) where they were at- 
 tached to the other three, and the whole proceeding safely to 
 Liverpool, where they arrived at ten in the evening." 
 
 The case was, however, here stated, to say the 
 least, in the mildest possible manner. The fact was 
 that the authorities at Manchester had, and not 
 without reason, passed a very panic-stricken hour on 
 account of the Duke of Wellington. That person- 
 age had been in a position of no inconsiderable 
 peril. Though the reporter preserved a decorous 
 silence on that point, the ministerial car had on the 
 way been pelted, as well as hooted ; and at Manches- 
 ter a vast mass of not particularly well disposed per- 
 sons had fairly overwhelmed both police and soldiery, 
 and had taken complete possession of the tracks. 
 They were not riotous, but they were very rough ; 
 and they insisted on climbing upon the carriages and 
 pressing their attentions on the distinguished inmates 
 in a manner somewhat at variance with English ideas 
 of propriety. The Duke's efforts at conciliatory 
 manners, as evinced through much hand-shaking 
 and baby-kissing, were not without significance. It 
 was small matter for wonder, therefore, that the 
 terrified authorities, before they got him out of their 
 town, heartily regretted that they had not allowed 
 him to have his own way after the accident to Mr. 
 Huskisson, when he proposed to turn back without 
 coming to it. Having once got him safely started 
 back to Liverpool, therefore, they preferred to leave 
 the other guests to take care of themselves, rather
 
 2S THE GENESIS OF 
 
 than have the Duke face the crowd again. As there 
 were no sidings on that early road, and the connections 
 between the tracks had, as a measure of safety, been 
 temporarily removed, the ministerial train in moving 
 towards Liverpool had necessarily shoved before it 
 the engines belonging to the other trains. The 
 unfortunate guests on those other trains, thus left to 
 their fate, had for the rest of the day a very dreary 
 time of it. To avoid accidents, the six trains 
 abandoned at Manchester were united into one, to 
 which were attached the three locomotives remaining. 
 In this form they started. Presently the strain broke 
 the couplings. Pieces of rope were then put in 
 requisition, and again they got in motion. In due 
 time the three other engines came along, but they 
 could only be used by putting them on in front of 
 the three already attached to the train. Two of 
 them were used in that way, and the eleven cars thus 
 drawn by five locomotives, and preceded at a short 
 distance by one other, went on towards Liverpool. 
 It was dark, and to meet the exigencies of the occa- 
 sion the first germ of the present elaborate system 
 of railroad night signals was improvised on the spot. 
 From the foremost and pioneer locomotive obstacles 
 were signalled to the train locomotives by the very 
 primitive expedient of swinging the lighted end of a 
 tar-rope. At Rainhill the weight of the train proved 
 too much for the combined motive-power, and the 
 thoroughly wearied passengers had to leave their 
 carriages and walk up the incline. When they got to
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 2g 
 
 the summit and resuming their seats, were again in 
 motion, fresh delay was occasioned by the leading 
 locomotive running into a wheel-barrow, maliciously 
 placed on the track to obstruct it. Not until ten 
 o'clock did they enter the tunnel at Liverpool. 
 Meanwhile all sorts of rumors of general disaster had 
 for hours been circulating among the vast concourse 
 of spectators who were assembled waiting for their 
 friends, and whose relief expressed itself in hearty 
 cheers as the train at last rolled safely into the 
 station. 
 
 We have also Miss Kemble's story of this day, to 
 which in her letter of August 25th she had looked 
 forward with such eager interest. With her father 
 and mother she had been staying at a country place 
 in Lancashire, and in her account of the affair written 
 in 1876 she says : 
 
 " The whole gay party assembled at Heaton, my mother and 
 myself included, went to Liverpool for the opening of the rail- 
 road. The throng of strangers gathered there for the same pur- 
 pose made it almost impossible to obtain a night's lodging for 
 love or money ; and glad and thankful were we, to put up with 
 and be put up in a tiny garret by an old friend, Mr. Redley, of 
 the Adelphi, which many would have given twice what we paid 
 to obtain. The clay opened gloriously, and never was an innu- 
 merable concourse of sight-seers in better humor than the surg- 
 ing, swaying crowd that lined the railroad with living faces. . . . 
 After this disastrous event [the accident to Mr. Huskisson,] the 
 clay became overcast, and as we neared Manchester the sky grew 
 cloudy and dark, and it began to rain. The vast concourse of 
 people who had assembled to witness the triumphant arrival of 
 the successful travelers was of the lowest order of mechanics
 
 3O THE GENESIS OF 
 
 and artisans, among whom great distress and a dangerous spirit 
 of discontent with the government at that time prevailed. Groans 
 and hisses greeted the carriage, full of influential personages, in 
 which the Duke of Wellington sat. High above the grim and" 
 grimy crowd of scowling faces a loom had been erected, at which 
 sat a tattered, starved-looking weaver, evidently set there as a 
 representative man, to protest against this triumph of machinery, 
 and the gain and glory which the wealthy Liverpool and Man- 
 chester men were likely to derive from it. The contrast between 
 our departure from Liverpool and our arrival at Manchester was 
 one of the most striking things I ever witnessed. * * * 
 
 MANCHESTER, September 2Oth, 1830. 
 MY DEAREST H : 
 
 " You probably have by this time heard and read accounts of 
 the opening of the railroad, and the fearful accident which oc- 
 curred at it, for the papers are full of nothing else. The accident 
 you mention did occur, but though the unfortunate man who was 
 killed bore Mr. Stephenson's name, he was not related to him. 
 [Besides Mr. Huskisson, another man named Stephenson had 
 about this time been killed on the railroad.] I will tell you 
 something of the events on the fifteenth, as, though you 
 may be acquainted with the circumstances of poor Mr. Hus- 
 kisson's death, none but an eye-witness of the whole scene 
 can form a conception of it. I told you that we had had places 
 given to us, and* it was the main purpose of our returning from 
 Birmingham to Manchester to be present at what promised to 
 be one of the most striking events in the scientific annals of our 
 country. We started on Wednesday last, to the numberof about 
 eight hundred people, in carriages constructed as I before de- 
 scribed to you. The most intense curiosity and excitement pre- 
 vailed, and though the weather was uncertain, enormous masses 
 of densely packed people lined the road, shouting and waving 
 hats and handkerchiefs as we flew by them. What with the
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 3 1 
 
 sight and sound of these cheering multitudes and the tremen- 
 dous velocity with which we were borne past them, my spirits 
 rose to the true champagne height, and I never enjoyed anything 
 so much as the first hour of our progress. I had been unluckily 
 separated from my mother in the first distribution of places, but 
 by an exchange of seats which she was enabled to make she re- 
 joined me, when I was at the height of my ecstacy, which was 
 considerably damped by finding that she was frightened to death, 
 and intent upon nothing but devising means of escaping from a 
 situation which appeared to her to threaten with instant annihila- 
 tion herself and all her travelling companions. While I was 
 chewing the cud of this disappointment, which was rather bitter, 
 as I expected her to be as delighted as myself with our excur- 
 sion, a man flew by us, calling out through a speaking trumpet 
 to stop the engine, for that somebody in the directors' car had 
 sustained an injury. We were all stopped accordingly and pres- 
 ently a hundred voices were heard exclaiming that Mr. Huskis- 
 son was killed. The confusion that ensued is indescribable ; the 
 calling out from carriage to carriage to ascertain the truth, the 
 contrary reports which were sent back to us, the hundred ques- 
 tions eagerly uttered at once, and the repeated and urgent de- 
 mands for surgical assistance, created asudden turmoil that was 
 quite sickening. At last we distinctly ascertained that the un- 
 fortunate man's thigh was broken. 
 
 " From Lady W , who was in the duke's carriage, and 
 within three yards of the spot where the accident happened, I 
 had the following details, the horror of witnessing which we 
 were spared through our situation behind the great carriage. 
 The engine had stopped to take in a supply of water, and sev- 
 eral of the gentlemen in the directors' carriage had jumped out 
 to look about them. Lord W , Count Batthyany, Count Ma- 
 tuscenitz, and Mr. Huskisson among the rest were standing 
 talking in the middle of the road, when an engine on the other 
 line, which was parading up and down merely to show its speed, 
 was seen coming down upon them like lightning. The most
 
 32 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 active of those in peril sprang back into their seats ; Lord W 
 saved his life only by rushing behind the duke's carriage, Count 
 Matuscenitz had but just leaped into it, with the engine all but 
 touching his heels as he did so ; while poor Mr. Huskisson, less 
 active from the effects of age and ill health, bewildered too by 
 the frantic cries of ' Stop the engine ! Clear the track ! ' that 
 resounded on all sides, completely lost his head, looked help- 
 lessly to the right and left, and was instantaneously prostrated 
 by the fatal machine, which dashed down like a thunderbolt 
 upon him, and passed over his leg, smashing and mangling it in 
 the most horrible way. (Lady W said she distinctly heard 
 the crushing of the bone.) So terrible was the effect of the ap- 
 palling accident that except that ghastly " crushing " and poor 
 Mrs. Huskisson 's piercing shriek, not a sound was heard or a. 
 word uttered among the immediate spectators of the catastrophe. 
 Lord W was the first to raise the poor sufferer, and calling to 
 his aid his surgical skill, which is considerable, he tied up the 
 severed artery, and for a time at least, prevented death by a loss 
 of blood. Mr. Huskisson was then placed in a carriage with his 
 wife and Lord W , and the engine having been detached from 
 the directors' carriage, conveyed them to Manchester. So great 
 was the shock produced upon the whole party by this event that 
 the Duke of Wellington declared his intention not to proceed, 
 but to return immediately to Liverpool. However, upon its 
 being represented to him that the whole population of Man- 
 chester had turned out to witness the procession, and that a dis- 
 appointment might give rise to riots and disturbances, he con- 
 sented to go on, and gloomily enough the rest of the journey 
 was accomplished. We had intended returning to Liverpool by 
 the railroad, but Lady W , who seized upon me in the midst 
 of the crowd, persuaded us to accompany her home, which we 
 gladly did. Lord W , did not return till past ten o'clock, at 
 which hour he brought the intelligence of Mr. Huskisson's 
 death. I need not tell you of the sort of whispering awe which 
 this event threw over our whole circle ; and yet great as was the
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 33 
 
 horror excited by it, I could not help feeling how evanescent the 
 effect of it was, after all. The shuddering terror of seeing our 
 fellow-creature thus struck down by our side, and the breathless 
 thankfulness for our own preservation, rendered the first even- 
 ing of our party at Heaton almost solemn ; but the next day 
 the occurrence became a subject of earnest, it is true, but free 
 discussion ; and after that was alluded to with almost as little 
 apparent feeling as if it had not passed under our eyes, and with- 
 in the space of a few hours." 
 
 In spite of accidents and contre-temps, however, 
 the road was opened to traffic, and at once proceeded 
 to outdo in its results the most eager anticipations of 
 its friends. No account of its first beginnings 
 would, however, be complete -for our time, which 
 did not also give an idea of the impressions produced 
 on one travelling over it before yet the novelty of 
 the thing had quite worn away. It was a long time, 
 comparatively, after September, 1830, before the men 
 who had made a trip over the railroad ceased to be 
 objects of deep curiosity. Here is the account of his 
 experience by one of these far-travelled men, with all 
 its freshness still lingering about it : 
 
 " Although the whole passage between Liverpool and Man- 
 chester is a series of enchantments, surpassing any in the Ara- 
 bian Nights, because they are realities, not fictions, yet there 
 are certain epochs in the transit which are peculiarly exciting. 
 These are the starlings, the ascents, the descents, the tunnels, 
 the Chat Moss, the meetings. At the instant of starting, or 
 rather before, the automaton belches forth an explosion of steam, 
 and seems for a second or two quiescent. But quickly the 
 explosions are reiterated, with shorter and shorter intervals, till 
 they become too rapid to be counted, though still distinct.
 
 34 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 These belchings or explosions more nearly resemble the pant- 
 ings of a lion or tiger, than any sound that has ever vibrated 
 on my ear. During the ascent they became slower and slower, 
 till the automaton actually labors like an animal out of breath, 
 from the tremendous efforts to gain the highest point of eleva- 
 tion. The progression is proportionate ; and before the said 
 point is gained, the train is not moving faster than a, horse can 
 pace. With the slow motion of the mighty and animated 
 machine, the breathing becomes more laborious, the growl 
 more distinct, till at length the animal appears exhausted, and 
 groans like the tiger, when overpowered in combat by the 
 buffalo. 
 
 " The moment that the height is reached and the descent 
 commences, the pantings rapidly increase ; the engine with its 
 train starts off with augmenting velocity; and in a few seconds 
 it is flying down the declivity like lightning, and with a uniform 
 growl or roar, like a continuous discharge of distant artillery. 
 
 "At this period, the whole train is going at the rate of thirty- 
 .five or forty miles an hour ! I was on the outside, and in front 
 of the first carriage, just over the engine. The scene was mag- 
 nificent, I had almost said terrific. Although it was a dead 
 calm the wind appeared to be blowing a hurricane, such was 
 the velocity with which we darted through the air. Yet all was 
 steady ; and there was something in the precision of the ma- 
 chinery that inspired a degree of confidence over fear of safety 
 over danger. A man may travel from the Pole to the Equator, 
 from the Straits of Malacca to the Isthmus of Darien, and he 
 will see nothing so astonishing as this. The pangs of Etna and 
 Vesuvius excite feelings of horror as well as of terror ; the con- 
 vulsion of the elements during a thunderstorm carries with it 
 nothing but pride, much less of pleasure, to counteract the awe 
 inspired by the fearful workings of perturbed nature ; but the 
 scene which is here presented, and which I cannot adequately 
 describe, engenders a proud consciousness of superiority in hu- 
 man ingenuity, more intense and convincing than any effort or
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 35 
 
 product of the poet, the painter, the philosopher, or the divine. 
 The projections or transits of the train through the tunnels or 
 arches, are very electrifying. The deafening peal of thunder, 
 the sudden immersion in gloom, and the clash of reverberated 
 sounds in confined space, combine to produce a momentary 
 shudder or idea of destruction a thrill of annihilation, which is 
 instantly dispelled on emerging into the cheerful light. 
 
 " The meetings or crossings of the steam trains flying in op- 
 posite directions are scarcely less agitating to the nerves than 
 their transits through the tunnels. The velocity of their course, 
 the propinquity or apparent identity of the iron orbits along 
 which these meteors move, call forth the involuntary but fearful 
 thought of a possible collision, with all its horrible consequences. 
 The period of suspense, however, though exquisitely painful, is 
 but momentary ; and in a few seconds the object of terror is far 
 out of sight behind. 
 
 " Nor is the rapid passage across Chat Moss unworthy of 
 notice. The ingenuity with which two narrow rods of iron are 
 made to bear whole trains of wagons, laden with many hundred 
 tons of commerce, and bounding across a wide, semi-fluid mo- 
 rass, previously impassable by man or beast, is beyond all praise 
 and deserving of eternal record. Only conceive a slender bridge 
 of two minute iron rails, several miles in length, level as Waterloo, 
 elastic as whalebone, yet firm as adamant ! Along this splen- 
 did triumph of human genius this veritable via triumphalis 
 the train of carriages bounds with the velocity of the stricken 
 deer ; the vibrations of the resilient moss causing the ponderous 
 engine and its enormous suite to glide along the surface of an 
 extensive quagmire as safely as a practiced skater skims the icy 
 mirror of a frozen lake. 
 
 " The first class or train is the most fashionable, but the sec- 
 ond or third are the most amusing. I travelled one day from 
 Liverpool to Manchester in the lumber train. Many of the car- 
 riages were occupied by the swinish multitude, and others by a 
 multitude of swine. These last were naturally vociferous if not
 
 36 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 eloquent. It is evident that the other passengers would have 
 been considerably annoyed by the orators of this last group, had 
 there not been stationed in each carriage an officer somewhat 
 analogous to the Usher of the Black Rod, but whose designa- 
 tion on the railroad I found to be ' Comptroller of the Gammon.' 
 No sooner did one of the long-faced gentlemen raise his note too 
 high, or wag his jaw too long, than the ' Comptroller of the Gam- 
 mon ' gave him a whack over the snout with the butt end of his 
 shillelagh ; a snubber which never failed to stop his oratory for 
 the remainder of the journey." 
 
 To one familiar with the history of English rail- 
 road legislation the last paragraph is peculiarly sig- 
 nificant. For years after the railroad system was in- 
 augurated, and until legislation was invoked to com- 
 pel something better, the companies persisted in 
 carrying passengers of the third class in uncovered 
 carriages, exposed to all weather, and with no more 
 decencies or comforts than were accorded to swine. 
 
 Naturally, the beginning of the railroad system in 
 America, was neither so interesting nor so picturesque 
 as it had been in the case of Great Britain. At most 
 it was but an imitation ; and that too, on a small scale. 
 Yet, about all its details there was something which 
 cannot but be peculiarly suggestive to the American 
 of the present day. As you review the record, it 
 seems to relate to another country and almost to a 
 different world. With the Manchester & Liverpool 
 road this was not so. There the thing, for a begin- 
 ning, was on a large scale. The cost of the struc-
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 37 
 
 ture, the number of the locomotives, the fame of the 
 guests, the mass and excitement of the spectators 
 were all equal to the occasion. This was not so in 
 America. Everything was diminutive and poor in 
 1831. The provincialism of the time and place is 
 almost oppressive. In turning over the old records 
 the eye constantly rests on the names, familiar to us, 
 of men now living ; but it seems scarcely possible that 
 any human life can have spanned the well nigh in- 
 credible gap which separates the America of 1878 
 from that of 1830. Certainly, neither anywhere else 
 nor at any other time has the world in a space of less 
 than fifty years witnessed such extraordinary develop- 
 ment. 
 
 Whatever credit is due to the construction of the 
 first railroad ever built in America is usually claimed 
 for the State of Massachusetts. Every one who has 
 ever looked into a school history of the United States 
 knows something 8f the Quincy railway of 1826. 
 Properly speaking, however, this was never or at 
 least, never until the year 1871, a railroad at all. 
 It was nothing but a specimen of what had been al- 
 most from time immemorial in common use in Eng- 
 land, under the name of "tram-ways." Indeed it is a 
 curious illustration of the combined poverty and back- 
 wardness of America at that time, that so common and 
 familiar an appliance should only then have been in- 
 troduced, and should have excited so much interest 
 and astonishment. This road, known as the Granite 
 railway, was built by those interested in erecting the
 
 '38 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 Bunker Hill Monument, for the purpose of getting the 
 stone down from the Quincy quarries to a wharf on 
 Neponset River, from which it was shipped to its des- 
 tination. The whole distance was three miles, and the 
 cost of the road was about $34,000. At the quarry 
 end there was a steep inclined plane, up and down 
 which the cars were moved by means of a stationary 
 engine. From the foot of that incline the road sloped 
 gently off to its river terminus. There was nothing 
 in its construction which partook of the character of 
 a modern railroad. The tracks were five feet apart, 
 and laid on stone sleepers eight feet apart. On this 
 stone substructure wooden rails were laid, and upon 
 these another rail of strap iron. Down this road two 
 horses could draw a load of forty tons, and thus the 
 expense of moving stone from the quarries to the 
 river was reduced to about a sixth part of what it 
 was while the highway alone was in use. 
 
 Such was the famous Quiney railway, the con- 
 struction of which is still referred to as marking an 
 era of the first importance in American history. 
 Such, also, it remained down to the year 1871, a 
 mere tramway, operated exclusively by means of 
 horses. In that year the franchise- was at last pur- 
 chased by the Old Colony Railroad Company, the 
 ancient structure was completely demolished, and a 
 modern railroad built on the right of way. Through 
 the incorporation into it of the old Granite railway, 
 therefore, the line which connects the chief town of 
 what was once Plymouth Colony with the chief town
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 39 
 
 of what was once the colony of Massachusetts Bay 
 has become the oldest railroad line in America. In 
 this there is, so to speak, a manifest historical pro- 
 priety. 
 
 Apart, however, from the construction of the 
 Granite railway, Massachusetts was neither particu- 
 larly early nor particularly energetic in its railroad 
 development. At a later day many of her sister 
 States were in advance of her, and especially was this 
 true of South Carolina. There is, indeed, some 
 reason for believing that the South Carolina Rail- 
 road was the first ever constructed in any country 
 with a definite plan of operating it exclusively by 
 locomotive steam power. But in America there was 
 not, indeed from the very circumstances of the 
 case there could not have been, any such dramatic 
 occasions and surprises as those witnessed at Liver- 
 pool in 1829 and 1830. Nevertheless the people of 
 Charleston were pressing close on the heels of those 
 of Liverpool, for on the i$th of January 1831, 
 exactly four months after the formal opening of the 
 Manchester & Liverpool road, the first anniversary 
 of the South Carolina Railroad was celebrated with 
 due honor. A queer looking machine, the outline 
 of which was sufficient in itself to prove that the in- 
 ventor owed nothing to Stephenson, had been con- 
 structed at the West Point Foundry Works in New 
 York during the summer of 1830 a first attempt to 
 supply that locomotive power which the Board had, 
 with a sublime confidence in possibilities, unanimous-
 
 4O THE GENESIS OF 
 
 ly voted on the I4th of the preceding January should 
 alone be used on the road. The name of Best 
 Friend was given to this very simple product of na- 
 tive genius. The idea of the multitubular boiler had 
 not yet suggested itself in America. The Best 
 Friend, therefore, was supplied with a common ver- 
 tical boiler " in form of an old fashioned porter-bottle, 
 the furnace at the bottom surrounded with water, 
 and all filled inside of what we call teats, running out 
 from the sides and tops." By means of these pro- 
 jections, or " teats," a portion at least of the neces- 
 sary heating surface was provided. The cylinder 
 was at the front of the platform, the rear end of which 
 was occupied by the boiler, and it was fed by means 
 of a connecting pipe. Thanks to the indefatigable 
 researches of an enthusiast on railroad construction, 
 we have an account of the performances of this, and 
 all the other pioneers among American locomotives ; 
 and the pictures with which Mr. W. H. Brown has 
 enriched his book* would alone render it both curious 
 and valuable. Prior to the stockholders' anniversary 
 of January I5th, 1831, if seems that the Best Friend 
 had made several trial trips " running at the rate of 
 sixteen to twenty-one miles an hour, with forty or 
 fifty passengers in some four or five cars, and without 
 the cars, thirty to thirty-five miles per hour." The 
 stockholders' day was, however, a special occasion, and 
 the papers of the following Monday, for it happened 
 on a Saturday, gave the following account of it : 
 
 * The History of the First Locomotive in America.
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 41 
 
 " Notice having been previously given, inviting the stockhold- 
 ers, about one hundred and fifty assembled in the course of the 
 morning at the company's building in Line Street, together with 
 a number of invited guests. The weather the day and night 
 previous had been stormy, and the morning was cold and cloudy. 
 Anticipating a postponement of the ceremonies, the locomotive 
 engine had been taken to pieces for clean ing, but upon the as- 
 sembling of the company she was put in order, the cylinders new 
 packed, and, at the word, the apparatus was ready for movement. 
 The first trip was performed with two pleasure-cars attached, 
 and a small carriage, fitted for the occasion, upon which was a 
 detachment of United States troops and a field piece which had 
 been politely granted by Major Belton for the occasion. . . The 
 number of passengers brought down, which was performed in 
 two trips, was estimated at upward of two hundred. A band 
 of music enlivened the scene, and great hilarity and good humor 
 prevailed throughout the day." 
 
 The " great hilarity and good humor " of this occa- 
 sion no one can doubt who studies the supposed con- 
 temporaneous picture of it contained in Mr. Brown's 
 book. The pleasure must, however,Tiave been largely 
 due to novelty, inasmuch as a railroad journey on a 
 " cold and cloudy " January day, performed in " two 
 pleasure cars," between which and an " old fashioned 
 porter-bottle " of a locomotive, puffing out smoke and 
 cinders, there was nothing but a " small carriage " fit- 
 ted up to carry " a field piece," while a band of music 
 enlivened the whole taking all these ingredients to- 
 gether, it would not at this time seem easy to com- 
 pound from them a day of high physical enjoyment. 
 But the fathers were a race of simpler tastes* 
 
 It was not long, however, before the Best Friend
 
 42 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 came to serious grief. Naturally, and even necessarily, 
 inasmuch as it was a South Carolina institution, it was 
 provided with a negro fireman. It so happened that 
 this functionary while in the discharge of his duties was 
 much annoyed by the escape of steam from the safety- 
 valve, and, not having made himself complete master 
 of the principles underlying the use of steam as a 
 source of power, he took advantage of a temporary 
 absence of the engineer in charge to effect a radical 
 remedy of this cause of annoyance. He not only fast- 
 ened down the valve lever, but further made the thing 
 perfectly sure by sitting on it. The consequences were 
 hardly less disastrous to the Best Friend than to the 
 chattel fireman. Neither were of much further practi- 
 cal use. Before this mishap chanced, however, in June, 
 1831, a second locomotive, called the West Point, had 
 arrived in Charleston ; and this at last was construct- 
 ed on the principle of Stephenson's Rocket. In its 
 general aspect, indeed, it greatly resembled that al- 
 ready famous prototype. There is a very characteris- 
 tic and suggestive cut representing a trial trip made 
 with this locomotive on March 5th, 1831. The nerves 
 of the Charleston people had been a good deal dis- 
 turbed and their confidence in steam as a safe motor 
 shaken by the disaster which had befallen the Best 
 Friend. Mindful of this fact, and very properly so- 
 licitous- for the safety of their guests, the directors 
 now had recourse to a very simple and ingenious 
 expedient. They put what they called a " barrier car '' 
 between the locomotive and passenger coaches of the
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 43 
 
 train. This barrier car consisted of a platform on 
 wheels upon which were piled six bales of cotton. A 
 fortification was thus provided between the passengers 
 and any future negro sitting on the safety valve. We 
 are also assured that " the safety valve being out of 
 the reach of any person but the engineer, will contrib- 
 ute to the prevention of accidents in future, such as 
 befel the Best Friend. Judging by the cut which rep- 
 resents the train, this occasion must have been even 
 more marked for its "hilarity " than the earlier one 
 which has already been described. Besides the loco- 
 motive and the barrier car there are four passenger 
 coaches. In the first of these was a negro band, in 
 general appearance very closely resembling the min- 
 strels of a later day, the members of which are ener- 
 getically performing on musical instruments of vari- 
 ous familiar descriptions. Then follow three cars full 
 of the saddest possible looking white passengers, who 
 were present as we are informed to the number of 
 one hundred and seventeen. The excursion was, 
 however, highly successful, and two and a quarter 
 miles of road were passed over in the short space of 
 eight minutes, about the speed at which a good 
 horse would trot for the same distance. 
 
 This was in March, 1831. About six months 
 before, however, there had actually been a trial of 
 speed between a horse and one of the pioneer 
 locomotives, which had not resulted in favor of the 
 locomotive. It took place on the present Baltimore 
 & Ohio road upon the 28th of August, 1830. The
 
 44 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 engine in this case was contrived by no other than 
 Mr. Peter Cooper. And it affords a striking illus- 
 tration of how recent those events which now seem 
 so remote really were, that here is a man still living, 
 and among the most familiar to the eyes and mouths, 
 of the present generation, who was a contemporary 
 of Stephenson, and himself invented a locomotive 
 during the Rainhill year, being then nearly forty years 
 of age. The Cooper engine, however, was scarcely 
 more than a working model. Its active-minded 
 inventor hardly seems to have aimed at anything 
 more than a demonstration of possibilities. The 
 whole thing weighed only a ton, and was of one-horse 
 power ; in fact it was not larger than those, hand- 
 cars now in common use with railroad section-men. 
 The boiler, about the size of a modern kitchen boiler, 
 stood upright and was filled above the furnace, which 
 occupied the lower section, with vertical tubes. The 
 cylinder was but three and a half inches in diameter, 
 and the wheels were moved by gearing. In order to 
 secure the requisite pressure of steam in so small a 
 boiler, a sort of bellows was provided which was kept 
 in action by means of a drum attached to one of the 
 car-wheels over which passed a cord which worked a 
 pulley, which in turn worked the bellows. Thus of 
 Stephenson's two great devices, without either of 
 which his success at Rainhill would have been impos- 
 sible, the waste-steam blast and the multitubular 
 boiler, Peter Cooper had only got hold of the last. 
 He owed his defeat in the race between his engine
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 4$ 
 
 and a horse to the fact that he had not got hold of 
 the first. It happened in this wise. Several exper- 
 imental trips had been made with the little engine 
 on the Baltimore & Ohio road, the first sections of 
 which had recently been completed and were then 
 operated by means of horses. The success of these 
 trips was such, that at last, just seventeen days 
 before the formal opening of the Manchester & 
 Liverpool road on the other side of the Atlantic, a 
 small open car was attached to the engine, the name 
 of which, by the way, was Tom Thumb and upon 
 this a party of directors and their friends were 
 carried from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills and back; 
 a distance of some twenty-six miles. The trip out 
 was made in an hour and" was very successful. The 
 return was less so, and for the following reason : 
 
 " The great stage proprietors of the day were Stockton and 
 Stokes; and on that occasion a gallant gray, of great beauty 
 and power, was driven by them from town, attached to another 
 car on the second track for the company had begun by making 
 two tracks to the Mills and met the engine at the Relay House, 
 on its way back. From this point it was determined to have a 
 race home, and the start being even, away went horse and en- 
 gine, the snort of the one and the puff of the other keeping 
 tune and time. 
 
 " At first the gray had the best of it, for his steam would be 
 applied to the greatest advantage on the instant, while the en- 
 gine had to wait until the rotation of the wheels set the blower 
 to work. The horse was perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead, 
 when the safety valve of the engine lifted, and the thin blue 
 vapor issuing from it showed an excess of steam. The blower 
 whistled, the steam blew off in vapory clouds, the pace increased,
 
 46 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 the passengers shouted, the engine gained on the horse, soon it 
 lapped him the silk was plied the race was neck and neck, 
 nose and nose, then the engine passed the horse, and a great 
 hurrah hailed the victory. But it was not. repeated, for just at 
 this time, when the gray's master was about giving up, the band 
 which draws the pulley which moved the blower slipped from 
 the drum, the safety valve ceased to scream, and the engine, for 
 want of breath, began to wheeze and pant. In vain Mr. Cooper, 
 who was his own engineer and fireman, lacerated his hands in 
 attempting to replace the band upon the wheel ; the horse gained 
 on the machine and passed it, and although the band was pres- 
 ently replaced, and steam again did its best, the horse was too 
 far ahead to be overtaken, and came in the winner of the race." 
 
 Poor and crude as the country was, however, 
 America showed itself far more ready to take in the 
 far reaching consequences of the initiative which 
 Great Britain gave in 1830 than any other country in 
 the world. Belgium, under the enlightened rule of 
 King Leopold, did not move in the new departure 
 until 1834, and France was slower yet. The fact is, 
 however, that those countries did not feel the need 
 of the railroad at all in the same degree as either Eng- 
 land or America. They already had excellent systems 
 of roads which sufficed for all their present needs. 
 In America, on the contrary, the roads were few and 
 badly built ; while in England, though they were good 
 enough, the volume of traffic had outgrown their 
 capacity. America suffered from too few roads ; 
 England from too much traffic. Both were restlessly 
 casting about for some form of relief. Accordingly, 
 all through the time during which Stephenson was
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 47 
 
 fighting the battle of the locomotive, America, as if 
 in anticipation of his victory, was building railroads. 
 It might almost be said that there was a railroad 
 mania. Massachusetts led off in 1826 ; Pennsylvania 
 followed in 1827, and in 1828 Maryland and South 
 Carolina. Of the great trunk lines of the country, a 
 portion of the New York Central was chartered in 
 1825 ; the construction of the Baltimore & Ohio 
 was begun on July 4th, 1828. The country, there- 
 fore, was not only ripe to accept the results of the 
 Rainhill contest, but it was anticipating them with 
 eager hope. Had George Stephenson known what 
 was going on in America he would not when writing 
 to his son in 1829 have limited his anticipation of 
 orders for locomotives to " at least thirty." 
 
 Accordingly, after 1830 trial trips with new loco- 
 motive engines followed hard upon each other. To- 
 day it was the sensation in Charleston ; to-morrow in 
 Baltimore ; the next day at Albany. Reference 
 has already been made to a cut representing the ex- 
 cursion train of March 5th, 1831, on the South Caro- 
 lina Railroad. There is, however, a much more 
 familiar picture of a similar trip made on the 9th of 
 August of the same year from Albany to Schenectady, 
 over the Mohawk Valley road. This sketch, more- 
 over, was made at the time and on the spot by Mr. W. 
 H. Brown, whose book has already been referred to. 
 There are few things of the sort more familiar to the 
 general eye, and, either in shop windows or in the
 
 48 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 offices of railroad companies, almost every one has cu- 
 riously studied the train, with its snorting little engine 
 and barrels of pine-knots for fuel, the highly respect- 
 able looking engineer, standing up and meditatively 
 observing his machine, with all the dignity inseparable 
 from a dress coat so neatly buttoned up, the two 
 following coaches, in the inside of the first of which 
 may be identified Mr. Thurlow Weed, already a man 
 of thirty years of age and one of the political powers of 
 the land, while he upon the outside seat, with his hat 
 on the back of his head, is, as we are informed, Mr. 
 Billy Winn, the penny post man. The history of this 
 now famous excursion has been preserved almost as 
 minutely as that of the more widely known affair which 
 had taken place at Liverpool just a year before. The 
 train was made up of a locomotive, the De Witt Clinton, 
 its tender and five or six passenger coaches, which 
 were, indeed, nothing but the bodies of stage coaches 
 placed upon trucks. The first two of these coaches 
 were set aside for distinguished visitors ; the others 
 were surmounted with seats of plank to accommodate 
 as many as possible of the great throng of persons 
 who were anxious to participate in the trip. Inside 
 and out the coaches were crowded ; every seat was 
 full. At Liverpool the start of the train was sig- 
 nalled by the discharge of a cannon ; they were more 
 modest at Albany, where the conductor, having duly 
 collected his tickets by stepping from platform to 
 platform outside the cars, mounted on the tender and, 
 sitting upon the little seat which is to be seen in the
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 49 
 
 sketch of the train, gave the signal to start with a tin 
 horn. What followed has been described by one who 
 took part in the affair : 
 
 " The trucks were coupled together with chains or chain- 
 links, leaving from two to three feet slack, and when the loco- 
 motive started it took up the slack by jerks, with sufficient force 
 to jerk the passengers, who sat on seats across the tops of the 
 coaches, out from under their hats, and in stopping they came 
 together with such force as to send them flying from their seats. 
 
 "They used dry pitch-pine for fuel, and there being no smoke 
 or spark-catcher to the chimney or smoke-stack, a volume of 
 black smoke, strongly impregnated with sparks, coal and cinders, 
 came pouring back the whole length of the train. Each of the 
 outside passengers who had an umbrella raised it as a protec- 
 tion against the smoke and fire. They were found to be but 
 a momentary protection, for I think in the first mile the last one 
 went overboard, all having their covers burnt off from the frames, 
 when a general melee took place among the deck-passengers, 
 each whipping his neighbor to put out the fire. They presented 
 a very motley appearance on arriving at the first station." 
 Here " a short stop was made, and a successful experiment tried 
 to remedy the unpleasant jerks. A plan was soon hit upon and 
 put into execution. The three links in the couplings of the cars 
 were stretched to their utmost tension, a rail, from a fence in the 
 neighborhood, was placed between each pair of cars and made 
 fast by means of the packing yarn from the cylinders. This ar- 
 rangement improved the order of things, and it was found to 
 answer the purpose when the signal was again given and the 
 engine started." 
 
 In spite of these trifling annoyances the engine, 
 
 which was a little thing weighing but three and a 
 
 half tons, accomplished the distance from Albany to 
 
 Schenectady in less than an hour, and, during a part 
 
 3
 
 50 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 of the way, ran at as high a speed as a mile in two 
 minutes. At Schenectady the members of the party 
 refreshed themselves, and then, resuming their seats, 
 reached Albany in due time and without delay or 
 accident of any kind. In spite of dilapidated gar- 
 ments and lost umbrellas, the passengers were on the 
 whole well pleased with their trip, and in this respect 
 at any rate far more fortunate than those who a year 
 before had helped inaugurate the Manchester & 
 Liverpool road. 
 
 The DeWitt Clinton, as well as all the other 
 engines used on the occasions which have been de- 
 scribed, were of American make. But the fame of 
 the Stephenson works at Newcastle-upon-Tyne had 
 crossed the ocean, and to possess a specimen of their 
 products was the ambition of every enterprising rail- 
 road company. As early as September 1829 one 
 of their earlier engines, the Stourbridge Lion by 
 name had been landed in New York and set up as 
 an object of curiosity in an iron-yard on the East 
 River. It was one of the old models, however, of 
 ante-Rocket construction, and was always regarded 
 as a failure. Orders for locomotives of the new model 
 were sent over as soon as its success was demonstrated, 
 and at about the time of the Schenectady excursion, 
 which has just been described, one of these was 
 landed in New York. Its whole cost, including 
 freight, duties and insurance, was $4,869.59. This 
 " powerful Stephenson locomotive," as it was called, 
 weighed about seven tons ; but, light as this now
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 5 I 
 
 seems, it was far too heavy for the structure upon 
 which it was to run. Early in September, however, 
 it was placed upon the tracks, and on the i6th and 
 1 7th made its trial trips, using coal for fuel. And 
 now another, and this time more formal and brilliant 
 excursion, was planned in honor of the event, and was 
 fixed for the 24th. It was to be to America what 
 the Manchester & Liverpool opening had been to 
 England, and the presence of the Duke of Wellington 
 there, was to be offset here by that of Gen. Scott. 
 But to be appreciated this excursion must be de- 
 scribed in contemporaneous language : 
 
 " The company consisted of the Governor, Lieutenant Gov- 
 ernor, members of the Senate, now in session as a Court of 
 Errors, our Senators in Congress, the Chancellor and Judges of 
 the Supreme and District Courts, State officers, the president of 
 the Board of Assistants and members of the Common Council 
 of the city of New York, the Mayor, Recorder and Corporation 
 Counsel of the city, and several citizens of New York, Albany 
 and Schenectady. 
 
 " Owing to a defect in one of the supply-pipes of the English 
 locomotive, that powerful engine was not brought into service, 
 and the party, having been delayed in consequence, did not 
 leave the head of Lydius Street until nearly twelve o'clock. 
 They then started with a train often cars, three drawn by the 
 American locomotive, De Witt Clinton, and seven by a single 
 horse each. The appearance of this fine cavalcade, if it may be 
 so called, was highly imposing. The trip was performed by the 
 locomotive in forty-six minutes, and by the cars drawn by horses 
 in about an hour and a quarter. From the head of the plane, 
 about a quarter of a mile from Schenectady, the company were 
 conveyed in carriages to Davis's Hotel, where they were joined
 
 52 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 by several citizens of Schenectady, and partook of a dinner 
 that reflected credit upon the proprietor of that well known es- 
 tablishment. Among the toasts offered was one which has been 
 verified to the letter, viz. : ' The Buffalo Railroad may we soon 
 breakfast in Utica, dine in Rochester, and sup with our friends 
 on Lake Erie !" After dinner the company repaired to the 
 head of the plane, and resumed their seats for the return to 
 Albany. It was an imposing spectacle." 
 
 All this took place during the summer of 1831, 
 and it was only during that very summer, when the 
 locomotive was already an established fact, a working 
 agent in at least two of her sister States, that Mas- 
 sachusetts aroused herself to a consciousness that 
 something unusual had taken place. Then at last 
 that corporation was chartered which subsequently, 
 five years later, opened for public use the first steam 
 railroad regularly planned and constructed as such 
 within the limits of the State. Such an apparent 
 apathy is not very explicable. Not only the Quincy 
 railway, but the Middlesex canal as well, had been 
 the first things of the kind brought to a successful 
 completion in America. Just at this time, also, the 
 manifest success of the Erie canal had given a new 
 and portentous significance to the Berkshire hills, 
 causing them to throw a dark shadow over the 
 future of Massachusetts. They seemed stationed on 
 the western border of the State, an insuperable bar- 
 rier against which the eastward tide of commerce 
 struck and then with a deflected course flowed quiet- 
 ly in the direction of New York. Either in some way 
 that barrier must be overcome or the material pro-
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 53 
 
 gress of the State would in the future be seriously 
 threatened. So much was obvious. Before the year 
 1826 this difficult problem had already occupied the 
 attention both of the public and of the legislature. 
 A commission had been appointed to survey a canal 
 route from tide water at Boston to the Connecticut, 
 and thence to some point in the State of New York, 
 near where the Erie canal emptied into the Hudson. 
 The report of this commission was submitted by Gov. 
 Lincoln to the legislature in January 1826, and to- 
 day, after the lapse of more than fifty years, the 
 document has a peculiar interest and significance. 
 
 The survey was made by Col. Loammi Baldwin, 
 a civil engineer who has left his mark cut deep on the 
 Massachusetts system of internal improvements. 
 There was no good route, and so he fixed on what 
 has since become well known as the Hoosac Tun- 
 nel line as being Jibe least bad. Accompanying the 
 report of 1826 is a map made by Col. Baldwin upon 
 which is laid down a canal-tunnel exactly where the 
 railroad tunnel now is. This canal-tunnel project was 
 adopted by Col. Baldwin as a dreadful alternative to 
 a system of locks crossing the mountains at the same 
 point. Not that he considered the lock scheme im- 
 practicable ; on the contrary, he demonstrated in his 
 report its perfect feasibility on paper He objected to 
 it solely on the score of expense. He accordingly had 
 recourse to the cheaper expedient of a tunnel, and pro- 
 ceeded to estimate its cost. That long forgotten esti- 
 mate is now one of the curiosities of engineering litera-
 
 54 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 ture. It was made, be it remembered, in the early 
 days before tunnelling had become a science, and 
 when the whole work would necessarily have been 
 done by hand-drilling and without the aid of any 
 explosive more powerful than gunpowder. In 
 making his estimate Col. Baldwin, as an engineer 
 of character having a reputation at stake, was 
 extremely cautious. He said, " in a tunnel, four 
 miles in length, of the size named, there will be 
 211,200 cubic yards of stone to excavate, which 
 at $4.25 per cubic yard, amounts to $920,832." 
 But this he took pains to state was " beyond a 
 doubt ; the highest price " having been assumed. 
 Even at the time, this conclusion, to which sub- 
 sequent bitter experience has lent a grim humor, 
 did not pass unchallenged. A writer in the Bos- 
 ton Courier, for instance, calculated that, on the 
 data given in the report, it woujd take fifty-two 
 years and nineteen days to finish the tunnel. The 
 present Hoosac Tunnel was in fact finished a little 
 over fifty years from the time when this report was 
 laid before the Legislature ; but, instead of having 
 proved " not more difficult than the cut through the 
 ' Mountain Ridge ' on the Erie canal," the expense 
 of which per cubic yard had been $1.75, each new 
 difficulty which developed itself was overcome .only 
 to make way for another, until the ultimate expense 
 was about $20 per cubic yard, and the total cost some 
 ten times the original estimate. 
 
 Naturally enough, however, nothing was done in
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 5$ 
 
 consequence of Col. Baldwin's report towards extend- 
 ing the Erie canal to a connection with tide-water at 
 Boston. That such an idea should ever have been 
 gravely entertained seems now almost beyond belief. 
 Yet there, on file among the public documents of 
 that day, is the record showing that sane men actu- 
 ally dreamed that water could be made to flow over 
 the Berkshire hills so as to compete with the un- 
 taxed current of the Hudson ! Four years more 
 passed by without contributing anything to the solu- 
 tion of the problem. In October 1829, however, the 
 crucial test at Rainhill gave a new direction to men's 
 thoughts in other places than in England. Nathan 
 Hale at that time edited the Boston Daily Advertiser, 
 and he had also been one of the commissioners under 
 whom Col. Baldwin had made his survey. An editor 
 of a school which has long since passed away, he 
 not only occupied a prominent position in the busi- 
 ness circles of the day, but by force of individual 
 character he exercised through his paper a wide and 
 useful influence. The Advertiser was Nathan Hale ; 
 and, as regarded this question, Nathan Hale moved 
 in the front rank of progress. And now in 1829 the 
 Advertiser reproduced day after day every detail 
 of the Rainhill experiments and spread them be- 
 fore the people of Massachusetts with all possible 
 emphasis. The result was immediate. The ses- 
 sions of the Massachusetts legislature were then 
 held in the spring and early summer, and occupied 
 about as many weeks as they now do months. The
 
 56 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 following June, in response as it were to the Rainhill 
 challenge and before the Manchester & Liverpool road 
 was yet open to traffic, a number of charters were 
 granted to corporations with all necessary powers to 
 construct railroads on specified routes. In those days, 
 however, the science of railroad financiering had not 
 been developed to the degree of excellence which it 
 has since attained. The first condition to an enterprise 
 was the actual raising of money to carry it out. While 
 capitalists were timid, legislatures were cautious. A 
 tedious contest, therefore, ensued between the two. 
 On the one hand, those who proposed to build the 
 roads insisted on a guarantee of exclusive railroad 
 rights between the points designated in their charters ; 
 on the other hand, the legislature refused to concede 
 any such monopoly. At last, however, in the case 
 of a single road, that between Boston and Lowell, the 
 exclusive concession asked for was granted for a term 
 of years. Accordingly in this case the charter was 
 accepted, the company speedily organized and books 
 of subscription opened. 
 
 In November '1830 accounts came across the ocean 
 of the successful opening of the Manchester & Liver- 
 pool road, and again Mr. Hale reproduced them in 
 detail. The schoolmaster was abroad. He was 
 busily at work between Liverpool and Manchester, and 
 the Advertiser kept his instructions before the eyes 
 of the people at home. Consequently, in June 1831, 
 two more roads were incorporated by the next legis- 
 lature, one of which, the Boston & Providence, still
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. S7 
 
 preserves its individuality and its original name. The 
 boards of direction of these several roads were made 
 up of the most respectable and best known citizens 
 of Boston. Patrick T. Jackson was president of the 
 Lowell company ; T. B. Wales of the Providence, and 
 Nathan Hale of the Worcester. There is something 
 very interesting and attractive in those days of small 
 things. To men of the present time, accustomed to 
 corporations which operate thousands of miles of 
 road, which yearly carry millions of tons of freight 
 and tens of millions of passengers, while they wield 
 hundreds of millions of capital, to men accus- 
 tomed to the presence of these leviathans, the little 
 original roads, the longest of which was but fifty miles, 
 seem little more than toys. They were, however, the 
 beginning of great things. We to-day are familiar with 
 the names of enterprises which stretch out into what 
 was then the undiscovered West, and the fabulous 
 East. We can, whenever we please, read the last quo- 
 tation of stocks representing a property lying on the 
 shores of the Euphrates or among the steppes and 
 gorges of the Rocky or Ural Mountains. We have 
 tunnelled the Alps and bridged the Mississippi. These 
 great accomplished facts, however, only make the 
 fresh, new impressions with which our fathers viewed 
 the gradual completion of the little original lines more 
 quaint and more interesting. The gossip, as it were, 
 of those days is by no means the least attractive 
 thing about them. 
 
 The Lowell was the first organized of the Mass-
 
 58 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 achusetts roads, as well as the first upon which 
 the work of construction was actually begun, though 
 the Boston & Providence was the first completed. But 
 it was upon the Worcester road, and towards the lat- 
 ter part of March, 1834, that the first locomotive ever 
 used in Massachusetts was set in motion. On the 24th 
 of the month Mr. Hale advised the readers of the 
 Advertiser that " the rails are laid, from Boston to 
 Newton, a distance of nine or ten miles, to which 
 place it is proposed to run the passenger cars as soon 
 as two locomotives shall be in readiness, so as to en- 
 sure regularity. One locomotive, called the Meteor, 
 has been partially tried and will probably be in readi- 
 ness in a few days ; the second, called the Rocket, is 
 waiting the arrival of the builder for subjecting it to 
 a trial, and the third it is hoped will be ready by the 
 first of May." The last named locomotive, the Rocket, 
 was built by the Stephensons at Newcastle-upon- 
 Tyne, and " the builder " whose arrival was looked 
 for must have been an English engineer sent out to 
 superintend the work of putting it in operation. No 
 allusion is made in the papers to the first trial of 
 these locomotives, but we have the impressions 
 which one who claims to have been an eye-witness 
 of it long afterwards gave : 
 
 " The Boston & Worcester Railroad Company imported from 
 Newcastle-upon-Tyne one of George Stephenson's locomotives, 
 small in stature but symmetrical in every particular, and finished 
 with the exactness of a chronometer. Placed upon the track, 
 its driver, who came with it from England, stepped upon the 
 platform with almost the airs of a juggler or a professor of chem-
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 59 
 
 istry, placed his hand upon the lever, and with a slight move of 
 it the engine started at a speed worthy of the companion of the 
 Rocket amid the shouts and cheers of the multitude. It gave 
 me such a shock, that my hair seemed to start from the roots, 
 rather than to stand on end." 
 
 On the 4th of April, a Friday by the way, a 
 locomotive was first employed on a gravel train, upon 
 which occasion, as the Advertiser the next day 
 assured its readers, " the engine worked with ease, 
 was perfectly manageable, and showed power enough 
 to work at any desirable speed." Three days later, 
 on Monday, /th, we are informed that a locomo- 
 tive ran on the railroad for the first time, " as far as' 
 Davis' tavern in Newton, a distance of eight or nine 
 miles, accompanied by a part of the directors and 
 fifty or sixty other persons, for the purpose of making 
 trial of the engine and examination of the road. 
 The party stopped several times for various purposes 
 on the way out. They returned in thirty-nine 
 minutes, including a stop of about six minutes for 
 the purpose of attaching five cars loaded with earth. 
 The engine travelled with ease at the rate of twenty 
 miles an hour." The next day a larger party went 
 over the ground, the directors inviting about one 
 hundred and thirty gentlemen on the excursion. 
 It would not appear to have been a very successful 
 affair, for, " after proceeding a short distance, their 
 progress was interrupted by the breaking of a con- 
 necting-rod between two of the cars. This accident 
 caused a considerable delay, and unfortunately the
 
 60 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 same accident occurred three or four times during 
 the excursion." So, after a short stop at Newton, 
 the party came back, quite cross apparently, and did 
 not get home until half past six in the evening. 
 On the 1 5th of the month a yet larger party, 
 consisting of about one hundred and twenty ladies 
 and gentlemen in six cars, went out to Newton and 
 back, making the return trip in less than half an 
 hour. The cars began to run regularly next day, 
 making two trips each way to Newton and back, 
 leaving Boston at 10 A. M. and at 3.30 P. M. The 
 regular passenger railroad service in Massachusetts 
 dates, therefore, from the i6th of May 1834. Al- 
 ready, four days before, there had appeared in the 
 advertising columns of Mr. Hale's paper a new form 
 of notice. At the head was a rude cut of a locomo- 
 tive and part of a train of cars, the cars being of 
 the old stage coach pattern, mounted high on wheels 
 with spokes in them, and divided into compartments 
 which were entered through doors at the sides. The 
 brakemen, sitting on a sort of coach boxes, regulated 
 the speed by the pressure of their feet on levers just as 
 is still done with wagons on hilly roads. The notice 
 was headed " Boston & Worcester Railroad " and 
 read as follows : 
 
 "The passenger cars will continue to run daily from the 
 depot near Washington St., to Newton, 6 o'clock and 10 o'clock 
 A. M. and at 3^ o'clock p. M., and 
 
 " Returning, leave Newton at 7, and a quarter past 1 1 A. M., 
 and a quarter before 5 P. M.
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. Ol 
 
 " Tickets for the passage either way may be had at the Ticket 
 Office, No. 617 Washington St., price thirty-seven and a half 
 cents each ; and for .the return passage, of the Master of the 
 cars, Newton. 
 
 " By order of the President and Directors. 
 
 " F. A. WILLIAMS, Clerk." 
 
 Curiously enough the issue of the very next day 
 contains this editorial notice : 
 
 " History of the United States. We understand that George 
 Bancroft Esq. of Northampton, has been for a long time en- 
 gaged in the preparation of a history of the United States, the 
 first volume of which is nearly ready for publication. Mr. Ban- 
 croft has been long known to the public as a scholar of distin- 
 guished talent, and diversified attainments ; and there is every 
 reason to believe that his work will be equally honorable to 
 himself and to the literary reputation of the country. He has 
 qualified himself for the task by a very diligent investigation of 
 authorities, and a resort to the most authentic sources, in order 
 to render his history no less valuable as a repertory of well as- 
 certained facts, than it will be spirited and interesting as a 
 narrative." 
 
 It would certainly be no easy matter to hit upon 
 any incident which could more forcibly illustrate the 
 briefness of the time within which the whole railroad 
 development has been compressed. Mr. Bancroft is 
 still at work on his history. The consecutive labor 
 of one literary life time covers, therefore, the entire 
 period. The later volumes of Bancroft's history are 
 still unpublished ; yet when the earliest railroad 
 train was run in New England the first -volume was 
 just issuing from the press. 
 
 Partially opened to travel in May, the Boston &
 
 62 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 Worcester road was by the end of June finished as 
 far as Needham, and on the 7th of July it was 
 formally opened to that point ; when " the stock- 
 holders and a number of other gentlemen, to the 
 number of about two hundred in all, by invitation of 
 the directors, made an excursion to Needham, in eight 
 passenger cars, drawn by the new locomotive Yan- 
 kee, . . The excursion was pleasant, and the party 
 appeared to enjoy the ride, and the beautiful scenery 
 which is presented to view on different parts of the 
 route." The further extension to Hopkinton was 
 completed by September, and so on the 2oth of 
 that month another excursion of some two hundred 
 in number went out from Boston in seven of the com- 
 pany's largest passenger cars drawn by the locomotive 
 Yankee, and duly celebrated the occasion. " They 
 started off" as the Advertiser of the following day 
 stated, " at a rapid and steady pace. The weather , 
 was unusually fine, and the sweetness of the atmos- 
 phere, the rapidity of the motion, and the beauty and 
 novelty of the scenery which was successively pre- 
 sented to view, appeared to produce in all the 
 party an agreeable exhilaration of spirits." At 
 Framingham the excursionists were met by John 
 Davis, then Governor of the Commonwealth, by 
 ex-Governor Lincoln and other gentlemen from 
 Worcester, who got upon the train and went with 
 it to Hopkinton, where it arrived at half past three 
 o'clock and was received with a salute of artillery, 
 the cheers of the populace and an address from the
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 63 
 
 village authorities ; after which, under escort of a 
 company- of riflemen, the whole party went to Cap- 
 tain Stone's tavern, where a collation had been pro- 
 vided. " While the party were at table the ladies 
 were invited to take seats in the cars, and the military 
 with their band of music to take a stand upon the 
 tops of the cars, where they were formed in sections. 
 In this manner they made an excursion of several 
 miles down the road and back, which they appeared 
 to enjoy highly. As they returned, the military on 
 the tops of the cars approached the hotel with arms 
 presented and music playing." Then followed 
 speeches from Governor Davis and Governor Lin- 
 coln, and presently, at quarter after five, the psfrty 
 resumed their seats in the train and safely returned 
 to Boston. The next day the train service was ex- 
 tended to Hopkinton. 
 
 . L A similar party which left Boston on the I5th of 
 November in honor of the completion of the road as 
 far as Westborough were not so fortunate as the Hop- 
 kinton excursionists. They started at eleven o'clock, 
 but were delayed for some time at Needham from a 
 cause which reads strange enough now head winds. 
 The road had but one track, and it was arranged that 
 the excursion train should at Needham meet and pass 
 another train on its way to Boston. It was autumn, 
 and there was a gale blowing from the east, so that the 
 locomotive Meteor had been delayed in its up passage 
 " by a strong head wind," and consequently could not 
 return on time. After a due amount of waiting the
 
 64 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 excursionists, however, lost their patience and de- 
 termined to proceed. They accordingly did so ; but 
 when they had cautiously crept along for about four 
 miles they met the belated Meteor coming down 
 upon them before the wind. There was nothing for 
 it but to take the back track to Needham, and there 
 get out of its way. This was done, and in doing it so 
 much time was consumed that the train did not reach 
 Westborough until two o'clock, having accomplished 
 thirty-two miles in the space of three hours. Once 
 at Westborough, however, the party proceeded to 
 celebrate with a dinner and speeches after the usual 
 fashion. The local authorities welcomed the direc- 
 tors with an address, to which Mr. Hale replied. At 
 the close of his remarks he ventured to say, in refer- 
 ence to the railroad, that, " some of them hoped to 
 see this work of improvement extended much further 
 to behold the day when the city of Boston would be 
 placed within an afternoon's ride of the rich valley of 
 the Connecticut River, and even when the banks of 
 the Hudson would be brought within a day's journey 
 of the metropolis of the commonwealth." He con- 
 cluded by expressing a wish that they might all live to 
 see these anticipations realized. He himself cer- 
 tainly did live to see them realized ; for the road was 
 formally opened from Boston to Albany in December, 
 1841, just seven years from the time at which he 
 spoke, and before his death in 1863 the question was 
 already, not of connecting Boston with Albany, but 
 the seaboard of the Atlantic with that of the Pacific.
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 65 
 
 Among the other speakers at Westborough were 
 Gov. Davis and both of the Everetts, Alexander and 
 Edward. A Mr. P. P. F. De Grand was also there, 
 a French emigrant of the old type, long resident in 
 Boston, whose name was very closely connected with 
 the early history of Massachusetts railroad develop- 
 ment. Indeed Mr. De Grand was at times almost the 
 moving spirit of the first enterprises, and it was his 
 wont energetically to refer to the Worcester rail- 
 road as being a forty- four mile extension of Boston 
 Long Wharf. During the periods of discouragement 
 which, a few years later, marked certain stages of the 
 construction of the Western road, connecting Worces- 
 ter with Albany, when both money and courage 
 seemed almost exhausted, Mr. De Grand never for a 
 moment faltered. He might almost be said to have 
 then had Western railroad on the brain. Among 
 other things, he issued a certain circular which 
 caused much amusement and not improbably some 
 scandal among the more precise. The Rev. S. K. 
 Lothrop, then a young man, had preached a sermon 
 in Brattle Street church, which attracted a good deal 
 of attention, on the subject of the moral and Chris- 
 tianizing influence of railroads. Mr. De Grand 
 * thought he saw his occasion, and he certainly availed 
 himself of it. He at once had a circular printed, a copy 
 of which he sent to every clergyman in Massachu- 
 setts, suggesting the propriety of a discourse on " the 
 moral and Christianizing influence of railroads in 
 general, and of the Western railroad in particular."
 
 66 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 To return, however, to the Boston & Worcester 
 road. It was completed in June, 1835, J ust f ur years 
 after it had been chartered. It ran through a far 
 from difficult country and was but forty-four miles 
 in length ; but in those days eleven miles a year were 
 looked upon as quite a rapid rate of railroad construc- 
 tion. At last, on the 3d of July, a locomotive with 
 one passenger car, in which were a few of the directors, 
 passed over the line from end to end, and on Saturday, 
 the 4th, the four engines, which constituted the entire 
 motive power of the company, passed twice each way 
 between Boston and Worcester, two engines, draw- 
 ing eleven cars, leaving the opposite ends of the road 
 at the same time. During the day over fifteen hun- 
 dred passengers were carried. In reality the opening 
 of those first completed railroad lines, for the Wor- 
 cester was the third of the original lines all opened 
 within one month, was an event to be celebrated, 
 an event second in importance to none in the his- 
 tory of the State. The formal opening took place 
 two days later, on the 6th, which, as hardly needs 
 to be said, was a great day for Worcester, then 
 a quiet country town of six thousand inhabitants. 
 At ten o'clock in -the morning a special train, con- 
 sisting of twelve cars, drawn by two locomotives* 
 and carrying some three hundred officials and in- 
 vited guests, left Boston and reached Worcester at 
 about one, where its arrival was welcomed by a salute 
 of artillery and a general ringing of bells. Charles 
 Allen, afterwards a member of Congress and Chief
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 67 
 
 Justice of the Superior Court of the State, was chair- 
 man of the committee of arrangements, and the pro- 
 gramme included a procession and dinner at the Town- 
 Hall. This, as usual, was followed by a great many 
 toasts and a considerable effusion of after-dinner elo- 
 quence. Mr. Hale spoke, of course, as president of 
 the road. He was followed by Edward Everett, as 
 Governor of the Commonwealth ; who, the report 
 says, made a speech " of uncommon beauty and in- 
 terest, interspersed with pleasant anecdote and elo- 
 quent remark. It was one of the happiest efforts of 
 the distinguished gentleman." 
 
 Of greater interest to posterity, however, were the 
 more common place remarks, from a rhetorical point 
 of view, of Mr. Henry Williams of Boston, one of the 
 directors as well as the clerk of the company. He 
 took occasion to allude " with much fueling to the 
 difficulties with which the enterprise had to contend 
 at the outset without the aid of the capitalists, who 
 hesitated to embark in so perilous an adventure. 
 ' The work was commenced and has been completed,' 
 said Mr. Williams, ' by the middling class in the com- 
 munity.' ' For the rest the toasts on this occasion 
 were of much the usual character, and now, after the 
 lapse of more than forty years, they have certainly 
 lost what little of flavor they may perchance once have 
 had, and read thin and flat enough. One only among 
 them has a curious sound, being strongly suggestive of 
 the familiar " tempora mutantur " of the Latin poet. 
 It was offered by ex-Governor Davis and was in these
 
 08 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 words, " Railroads. We are willing to be rode 
 hard by such monopolies." On that day certainly no 
 anticipation of Granger agitations or of " Potter " laws 
 was present in the mind of Governor Davis, or of any 
 one else. At least no such forebodings troubled the 
 festivities of the occasion, and a prophet who would 
 then have dared to predict that within the lifetime of 
 any there gathered together a political party would 
 rise up with whom the indiscriminate denunciation of 
 those who built railroads as "vampires" and those 
 who operated railroads as " the robber barons of mod- 
 ern civilization " was the breath of life, assuredly 
 that prophet of evil would have found himself com- 
 pelled to face a storm of jeers and contumely. But 
 no such bird of ill-omen presented himself, and at 
 eight o'clock that evening the safe and uneventful 
 return home, of the Boston party brought the cele- 
 bration to a close. 
 
 Meanwhile those who had the construction of the 
 other roads in charge were not idle. The Boston & 
 Providence was fast approaching completion, and on 
 Tuesday, June 2d, a party went over it from end to 
 end. The following account of the excursion, which 
 appeared in a Providence paper a few days later, has 
 rather acquired than lost interest through the lapse 
 of forty years. The party set out from Providence 
 upon the invitation of the board of directors : 
 
 " It was in contemplation to have taken the new engine 
 that had arrived from Philadelphia only the day before, but some 
 of her pipes were not in order, and we finally set off from the
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 69 
 
 depot at India Point, at a quarter before one o'clock in the af- 
 ternoon, with two cars, each propelled by two horse power. 
 
 " The application of horses afforded us a most fortunate 
 opportunity for inspecting the grand structure over which we 
 passed. The road . . has been laid to endure with the ever- 
 lasting hills, and is finished with a neatness very gratifying to 
 the eye. The viaduct at Canton, though yet unfinished, is a 
 stupendous work. A view of it many times repays the trouble 
 of passing round. The excavations and embankments in Can- 
 ton are also worthy of minute attention ; they testify in strong 
 language, to man's dominion over nature, and his ability to 
 overcome any obstacle to any undertaking that is not either 
 morally or physically absurd. The project of cutting through 
 these rocky heights and crossing the valley of the river by the 
 viaduct was a very bold one. A hesitating mind would have 
 surmounted them by stationary engines, or some less formida- 
 ble way. But any other mode would have detracted very much 
 from the facilities which give value to such a road. 
 
 " The road has been constructed under the direction of 
 Major McNeil, and it will stand for ages, an enduring monument 
 of the high talents and high attainments of its accomplished 
 engineer. 
 
 " Among the curiosities on the way is a bog in Mansfield 
 where the road sunk, during its formation, to the depth of 
 forty feet , and it is also a curious fact that sixteen miles and 
 a half of this road are on a perfectly straight line. 
 
 " After examining the work at Canton we took the engine 
 at twenty minutes past five, and were landed at West Boston at 
 about six o'clock. The party accompanied the directors to their 
 depot at the Tremont House, and enjoyed their overflowing hos- 
 pitality with keen appetites and grateful hearts." 
 
 The viaduct at Canton, by the way, the bold 
 conception and fine construction of which excited so 
 much admiration in the minds of these excursionists,
 
 7O THE GENESIS OF 
 
 really was a most creditable piece of work. When 
 they did build, they built better in those days than 
 they now do, and the passage of forty years of con- 
 stant use has developed no greater need for repairs 
 on the Canton viaduct than it has on the pyramids 
 of Egypt. That viaduct, also, has a history of its 
 own, curiously illustrating the value of fatal accidents 
 as a dynamic force in railroad development. In the 
 earliest surveys of the route of the Boston & Provi- 
 dence line, the deep and wide ravine through which 
 the Neponset river flows between the elevated hills 
 of Canton had presented itself as a serious obstacle 
 in the way of the enterprise. Closely following the 
 precedents already established in the case of the coal 
 tramways, both at home and abroad, the engineers 
 at first proposed to overcome the difficulty by means 
 of inclined planes operated by stationary engines. 
 It so happened, however, that there already was, 
 only a few miles away and also close to the banks of 
 the Neponset, an inclined plane at the end of the 
 Quincy Granite Railway. From motives of curiosity 
 parties of gentlemen were in the custom of visiting 
 that work. While the construction of the Boston & 
 Providence road was yet undecided, a party of this 
 sort was one day ascending the Quincy incline when 
 the pulleys broke, and the car on which the visitors 
 were ran backwards down the grade, throwing them 
 out and killing one of them, a Mr. Gibson, well known 
 in Boston. . This accident brought inclined planes into 
 great disfavor, and induced the construction of the
 
 , THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 7 1 
 
 Canton viaduct ; just as invariably since that time 
 every serious railroad accident has had a direct and 
 often most perceptible influence in bringing about 
 some great advance in railroad construction or ap- 
 pliances for safety. 
 
 To return, however, to the party of excursionists 
 who visited Boston in the early days of June, 
 1835. They had left Providence on Tuesday. On 
 the very day before, another event of interest had 
 taken place on Long Island sound, for the ill-fated 
 steamer Lexington, built specially to run between 
 New York and Providence in connection with the 
 new railroad, had then made her trial trip. The Lex- 
 ington was constructed for and under the direction of 
 Captain Cornelius Vanderbilt, who had not then ar- 
 rived at his subsequent title by courtesy of Commo- 
 dore, but " whose reputation for fast boats is," the 
 contemporaneous authority goes on to say, " so well 
 established in this community." The Lexington 
 upon her trial trip astonished those on board of her, 
 and the editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer, 
 who was one of the number, thus gave vent to his 
 feelings : 
 
 " We were of the party who accompanied her on this novel 
 and interesting expedition : and although the Boston & Provi- 
 dence Railroad is not yet opened which event will shorten the 
 time of travelling between those cities two hours we yester- 
 day, breakfasted at Boston, left there at 2 A. M., and arrived 
 in this city off Dry Dock in eleven hours and fifty -nine min- 
 utes from Providence, performing the entire distance in less
 
 72 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 than sixteen hours, and bringing with us the Boston daily papers 
 of yesterday morning for the benefit of our readers and those of 
 our cotemporaries." 
 
 In other words, General Webb had left Boston at 
 two in the morning and arrived in New York at six 
 o'clock on the evening of the same day, being the 
 shortest time which had ever been made between 
 those two cities. He then proceeds, in a strain of en- 
 thusiastic exultation over the prospect of " reducing 
 the time of overcoming the distance between New 
 York and Boston (250 miles) to fourteen hours," and 
 closes with a tribute which, though offered nearly 
 half a century ago, still has an amusing significance : 
 
 " Other sections of the country will be equally benefited by 
 this improvement of steam navigation by Captain Vanderbilt, 
 and his name will in future be classed with those of Fulton and 
 Stephenson, to the latter of whom we owe nearly all the im- 
 provements which have been made in the steam engine, since 
 the death of that great man to whom the world is indebted for 
 that most important discovery which has ever been made except 
 the art of printing." 
 
 Having given one side of the picture ; it is but 
 fair to present the other. The advent of railroad 
 locomotion was not even in America hailed by all in 
 a similar spirit of exuberant satisfaction. A little 
 over a month after the time when General Webb 
 went from Boston to New York in sixteen hours, a 
 gentleman of the very old school, then in his sixty- 
 fourth year, made the same trip ; and in his diary 
 thus freshly recorded his experience and sensations :
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 73 
 
 "July 22, 1835. This morning at nine o'clock I took pas- 
 sage in a railroad car (from Boston) for Providence. Five or 
 six other cars were attached to the locomotive, and uglier boxes 
 I do not wish to travel in. They were made to stowaway some 
 thirty human beings, who sit cheek by jowl as best they can. 
 Two poor fellows, who were not much in the habit of making 
 their toilet, squeezed me into a corner, while the hot sun drew 
 from their garments a villainous compound of smells made up of 
 salt fish, tar and molasses. By and by, just twelve, only twelve 
 bouncing factory girls were introduced, who were going on a 
 party of pleasure to Newport. "Make room for the ladies !" 
 bawled out the superintendent. " Come, gentlemen, jump up 
 on the top ; plenty of room there." " I'm afraid of the bridge 
 knocking my brains out," said a passenger. Some made one 
 excuse and some another. For my part, I flatly told him that 
 since I had belonged to the corps of Silver Grays I had lost my 
 gallantry, and did not intend to move. The whole twelve were, 
 however, introduced, and soon made themselves at home, suck- 
 ing lemons and eating green apples. . . . The rich and 
 the poor, the educated and the ignorant, the polite and the vul- 
 gar, all herd together in this modern improvement in travelling. 
 The consequence is a complete amalgamation. Master and 
 servant sleep heads and points on the cabin floor of the steamer, 
 feed at the same table, sit in each other's laps, as it were, in the 
 cars ; and all this for the sake of doing very uncomfortably in 
 two days what would be done delightfully in eight or ten. Shall 
 we be much longer kept by the toilsome fashion of hurrying, 
 hurrying, from starting (those who can afford it) on a journey 
 with our own horses, and moving slowly, surely and profitably 
 through the country, with the power of enjoying its beauty and 
 be the means of creating good inns. Undoubtedly, a line of post- 
 horses and post-chaises would long ago have been established 
 along our great roads had not steam monopolized everything. 
 . . . Talk of ladies on board a steamboat or in a railroad car. 
 There are none. I never feel like a gentleman there, and I can-
 
 74 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 not perceive a semblance of gentility in any one who makes part 
 of the travelling mob. When I see women whom, in their draw- 
 ing-rooms or elsewhere, I have been accustomed to respect and 
 treat with every suitable deference, when I see them, I say, 
 elbowing their way through a crowd of dirty emigrants or low- 
 bred homespun fellows in petticoats or breeches in our country, 
 in order to reach a table spread for a hundred or more, I lose 
 sight of their pretentions to gentility and view them as belonging 
 to the plebeian herd. To restore herself to her caste, let a lady 
 move in select company at five miles an hour, and take her meals 
 
 in comfort at a good inn, where she may dine decently 
 
 After all, the old-fashioned way of five or six miles with liberty 
 to dine decently in a decent inn and be master of one's move- 
 ments, with the delight of seeing the country and getting along 
 rationally, is the mode to which I cling, and which will be 
 adopted again by the generations of after times."* 
 
 Curiously enough, but probably as the result of a 
 very natural spirit of emulation in those engaged in 
 building them, the three initial roads of Massachusetts, 
 the germs of her subsequent railroad system, were 
 all completed and opened to traffic within four weeks of 
 each other, the Providence on the nth of June, the 
 Lowell on the 2/th of the same month, and theWorces- 
 ter on the 3d of July. They were all well built roads, 
 especially that to Lowell, "in the construction of which 
 the Manchester & Liverpool precedents had been so 
 closely followed that the serious error was committed 
 of laying the rails on stone blocks instead of wooden 
 ties. It is, indeed, matter of curious observation 
 that almost uniformly those early railroad builders 
 
 * Recollections of Samuel Breck, pp. 275-7.
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 75 
 
 made grave blunders, whenever they tried to do their 
 work peculiarly well ; they almost invariably had after- 
 wards to undo it. The Lowell road, for instance, 
 was too well built in many respects. On a portion 
 of its track the stone blocks, into which the oaken 
 plugs to spike the rails to were inserted, were laid on 
 a foundation of continuous, parallel, dry, stone walls 
 running in trenches under each line of rails, and from 
 two and a half to four feet deep and a foot and a half 
 wide. Such work as this was intended to last, and 
 doubtless the Boston & Lowell directors thought that 
 they had acquitted themselves of their trust with a 
 far seeing economy. Unfortunately, as time passed, 
 experience decided the other way. They gradually 
 learned to their great surprise that speed without elas- 
 ticity is always costly ; and to-day the sides of the road- 
 bed are liberally ornamented with those useless stone 
 sleepers, the eternal life of which was once looked for- 
 ward to with confident pride. It was only through the 
 shrewd sense of its constructing engineer, also, that 
 the Boston & Providence company was saved from 
 this same blunder. Captain McNeill had been sent 
 abroad to examine the Manchester & Liverpool road. 
 While doing so he not only had the sense to see that 
 the objections to the use of wood which existed in 
 England, because of its scarcity, did not hold good 
 in this country, but he also with great sagacity di- 
 vined at once the importance of an elastic road-bed. 
 In one important respect, however, the early railroad 
 companies enjoyed an enormous advantage over those
 
 76 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 of to-day; the materials they used were as a rule 
 honestly made. The original iron of the Boston & 
 Providence weighed fifty-five pounds to the yard and 
 would outlast most modern steel. The last of it was 
 not taken out of the tracks until 1860, and then, 
 after twenty-five years of continuous service, it was 
 still in good condition. 
 
 The first epoch of railroad construction in Massa- 
 chusetts did not, however, close with the opening of 
 the Boston & Worcester road. On the contrary, it 
 rather began with that want. It closed six years later 
 during the last days of 1841 when at length with 
 hard struggle and after many and bitter discour- 
 agements, at times verging almost on despair, the 
 Western railroad was completed. By it Boston was 
 brought intoa close connection with Albany and that 
 great network of internal communication, whether 
 by land or water, which there found an outlet. For 
 the time the construction of that road was really a 
 great achievement, much greater than the subse- 
 quent building of the Pacific railways. Begun in 
 1834, it was seven years, covering all the dreary period 
 which followed the panic of 1837, before it could 
 be finished. During that time the work progressed 
 at an average rate of about twenty two miles a year. 
 Repeatedly it would have come to a dead stand-still 
 had not the assistance of the State been extend ed to it 
 with a liberal hand. Of its original officers during the 
 period of construction but one now survives, Josiah 
 Quincy, then the younger of the name, who was treas-
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM 77 
 
 urer of the corporation. As in the case of Mr. De 
 Grand, the sanguine temper of Mr. Quincy was then 
 of no little service. During the too frequently recur- 
 ring days of despondency he was wont to humorously 
 draw courage for himself and his associates from the 
 remark of that king of Spain who met the sugges- 
 tion of a canal between two points in his dominions 
 with the dry negative, that " If the Almighty had 
 intended there should be navigation between these 
 two points, he would undoubtedly have placed a river 
 there ; but it was not for a poor mortal like himself 
 to improve on the infinite wisdom of God's handi- 
 work." But in the case of the Berkshire hills, as 
 Mr. Quincy argued, the Almighty had made a prac- 
 ticable roadway, and hence it was clear He meant in 
 His wisdom there should be a railroad built through 
 them, and consequently the road would be built. 
 Built at last it was, and its completion brought to a 
 triumphant close the first epoch of Massachusetts 
 railroad construction. The State then had a com- 
 plete railroad system ; and, in closely studying the 
 records of the time, it is curious to see what a 
 revolution the new power had already brought 
 about. The community had in 1841 fully entered 
 on the new life. Accordingly when the Western 
 railroad was at last opened, though the event was 
 Qne of too much importance to be passed over un- 
 noticed, the celebration had distinctly lost that fresh, 
 primitive flavor which alone lends to our times a 
 charm in the earlier occasions. The opening of a
 
 78 THE GENESIS OF 
 
 new railroad was in 1841 an old story. Every one 
 had then made journeys by rail. There was no long- 
 er any novelty about the thing, and the orators who 
 tried to excite fresh emotions of wonder by dwelling 
 on the well-worn theme began to find it very hard 
 work. Nevertheless on the 2/th of December 1841, 
 the members of the Boston city government started 
 for Albany, on what would now be termed a " muni- 
 cipal junket." Among other invited guests they took 
 with them a delegation from New Bedford. To these 
 New Bedford gentlemen was due on this occasion 
 the last vestige of that simple wonder which had al- 
 ways been so prominent a feature in the earlier rail- 
 road celebrations. In order to lend point to the as- 
 tonishing fact that, leaving their homes in the morn- 
 ing they would in fifteen hours be in Albany, these 
 gentlemen during the small hours of the 3ay of their 
 departure caused some spermaceti candles to be 
 moulded. These they took with them on their trip, 
 and that evening the rays from these candles illu- 
 mined the table around which took place the civic 
 banquet at Albany. But the Albanians were not to 
 be outdone. They were to return to Boston with their 
 guests the next day ; and in doing so, they took with 
 them a barrel of flour, the wheat for which had been 
 threshed at Rochester on the previous Monday, 
 they went to Boston on Wednesday while the bar^- 
 rel itself was made from wood which on the thresh- 
 ing day had been growing in the tree. This flour, 
 duly converted into bread, the authorities of the two
 
 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM. 79 
 
 cities and their invited guests solemnly ate at a grand 
 dinner given at the United States Hotel in Boston 
 on the evening of December 3Oth, 1841. Of the 
 toasts and speeches given utterance to on this occa- 
 sion there is little enough to say. In them honest 
 astonishment had given place to a mouthing elo- 
 quence. Every one realized fully the importance 
 and the far reaching consequence of the event they 
 were met to celebrate, the fire companies and the 
 military were all paraded and the air was filled with 
 the strains of music, but none the less it was all a 
 twice-told tale. Railroads had grown to be com- 
 monplace affairs. The world had already accustomed 
 itself to the new conditions of its existence, and 
 wholly refused to gape in childish wonder at the 
 thought of having accomplished a journey of fifty 
 miles more or less between the rising and setting of 
 even a December sun. The genesis of the system 
 was complete.
 
 * 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 DURING the last ten years there has been so 
 much vague discussion of what is commonly 
 known as the Railroad Problem, that many people, 
 and those by no means the least sensible, have begun 
 gravely to doubt whether after all it is not a mere 
 cant phrase, and whether any such problem does 
 indeed exist. Certainly the discussion has not been 
 remarkable for intelligence, and the currency ques- 
 tion itself has hardly been more completely befogged 
 in clouds of indifferent declamation, poor philosophy 
 and worse logic. No fallacy has been too thin to pass 
 current in it ; and the absolute power which certain 
 words and phrases have held over the public mind 
 has throughout seemed to set both argument and 
 patience at defiance. . Under these circumstances^) 
 before beginning to discuss the Railroad Problem, it 
 might seem proper to offer some definition of what 
 that problem is. To do this concisely is very diffi- 
 cult. As an innovating force the railroad has made 
 itself felt and produced its problems in every depart- 
 ment of civilized life. So has the steam-engine ; so has 
 the newspaper ; so has gunpowder. Unlike all these, 
 however, the railroad has developed one distinctive 
 problem, and a problem which actively presses for
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 8 1 
 
 solution. It has done so for the reason that it has 
 not only usurped, in modern communities, the more 
 important functions of the highway, but those who 
 own it have also undertaken to do the work which 
 was formerly done on the highway. Moreover, as 
 events have developed themselves, it has become ap- 
 parent that the recognized laws of trade operate but 
 imperfectly at best in regulating the use made of these 
 modern thoroughfares by those who thus both own 
 and monopolize them. Consequently the political 
 governments of the various countries have been called 
 upon in some way to make good through legislation 
 the deficiencies thus revealed in the working of the 
 natural laws. This is the Railroad Problem. Thus 
 stated, it hardly needs to be said that the questions 
 involved in its solution are of great magnitude and 
 extreme delicacy. To deal correctly with them re- 
 quires a thorough knowledge of intricate economical 
 laws, superadded to a very keen insight into political 
 habits and modes of thought. For not only is there 
 a general railroad problem for all countries, but this 
 problem has to be dealt with in a peculiar way in each 
 country. One mode of treatment will not do for all. 
 Before discussing, therefore, the form this problem 
 has assumed in America it will be well to briefly re- 
 view its development, and the efforts made to solve 
 it elsewhere. The experience of other countries can 
 hardly fail to throw a side light at least on the direc- 
 tion events are taking here. 
 
 The railroad originated in England, and in Eng- 
 4*
 
 82 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 land it has upon the whole attained its highest pres- 
 ent stage of development. The English railroad sys- 
 tem and the English experience must, therefore, first 
 be described. In one of the earlier parliamentary 
 debates on the subject of railroads the Duke of 
 Wellington is reported to have said that in dealing 
 with them it was above all else necessary to bear in 
 mind the analogy of the king's highway. The re- 
 mark was certainly characteristic, both of the indi- 
 vidual and the race. Without any careful analysis 
 to find out whether it was real or apparent only, the 
 analogy was accepted and upon it was based that 
 whole elaborate system of legislation through and in 
 spite of which both in Great Britain and in America 
 the railroad system grew up, and in the meshes of 
 which it is now struggling. In fact the analogy was 
 essentially a false one. In no respect did the railroad 
 in reality resemble the highway, any more than the 
 corporation which owned and operated it resembled 
 the common carrier. The new system was not amen- 
 able to the same .natural laws which regulated and 
 controlled the operations of the old one, and the more 
 the principles and rules of law which had grown out 
 of the old system were applied to it, the worse the 
 result became. The acme of the ludicrous in this 
 respect was, however, reached not in England but in 
 America. In England the truth dawned in time 
 on the minds of those upon whom the work of 
 legislation devolved. After more than forty years of 
 blundering it was there at last realized in 1872 that
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 83 
 
 the railroad system was a thing sui generis, a vast 
 and intricate formative influence, as well as a material 
 power, the growth of which was to be curiously 
 watched in the expectation that in due time it would 
 develop some phase which again would call forth 
 a corresponding development in the machinery of 
 government, through which its political and economi- 
 cal relations with the community would be finally 
 established on some rational and permanent basis. 
 Meanwhile at the very time this result was reached 
 in Great Britain, and the railroad problem conse- 
 quently ceased to be a matter for active discussion, 
 America was clinging more desperately than ever to 
 that false analogy which had thus been finally aban- 
 doned in the place where it originated. Since 1872, 
 even more than before that time, the American legis- 
 lation has been inspired by the theory that the rail- 
 road corporation is nothing but an overgrown com- 
 mon-carrier, who has in some way got the monopoly 
 of a highway, and, being crazed by sudden and ill- 
 gotten gains, has forgotten his proper place in life ; of 
 which he must forthwith be reminded through an 
 exercise of political power. The old analogy sug- 
 gested by the Duke of Wellington, as mischievous as 
 it is false, still maintains a strong hold on the legisla- 
 tive mind and belittles a great question. 
 
 Upon it, however, the whole railroad system of 
 Great Britain was founded. In the first place, the 
 proprietor of the road-bed and the carrier over it were 
 to be different persons. Provision in this respect was
 
 84 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 especially made in all early charters, and it was sup- 
 posed that the power of using the road, which was 
 reserved to all the world on certain fixed terms, would 
 make impossible any monopoly of the business over 
 it. Experience, of course, quickly showed how utterly 
 fallacious this reasoning was. No glimmer of doubt, 
 however, as to the correctness of the analogy drawn 
 from the king's highway suggested itself to the parlia- 
 mentary mind. On the contrary it was only the more 
 tenaciously clung to. Recourse was had to a system 
 of fixed maxima charges, and the old tollboards of the 
 turnpikes were incorporated at enormous length into 
 the new charters as they were granted. One of these, 
 for instance, which went through Parliament in 1844, 
 consisted of three hundred and eighty-one distinct 
 sections, in which, among other things, it was pre- 
 scribed that for the carriage of a " horse, mule, or ass " 
 the company might charge at a rate not to exceed 
 three pence per mile, while for a calf or a pig or 
 " other small animal," the limit was a penny. Nat- 
 urally, this attempt at regulation proved no more effi- 
 cacious than the other ; but it served its turn until yet 
 another theory, that of parallel highways controlled 
 by competing common carriers, was ready to be de- 
 veloped. This was about the year 1840. The chaotic 
 condition of the English railroad legislation had then 
 begun to attract public notice, and this led to a ref- 
 erence of the whole subject to the first of those many 
 special parliamentary committees which have taken it 
 into consideration. Sir Robert Peel was a member
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 85 
 
 of this committee, which apparently fell back on the 
 principles of free trade as affording all the regulation 
 of railroads which was needed. 
 
 It was argued that "an enlightened view of their 
 own interests would always compel managers of rail- 
 roads to have due regard to the general advantage of 
 the public." At the same time, to afford railroad 
 managers a realizing sense of what the principles of 
 free trade were, numerous charters were granted and 
 liberal encouragement given to the construction of 
 competing lines. Then came on the great railroad 
 mania of 1 844, and, as other countries have since done, 
 England awoke one day from dreams of boundless 
 wealth to the reality of general ruin. Free trade in 
 railroads was then pronounced a failure, and in due 
 time another parliamentary committee was appointed, 
 and the whole subject was again taken into considera- 
 tion. Of this committee Mr. Gladstone was the guid- 
 ing spirit. Meanwhile Sir Robert Peel, who was then 
 prime minister, had changed his mind as respects the 
 efficacy of " an enlightened self-interest " stimulated 
 by competition, and had come to the conclusion that 
 railroad competition was an expensive luxury for the 
 people indulging in it, and that there might be some- 
 thing in state management of railroads ; a system 
 which his friend, King Leopold of Belgium, was then 
 developing with much judgment and success. Ac- 
 cordingly Mr. Gladstone's committee made a series 
 of reports which resulted in the passage of a law look- 
 ing to the possible acquisition of the railroads by the
 
 86 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 state at the expiration of twenty-one years from that 
 time. With this measure as the grand result of their 
 labors the committee rested. Not so the railroad 
 system. The twenty-one years elapsed in 1865, and 
 during that time Parliament sat and pondered the 
 ever-increasing complication of the railroad problem 
 with most unsatisfactory results. Competition be- 
 tween railroads through all those years was working 
 itself out into combination ; and, as the companies 
 one after another asked and secured acts of amalga- 
 mation, obstinately refusing to compete, it was clearly 
 perceived that something was wrong. The parlia- 
 mentary mind was sorely troubled ; but no way of 
 deliverance revealed itself. In 1865 a new commis- 
 sion was appointed, which went again over the famil- 
 iar path, this time in the direction of state ownership. 
 The cry now was that the process of amalgamation, 
 or consolidation as we in America term it, had gone 
 so far that the time was close at hand when the rail- 
 roads would manage the state, if the state did not 
 manage the railroads. In truth there was something 
 rather alarming in the speed with which illustrations 
 followed one upon another of the truth of George 
 Stephenson's aphorism, that " Where combination 
 is possible, competition is impossible." The thing, 
 too, was now done upon a scale of magnificence which 
 was not less startling than novel. The world had seen 
 nothing of the kind before, and naturally paused to 
 ask what it all meant and whither it was tending. 
 For instance, one committee pointed out, as an
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 8/ 
 
 example of what the process might lead to, that a 
 single amalgamation was suggested to it through 
 which a union of 1200 miles of railroad would be ef- 
 fected, bringing under one control 60,000,000 of 
 capital with 4,000,000 of annual revenue, and ren- 
 dering impossible throughout one large district the 
 existence of an independent line of railway. A few 
 years later, when the next committee sat, all this had 
 become an established fact; only the mileage was 
 1500 instead of 1200, the capital 63,000,000 instead 
 of 60,000,000, and the annual income 7,000,000 
 instead of 4,000,000. Nevertheless the commission 
 of 1865 followed closely in the steps of its predeces- 
 sors. It dumped upon the tables of Parliament an 
 enormous " blue-book," which left the matter exactly 
 as dark as it was before. Still the amalgamations 
 went on. All England was rapidly and obviously 
 being partitioned out among some half-dozen great 
 corporations, each supreme in its own territory. Then 
 at last, in 1872, a committee on railroad amalgama- 
 tions was appointed, the .Marquis of Salisbury and 
 the Earl of Derby being two of its members, which 
 really gave to the whole subject an intelligent consid- 
 eration. Unlike its predecessors, that committee did 
 not leave the railroad problem where they found it. 
 On the contrary, they advanced it by one entire stage 
 on the road to its solution. In the first place, after 
 taking a vast amount of evidence, they proceeded to 
 review the forty years of experience. The result of 
 that review may be stated in few words.
 
 88 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 They showed with grim precision how, during that 
 period, the English railroad legislation had never ac- 
 complished anything which it sought to bring about, 
 nor prevented anything which it sought to hinder. 
 The cost to the companies of this useless mass of 
 enactments had been enormous, amounting to some 
 ^80,000,000 ; for these were 3,300 in number and 
 filled whole volumes. Then the committee examined 
 in detail the various parliamentary theories which 
 had, at different stages, marked the development of 
 the railroad system. The highway analogy was dis- 
 missed in silence ; but of the " enlightened view of self- 
 interest " theory, it was remarked that experience had 
 shown that as a regulating force this was to be relied 
 upon " only to a limited extent." The principle of 
 competition was next discussed, and the conclusion 
 of the committee was " that competition between 
 railroads exists only to a limited extent, and cannot 
 be maintained by legislation.'' Of the great Gladstone 
 act of 1845, looking to the ultimate purchase of the 
 railroads by the government, it was remarked that 
 " the terms of that act do not appear to be suited to 
 the present condition of railway property, or to be 
 likely to be adopted by Parliament, in case of any in- 
 tention of Parliament at any future time to purchase 
 the railways." Having disposed of this measure, the 
 committee addressed itself to the amalgamation panic, 
 which through so many years had rested like a night- 
 mare on. the slumberous discussions of Parliament. 
 They cited the case of the North- Eastern railway,
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 89 
 
 which was composed of thirty-seven once independent 
 lines, several of which had formerly competed with 
 each other. Prior to their consolidation these lines 
 had, generally speaking, charged high rates, and they 
 had been able to pay but small dividends. Now, the 
 North-Eastern was the most complete monopoly in 
 the United Kingdom. From the Tyne to the Humber 
 it held the whole country to itself, and it charged the 
 lowest rates and paid the highest dividends of all the 
 great English companies. It was not vexed by liti- 
 gation, and while numerous complaints were heard 
 from Lancashire and Yorkshire, where railway com- 
 petition existed, no one had appeared before the 
 committee to prefer any complaint against the North- 
 Eastern. In view of such facts as these the commit- 
 tee reported that amalgamation had " not brought 
 with it the evils that were anticipated, but that in any 
 event long and varied experience had fully demon- 
 strated the fact that while Parliament might hinder 
 and thwart, it could not prevent it, and it was equally 
 powerless to lay down any general rules determining 
 its limits or character." The statute-book was full of 
 acts regulating the rates at which the poorer classes 
 should be carried by rail, and these acts at least had 
 always been pointed to as indisputable evidence of 
 the virtue and efficacy of railroad regulation by Par- 
 liament. In their day they had perhaps done good 
 service ; but yet even of these as a whole it was re- 
 ported that " the ill success of this attempt may well 
 justify hesitation in entering upon further general
 
 9O THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 legislation of the same kind." Finally, the commit- 
 tee examined all the various panaceas for railroad 
 abuses which are so regularly each year brought for- 
 ward as novelties in the legislatures of this country. 
 These they passed in merciless review. 
 
 Equal mileage rates they found inexpedient as 
 well as impossible ; the favorite idea of a revision of 
 rates and fares with a view to establishing a legal 
 tariff sufficient to afford a fair return and no more on 
 the actual cost of the railroads, they pronounced 
 utterly impracticable ; tariffs of maxima charges in- 
 corporated into laws, they truly said had been re- 
 peatedly enacted and as often had failed ; periodical 
 revisions of all rates and fares by government agents 
 they found to be practically impossible, unless some 
 standard of revision which had not yet been suggested 
 could be devised. There is in the French law a pro- 
 vision that whenever the profits of any road shall ex- 
 ceed a certain percentage on its cost, such excess 
 shall be divided between the corporation owning the 
 railway and the government. This plan, also, the 
 committee took into careful consideration, only to 
 conclude that in Great Britain its adoption would be 
 attended with " great if not insuperable difficulties." 
 Finally, the owning of the railroads by the govern- 
 ment was referred to as " a state of things which may 
 possibly arise," but one which the committee was not 
 at all disposed at present to recommend. 
 
 At first glance, therefore, it seemed as if this com- 
 mittee had arrived at only negative results ; but in
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. gi 
 
 truth they had reached positive conclusions of the 
 first importance. They had, indeed, clearly stated 
 the problem ; a thing never before done in Great 
 Britain. The natural development of the railroad 
 system as a system was recognized, and the folly of 
 restrictive legislation demonstrated. A new policy 
 was thus established, at the base of which was the 
 principle of private ownership and management, 
 which was to be left to work out its own destiny 
 through that process of combination in which com- 
 peting monopolies always result. The members of 
 the committee saw perfectly clearly where their pro- 
 cess of reasoning would bring them out. It could 
 result only in a tacit assent to the growth of private 
 corporations until they become so great that they 
 must, soon or late, assume relations to the govern- 
 ment corresponding with the public nature of their 
 functions. This was obvious enough. Meanwhile 
 the committee also saw with equal clearness that this 
 was a question of the future, perhaps of the remote 
 future ; a question which certainly had not yet pre- 
 sented itself, and which they had no disposition to 
 precipitate. They accordingly fixed definitely the 
 policy of Great Britain as an expectant one. The 
 railroad system was to be left to develop itself in its 
 own way, as a recognized monopoly, held to a strict 
 public accountability as such. Whenever it should 
 appear that it abused its privileges and power, then 
 the time for action would have arrived. As yet this 
 was not the case in any such degree as called for a
 
 92 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 decisive and far reaching measure of reform. To bet- 
 ter watch over it meanwhile, and to cause its mem- 
 bers to work with less friction among themselves and 
 with a more careful regard to the equal rights of pri- 
 vate persons, an exceptional piece of governmental 
 machinery was provided i'n the form of a board of 
 commissioners. The powers of this tribunal were 
 both judicial and executive in character and very 
 broad. It was its duty not only to hear all complaints 
 of private parties, but to intervene in cases of difficulty 
 which might arise between the companies themselves. 
 The board was in fact designed to insure to the com- 
 munity an easy and equitable interchange of traffic 
 over its railroad lines, as well as to put a stop in so far 
 as might be practicable to that unjust and vexatious 
 system of discrimination which seems to be insepa- 
 rable from all active railroad competition. Through 
 this board the exceptional character of the rail- 
 road system was at last recognized. An attempt was 
 made to deal with the anomaly as an anomaly. 
 Meanwhile the most noticeable feature in the career 
 of the board, which has now been in existence five 
 years, is the very trifling call which seems to have 
 been made upon it. So far as can be judged from its 
 annual reports, the cases which come before it are 
 neither numerous nor of great importance. It would, 
 however, be wholly unsafe to conclude from this fact 
 that such a tribunal is unnecessary. On the con- 
 trary, it may confidently be asserted that no compe- 
 tent board of railroad commissioners, clothed with
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 93 
 
 the peculiar powers of the English board, will ever, 
 either there or anywhere else, have many cases to 
 dispose of. The mere fact that the tribunal is there, 
 that a machinery does exist for the prompt and 
 final decision of that class of questions, puts an end 
 to them. They no longer arise. They cease to arise 
 for the simple reason that the railroad corporations in 
 these matters are not like the members of a numerous 
 and complicated business community. The controver- 
 sies among them, which do not involve legal points, 
 are comparatively simple and confined to few persons. 
 These they will in the vast majority of cases settle 
 themselves, if they only know that if they do not so 
 settle them, a public official will. The English 
 board has always been composed of very competent 
 .men. Accordingly the officials of the corporations, 
 knowing quite well in advance what their decisions will 
 be, do not probably care to encounter them. A single 
 test case disposes of innumerable subsequent cases. 
 
 In Great Britain, therefore, the discussion of the 
 railroad problem may be considered as over for the 
 time being. It is quiescent, not dead. The period 
 of meddlesome and restrictive legislation is passed, 
 and the corporations are now left to work out their 
 own destinies in their own way, just so long as they 
 show a reasonable regard for the requirements and 
 rights of the community. The time may not be 
 remote, when, for instance, all England will be served 
 by three or four gigantic railroad companies, or per- 
 haps by only one ; just as many cities are now fur-
 
 94 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 nished with gas. Nor is this ultimate result any 
 longer viewed with apprehension. The clearer politi- 
 cal observers have come to realize at last that con- 
 centration brings with it an increased sense of 
 responsibility. The larger the railroad corporation, 
 the more cautious is its policy. As a result, there- 
 fore, of forty years of experiment and agitation. 
 Great Britain has on this head come back very nearly 
 to its point of commencement. It has settled down 
 on the doctrine of laissez faire. The river is not to 
 be crossed until it is reached ; and, perhaps, by the 
 time it is reached a practicable method of crossing 
 will have become quite apparent. 
 
 Turning now from Great Britain to Belgium, an 
 opportunity is offered to observe the practical work- 
 ing of a wholly different policy. The famous Belgian 1 
 railroad system originated with King Leopold, and 
 bears to this day marks of the creating mind. When 
 the Manchester & Liverpool railway was completed 
 the Belgian revolution had not yet taken place, 
 and Leopold was still a resident of England. His 
 attention was naturally drawn to the possible conse- 
 quences of this new application of steam, and when, 
 a few years later, he was called to the throne of Bel- 
 gium, one of his earliest projects related to the con- 
 struction of railroads in his new dominions. He was 
 strongly persuaded, however, that the English system 
 of private construction was not the correct one. He, 
 as well as the Duke of Wellington, strongly adhered 
 to the analogy of the highway ; but, more logical
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 95 
 
 * 
 
 than the duke, his was the king's highway and not a 
 turnpike. Accordingly he planned a system of rail- 
 way communication in which the roads the steam- 
 highways were to be constructed, owned, and 
 operated by the state. With some difficulty legisla- 
 tive assent to his scheme was obtained, and the 
 earliest lines were undertaken in 1833. The govern- 
 ment then went on year by year developing the 
 system, but failed to keep pace witTi the public 
 demand. Accordingly, in a few years, though not 
 until after the principal and more remunerative routes 
 were occupied, concessions, as they were called, being 
 the equivalent of English charters, were made to 
 private companies, which carried on the work of 
 extension. 
 
 One peculiar feature in all these concessions had, 
 however, a direct and sagacious though somewhat 
 distant bearing on the fundamental idea of the Bel- 
 gian railroad system, that of ultimate government 
 ownership. They were all made for a term of ninety 
 years, at the expiration of which the railways were 
 to become the property of the state, which was to 
 pay only for their rolling-stock. The right was also 
 reserved to the government of buying back the con- 
 cession at any time, upon assuming payment to the 
 owners for any unexpired balance of the ninety years 
 of a yearly sum equal to the average net receipts 
 during the seven years next preceding the taking. 
 
 Until their concessions should be thus termi- 
 nated, however, the private companies owned and
 
 96 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 * 
 operated their several roads in much the same way 
 
 as English or American corporations; although the 
 greatest benefit from their construction resulted 
 to the state lines, which, holding the centre of the 
 country and the main routes of communication, 
 kept the private lines necessarily tributary. In 
 1850, the government owned about two-thirds of 
 all the railroad mileage then in operation, and pri- 
 vate companies the other one-third. Ten years 
 later the proportion had changed, two-thirds of 
 the system being in the hands of private compa- 
 nies. It so happened, also, that, as the government 
 in making the concessions had followed no plan of 
 districting the country, but had rather adopted a 
 policy of competing lines, these lines competed not 
 only with each other but also with the state lines. 
 From this fact there resulted a condition of affairs 
 which was wholly unanticipated, but which has since 
 constituted the very essence of the Belgian railroad 
 system. For the first and only time in railroad his- 
 tory, a case was presented in which competition did 
 not result in combination. The one system of lines 
 being owned by the state and the other by private 
 companies, no consolidation of the two was practica- 
 ble as against the public ; and accordingly the gov- 
 ernment found itself in a position to regulate the 
 whole system through the ownership of a part of it, 
 and in consequence was able to establish a policy of 
 cheap railroad transportation, under the influence of 
 which the country developed with amazing rapidity.
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 97 
 
 The action of the government, however, practi- 
 cally forced the various independent companies to 
 unite among themselves ; until, about the year 1860, 
 they had become consolidated into trunk lines suffi- 
 ciently powerful to compete with the state on equal 
 terms. Under these circumstances, in order to main- 
 tain the principle of its railroad system, the govern- 
 ment was forced into a policy of further development 
 which in 1870 resulted in the acquisition by lease 
 of a whole system of competing lines. Again, in the 
 year 1872, as one of the indirect outcomes of the 
 Franco-German war, the government felt constrained 
 to purchase, from the English company which owned 
 it, the Luxembourg road in order to keep it from 
 falling into German hands. Finally, at the close of 
 the year 1876, the state owned or controlled sixty per 
 cent, of the entire railroad mileage of the country, 
 while the remaining forty per cent, belonged to pri- 
 vate companies. These private companies practically 
 operate their roads with the utmost freedom from 
 governmental interference. They raise and lower 
 their rates at discretion, and no limitation is put on 
 the amount of dividends they may declare. In respect 
 to questions of police and safety only does the gov- 
 ernment formally interfere with them ; and, with the 
 exception of certain guaranteed lines, it has no power 
 even of supervising their accounts, or, indeed;, of 
 compelling them to render any. 
 
 Of late years, therefore, Belgium has simply pre- 
 sented the spectacle of the state, in the character of 
 5
 
 90 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 the richest and most powerful railroad company of 
 its system, holding in check and regulating other 
 companies, not greatly inferior to it in power, which 
 compete with it for business and with which it deals 
 on terms of equality. The effect of this on each 
 system of roads has been excellent. At times, 
 when the government has attempted certain great 
 measures of reform or bold experiments in transpor- 
 tation, its course has been vehemently criticised by 
 the private companies, who have complained that 
 their property was being unjustly depreciated by 
 tariff reductions made upon unsound principles, but 
 which, from their position, they were compelled to 
 adopt. This was perfectly true ; but, on the other 
 hand, the government was so largely interested in 
 railroad property that it felt no disposition to persist 
 in any line of experiment which seemed likely to 
 reduce its value permanently ; and in the long run the 
 private companies have found that the experiments 
 of government were far less to be feared than the wild 
 and ruinous fluctuations of railroad competition, as it 
 was carried on in Great Britain. These they were 
 exempt from. The competition they had to meet 
 was decided, but of a wholly different character. It 
 was certain, firm, and equably distributed. Those 
 managing the state roads acted at all times under a 
 heavy sense of responsibility; they did not dare to 
 show preference to persons or localities; they could 
 not do business for anything or nothing one day, and 
 the next combine against the public to make good
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 99 
 
 their losses through extortionate charges. In a word, 
 it was found that while the competition between 
 private roads in Great Britain and America disturbed 
 and disorganized railroad traffic, that between public 
 and private roads in Belgium regulated it. 
 
 The government, meanwhile, in its turn pressed 
 by the competition of the private lines, found itself 
 compelled to work its roads on regular " commercial 
 principles." In order to get business it made special 
 rates, and, if necessary, entered into joint-purse 
 arrangements with its adversaries. It made bold 
 experiments, and through those experiments es- 
 tablished certain principles of transportation now 
 universally recognized. At other times its ex- 
 periments resulted in failure and were abandoned. 
 Yet little doubt can be entertained that it was the 
 constant pressure of competition which kept the 
 state lines up to their work and in the advance of 
 railroad development. The tendency in Belgium 
 now is for the government to absorb all the remain- 
 ing lines. Should this be done, it will then remain 
 to be seen whether by so doing that equilibrium to 
 which the success of the whole system has appar- 
 ently been due will not have been destroyed. Com- 
 petition, certainly, will then no longer exist, and with 
 its disappearance a strong incentive to activity may 
 also disappear. 
 
 It would of course be most unnatural to suppose 
 that the state roads of Belgium have always given 
 perfect satisfaction to the community. There have,
 
 IOO THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 on the contrary, been very grave and distinct com- 
 plaints in regard to their management, but nothing 
 which will compare with those constantly made both 
 in Great Britain and in America. To satisfy every 
 one always is a result not likely to be attained under 
 any system or in any country ; meanwhile, it may 
 with tolerable safety be asserted that the Belgian 
 system is as satisfactory to the people of Belgium as 
 the nature of things human permits that it should 
 be ; certainly the public feeling points very distinctly 
 towards the acquisition of the remaining lines of the 
 system by the government, while the sale of the 
 government lines to private corporations has never 
 been urged by any considerable party. Financially 
 the undertaking has proved a decided success, the 
 government roads netting an annual profit of late 
 years of about six per cent, which is equivalent to 
 at least ten per cent in this country. 
 
 While in Great Britain, therefore, the railroad 
 problem seems entering upon a period of comparative 
 quiescence, a phase of expectancy, as it were, in 
 Belgium the contrary would seem to be the case. 
 Should the Belgian government now adopt a policy 
 of expansion, and proceed to acquire the remaining 
 lines of the system, it will enter upon the very 
 doubtful experiment of exclusive state manage- 
 ment. The problem will then assume wholly new 
 phases, the development of which will everywhere be 
 watched with deep interest. 
 
 The railroad system of France was developed on
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. IOI 
 
 principles wholly different from those adopted in 
 England and Belgium. In that country there was 
 none of the bold English initiative ready to force 
 the experiment along through private enterprise ; nor 
 was there any King Leopold on the throne. There 
 was already an admirable system of highways, and, 
 comparatively speaking no great need was felt of rail- 
 roads. Moreover, in spite of the political changes and 
 the turbulence which have characterized the history of 
 the country, the French mind is essentially conserva- 
 tive ; it looks naturally to the government for an in- 
 itiative, and not only submits to, but craves minute 
 regulation from a central authority. Accordingly, 
 when forty years ago England and America caught 
 eagerly at the idea of railroad development, and 
 rushed into it with all the feverish ardor which ever 
 marks private speculation, France hung back. It 
 was not until 1837, when already what are now the 
 great trunk routes of Great Britain and of America 
 had assumed a definite shape, that the French system 
 began slowly to struggle into life. Even then the 
 first attempts resulted only in failure. The govern- 
 ment, after hesitating long, recoiled from the idea 
 of following the bold example set by Belgium, and 
 decided in favor of a system of concessions to pri- 
 vate companies, instead of construction by the state. 
 These companies were organized at last, and an ap- 
 peal was made to the public. The public, still timid 
 and lacking confidence in itself, failed to respond, 
 and the companies, frightened at the liabilities they
 
 102 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 had incurred, renounced their concessions. Then at 
 last, but not until 1842, the government definitely 
 took the lead. A division of risk was effected. Nine 
 great lines were mapped out, seven of which were in- 
 tended to connect Paris with the departments of the 
 frontier or the sea-board, while two were provincial. 
 As respected some of these the state assumed the 
 expense of acquiring the necessary lands and building 
 the stations, while the companies undertook to furnish 
 the superstructure and material, and to operate the 
 roads ; as respected othe'rs the companies took upon 
 themselves the whole burden. The political disturb- 
 ances of 1848 and the years immediately ensuing 
 greatly retarded French development in railroads, as 
 it did in everything else. It was not until 1859 that 
 the system assumed a definite shape. Then at last, 
 under the inspiration of the imperial government, 
 a new and final arrangement was effected. The exist- 
 ing lines were consolidated, and France was prac- 
 tically partitioned out among six great companies, 
 to each of which a separate territory was allotted. 
 The fundamental distinction between the French and 
 the English and American railroad systems was now 
 brought into sharp prominence. Not only was no 
 provision made for competition, but every precau- 
 tion was taken to prevent it. No company was to 
 trench upon the territory allotted another, and, 
 in consideration of this immunity, each line under- 
 took within its ow-n district a railroad development 
 proportionate to all reasonable demands. Again,
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 103 
 
 however, the companies found the burden they had 
 assumed out of proportion to their resources. Once 
 more recourse was had to the state. The neces- 
 sary assistance was forthcoming, but on condition. 
 The lines to be constructed and operated by each 
 company were laid down, and arbitrarily divided into 
 classes, designated as the ancien rdseau and the nou- 
 veau r/seaii, the first of which included the older and 
 more profitable, and the latter the additional routes 
 the construction of which was deemed essential. 
 Upon the securities issued to build these last the 
 government guaranteed a minimum rate of interest, 
 which the companies undertook ultimately to reim- 
 burse. The material of both the ancien and the nou- 
 veau rdseaux was also pledged as security for any 
 advances which the state might be called upon to 
 make. The amount of advances thus made up to 
 the present time somewhat exceeds $60,000,000. 
 The concessions are for ninety-nine years, at the ex- 
 piration of which the roads will revert to the state, 
 which is bound, however, to purchase the rolling- 
 stock at a valuation, after deducting advances made. 
 The right is also reserved to the government of pur- 
 chasing the lines on payment of an annuity for the un- 
 expired portion of the ninety-nine years' concession, 
 calculated on the average profits of the lines during 
 the seven years previous to the act of taking. 
 
 The French method of operating the railroads is 
 as far removed from the English or American as is 
 the system under which they were constructed. The
 
 104 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 supervision of the government is ubiquitous. Every 
 tariff, every time-table, has to be submitted for ap- 
 proval, and there are public agents at every principal 
 station. The accounts of the companies are subjected 
 to an annual examination, and the most rigid police 
 regulations are enforced. If questions arise between 
 companies, they are settled not by might asserting 
 itself through competition, but by a board of ar- 
 bitration, with an ultimate appeal in matters of 
 graver importance to the Central Railroad Com- 
 mission. 
 
 Thus it is that, in theory, the railroad system of 
 France is purely and essentially French. The gov- 
 ernment initiated it, supervises it, has a large ulti- 
 mate pecuniary interest in it. At the expiration of 
 sixty years more it may yet be made to pay off 
 the national debt. At present, however, it is accfu- 
 mulating it. The guaranteed interest is a constant 
 burden on the revenue. And it is in this connection 
 that the French railroad problem asserts itself. The 
 essence of the system lies in regulation, as a substi- 
 tute for competition. One railroad war, such as an- 
 nually vexes America, would make the guaranty of 
 the government assume proportions calculated to 
 appal the most daring minister of finance. One can 
 imagine the fury of American railroad struggles if 
 the payment of interest was guaranteed from the 
 public treasury ! Competition, therefore, cannot be 
 tolerated among the railroads of France. The 
 French public, nevertheless, like the English and the
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 10$ 
 
 American, is constantly demanding more railroads. 
 It asks for them, too, not because they are profitable 
 in themselves, but because of the incidental advan- 
 tages to be derived from them. The great estab- 
 lished companies naturally say that there must b"e 
 some limit to construction. They can ruin neither 
 themselves nor the government by building railroads 
 intended merely to improve the value of adjacent 
 property. To this those demanding the additional 
 roads simply reply that if the great companies will 
 not supply them, they desire the privilege of supply- 
 ing themselves. 
 
 Yielding to this plausible argument, and to a feel- 
 ing of political necessity, a law of the empire, known 
 as the railroad law of the I2th of July, 1865, under- 
 took to create a third rtseau called the rtseau vicinal. 
 It was a French approach to the American idea of a 
 general railroad law. The departments and com- 
 munes were empowered either to construct certain 
 local railroads themselves, or to grant charters for 
 their construction by others. It was erroneously 
 supposed that these roads would be insignificant 
 affairs, and act as mere feeders to the great compa- 
 nies. The French do not move rapidly in enterprises 
 of this description, but still they move. The door 
 was now open ; competition soon entered through it. 
 At first few local concessions were made, and those 
 in good faith. Then the projects began to flow in, 
 and they rapidly assumed a new phase. The con- 
 tractor, the speculator, and the black-mailer made
 
 106 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 their appearance in rapid succession. Railroads 
 were built to be sold. 
 
 A new character now suddenly appeared upon 
 the stage in the person of a daring Belgian operator, 
 or railroad king, one Phillipart by name. This man 
 had seen his opportunity some years before in Bel- 
 gium, and by constructing and connecting a number 
 of cheap railroads in that country parallel with the 
 state roads he had succeeded in so embarrassing the 
 operations of the latter, that the government had in 
 1870 leased his properties on terms very advantageous 
 to him. It in fact bought him out. Transferring 
 himself to Paris he there attempted a similar opera- 
 tion on the French reads under cover of the rfceau 
 vicinal, connecting the disconnected lines into com- 
 peting systems. He wielded an enormous capital 
 and operated on a large scale. For a time he occa- 
 sioned the government and the old established lines 
 much perplexity. Obtaining control of several banks 
 and taking advantage of the mania for railroad con- 
 struction, he developed his plans with great rapidity. 
 In 1870, the local lines constructed under the law of 
 1865 aggregated but 180 miles.. During the war 
 with Germany the amount did not, of course, 
 increase. Under the stimulus of the Phillipart 
 mania, however, it rapidly assumed new proportions, 
 and in 1875 there were 930 miles of completed local 
 roads, while 1730 more miles were in process of 
 actual construction, and 756 miles authorized. 
 These roads involved an estimated outlay of $130,-
 
 . THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 1 07 
 
 000,000. The posture of affairs was highly alarming, 
 and the government was being rapidly forced into a 
 very difficult position. The French nation had a 
 large pecuniary interest in the existing railroad sys- 
 tem. It was in fact under the terms of the concessions 
 a vast sinking fund for the future extinction of the 
 national debt. Its value was now seriously menaced 
 by that uncontrolled competition which it had been 
 the whole effort of the French railroad policy to pro- 
 vide against. Yet the hands of the government were 
 tied. It did not dare to run counter to the mania 
 and repeal the law of 1865, for that would have been 
 tantamount to forbidding all future railroad construc- 
 tion. It seemed, indeed, as if the Phillipart scheme 
 must again prove a success, and that the established 
 lines would have to submit to being victimized. The 
 mania, however, did not suffice to overcome the ob- 
 stacles in the great operator's way. The odds against 
 Phillipart were too heavy. He was broken down in 
 his stock speculations by a general combination 
 against him, and failed for an enormous amount early 
 in 1876. With his failure the mania collapsed. The 
 question, however, only assumed a new shape. The 
 local lines were worthless in themselves, but those 
 holding stock in them were not without influence, 
 and they now turned to the government. The ques- 
 tion of the purchase of all the railroads by the state 
 was agitated ; and it was claimed the government 
 should at least complete the unfinished local roads 
 and do something to relieve their owners. The plan
 
 108 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 of purchase by the state encountered, however, much 
 resistance from the existing companies, and the dis- 
 cussion would probably soon have died away, had it 
 not recently been revived through the publication of 
 two reports prepared by the present Minister of 
 Public Works. Here the matter now rests and the 
 course which events will take is not apparent. Mean- 
 while, the whole drift of discussion tends, away from 
 the private ownership of French railroads and reliance 
 on competition among them, towards a closer connec- 
 tion between the railroads and the government. So 
 far as uncontrolled competition is concerned, the 
 result of the Phillipart struggle has, indeed, been 
 decisive. It will hardly again be seriously attempted. 
 On the other hand the vested interests in the estab- 
 lished companies are so powerful that it seems 
 improbable they will be disturbed. The relations 
 between the community in France and its railroad 
 system are moreover reasonably satisfactory, and no 
 strong disposition to force a change is apparent. 
 Though not especially enterprising, the companies 
 are as a rule solvent, impartial and reliable. Indeed 
 those managing them look with simple astonishment 
 on the wild fluctuations in the railroad tariffs in- 
 cident to the American method of operation, and 
 they do not hesitate to say that if any similar out- 
 rages were perpetrated on the French people and 
 business public by them, the question of the state 
 ownership of railroads would immediately assume a 
 new shape. Such proceedings would not be tolerated.
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. lOO, 
 
 If there is, indeed, an inherent and irresistible 
 . tendency in the railroad systems of all countries to 
 assume closer relations with governmental systems ; 
 if, as so many are inclined to believe, transportation 
 is such an important and complex element in modern 
 life that it must ultimately find its place among the 
 functions of the state, then it is safe to say that 
 in no other country does the railroad problem pre- 
 sent so interesting a phase of present development 
 as in Germany. The inclination of the German 
 mind, especially the North German mind, is bu- 
 reaucratic. It takes naturally and kindly to this 
 method of development. It seems the natural 
 mode in which the political genius of the people 
 works. With us, in America, it is just the oppo- 
 site. The commission is our bureau. We are con- 
 tinually driven to a recourse to it, but we always ac- 
 cept the necessity with reluctance, and the machine 
 withal does not work well. Where it is not corrupt, 
 it is apt to be clumsy. We get from it no such re- 
 sults as are obtained by the Germans. > The reason, 
 if we choose to seek it, is obvious enough. The 
 bureau is a natural outgrowth of the German polity; 
 it is the regular and appropriate form in which that 
 polity effects its work. With us it is a necessity, but 
 none the less an excrescence. Our political system 
 has come in contact, through the complex develop- 
 ment of civilization, with a class of problems in pres- 
 ence of which it has broken down ; such questions as 
 those of police, sanitary regulations, education, in-
 
 110 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 ternal improvements, transportation. At first we 
 always try to deal with these through the machinery 
 of parliamentary government, a sort of sublimated 
 town meeting. The legislative committee is the 
 embryotic American bureau ; as such it serves its 
 purpose for a time, doing its work in an uncouth, 
 lumbering sort of way, and then, its insufficiency be- 
 coming manifest, it makes way for the commission. 
 The American commission is, however, by no means 
 the Prussian bureau. It is at best a very poor sub- 
 stitute for it ; a thing suddenly improvised in place 
 of one gradually developed. 
 
 When a community is brought face to face with 
 such a problem as the gradual political development, 
 it might almost be said the political evolution, of its 
 railroad system, this distinction becomes important. 
 In the one case the question is approached by a pa- 
 tient, trained professional ; in the other by an eager, 
 ever-confident amateur. If, therefore, the problem 
 of reestablishing the state in new and more effective 
 relations with the agencies of transportation is to be 
 solved in our time, it is pretty safe to predict that the 
 solution will be reached in Germany long before it is 
 in America. Not only do they approach it there 
 in a more practical and scientific spirit, but the ground 
 is better prepared. The material is more ready to the 
 hand. For, almost necessarily, the German railroad 
 system reflects the condition of the German political 
 system. It is a curious complication, very difficult to 
 understand : a mass of raw material, out of which
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. Ill 
 
 order is to be deduced. Particularism rules supreme ; 
 each petty sovereignty has a policy of its own. Yet cer- 
 tain fundamental principles have asserted themselves 
 everywhere. The system, for instance, was originally 
 established on the principle of concessions to private 
 companies, usually for from thirty to fifty years, and 
 the idea of competition found no place in it. On the 
 contrary, the building of competing lines was ex- 
 pressly forbidden. As the several lines extended 
 themselves, this restriction so impeded their develop- 
 ment that in Prussia a few years ago it was repealed. 
 The results which have just been described in France 
 then ensued. A mania for railroad construction and 
 expansion developed itself. Dr. Strausburg burst 
 upon an astonished world. The usual result followed. 
 A panic and collapse took place, and railroad prop- 
 erty depreciated in value as much in Prussia as re- 
 cently it has in America. 
 
 But throughout Germany the relations between 
 the state and the railroads have always been very 
 close. Those building the roads under concessions 
 have received liberal aid from government, sometimes 
 in the form of a subsidy, at other times through a 
 guaranty of interest or dividends ; while in yet other 
 cases the state itself has been a large stockholder. 
 The tendency towards a closer connection between the 
 government and the railroads has constantly been ap- 
 parent, and is more pronounced now than ever before. 
 Prussia, always a large, if not the largest, owner and 
 manager of railroads in North Germany, has lately
 
 112 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 purchased new lines; while the government of Bava- 
 ria has at last acquired all the railroads within the 
 limits of that country, and is indeed thus the first 
 considerable government in the world to both own. 
 and work its entire system. Whether actually own- 
 ing and operating the railroads or not, however, the 
 hand of the German governments has ever been pres- 
 ent in their affairs, regulating everything, from the 
 rates on merchandise to the safeguards against acci- 
 dent. Starting from the fundamental German princi- 
 ple that it is not only the right but the duty of the 
 state to interfere in every matter of public interest, it 
 assumed the power as a matter of course, until in 
 practice the will of the minister was able to make it- 
 self felt in every direction. 
 
 Owing to the lack of cohesion among the politi- 
 cal organizations of the German-speaking race, the 
 necessities of their position long ago caused the rail- 
 roads of central Europe to form a union among them- 
 selves. In this there were included, in 1873, nearly 
 one hundred managements, operating 26,000 miles 
 of track, the governments being represented in the 
 same way as private managements. This union set- 
 tled questions of fares and freights, and made all 
 necessary traffic arrangements. Through it combi- 
 nation was made to take the place of competition, 
 and in case of controversy the roads had recourse to 
 arbitration, directly under the eye of the government 
 and of the public, instead of to wars of rates. Before 
 the battle of Sadowa brought the North German
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 11$ 
 
 empire into existence, this union was, under the 
 conditions there existing, a necessity. It then became 
 firmly established, and is now recognized as a most 
 useful part of the railroad organization. It introduces 
 into the system uniformity and stability, causing a 
 direct contact with the government. 
 
 Holding in ownership and themselves operating 
 the whole or a large portion of the railroads within 
 their limits, as so many of the German governments 
 did, it was inevitable that the formation of the Ger- 
 man empire must here also work a new departure. 
 The control of the lines of communication was very 
 essential to the stability of the new imperial system. 
 Provision in this respect was accordingly made in the 
 constitution of the empire, and the policy to be pur- 
 sued under it has since been not the least perplexing 
 of the many perplexing questions which have engaged 
 the attention of Prince Bismarck. At first he seemed 
 to incline towards a scheme of general state owner- 
 ship. All the railroads were by degrees to be pur- 
 chased and absorbed by the imperial government. 
 As a step in this directio'n a commission was ap- 
 pointed which in 1876 made an elaborate report. 
 This was submitted to the Prussian parliament, 
 accompanied by a government project for the trans- 
 fer of the state roads of that country to the empire. 
 After a vigorous debate, in which Bismarck himself 
 took an active part, the measure was passed, though 
 not without considerable opposition. Nothing, how- 
 ever, has been done under it ; on the contrary the
 
 114 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 movement seemed to stop here, and it is generally 
 supposed will not, at any rate for the present, be 
 pressed further. It is further stated that Bismarck 
 after full consideration has come to the conclusion 
 that the correct solution of the problem does not lie 
 in the direction of state ownership. He has com- 
 plained bitterly in the Prussian parliament of repeated 
 conflicts between the imperial government and the 
 managements of the railroads, and not long since 
 proposed to create a special ministry to take charge 
 of the subject so far as Prussia was concerned. This 
 measure was defeated, and led to a change in the 
 cabinet. Meanwhile Baron von Weber, who is the 
 highest German authority on railroad subjects, has 
 recently entered the Prussian service, and is thus in 
 position to affect the course of affairs. He is com- 
 mitted against the project of imperial ownership, and 
 inclines to the adoption of a definite policy very 
 similar to that which has been arrived at in Great 
 Britain. He would leave the system to develop in 
 its own way, and to assume such shape as circum- 
 stances may dictate. Those owning the individual 
 railroads, whether states or companies, should be left 
 to manage them, provided they did so under close 
 governmental supervision. In Germany it should-be 
 understood this means much more than it does in 
 Great Britain, or would in America. Meanwhile the 
 German policy seems to incline towards at least 
 trying the experiment of government control, before 
 having recourse to government ownership. The
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 11$ 
 
 whole question there, however, is complicated by 
 political and military considerations which do not 
 affect it either in Great Britain or in America. 
 
 The English, the Belgian, the French, and the 
 German are the four great railroad systems. With 
 many points in common, each has peculiar features 
 deserving of careful study. In their political rela- 
 tions they are divided into two groups by a broad 
 line of demarkation. On the one side of that line are 
 the systems of the English-speaking race, based upon 
 private enterprise and left for their regulation to the 
 principles of laissez faire, the laws of competition, 
 and of supply and demand. On the other side of 
 the line are the systems of continental Europe, in the 
 creation of which the state assumed the initiative, 
 and over which it exercises constant and watchful 
 supervision. In applying results drawn from the 
 experience of one country to problems which present 
 themselves in another, the difference of social and 
 political habit and education should ever be borne in 
 mind. Because in the countries of continental Eu- 
 rope the state can and does hold close relations, 
 amounting even to ownership, with the railroads, it 
 does not follow that the same course could be suc- 
 cessfully pursued in England or in America. The 
 former nations are by political habit administrative, 
 the latter are parliamentary ; in other words, France 
 and Germany are essentially executive in their gov- 
 ernmental systems, while England and America are 
 legislative. Now the executive may design, construct,
 
 Il6 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 or operate a railroad ; the legislative never can. A 
 country, therefore, with a weak or unstable execu- 
 tive, or a crude and imperfect civil service, should 
 accept with caution results achieved under a govern- 
 ment of bureaus. Nevertheless, though conclusions 
 cannot be adopted in the gross, there may be in them 
 much good food for reflection. 
 
 The railroad system of the United States, with 
 all its excellences and all its defects, is thoroughly 
 characteristic of the American people. It grew up 
 untrammelled by any theory as to how it ought to 
 grow ; and developed with mushroom rapidity, with- 
 out reference to government or political systems. In 
 this country alone were the principles of free trade 
 unreservedly and fearlessly applied to it. The result 
 has certainly been wonderful, if not in all respects 
 satisfactory. Why it has not been wholly satisfac- 
 tory remains to be explained. 
 
 Looked upon as a whole, the American railroad 
 system may now be said to have passed, wholly or in 
 part, through three distinct phases of growth the 
 limits of which are merged in each other, though 
 their order of succession is sufficiently clear. First 
 was the period of construction, beginning with the 
 year 1830 and closing with the completion of the 
 Pacific railroad in 1869; merged wfth this period 
 and following upon it, was that of active competition, 
 which reached its fullest development in 1876 ; this 
 naturally was followed by the period of combination,
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 1 1/ 
 
 which first assumed a large and definite, shape in 
 1873, and has since that gradually but surely been 
 working itself out into something both definite and 
 practical. To one now looking back and reviewing 
 the whole course of events, cause and effect become 
 apparent. Things could not have taken any course 
 other than that which they did take, the logic has 
 been inexorable. The whole theory under which the 
 railroad system was left to develop itself was founded 
 on a theoretical error ; and it was none the less an error 
 because, even if it had been recognized as such, it 
 could not have been remedied. That error lay in 
 the supposition, then universally accepted as an 
 axiom, that in all matters of trade, competition, if al- 
 lowed perfectly free play, could be relied upon to 
 protect the community from abuses. The efficacy 
 of railroad competition, expressing itself in the 
 form of general laws authorizing the freest possible 
 railroad construction everywhere and by any one, 
 at an early day became almost a cardinal principle of 
 American faith. 
 
 The people of the country in their political ca- 
 pacity had faith in it. Indeed, not to have had faith 
 in it at that time would have seemed almost to imply 
 a doubt of the very principles upon which the gov- 
 ernment was established. The whole political ex- 
 periment in America was based upon the theory that 
 the government should have the least possible con- 
 nection with all industrial undertakings, that these 
 undertakings had been regulated in other countries
 
 ' Il8 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 far too much, and that now, in the New World, it 
 was to be proved that they would regulate themselves 
 best when most left alone. The exceptions to this 
 rule had yet to develop themselves. Forty years ago 
 they had not begun, or had hardly begun, to develop 
 themselves at all. If the people, and through the 
 people the government, had faith in competition, the 
 private individuals who constructed the railroads 
 seemed to have no fear of it. They built roads 
 everywhere, apparently in perfect confidence that the 
 country would so develop as to support all the roads 
 that could be built. Consequently railroads sprang 
 up as if by magic, and after they were constructed, 
 as it was impossible to remove them from places 
 where they were not wanted to places where they 
 were wanted, they lived upon the land where they 
 could, and, when the business of the land would 
 not support them, they fought and ruined each other. 
 The country was of immense extent, and its 
 development under the stimulus of the new power 
 was unprecedentedly rapid. At first, and during the 
 lives of more than one generation, it really seemed 
 as if the community had not relied upon this funda- 
 mental law of competition without cause. Never- 
 theless, there never was a time, since the first rail- 
 road was built, when he who sought to look for them 
 could not find in almost any direction significant in- 
 dications of the violation of a natural law. Local in- 
 equalities always existed, and the whole system was 
 built up upon the principle of developing competing
 
 THE RAILROAD PBOBLEM. 1 1 9 
 
 points at the expense of all others. There were cer- 
 tain localities in the country known as railroad cen- 
 tres ; and these railroad centres were stimulated into 
 an undue growth from the fact that competition was 
 limited to them. The principles of free trade did not 
 have full play ; they were confined to favored locali- 
 ties. Hence resulted two things: in the first place 
 the community suffered ; then the railroads. Under 
 the hard stress of local and through competition the 
 most glaring inequalities were developed. The work 
 of the railroad centres was done at a nominal profit, 
 while the corporations recompensed themselves by 
 extorting from other points where competition did 
 not have to be met, the highest profit which business 
 could be made to pay. It thus gradually became 
 apparent, although men were very slow to take in 
 the fact, that immense and invaluable as were the 
 results in many respects secured through unlimited 
 railroad competition, yet so far as the essential matter 
 of securing to all reasonable and equal rates of pay- 
 ment for similar services performed was involved, it 
 did not produce the effect confidently expected of it. 
 On the contrary, it led directly to systematic dis- 
 criminations and wild fluctuations, and the more ac- 
 tive the competition was, the more oppressive the 
 discriminations became and the less possible was it 
 to estimate the fluctuations. In other words, while 
 the result of other and ordinary competition was to 
 reduce and equalize prices, that of railroad competi- 
 tion was to produce local inequalities and to arbi-
 
 120 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 trarily raise and depress prices. The teachings of po- 
 litical economy were at fault. The variation was so 
 great that it was evident some important factor in the 
 problem had been overlooked. 
 
 Though in the case of the railroad system the 
 disturbance produced by this false application of a 
 correct principle was far more sensibly felt in Amer- 
 ica than in any other country, yet the reason of the 
 difficulty was thought out elsewhere. Much has been 
 heard within the last few years of a newly developed 
 school of political and economic thinkers which is 
 making itself felt in Germany, and the tendency of 
 which is supposed to be reactionary against English 
 free trade and laissez faire. These German thinkers 
 have been laid hold of in this country by the protec- 
 tionists, and claimed by them as allies. In truth 
 they are nothing of the sort. They are free traders 
 themselves, but they declare that the principles of 
 free trade also are not of unlimited application ; that, 
 on the contrary, experience, and especially the expe- 
 rience of the last few years, has definitely shown that, 
 in the complex development of modern life func- 
 tions are more and more developed which, in their 
 operation, are not subject to the laws of competition 
 or the principles of free trade, and which indeed are 
 reduced to utter confusion within and without if 
 abandoned to the working of those laws. The more 
 thorough ascertainment of these limitations on prin- 
 ciples generally correct is one of the important stud- 
 ies of the day. Thirty years ago they were not
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 121 
 
 understood at all ; they are now understood only in 
 part. John Stuart Mill had a clear though limited 
 perception of them ; and how limited his perception 
 was will be realized from the fact that of the twelve 
 hundred pages of his work on political economy he 
 devotes just four pages to this subject. Yet to-day 
 these limitations are asserting themselves in a way 
 which cannot be ignored. 
 
 The traditions of political economy, therefore, to 
 the contrary notwithstanding, there are functions of 
 modern life, the number of which is also continually 
 increasing, which necessarily partake in their essence 
 of the character of monopolies. The supplying rail- 
 road and telegraph facilities presents examples of 
 these on the large scale, as the supplying cities and 
 large towns with water and gas presents examples of 
 them on a smaller scale. All of these, and others 
 which could be named, partake of the character of 
 monopolies as a fundamental condition of their de- 
 velopment. Now it is found that, wherever this 
 characteristic exists, the effect of competition is not 
 to regulate cost or equalize production, but under a 
 greater or less degree of friction to bring about com- 
 bination and a closer monopoly. The law is invaria- 
 ble. It knows no exceptions. The process through 
 which it works itself out may be long, but it is sure. 
 When the number of those performing any industrial 
 work in the system of modern life is necessarily 
 limited to a few, the more powerful of those few will 
 inevitably absorb into themselves the less powerful. 
 ' 6
 
 122 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 > 
 
 The difficulty of the process is a mere question of 
 degree ; its duration is a mere question of time. In 
 America a great many agents, though by no means 
 an unlimited number, are employed in the work of 
 railroad transportation, hence the monopoly is looser 
 and the struggle between the monopolists is fiercer 
 than it is in many other countries ; hence, also, the 
 process of bringing about a thorough combination is 
 rendered more difficult and requires more time. 
 None the less it goes on. 
 
 Where the extent of country to be occupied was 
 so vast and the necessity for some means of trans- 
 portation so great, it naturally took a number of 
 years for a theoretical error at the bottom of a sys- 
 tem to work its way to the top. For a long time all 
 went apparently well. The people of the country 
 saw only the manifold advantages which flowed from 
 a railroad construction which was stimulated by 
 every inducement which could be held out to avarice. 
 Thousands of miles were built each year, the interior 
 was opened to the seaboard with an energy which out- 
 did expectation, new appliances, whether of speed, 
 of safety or of economy were introduced as fast 
 as ingenuity could invent them, rates of fare and 
 of freight between distant points became lower and 
 lower, until what seemed reasonable yesterday was 
 looked upon as exorbitant to-day, and altogether 
 the development was so surprising that it could not 
 but excite sensations of wonder and gratitude which 
 for the moment alone found expression. This state
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 12$ 
 
 of things could not be permanent. The mania for 
 railroad construction which began in 1866, and cul- 
 minated in the crash of 1873, brought matters to a 
 crisis. As lines multiplied, the competition increased. 
 The railroads had been built much too rapidly and 
 the business of the country could not support them. 
 Those immediately in charge were under a constant 
 and severe pressure to earn money ; and they earned 
 it wherever and however they could. They stopped 
 at nothing. Between those years it is safe to say that 
 the idea of any duty which a railroad corporation owed 
 to the public was wholly lost sight of. In the eyes of 
 those managing them the railroads were mere private 
 money-making enterprises. They acted accordingly. 
 If they were forced to compete, they competed sav- 
 agely and without regard to consequences ; where 
 they were free from competition, they exacted the 
 uttermost farthing. There naturally ensued a system 
 of sudden fluctuations and inequitable local discrimi- 
 nations which has scarcely ever been equalled and 
 which was well-nigh intolerable. At one point sev- 
 eral roads would converge, and the business or travel 
 to and from that point would be furiously fought over 
 until rates became almost literally nominal; mean- 
 while those engaged in business or living at other 
 points but a few miles away would be charged every 
 penny that they could be made to pay without be- 
 ing driven off the railroad and back to the highway. 
 Where goods starting from the same point were to 
 be delivered at different stations on the line of the
 
 124 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 same road, those forwarding them discovered to their 
 cost that the tariff resembled nothing so much as an 
 undulating line, for a distance of twenty miles, more 
 would have to be paid than for a distance of forty 
 miles. Those living between competing points were 
 rigidly excluded from the benefits of competition. To 
 such an outrageous extent was this carried, that it be- 
 came the common practice where an entire car-load of 
 merchandise, destined to some way station on the line 
 of a railroad, was paid through to a competing point 
 far beyond on that line, to make a large extra charge 
 for not hauling it to that point, but dropping it at its 
 ultimate destination in the first place. It was exactly 
 as if a traveller was to buy a through ticket from Al- 
 bany to Buffalo, and the railroad company were to 
 insist not only on taking up his ticket but on charg- 
 ing him a dollar extra if he left the train at Syracuse. 
 Remonstrances against this absurd anomaly were 
 treated by the officials of the railroad companies as 
 if they were too unreasonable for a patient hearing. 
 This was much more the case in the West than at the 
 East, but even in Massachusetts when the state rail- 
 road commissioners on one occasion urged upon a 
 corporation the injustice of charging some twenty 
 dollars extra on each car-load of wheat which had 
 been paid for on a through bill of lading to the fur- 
 ther end of its line if they left it at its point of desti- 
 nation one hundred miles short of that end, thus 
 making a charge of twenty dollars for not hauling 
 the loaded car one hundred miles, in this case their
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 12$ 
 
 representations were met with the counter proposal 
 that, if the consignee preferred, the company would 
 haul his goods by his door to the point to which 
 they were billed, and then back, charging both ways. 
 He might pay the through rate forward and the local 
 rate back, or submit to the extra charge, just as he 
 chose. Besides all this, however, competition led to 
 favoritism of the grossest character, men or business 
 firms whose shipments by rail were large could com- 
 mand their own terms, as compared with those whose 
 shipments were small. The most irritating as well 
 as wrongful inequalities were thus made common all 
 over the land. Every local settlement and every 
 secluded farmer saw other settlements and other 
 farmers more fortunately placed, whose consequent 
 prosperity seemed to make their own ruin a question 
 of time. Place to place, or man to man, they might 
 compete ; but where the weight of the railroad was 
 flung into one scale, it was strange indeed if the 
 other did not kick the beam. 
 
 Of course, even under the most favorable circum- 
 stances, it was wholly unlikely that such a condition 
 of affairs should long continue. The fact that these 
 abuses were the simple and inevitable outcome of a 
 public policy in regard to railroads which had from 
 the beginning been jealously adhered to was of no 
 consequence. People felt and did not reason. 
 Competition made the price of flour and cloth and 
 shoes equal and reasonable : why should it make fares 
 and freights unequal and unreasonable? Few in-
 
 126 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 deed were they who could be made to see that the 
 true cause of complaint was with an economical the- 
 ory misapplied, not with those who with only too 
 much energy had carried out the misappled theory to 
 its final logical conclusions. Yet a cause of complaint 
 did exist, and to a degree which made a popular ex- 
 plosion inevitable. In the case of the railroad corpo- 
 rations, moreover, the prejudice was aggravated by 
 well authenticated rumors of the gross financial 
 scandals which disgraced their management. The 
 system was, indeed, fairly honeycombed with job- 
 bery and corruption. They began high up in the 
 wretched machinery of the construction company, 
 with all its thimble-rig contrivances to effect the 
 unseen transfer of assets from the treasury of the 
 corporation to the pockets of its directors. Thence 
 they spread downward through the whole system of 
 supplies and contracts and rolling-stock companies, 
 until it might not unfairly be said that everything 
 had its price. 
 
 The natural results followed. In 1879 a popular 
 agitation broke out which for the time being threat- 
 ened to sweep down not only all legal barriers but 
 every consideration of self-interest ; and, at the same 
 time, the corporations driven to the verge of bank- 
 ruptcy, if not fairly over it. by the joint effects of cor- 
 ruption and competition, turned their thoughts on the 
 single chance of escape which combination among 
 themselves held out. In 1873 the Grangers were 
 electing Judges in Illinois; and in 1874 the railroad
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. I2/ 
 
 magnates were discussing the details of a grand com- 
 bination at Saratoga. 
 
 Of the Granger episode little now needs to be 
 said. That it did not originate without cause has 
 already been pointed out. It is quite safe to go 
 further and to say that the movement was a neces- 
 sary one, and through its results has made a solu- 
 tion of the railroad problem possible in this country. 
 At the time that movement took shape the railroad 
 corporations were in fact rapidly assuming a position 
 which could not be tolerated. Corporations, own- 
 ing and operating the highways of commerce, they 
 claimed for themselves a species of immunity from 
 the control of the law-making power. When laws 
 were passed with a view to their regulation, they 
 received them in a way which was at once arrogant 
 and singularly injudicious. The officers entrusted 
 with the execution of those laws they contemptu- 
 ously ignored. Sheltering themselves behind the 
 Dartmouth College decision, they practically under- 
 took to set even public opinion at defiance. Indeed 
 there can be no doubt that those representing these 
 corporations had at this juncture not only become 
 fully educated up to the idea that the gross inequali- 
 ties and ruinous discriminations to which in their busi- 
 ness they were accustomed were necessary incidents 
 to it, which afforded no just ground of complaint to 
 any one ; but they also thought that any attempt to 
 rectify them through legislation was a gross outrage 
 on the elementary principles both of common sense
 
 128 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 and of constitutional law. In other words, they had 
 thoroughly got it into their heads that they as com- 
 mon carriers were in no way bound to afford equal 
 facilities to all, and, indeed, that it was in the last 
 degree absurd and unreasonable to expect them to 
 do so. The Granger method was probably as good 
 a method of approaching men in this frame of mind 
 as could have been devised. They were not open to 
 reason, from the simple fact that their ideas of what 
 in their position was right or wrong, reasonable or 
 unreasonable, were wholly perverted. They were 
 part of a system founded on error ; and that error 
 they had all their lives been accustomed to look upon 
 as truth. The Granger violence was, therefore, need- 
 ful to clear the ground. This it did ; and it did it in 
 a w*ay far from creditable to those who called them- 
 selves Grangers. 
 
 Indeed, the extravagant utterances of that time 
 would even now seem incredible were they not mat- 
 ter of record. For instance, the following is one of 
 a long series of resolutions adopted at a general 
 convention of the Granges held at Springfield, 111., 
 on the 2d of April, 1873 : 
 
 Second. The railways of the world, except in those countries 
 where they have been held under the strict regulation and super- 
 vision of the government, have proved themselves of as arbitrary 
 extortion and opposed to free institutions and free commerce 
 between the states as the feudal barons of the Middle Ages. 
 
 This comparison between the modern railroad 
 corporations and the feudal barons, in spite of its
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 grotesque absurdity, was very popular among the 
 Granger rhetoricians. It made its appearance with 
 great regularity in nearly all their more labored and 
 ornate productions. In June, 1873, for example, 
 numerous county gatherings put forth a declaration 
 of farmers' grievances and principles, in which oc- 
 curred this passage : 
 
 " The history of the present railway monopoly is a history of 
 repeated injuries and oppressions, all having in direct object the 
 establishment of an absolute tyranny over the people of these 
 States unequalled in any monarchy of the Old World, and having 
 its only parallel in the history of the mediaeval ages, when the 
 strong hand was the only law, and the highways of commerce 
 were taxed by the feudal barons, who, from their strongholds, 
 surrounded by their armies of vassals, could lay such tribute 
 upon the traveller as their own wills alone should dictate." 
 
 As usual, these wild utterances in due time re- 
 sulted in the enactment of yet wilder laws. Laws 
 were demanded which should regulate the profits, 
 the methods of operation, and the political relations 
 of the railroads ; the corporations were to be made 
 to realize, as the phrase went, that " thecreated was 
 not greater than the creator;" that the railroads 
 were the servants of the people and not their masters. 
 Here then ought to have been met a complete and 
 logical abandonment of the whole theory of regula- 
 tion by natural law, under which the railroad sys- 
 tem had been organized and had grown up. If that 
 theory was worth anything at all, the remedy for the 
 ills under which the community was suffering would
 
 130 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 
 
 at once come into play. The railroads were not 
 monopolies. There was nothing to prevent the or- 
 ganization of new companies to construct parallel 
 and competing lines of road. Here was the remedy 
 through competition : and the mere statement of it 
 revealed its utter absurdity. Nevertheless the idea 
 that from the very necessity of the case uncontrolled 
 railroad competition led directly to and was insepar- 
 able from railroad discriminations and local inequali- 
 ties obtained no lodgment. 
 
 The fact that the railroad companies did not com- 
 pete with each other -regularly and equally and mod- 
 erately at all times and at all places was patent. The 
 reason why they did not do so was not at once appa- 
 rent, and the result itself, therefore, by a sort of gen- 
 eral consent, was set down as one more manifestation 
 of that innate perversity common to all monopolists. 
 Meanwhile not the slightest degree of distrust was 
 felt of the competitive principle under the conditions 
 in which it was now sought to be applied. That, 
 throughout the discussion, was accepted as axiom- 
 atic a nostrum at once universal and infallible. 
 
 The abandonment of competition between rail- 
 roads consequently found no place in the philosophy 
 of Granger legislation. It was, on the contrary, tena- 
 ciously clung to, and new laws were passed to render 
 more illegal than ever any combination between com- 
 peting lines. The remedy, from the Granger point 
 of view, was obvious. As the trouble was due to hu- 
 man perversity, and not to any defect in principle,
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 131 
 
 nothing was needed to make things right but more 
 of the same remedy, liberally supplemented by penal 
 legislation. If the Sangrado treatment did not work 
 a cure, the blood-letting must go on, but the alguazil 
 should replace the warm water. 
 
 Meanwhile the Granger legislation, crude as it 
 was and utterly as it lacked insight, did produce 
 results. That it did so was due wholly to the fact 
 that the states which enacted the Granger laws went 
 further, and incorporated into them a special execu- 
 tory force. To a certain extent, therefore, the state 
 governments assumed the management of the rail- 
 roads. In so far as they did this, the Granger legis- 
 lation was logical and consequently effective. Gov- 
 ernment regulation is a practical substitute for com- 
 petition. Apart from this, it was in no respect a 
 success. If experience has proved anything conclu- 
 sively, it has certainly proved that mere abstract laws 
 aimed at the inequalities which arise out of railroad 
 competition are of no avail. Whether placed on the 
 statute books as laws generally applicable, or incor- 
 porated at length into special charters, the result has 
 been the same. The precedents are innumerable, 
 and the Granger experiments did but add to their 
 number. The ingenuity of lawyers, working on the 
 intricacies of a most complicated system, has never 
 failed to make a broad path through the meshes of 
 merely declaratory statutes. The Granger legisla- 
 tures, though with great reluctance, recognized this 
 fact. Boards of commissioners were accordingly pro-
 
 132 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 vided, and to them was entrusted a general supervis- 
 ion over the railroads and the duty of making the 
 new legislation effective. The organization and ex- 
 perience of these commissions is, from the govern- 
 mental point of view, the most important and in- 
 structive phase in the development of the railroad 
 problem during the last few years. 
 
 It has already been pointed out that the inclina- 
 tion of the American mind is not bureaucratic. 
 Recourse is had in this country to commissions, as 
 our bureaus are called, with great reluctance. Ex- 
 perience, it must also be admitted, fully justifies this 
 feeling of distrust ; as a rule they do not work well. 
 Not only do they develop in too many cases a sin- 
 gular aptitude for all jobbery, but, even when hon- 
 estly composed, they rarely accomplish much. 
 Once created, also, they can never be gotten rid of. 
 They ever after remain part of the machinery of 
 government, drawing salaries and apparently making 
 work for themselves to do. The reason is obvious. In 
 America there are not many specialists, nor have the 
 American people any great degree of faith in them. 
 The principle that all men are created equal before 
 the law has been stripped of its limitations, until in 
 the popular mind it has become a sort of cardinal 
 article of political faith that all men are equal for all 
 purposes. Accordingly, in making up commissions 
 to deal with the most complicated issues arising out 
 of our modern social and industrial organization, 
 those in authority are very apt to conclude that one
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 133 
 
 man can do the work about as well as another. The 
 result is what might naturally be expected ; and the 
 system is made responsible for it. All this received 
 pointed illustration in the case of the Granger com- 
 missions. In the first place the country did not 
 contain any trained body of men competent to do 
 the work. They had got to be found and then edu- 
 cated. In the next place the work was one of great 
 difficulty and extreme delicacy. The commissioners 
 were to represent the government in a momentous 
 struggle with the most compact and formidable 
 interest in the country. They were to be pitted 
 against the ablest men the community could supply, 
 thoroughly acquainted with their business and with 
 unlimited resources at their disposal. Finally the 
 test of success was -to be that, under these circum- 
 stances and in the face of these difficulties, the com- 
 missioners should develop the crude original laws 
 placed in their hands into a rational and effective 
 system. 
 
 It was from the beginning, therefore, obvious 
 that no high standard of success could reasonably be 
 hoped for from the Granger commissions. They 
 were far too heavily handicapped. In the first place 
 the executives of the states in selecting their mem- 
 bers not infrequently seemed to regard any antece- 
 dent familiarity with the railroad system as a total 
 disqualification. So afraid were they of a bias, that 
 they sought out men whose minds were a blank. 
 Farmers, land-surveyors, men of business and poli-
 
 134 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 ticians were selected. There were, of course, excep- 
 tions to this remark, and some very competent men 
 were appointed who did excellent work so long as 
 they remained in office. But a long continuance in 
 office was again looked upon as undesirable, and 
 these men were either speedily removed to make 
 way for incompetents, or they voluntarily passed 
 into the employ of the railroad corporations before 
 they had fairly mastered the situation.* Above and 
 beyond' all this, however, these commissions began 
 their work in a false position, and they never extri- 
 cated themselves from it. They were not judicial 
 tribunals. They ever reflected the angry complex- 
 ion of the movement out of which they had originat- 
 
 * There could not be a better illustration of the shifting charac- 
 ter of these boards under the system in. use in the states of the 
 West than has been fuinished in the case of that of Illinois. It consists 
 of three members. The original appointments were made July 1st, 
 1871. These commissioners went out of office and an entirely new 
 set were appointed on March I3th, 1873. The chairman of the new 
 board died in the succeeding November, and a successor was ap- 
 pointed. These commissioners held office until February 2ist, 1877, 
 when they all retired, and were succeeded by the present board. 
 Three complete changes in less than six years, with one additional 
 vacancy occasioned by death. Under these circumstances a remark 
 in its last report that " the Commission, ever since the time of its 
 organization, has labored under embarrassments which have deprived 
 it of the ability to be as useful to the people " as it might have been, 
 seems in no way unreasonable. But who is responsible ? Certainly 
 not the commissioners, who by no possible exertion of their own dur- 
 ing their brief tenure of office could have qualified themselves to 
 perform its duties. The railroad corporations manage things differ 
 ently.
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 135 
 
 ed. They were where they were, not to study a dif- 
 ficult problem and to guide their steps by the light 
 of investigation. Nothing of this sort was, as a rule, 
 expected of them. On the contrary they were there 
 to prosecute. The test of their performance of duty 
 was to be sought in the degree of hostility they 
 manifested to the railroad corporations. In a word 
 they represented force. 
 
 That under these circumstances they succeeded 
 at all is the true cause of astonishment ; not that 
 they succeeded but partially. That they did suc- 
 ceed was due solely to the incorrigible folly and pas- 
 sionate love of fighting which seems inherent in the 
 trained American railroad official. Placed as they 
 were, entirely unfamiliar with the difficult questions 
 they were compelled to confront, lacking confidence 
 in themselves and very much afraid of their oppo- 
 nents, had those opponents seen fit to be even mod- 
 erately civil and deferential to them, the position of 
 the commissioners would have been rendered ex- 
 tremely difficult. Had the representatives of the 
 railroad corporations, with their vast resources and 
 intimate acquaintance with the subject, been wise 
 enough to take the initiative and meet the commis- 
 sioners half way, it would have been strange indeed 
 if they had not succeeded in impressing upon them 
 a sense of the difficulty of their task, and so mate- 
 rially affected their action. Instead of this they 
 simply ignored them. For instance, when the newly 
 organized California board requested one corporation
 
 136 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 to forward the passes which would enable the com- 
 missioners to go over its road, the passes came accom- 
 panied by a denial of the " validity of the law," and 
 a statement that they were sent " not in obedience 
 to said Act, but merely as an act of courtesy to the 
 members of the Board and their Secretary." Even 
 in Massachusetts, the mere suggestion of the com- 
 missioners in 1871 to the railroad corporations that 
 they should carefully revise their tariffs, was met by 
 one General Manager with the astounding reply that 
 " he had not supposed, and did not now suppose 
 that the Commission intends to seriously attempt 
 advising the trained and experienced managers of 
 roads in this Commonwealth upon the details of their 
 duty." In the West, during the years 1872-3, if a 
 railroad official was asked what course the compa- 
 nies proposed to pursue in regard to the new legis- 
 lation, the usual answer was that they did not pro- 
 pose to pay any attention whatever to it. Imagine 
 the English corporations thus coolly setting Parlia- 
 ment at defiance ! Naturally this impolitic course 
 not only incensed the commissioners, but, what was 
 of far more consequence, it strengthened their hands. 
 The popular feeling, strong enough before, was inten- 
 sified. The agitation was thus kept alive until the 
 decision of the courts of last resort was obtained, 
 which fortunately placed the railroads completely at 
 the mercy of the legislatures. Nothing short of this 
 would apparently have sufficed to force them out of 
 their attitude of stupid, fighting defiance. This re
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 137 
 
 suit, however, once arrived at, they immediately 
 recovered their senses, and with them their strength. 
 They became at once compliant and formidable. 
 Their knowledge, their skill, their money and their 
 influence began to tell. Driven by brute force out 
 of the utterly untenable position in which they had 
 sought to entrench themselves, the moment they 
 reconciled themselves to the use of the weapons of 
 protection customary in civilized communities mat- 
 ters began sensibly to improve. Not that the prob- 
 lem was touched, for discrimination and inequality, 
 competitive business and local combinations, still 
 remained inherent in the system. An obligation to 
 the public was, however, recognized. It was no long- 
 er claimed that railroads were mere private business 
 enterprises, and the abuses incident to their compe- 
 tition among themselves were at least softened down 
 by the absence of that old arbitrary spirit which had 
 so aggravated hardships. The laws were sufficiently 
 complied with to remove the more flagrant causes 
 of complaint, and the practical results thus secured 
 through the Granger agitation were far more con- 
 siderable than has been generally supposed. 
 
 Fortunately, while in the more western states of 
 the Union years were being wasted in a mere pre- 
 liminary struggle, the question in another part of the 
 country had from the beginning taken a different 
 shape, and one far more promising of results. Owing 
 to other conditions of railroad ownership and a more 
 composed state of the public mind, the East afforded
 
 138 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 a better field for profitable discussion than the West. 
 Various state railroad commissions already existed 
 in that section, but in 1869 one was organized in 
 Massachusetts on a somewhat novel principle, and a 
 principle in curious contrast with that which has 
 just been described as subsequently adopted in the 
 West. In the West the fundamental idea behind 
 every railroad act was force ; the commission repre- 
 sented the constable. In the Massachusetts act the 
 fundamental idea was publicity ; the commission 
 represented public opinion. The law creating the 
 board and defining its field of action was clumsily 
 drawn, and throughout it there was apparent a 
 spirit of distrust in its purpose. In theory an 
 experiment, in reality it was a makeshift. The 
 powers conferred on the commissioners hardly 
 deserved the name ; and such as they were, they 
 were carefully hedged about with limitations against 
 their abuse. Accordingly when the commissioners 
 entered upon their duties they were at first inclined 
 to think that they could hardly save themselves from 
 falling into contempt from mere lack of ability to 
 ^compel respect for their decisions. In fact, how- 
 ever, the law could not have been improved. Had 
 it not been a flagrant legislative guess, it would have 
 been an inspiration. The only appeal provided was 
 to publicity. The board of commissioners was setup 
 as a sort of lens by means of which the otherwise scat- 
 tered rays of public opinion could be concentrated 
 to a focus and brought to bear upon a given point.
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 139 
 
 The commissioners had to listen, and they might in- 
 vestigate and report ; they could do little more. 
 Accordingly they were compelled to study their 
 subject, and with each question which came before 
 them they had to stand or fall on the reasons they 
 presented for their conclusions. They could not 
 take refuge in silence. Whenever they attempted to 
 do so they speedily found themselves in trouble. 
 They had, as each case came up, to argue the side of 
 the corporations or of the public, as the case might 
 be ; but always to argue it openly, and in a way 
 which showed that they understood the subject and 
 were at least honest in their convictions. Placed 
 from the beginning in this position, the -board was 
 singularly fortunate in the permanence with which 
 its members were continued in office. But two 
 individual changes were made in it during nine 
 years, and it has undergone no change during the last 
 six. Accordingly it had a chance to outlive its inex- 
 perience and profit by its own blunders, which natu- 
 rally were at first neither trifling nor infrequent. 
 The result was necessarily as different from that 
 reached at the West, as were the conditions under 
 which it was reached. The board, in the first place, 
 became of necessity a judicial in place of a prosecut- 
 ing tribunal. It naturally had often to render decis- 
 ions upon matters of complaint which came under its 
 cognizance in favor of the railroad corporations ; 
 whether it decided in their favor or against them, 
 however, its decisions carried no weight other than
 
 I4O THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 that derived from the reasons given for them. The 
 commissioners were consequently under the necessity 
 of cultivating friendly relations with the railroad of- 
 ficials, and had to inspire them, if they could, with a 
 confidence in their knowledge and fairness. Without 
 that they could not hope to sustain themselves. On 
 the other hand, their failure was imminent unless 
 they so bore themselves as to satisfy the public that 
 they were absolutely independent of corporate influ- 
 ence, and could always be relied upon to fearlessly 
 investigate and impartially decide. 
 
 Undesignedly the Massachusetts legislators had 
 rested their law on the one great social feature which 
 distinguishes modern civilization from any other of 
 which we have a record, the eventual suprem- 
 acy of an enlightened public opinion. The line 
 of policy thus happily initiated was carefully pur- 
 sued. New and wider powers were, year by year, 
 conferred upon the board, but always in the same 
 direction, powers to investigate and report. The 
 commissioners meanwhile were not slow to realize 
 the advantage of their position, and have repeatedly 
 put themselves on record as desiring no more arbi- 
 trary powers, as feeling themselves indeed stronger 
 without them. In 1876, this policy reached its final 
 result, as the legislature then placed the entire sys- 
 tem of accounts kept by the corporations under the 
 direct supervision of the board. Its power in this 
 respect was unlimi^d. Not only was it authorized 
 to prescribe a uniform system upon which those
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 14! 
 
 accounts should be kept, but they were also to be 
 kept under the immediate and constant supervision 
 of its officers, and on proper application the books 
 were to be publicly investigated. In view of the 
 notorious scandals which have made " railroad 
 financiering " a by-word for whatever is financially 
 loose, corrupt and dishonest, the scope and signifi- 
 cance of this measure does not need to be dwelt 
 upon. It went to the root of the matter. It 
 opened to light all the dark places. In France only, 
 it is believed, had a similar power been asserted ; but 
 there, its exercise was based on the large pecuniary 
 interest the government had in the railroad proper- 
 ties. It was a partner, and as such concerned in all 
 their transactions. In Massachusetts a different 
 ground was taken. The indisputable fact was rec- 
 ognized that those corporations are so large and so 
 far removed from the owners of their securities, and 
 the community is so deeply concerned in their 
 doings and condition, that the law-making power 
 both has a right and is in duty bound to insist on 
 that publicity as respects their affairs without which 
 abuses cannot be guarded against. No where has 
 the soundness of this doctrine received such copious 
 illustration as in America during the last few years. 
 Singularly enough also, this act was passed not only 
 without opposition from the railroad companies as 
 a body, but with the active assent of many of them. 
 When it took effect the corporations were sum- 
 moned together by the commissioners and invited
 
 142 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 to assist, through a committee of their accountants, 
 in preparing a uniform system of accounts. They 
 did so ; and the system thus prepared by them, after 
 being approved by the board, was put in operation. 
 The accounts of all the Massachusetts roads have 
 since been kept in practical accordance with it. 
 
 This measure carried the Massachusetts method 
 of dealing with the railroad question to its ultimate 
 point of development under a state government. 
 No greater degree of publicity was possible. The 
 system was perfectly simple, but none the less logi- 
 cal and practical. It amounted to little more than 
 the establishment of a permanent board of arbitra- 
 tion, acting without any of the formality, expense 
 and delay of courts of law. On each question which 
 came before it, whether brought to its notice by 
 means of a postal card or through the action of a 
 city government, this board was to make an inves- 
 tigation. If wrongs and grievances were made to 
 appear, and no measure of redress could be secured, 
 the appeal was to the courts or the legislature, the 
 board still being the motive force. Thus on all 
 questions, not strictly legal, arising out of the rela- 
 tions of the railroad corporations, whether among 
 themselves, with the community as a whole or with 
 individuals, a body of experts, supposed to be 
 skilled, was provided, who were clothed with full 
 inquisitorial powers and whose duty it was, whether 
 moved thereto by facts within their own knowledge 
 or brought to their knowledge through the interven-
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 143 
 
 tion of others, to investigate the doings or condition 
 of the corporations, and to lay the resulting facts in 
 detail before the public. Without remedial or cor- 
 rective power themselves, behind them stood the 
 legislature and the judiciary ready to be brought 
 into play should any corporation evince an unrea- 
 sonable spirit of persistence, when once clearly 
 shown to be in the wrong. 
 
 The policy thus described would seem to have 
 worked sufficiently well in Massachusetts. The com- 
 mission has certainly succeeded in sustaining itself, 
 for, while at every session the legislature has 
 conferred upon it new powers, always in the same 
 direction, the railroad corporations have never 
 appeared in opposition to it as a body. The 
 particular measures recommended by it have not, of 
 course, always been looked upon with favor by the 
 corporations, nor adopted by the legislature. This 
 also has been fortunate, as the opposition and con- 
 sequent delays thus encountered have given the 
 commissioners time to reconsider many of the con- 
 clusions which they had reached and, if need be, to 
 revise them. This they have frequently done. That 
 a commission organized on a like basis in any of 
 the western states between the years 1870 and 1875, 
 could have accomplished the work there to be done 
 is, to say the least, improbable. It could have com- 
 manded the confidence of neither side, and would 
 have been listened to by neither. The issue then 
 and there presented had to be fought out with other
 
 144 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 weapons than written reports. Now that it has 
 been fought out and decided, the question presents 
 itself in a different aspect. But it has been denied 
 that a similar policy would, even under the conditions 
 which now exist, succeed in the more western states, 
 on the ground that the railroad corporations of that 
 section are not so sensitive to the public opinion about 
 them as those of Massachusetts. They are not owned 
 in the West, and the absentee owner is currently 
 supposed to care nothing for the West, its interests, 
 feelings or sentiments. As to the local management, 
 that is in the hands of salaried subordinates who are 
 neither expected nor disposed to serve two masters. 
 Every one at all acquainted with the real facts in 
 the case knows perfectly well to how little weight 
 this line of reasoning is entitled. The conditions 
 stated are, on the contrary, exactly those in which 
 such a machinery as that in use in Massachusetts 
 would be peculiarly useful and effective. So far from 
 being insensible to public opinion in the West, the 
 eastern owner of western railroad securities is in fact 
 peculiarly sensitive to it. The rule that the remote 
 and unknown is always formidable applies in his 
 case as well as in most others, and heretofore it has 
 been by no means one of the least difficulties of the 
 western railroad situation that no machinery has ex- 
 isted through which the voice of complaint could be 
 carried over the head of the local manager directly 
 home to the foreign proprietor. It is rarely indeed 
 that satisfactory results are brought about through
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 145 
 
 any dealings with subordinates. Nor is this remark 
 true of railroads alone. Where any good cause of 
 complaint exists, the local managers are usually more 
 or less responsible for it. Men of routine, they as a 
 rule can see only their own side of any question ; 
 above all, they rarely know when to yield, and are apt 
 to resent interference as if it were an insult. The 
 true way would be to go unceremoniously over them. 
 The owner is the man. In the case of the western 
 railroads, however, the foreign owner has naturally 
 looked upon the Granger commissioner as the willing 
 agent of demagogues and communists, their mere 
 attorney, bound to prosecute and annoy, right or 
 wrong ; on the other hand, the commissioner has 
 not hesitated to give his opinion of the foreign 
 owner as a " robber baron," a "bloated bondholder" 
 and " a money shark." To one who has had an op- 
 portunity to look behind the scenes on either side a 
 wilder case of mutual misapprehension could not 
 well have been imagined. A great advance towards 
 a better condition of affairs in this respect has, how- 
 ever, been secured during the last year, through the 
 action of the Iowa legislature in repealing the so- 
 called " Potter " law, and substituting for it a com- 
 mission practically organized on the Massachusetts 
 plan. It will only remain for those who compose 
 that commission to fairly try the effect of intelligent 
 public discussion as a substitute for ignorant force. 
 That the experiment should now be tried by them, 
 and made to succeed, is of the utmost importance ; 
 7
 
 146 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 for if it does succeed the whole movement in the 
 West will be advanced by one entire stage. The 
 decision of' the Supreme Court in the Granger cases 
 having finally settled the legal relations of the par- 
 ties, the discussions before this board and its conse- 
 quent action may gradually establish them on a 
 friendly and intelligible basis. 
 
 No comprehensive solution of the American rail- 
 road problem need, however, now or at any time, be 
 anticipated from action of the government. The 
 statesman, no matter how sagacious he may be, can 
 but build with the materials he finds ready for his 
 hand. He cannot call things into existence nor, in- 
 deed, can he even greatly hasten their growth. If he 
 is to succeed, he must have the conditions necessary 
 to success. So far as the railroad system of this coun- 
 try is concerned in its relations to the government, 
 everything is as yet clearly in the formative condi- 
 tion. Nothing is ripe. That system is now, with 
 far greater force and activity than ever before, itself 
 shaping all the social, political and economical con- 
 ditions which surround it. The final result is proba- 
 bly yet quite remote, and will be reached only by 
 degrees. When it comes, also, it will assuredly work 
 itself out ; probably in a very commonplace way. 
 The development will then unquestionably be found 
 to have been correspondent ; that is, consciously or 
 unconsciously, the government on one side and the 
 railroad system on the other will have worked to- 
 wards each other. Whether travelling on lines nearly
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 147 
 
 parallel, or which seem. gently to converge or to 
 sharply diverge, or even to run counter to each other, 
 we may rest assured that, whether we see it or not, 
 they are steadily in the United States, as in France, 
 England and Germany, doing this now. 
 
 Hitherto the attempt has been to show how far 
 the process of governmental development has as yet 
 gone in America towards this common ground. It 
 is not much and can be briefly summarized. So far 
 as legislation, pure and simple, is concerned, no pro- 
 gress at all has been made. The laws intended to 
 abstractly solve the difficulties presented have been 
 mere copies, whether intentional or not, of similar 
 acts long since passed elsewhere, and the utter futility 
 of which is denied by no one. Passing on to the 
 more positive results, the essential fact that railroad 
 corporations are amenable to the legislative power 
 has been completely established in the West ; while 
 in the East the influence of publicity and the result- 
 ing force of public opinion as a power adequate to 
 all necessary control of the railroad corporations have 
 been tested to a certain extent. The real issue, 
 however, has not yet been touched ; for all that has 
 yet taken place is little more than the skirmishing 
 which precedes a decisive engagement. Hitherto 
 the question has been confined within state limits ; 
 but the problem in its full magnitude and complexity 
 is co-extensive with that continental field in which 
 Congress alone has " power to regulate commerce 
 between the states." It is there, as the result of an
 
 148 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 uncontrolled and an as yet. uncontrollable competi- 
 tion, that those harsh inequities manifest themselves 
 which have hitherto baffled all attempts at regu- 
 lation. 
 
 It is now necessary to turn from the side of the 
 question which relates to the government, and to 
 consider that which relates to the railroad corpora- 
 tions. It will be found that they also have made 
 progress within the last few years. There is no oc- 
 casion to go back beyond 1873. At that time the 
 unnaturally rapid construction which had for ten 
 years been going on produced its result. A general 
 collapse took place. In that collapse the railroad in- 
 terest from the first suffered more severely than any 
 other, and a vast number of corporations were forced 
 into bankruptcy, either because the country did not 
 afford a sufficient business to support them or be- 
 cause such business as it did afford was fought over 
 and competed for until it ceased to be worth possess- 
 ing. Bankruptcy, again, became merely the process 
 through which absorption was carried on ; but it was 
 a terribly exhausting process. It was competition 
 run mad. So long as the struggle was confined to 
 solvent roads, or to roads which had not yet resigned 
 themselves to a condition of chronic insolvency, 
 something might be predicated in regard to it. There 
 was a point at which the owners of the railroads 
 would cease to be willing to do business in a man- 
 ner which seemed likely to result only in their 
 inevitable ruin. The moment that point was reached
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 149 
 
 and the conviction was fairly forced upon the minds 
 of the contending parties that a conflict further 
 prolonged would lead to this result and that shortly, 
 then the moment for an agreement or for a combi- 
 nation had arrived. They invariably came together 
 and sought to save themselves at the expense of 
 the community. In other words, there was always 
 a point, so long as solvent roads only were con- 
 cerned, at which competition naturally and quietly 
 resulted in combination. This, however, was true 
 only of solvent corporations. But the effect of 
 the crisis of 1873 was sharply to divide the railroad 
 system of the whole country, and more particularly 
 the railroad system of the West, into two classes : 
 the solvent roads and the insolvent roads. The 
 trunk lines mainly belonged to the former class, and 
 the latter class comprised certain of the trunk lines 
 and many, if indeed in the West not a majority, of 
 what are known as the cross lines and the side lines. 
 Between the solvent roads and the roads thus 
 bankrupt a new form of competition then developed 
 itself. The bankrupt roads were operated not for 
 profit, apparently, but to secure business ; business 
 at any price. If it was paying business, so much the 
 better ; if, however, the business would not pay, it 
 was better than no business at all. Accordingly, 
 the position of the solvent lines soon became almost 
 untenable. They found themselves forced to decide 
 whether to lose their business entirely and to see it 
 pass away from them to rival lines, or to retain that
 
 ISO THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 business by doing it at a dead loss, which seemed 
 inevitably to endanger their ultimate solvency also. 
 Such competition as this could not terminate in the 
 usual combination. The difficulty was exceptional, 
 and unless some new method of solution could be 
 devised, must be left to solve itself. 
 
 Accordingly, in the summer of 1873, those man- 
 aging the principal through lines running east and 
 west met together in conference. Commodore Van- 
 derbilt was then passing the vacation time after his 
 usual manner at Saratoga. To Saratoga the repre- 
 sentatives of the other lines accordingly found their 
 way, and there took place a consultation which be- 
 came subsequently famous as the " Saratoga Confer- 
 ence." That conference resulted, it is true, only in a 
 scheme which soon proved abortive ; nevertheless it 
 was deserving of all the temporary notoriety it 
 achieved, for it will probably be found to have 
 marked an era in the history of American railroad 
 development ; the era of what may, perhaps, be 
 known as the Trunk-line Protectorate. There were 
 five rival through routes. Chief among them was 
 the New York Central. North of the New York 
 Central was the Grand Trunk, the through route of 
 Canada. South of it lay three other competing 
 lines : the Erie, the Pennsylvania, and the Balti- 
 more & Ohio. Of those lines three only, with their 
 connections, were represented at the Saratoga con- 
 ference, or agreed to its conclusions. These were 
 the New York Central, the Erie, and the Pennsyl-
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. I$I 
 
 vania. At the time, the results of the Saratoga 
 conference excited alarm and popular clamor 
 throughout the country. It was looked upon as a 
 movement against public policy, and the plan for 
 operating the combined roads which resulted from 
 its deliberations was denounced as one which, if 
 successfully carried out, must necessarily result in 
 the destruction of all competition for carriage be- 
 tween the sea-board and the West, and as conse- 
 quently turning over to a band of heartless monop- 
 olists the vital work of transporting the cereals of the 
 interior to their market. The cry of the " railroad 
 kings " and " railroad extortioners " was at once 
 raised from almost every quarter. Meanwhile this 
 clamor, like most popular clamors, had little real 
 cause. The essential principle of the Saratoga 
 combination lay in fact merely in the substitution 
 of an open and responsible organization for a secret 
 and irresponsible one, which had for years been in 
 existence. To thoughtful and reflecting men it 
 seemed very questionable whether, after all, such 
 a change was not directly to the advantage of the 
 community ; even more to the advantage of the 
 community indeed than of the railroad corporations. 
 That the whole business of transportation between 
 the West and the sea-board, and the prices which 
 should be charged for doing it, had long been per- 
 formed under common tariffs binding on all the roads 
 represented at Saratoga, and made by their agents 
 at stated times, was a matter of public notoriety. The
 
 I $2 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 newspapers had for years contained, among other 
 regular news items, the reports of the meetings of 
 these freight agents of the different corporations for 
 the purpose of effecting these common tariffs, just 
 as they had contained reports of the doings of the 
 state legislatures or of Congress. That such meet- 
 ings should have been held and such common tariffs 
 prepared and published, was obviously a matter of 
 mere necessity to the railroads. It would have 
 been utterly impossible for them to live under the 
 pressure of a war of rates knowing no limitation, 
 a war in which freight of every description should 
 be transported long distances absolutely for nothing. 
 There was a time, for instance, when cattle were 
 brought over the competing roads in New York 
 at a dollar a car. Such competition as this plainly 
 opened the widest and shortest way to insol- 
 vency, and it was to avoid it that the conven- 
 tions of freight-agents met. There was no secrecy 
 about their proceedings. The tariffs arranged by 
 them were published in the papers. They took 
 effect at stated periods, and they were subject to 
 modifications at other periods. There was no more 
 concealment about them, if indeed so much, as there 
 was about the regular local tariffs in operation on 
 the several roads represented. The only difference 
 between the local and the through tariffs was that, 
 whereas the former were fixed and rarely changed, 
 the latter were subject to sudden and violent fluc- 
 tuations. These fluctuations were known as railroad
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. I 53 
 
 wars, and to these it was proposed to put a stop 
 through the machinery devised in the Saratoga con- 
 ference. It was not intended as the result of that 
 conference to, as it is called, " pool " the profits of 
 the different lines which were parties to it. On the 
 contrary, each line was to be left free to procure all 
 the business that it could, and charge the agreed- 
 upon rates therefor, and to keep to itself all the 
 profits that it could realize from it. There was 
 nothing which looked to a common-purse arrange- 
 ment. The effort was solely to do away with 
 wars of rates through <the agency of arbitration. 
 In place of the " Rob Roy plan " of leaving each 
 company to assert its own rights and to main- 
 tain them if it was able, a central board was or- 
 ganized, the duty of which was to establish rules 
 and tariffs which should be binding upon the 
 various companies, and this central board it was 
 intended should be clothed with sufficient powers 
 to hold the companies firmly. It was an attempt 
 to substitute arbitration among railroads for a con- 
 dition of perpetual warfare ; consequently, though 
 the roads through this board secured a much 
 closer combination than had ever before been 
 effected, yet, from the very fact of their so doing, 
 they also concentrated responsibility upon the board 
 and consequently upon themselves. The board of 
 arbitration was their representative. It acted openly 
 and publicly, before the whole country. It estab- 
 lished rates, and it was responsible to the country 
 7*
 
 154 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 and to public opinion for the rates thus established. 
 Upon it, therefore, the whole force of public opinion 
 could, at any time, be brought to bear, in place of 
 being dissipated as before among a number of wholly 
 irresponsible subordinate agencies. Apparently, 
 therefore, to any one who looked below the mere 
 surface of things, to any one who was not led 
 astray by empty cries against railroad kings, and by 
 the equally empty denunciation of monopolies, the 
 Saratoga conference had resulted in no insignificant 
 public benefit. It had substituted the responsible 
 for the irresponsible ; publicity for secrecy ; it 
 seemed, at last, to promise to bring the railroads 
 together under one head, and that a directly account- 
 able head. 
 
 Obviously, the adhesion of all the trunk lines was 
 essential to the success of this experiment. The 
 position would not be greatly altered from what it 
 had been before, if, while the three central through 
 lines between the West and the sea-board had ef- 
 fected a combination, they were yet flanked, as it 
 were, on the one side and the other, by lines not 
 parties to the arrangement ; by the Grand Trunk 
 upon the north, and by the Baltimore & Ohio on the 
 south. This proved to be the fact. At the time of 
 the conference, Mr. Garrett, the president of the 
 Baltimore & Ohio, was absent in Europe. Imme- 
 diately on his return, ostensibly to pay him a visit 
 of compliment but in reality to induce him to give 
 in his adhesion to the new arrangement, the repre-
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 155 
 
 sentatives of the other lines paid a visit to Baltimore. 
 It soon became apparent that trouble was impend- 
 ing. Mr. Garrett declined to surrender what he 
 called the independent policy of the company which 
 he represented. He professed the utmost willingness 
 to agree on its behalf to adhere to the rates estab- 
 lished by the combined lines, but he refused to sub- 
 ject it to the jurisdiction of the board of arbitration. 
 He sought, in fact, to avoid all entangling alliances, 
 and to keep the Baltimore & Ohio in a position 
 of absolute independence, to do what it pleased in 
 view of the local interests which it had always been 
 its policy to foster. The representatives of the three 
 central lines* returned, therefore, from Baltimore in 
 no good humor. Nor were their apprehensions of 
 impending trouble unfounded. Hardly was the 
 board of arbitration under the Saratoga conference 
 organized, when a bitter railroad war arose between 
 the lines which they represented and their southern 
 neighbor. The more active hostilities were neces- 
 sarily confined to the Pennsylvania road, which was 
 brought immediately in contact with the Baltimore 
 & Ohio. The war, though short, was very severe, 
 and, for the time being, seemed to disorganize the 
 railroad relations of half the country. It ended, as 
 wars between solvent corporations always have ended 
 and always must end, in an agreement. The Balti- 
 more & Ohio became one of the combination of 
 roads, upon the old footing of tariffs agreed upon in 
 conferences of freight-agents. It retained its inde-
 
 I $6 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 pendence. It was not subject to the jurisdiction, 
 or bound by the action, of any board of arbitra- 
 tion, and consequently the board became a useless 
 piece of lumber. Thus the one thing, practically, 
 which the furious struggle had resulted in was the 
 destruction of that which was best in the Saratoga 
 arrangement. The worst features of the old sys- 
 tem of irresponsible combination were restored ; 
 for with the board of arbitration the two great 
 principles of publicity and direct responsibility, 
 which that board necessarily represented, had also 
 disappeared ; there remained nothing but a loose 
 understanding, such as it was, between four of the 
 five through routes, which was binding upon them 
 only so long as they saw fit to be bound by it. 
 Even this loose understanding, however, was not 
 a general one. The Grand Trunk of Canada re- 
 fused to enter into it ; and the Grand Trunk of Can- 
 ada was not only thus a recusant road, but it also 
 so happened that it was bankrupt. This, for the 
 reasons already stated, sorely complicated the strug- 
 gle. The combined and solvent roads were very 
 loath to enter into a war of rates with an insol- 
 vent through line, aided, as it necessarily was, 
 by the whole system of bankrupt western connec- 
 tions. Therefore railroad competition in the win- 
 ter of 1875 developed itself to its full extent, but 
 now with results which few had ever anticipated. 
 It, of course, led to discrimination, but for once 
 the places specially discriminated against were
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 the two great railroad centres of the country, 
 Chicago and New York. The Grand Trunk road led 
 directly to neither of these cities. Consequently, 
 the combined roads being unwilling to meet that line 
 in a war of rates it was left at liberty to compete at 
 points it did reach almost without restraint. Its 
 rates, and those of the roads which connected with 
 it, accordingly were marked down low enough to 
 cause business to be turned away from the combined 
 lines. This meant that business was diverted from 
 Chicago and from New York, the centres which those 
 lines especially connected. Meanwhile, though the 
 Grand Trunk did not reach either Chicago or New 
 York, it did through connecting roads reach the rival 
 cities of Milwaukee and Boston. Hence it was that 
 so long as that war of rates was suffered to continue, 
 both New York and Chicago looked on, not without 
 dismay, while the stream which flowed through their 
 own channels seemed rapidly to be drying up, and 
 that which flowed through the channels of their 
 rivals was swollen beyond all precedent. 
 
 That such a condition of affairs should long be 
 endured in silence was riot to be expected. Accord- 
 ingly the business communities of both cities soon 
 began to bestir themselves, and the press of each to 
 make itself heard. The course pursued in the two 
 cases was almost diametrically opposite. In Chicago 
 a committee of the Board of Trade was appointed to 
 take the situation under advisement, and this com- 
 mittee indue time was delivered of a report. It was
 
 158 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 a singular document. The theory was advanced in 
 it that what Chicago, the great converging point of 
 all western railroads, yet needed was one more 
 through line to the East ; but this time it needed a 
 hopelessly, permanently, bankrupt line in the hands 
 of a perpetual receiver ! In New York a far more 
 sensible course was adopted. The merchants met to- 
 gether in conference, and a committee was appointed 
 to wait upon the managers of the New York Cen- 
 tral and to point out to them the damage which was 
 being done to what must after all, under any circum- 
 stances, remain the natural terminus of their road. 
 The duty of protecting their own best customer, 
 which devolved upon those managing the line, 
 scarcely needed to be dwelt upon. The meeting 
 between the committee and the officials was a very 
 friendly one. No complaint was made as to the 
 rates then charged by the New York Central. These 
 were freely acknowledged to be reasonable and suf- 
 ficiently low. But the competing rates of the other 
 line were lower. On this point there was no dispute, 
 for the railroad officials freely admitted that the rates 
 west from Boston were some fifty per cent, less than 
 the rates at that same time from New York. It was 
 not denied, either, that the condition of affairs neces- 
 sarily resulted in great hardship, and must involve 
 the destruction of many branches of New York 
 business. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the Vanderbilts at 
 once recognized and acknowledged the public duty
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 159 
 
 which devolved upon them. They stated to the 
 committee the circumstances under which they were 
 placed, and promised that, at whatever cost, the in- 
 terests of the city of New York should be protected. 
 A fierce railroad war now seemed impending. A 
 bold announcement was immediately put forth that 
 the New York Central was prepared to enter into 
 the field of competition, even with its bankrupt rival, 
 and that rates would be marked down to any point 
 necessary for the protection of New York inter- 
 ests, however low that point might prove to be. 
 Accordingly they were at once reduced some sixty 
 per cent. It was obvious that events must take one 
 of two courses. Either there must be a destructive 
 war, in which the New York Central, as the solvent 
 line, would suffer the most ; or it must be made 
 worth the while of those managing the Grand Trunk 
 to enter the combination and retire from the strug- 
 gle. Events moved rapidly. Scarcely were the 
 newspapers filled with the rumors of war and with 
 the loud notes of preparation for it, when they also 
 announced that a conference of the competing par- 
 ties was about to be held in the city of New York. 
 It was held there. The usual discussion took place 
 in public, which promised, apparently, to produce 
 small results. The parties seemed to stand too far 
 apart from each other. These things, however, are 
 not generally arranged in public, or in the presence 
 of newspaper reporters. While the representatives 
 of connecting roads, east and west, were discussing
 
 l6o THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 and hopelessly differing, those representing the three 
 corporations most immediately concerned withdrew 
 to the parlor of a neighboring hotel. In an hour or 
 two they separated, and the evening papers of New 
 York for that day announced that, all differences 
 between the competing lines having been adjusted, 
 rates would at once be restored to a paying basis. 
 
 This combination was effected in December 1875, 
 and was based upon a division of business ; the 
 longer and more indirect route being in fact allowed 
 a share of the traffic, in order to buy it off. Matters 
 were, however, arranged in that quarter only to 
 have trouble break out elsewhere in an even more 
 aggravated form. The combination of December, 
 1875, was, in fact, of even shorter duration than any 
 of its numerous predecessors, for it lasted scarcely 
 one month. Early in February it was broken, in 
 consequence of "a misunderstanding between the 
 Erie and New York Central, and a new war of rates 
 was begun on all east-bound through freights, under 
 the influence of which they fell rapidly. This con- 
 tinued until March, when another meeting of the 
 representatives of through lines was held, and 
 renewed efforts were made to effect an understand- 
 ing. These, however, resulted in nothing, except a 
 brief postponement of an inevitable struggle. They 
 wholly failed to touch the real root of the difficulty. 
 This no longer lay in the old and chronic inability 
 of the railroad officials to put any trust in each 
 other's good faith, and rigidly to enforce upon their
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. l'6l 
 
 subordinates a scrupulous regard to agreements. 
 The struggle had assumed a new and, to the railroad 
 interests, far more dangerous form, that of a bitter 
 rivalry between the great commercial cities of the 
 seaboard. Baltimore and Philadelphia were not only 
 asserting an ability to compete with New York as 
 exporting points for western produce, but, owing to 
 the thorough organization and perfect development 
 of their great railroad lines and terminal facilities, 
 they were demonstrating their power to do it. Ever 
 since the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, a monop- 
 oly of the business of exporting produce had been 
 practically conceded to New York. Only within the 
 last ten years has it been supposed that railroads 
 could compete for the carriage of cheap and bulky ar- 
 ticles with lake or even slack-water navigation. Rates, 
 however, have continued to fall, until it has at last 
 been demonstrated that under certain favorable con- 
 ditions it is more advantageous at all seasons to for- 
 ward nearly every description of merchandise by rail 
 than at least by canal. Accordingly, the amount of 
 agricultural products carried by rail from west to east, 
 as compared with that carried by water, had gradually 
 increased until, at the close of the year 1876 it amount- 
 ed to more than half of the whole quantity moved. 
 In 1873, the proportion was 29.8 per cent moved by 
 rail, to 70.2 per cent by water; in 1874, it was 33 
 per cent by rail, to 67 per cent by water; in 1875, 
 it was 41 per cent by rail to 59 per cent by water ; 
 and at last, in 1876, it was 52.6 per cent by rail to 47.4
 
 1 62 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 by water. This transfer, also, had taken place not- 
 withstanding the fact that during the years named 
 the pressure of competition had forced down rates 
 on wheat carried by lake and canal from Chicago to 
 New York by more than one-half, from 19.2 cents 
 per bushel to 9.5. Lower than this they could not 
 go at the canal tolls then in force, and at this rate the 
 railroads were taking the traffic. Under these circum- 
 stances, it was inevitable that a wholly new phase of 
 competition must be developed. Canal navigation 
 was possible to New York alone ; but when the traffic 
 passed from the canal to the railroads; other cities 
 possessed equal if not superior advantages. Accord- 
 ingly, the struggle was no longer between the rail- 
 roads leading to New York and the Erie Canal, but 
 between railroads leading to different seaboard 
 points. The monopoly of New York was threatened. 
 Neither was the result of the impending struggle by 
 any means so certain as long habit might induce 
 many people to suppose. The prescriptive enjoyment 
 of an undisputed monopoly has produced in the case 
 of New York the usual results, and both railroads 
 and business community of that place, confidently 
 relying on long possession and natural advantages, 
 have allowed abuses to creep in, or failed to supply 
 improved facilities, until the handling of produce for 
 export there has become most unnecessarily expen- 
 sive. Meanwhile, the cities of Philadelphia and 
 Baltimore, having great natural disadvantages to 
 overcome, were naturally forced to husband every
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 163 
 
 resource and make the most of every circumstance 
 in their favor. All this they did with a degree of 
 sagacity, foresight and success well deserving of 
 careful study. 
 
 At bottom it was this changed relative position 
 of Baltimore and Philadelphia towards New York 
 which, during the early months of 1876, was grad- 
 ually driving the great lines into a fiercer and more 
 destructive war of rates than had ever been known 
 before. New York, and consequently the main rail- 
 road line leading to it, began for the first time to 
 realize that its easy supremacy no longer existed, 
 and that in the struggle of competition it had no 
 advantages to waste. Theretofore it had always 
 been the practice on shipments from western points 
 to the seaboard to take into consideration the dis- 
 tances of the several cities from the point'of starting. 
 A concession had always been allowed in favor of 
 the southern points of shipment, under which origi- 
 nally the rate to Boston had been five cents per hun- 
 dred more than to New York, that to New York 
 five cents more than to Philadelphia, and that to 
 Philadelphia five cents more than to Baltimore. 
 The,se differences had subsequently been modified 
 until, for some time previous to March, 1875, on all 
 export merchandise rates to Boston and New York 
 were equal, while those to Philadelphia and Balti- 
 more, though equal to each other, were five cents less 
 than the New York-Boston rate. As the sense of 
 pressure from the competition of the more southern
 
 164 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 thoroughfares increased, however, the New York in- 
 terests began to realize that this arbitrary rate 
 placed them under a too heavy disadvantage. Ac- 
 cordingly, a new adjustment of rates was effected on 
 a different principle. A differential tariff was agreed 
 upon, based on distance, under which, taking Chi- 
 cago as a fixed point, and the rate from that city 
 to New York as the standard, a reduction from it of 
 10 per cent was allowed in favor of Philadelphia, and 
 one of 12.5 per cent, in favor of Baltimore. This 
 adjustment did not affect the Boston rate, which 
 remained as before. 
 
 The results of the new system soon began to 
 show themselves and it was apparent that the New 
 York Central had been over-reached. The receipts 
 of western produce increased immensely at Philadel- 
 phia and at Baltimore, indicating an alarming diver- 
 sion of the export trade from New York ; for the 
 difference in rates between the ports was not infre- 
 quently almost equal to the entire ocean freight to 
 Europe. When those controlling the New York 
 Central became fully awake to this fact, and when 
 they also realized the pressure in the way of equal 
 competition under any circumstances which Balti- 
 more and Philadelphia, with all their perfect facili- 
 ties for handling through business, could now bring 
 to bear upon them, it naturally occurred to them 
 that the time had come for refusing longer to con- 
 cede a differential rate in favor of those who seemed 
 in no respect less advantageously placed than them-
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 1 65 
 
 selves. In order, however, to assume a consistent 
 position on this subject, it became necessary for the 
 Central road to extend the principle beyond New 
 York, and to claim a uniform rate from the interior 
 to all the seaboard points. This principle it was 
 perfectly obvious that the southern or shorter routes 
 could not concede, as with their longer ocean route 
 it was tantamount to the surrender of that export 
 trade a share in which they had made such prodi- 
 gious efforts to secure. A full trial of strength thus 
 became inevitable. 
 
 The struggle did not, however, break out in the 
 first place between those who subsequently became 
 the principal parties to it. On the contrary, all 
 through the month of March and the early part of 
 April, 1876, conferences were held and strenuous 
 efforts made to hold the through lines to an under- 
 standing among themselves. At the last of these, 
 on the 4th of April, the New York Central repre- 
 sented that it was under the necessity of meeting 
 the competition of the Grand Trunk in New Eng- 
 land, and to this those representing the other lines 
 assented upon the understanding that the struggle 
 was to be a local one, and was not to extend to New 
 York, nor to divert business from that city. In the 
 course, however, of a very few days, it became ap- 
 parent that the contest could not be thus restricted, 
 and as the result of a further conference on the i8th 
 of April, at which a number of complaints were pre- 
 sented, the New York Central finally gave notice of
 
 1 66 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 the complete abandonment of all agreements, and 
 almost immediately a general war of rates began. 
 Between the 3d of May and the I4th of June, the 
 fare between Boston and Chicago over the New 
 York Central fell from $25.85 to $14, and that over 
 the Grand Trunk from $23.85 to $12.50; while, as 
 respects freights, the rates between Boston and Chi- 
 cago on articles of the first class fell from 75 cents 
 per hundred pounds to 20 cents, and that on agri- 
 cultural products from Chicago to New York fell 
 from 50 cents per hundred to 18 cents. These, also, 
 were the published rates, while innumerable special 
 contracts on terms far more favorable to shippers 
 were made wherever business was competed for. Ship- 
 pers whose patronage was really worth having were, 
 in fact, in a position to dictate their own terms ; and 
 they did it. For six months the spectacle was wit- 
 nessed of railroads hauling merchandise 1,013 miles 
 east for $3.60 per ton, and the same distance west 
 for $2.80 per ton, in the one case at the rate of 3.5 
 mills per ton per mile, and in the other at the rate 
 of 2.8 mills ; a result which made sober and reason- 
 able the most extravagant predictions which the ad- 
 vocates of cheap transportation had ever ventured 
 to utter. 
 
 No sooner was the struggle fairly developed than 
 the true issue was boldly avowed by the New York 
 Central, it being to restore the commercial supre- 
 macy of New York, imperilled by the rapid develop- 
 ment of southern rivals. The principles of trans-
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 1 67 
 
 portation involved were sufficiently simple. It was 
 conceded on all sides that in the case of rival or com- 
 peting lines between any two given points, as Chi- 
 cago and New York, the shorter or more direct route 
 had the right, as it was termed, to establish the rate ; 
 that is, it fixed a rate, and the longer routes were 
 obliged to meet it, regardless of their own greater 
 mileage ; the principle of charging so much per ton per 
 mile being, for obvious reasons, inapplicable. Where, 
 however, lines terminated at different though com- 
 peting centres, it was maintained that the principle of 
 mileage should apply, that there was no reason, for 
 instance, why Baltimore should not enjoy, as com- 
 pared with Portland or Boston, the full advantage of 
 its geographical situation. While the managers of the 
 Baltimore & Ohio and the Pennsylvania roads insisted,, 
 therefore, on the differential allowance, those of the 
 New York Central met them by fixing rates at so low 
 a point that the differential allowance, when insisted 
 upon, could not amount to enough to influence the 
 course of traffic. Before the substitution of steel 
 rails for iron, the roads could not possibly have en- 
 dured the test of carrying on a season's business at 
 the rates which ensued. Some idea may be realized 
 of the wonderful economy which has been attained 
 in the movement of merchandise, from the fact that 
 as a regular thing a ton in weight was moved four 
 hundred and fifty miles from Buffalo to New York 
 for $1.50, whereas in the early part of the century it 
 would have cost $100.
 
 1 68 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 Having practically lasted for over eight months 
 of the centennial year, thus enabling thousands of 
 visitors to attend the Philadelphia Exposition at 
 rates of fare never before dreamed of as possible, the 
 struggle came to a close in December. In its results 
 it was not decisive, for nothing but a general amal- 
 gamation of all the trunk lines into one huge consol- 
 idated company could have been decisive ; and for 
 that neither the corporations themselves nor the 
 public mind were yet ripe. Though not decisive, 
 however, the results were most significant. Without 
 having secured, or probably ever having expected to 
 secure, everything which it had claimed, the New 
 York Central interest emerged from the conflict dis- 
 tinctly in the ascendant. It had stood the strain 
 .better than any of its rivals ; its dividends were not 
 diminished, and its balance sheet exhibited fewer 
 items of mystery. Meanwhile the Baltimore & 
 Ohio had abandoned all pretensions to independence, 
 and was quite ready to enter into alliances, no mat- 
 ter how entangling; and the Pennsylvania road, 
 having lost for the time being its ability to pay 
 dividends, had lost with it all disposition to com- 
 pete. The arrangement first arrived at was a very 
 complicated one, in which an elaborate system of 
 rebates to equalize ocean freights was a prominent 
 feature, and which was apparently designed to 
 secure a sort of rough equality among the several 
 exporting cities ; while, so far as the local traffic was 
 concerned, a slight advantage was conceded to New
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 169 
 
 York in the northern portions of the great district 
 in which through their connections all the trunk lines 
 compete, and a somewhat larger advantage was given 
 to Baltimore in the southern portions of that dis- 
 trict. The fundamental idea of this arrangement 
 was, however, reasonable and just, and has not since 
 been abandoned. So far as the much sought for ex- 
 port trade was concerned, the entire cost of carriage 
 from the gathering point in the West to the foreign 
 market was taken into account, and the railroad rates 
 to the several seaboard cities were so fixed as to give 
 a decided superiority to no one of them. So far as 
 was possible, they were placed upon a footing of 
 equality, and left to improve their advantages or to 
 overcome their disadvantages as best they could. 
 
 It soon, however, became apparent that some- 
 thing more than a vague understanding was neces- 
 sary. Even Mr. Garrett had been forced to recognize 
 the fact that the time was past in which railroads 
 could insist upon their right to take all they could 
 get, and to keep all they took. To deal with the 
 great problem of competitive business a system, in- 
 deed, was wanted, but, even more than a system, a 
 man. 
 
 Two years had now elapsed since the failure 
 of the experiment devised at Saratoga, and little 
 confidence was felt in any recourse to a board of 
 extemporaneously devised commissioners or arbi- 
 trators who, however personally respectable they 
 might be, would certainly be sustained by no exter-
 
 17 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 nal power, and would probably enjoy no particular 
 degree of moral confidence. Meanwhile, as is always 
 the case where a real want exists, the Saratoga fail- 
 ure, had been followed by new experiments in the 
 same direction elsewhere. To one of these experi- 
 ments it is now necessary to recur. Uncontrollable 
 and ruinous railroad competition was not at all con- 
 fined to any single section of the United States, or to 
 any particular system of railroads. It had been felt at 
 the South even more than at the North and West, 
 and the corporations there were in no condition to 
 bear through any long period a heavy strain on their 
 resources. It was in the South, accordingly, that 
 the next attempt was made to reduce the railroad 
 chaos to some degree of order. In principle this ex- 
 periment was very like that which resulted from the 
 Saratoga conference, but its working details had 
 been much more carefully thought out. It assumed 
 a definite shape under the name of the Southern 
 Railway and Steamship Association. 
 
 The representatives of some thirty independent 
 railroad and steamship companies had met at Atlan- 
 ta, Georgia, in September, 1875, and regularly asso- 
 ciated themselves. A formal constitution, setting 
 forth both the objects the association was designed to 
 secure and the means through which it was proposed 
 to secure them, was then agreed upon and signed. 
 Under this constitution the associated companies 
 proposed to transact that portion, and that portion 
 only, of their business in which they might be jointly
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. IJ\ 
 
 concerned, and to the proper conduct of which con- 
 stant negotiations and even cooperation were neces- 
 sary. A central bureau was provided for, which was 
 in fact a species of clearing-house. A single official, 
 with the style of general commissioner, was to preside 
 over this bureau. The necessity of transacting busi- 
 ness through the clumsy agency of conventions was 
 thus obviated, and, as all matters in dispute had to 
 pass through the hands of an experienced and impar- 
 tial officer, that personal contact between incompetent 
 and irritated subordinates which is the cause of at 
 least one-half of the railroad wars became wholly un- 
 necessary. The general commissioner was intended 
 to be the common executive officer of the associa- 
 tion. As all negotiations were to be carried on 
 through him, every difficulty as it arose necessarily 
 came under his eye, enabling him to prevent many 
 complications by judiciously acting as adviser and 
 mediator. If, however, harmonious cooperation 
 could not be preserved in this way, it then became 
 the duty of the general commissioner, as umpire, to 
 judicially decide questions at issue between the mem- 
 bers of the association, though his decisions were at 
 all times subject to appeal to a board of mutually 
 appointed arbitrators. The next duty of the general 
 commissioner was to see that all agreements entered 
 into, and all his own decisions or those of the boards 
 of arbitration, were fully and honestly carried out. 
 In this respect, of course, he, like the Saratoga com- 
 missioners, could bring no legal power to bear on a
 
 172 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 recusant. Yet, though the force he could exercise 
 was in main a moral one only, he was not confined 
 to that. He could, in case of need, declare a partial 
 or even a general war of rates, and the combined 
 force of the association being thus wielded by one 
 hand, it was in a position to practically enforce a 
 policy, and, what was more, in doing so to expend 
 only that amount of strength necessary to accomplish 
 the end in view. Neither could the withdrawal 
 from it of any one member, nor indeed of a number 
 of them, dissolve the association. For, in spite of 
 such withdrawal, the clearing-house and the agency 
 for the transaction of joint business still remained in 
 the service of those which were left. As other com- 
 panies could also at any time join the association, the 
 system admitted of indefinite expansion, and, indeed, 
 could with mere changes in detail be made to in- 
 clude the entire railroad system of the continent, 
 much as the similar German association includes all 
 the railroads of Central Europe. 
 
 Next to the outside pressure which causes those 
 managing the individual lines t yield something of 
 their independence for the sake of order, the success 
 of any such combination as this depends almost ex- 
 clusively upon the ability, temper, and skill of the 
 general commissioner, and upon the degree with which 
 he is able to inspire respect and confidence in the 
 minds of the associates. In this particular the south- 
 ern association was fortunate. Colonel Albert Fink, 
 for a number of years connected with the Louisville
 
 THL RAILROAD PROBLEM. 173 
 
 & Nashville Railroad Company as its Vice President 
 and General Manager, in which position he had dis- 
 played qualities especially fitting him for such a 
 post as-he was now chosen to fill, became its general 
 commissioner. He, if any man, could be expected 
 to carry the plan of the association into successful 
 working, for it was he who had devised and matured 
 it. The experiment was thus tried under the most 
 favorable auspices, and its success, though not com- 
 plete, had in 1877 been sufficiently marked to attract 
 throughout the country the attention of more observ- 
 ant men interested in questions of railroad develop- 
 ment. 
 
 Determined to go a step further towards an effec- 
 tive combination than they had ever gone before, 
 those representing the northern trunk lines now 
 summoned Colonel Fink to their assistance, and ap- 
 pointed him as commissioner to act under an execu- 
 tive committee of their number in the adjustment of 
 all questions which might arise among them. The 
 object of the new combination was at first simple and 
 comparatively feasible. All the trunk lines whether 
 they terminated there or not, had offices in New 
 York, and were in steady competition for the mer- 
 chandise shipments to the West from that place. 
 Consequently not only was the value of the business 
 destroyed to the railroads, but a steady discrimina- 
 tion existed in favor of New York as against other 
 and especially more interior points. The combina- 
 tion of which Colonel Fink was the executive officer
 
 1/4 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 was intended, therefore, to regulate rates on all ship- 
 ments by rail from the city and suburbs of New York 
 
 to the West. The business was divided among -the 
 
 _ 
 
 four trunk lines, on the basis of an apportionment of 
 tonnage and not an apportionment of earnings. Daily 
 returns of all shipments from New York to the West 
 were made to the commissioner, and thirty-three per 
 cent of this business was allotted each to the New 
 York Central and the Erie, twenty-five per cent to 
 the Pennsylvania, and nine per. cent' to the Balti- 
 more & Ohio. Any road doing more than its al- 
 lotted share of business had, under the commission- 
 er's instructions, to turn the excess over to the road 
 doing less than its allotted share, and to pay full 
 rates for it. 
 
 The operations of this organization were unneces- 
 sarily complex and cumbersome, owing to the fact 
 that the roads concerned in it were unwilling to sur- 
 render their identity so far as to issue only common 
 bills of lading from common offices. They insisted 
 on issuing their own bills specifying the line by which 
 shipment was made, and thereby incurring legal obli- 
 gations. If, then, any company was found to have 
 received and receipted for shipments in excess of its 
 proportion, that excess had to be carted off to some 
 other line, and reached its destination in a way dif- 
 ferent from that designated in the bill of lading. This 
 method of dividing the business was, therefore, not 
 only cumbersome, but it involved very serious legal 
 questions which at once suggest themselves. It was
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 1/5 
 
 due to the old jealousy. Each company, but the 
 New York Central especially, wished to retain its own 
 business and its organization for getting it. They 
 were not prepared, so to speak, to burn their bridges, 
 even though by so doing a great economy would 
 have been effected, by doing away with an army of 
 agents, and all questions of legal responsibility 
 avoided. 
 
 Nevertheless in the hands of Colonel Fink, clum- 
 sy as its mode of operation was, the combination 
 held together and a division of the business was 
 effected. Its operation was peculiar, in that it was 
 limited to the city of New York and its immediate 
 vicinity. At other central points, such as Boston, 
 Philadelphia and Baltimore, the local business was 
 left to take whatever course it chose, the several 
 lines merely agreeing to sustain rates. Should, how- 
 ever, the rates not be sustained at these local points, 
 this fact did not necessarily involve a disruption of 
 the New York combination. The west-bound busi- 
 ness would still be distributed among the lines in 
 the method already described, though the rates 
 charged would, in certain events, have to be reduced 
 to prevent a diversion of business from New York to 
 the point of local competition, wherever that might 
 be. This contingency, in fact, speedily arose through 
 the action of the Grand Trunk line which, not reach- 
 ing New York, proceeded to compete at Boston. A 
 diversion of business was accordingly effected to such 
 a degree that New York merchandise during the lat-
 
 176 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 ter part of 1877 began to move to the West by way 
 of Boston. This naturally occasioned loud complaint 
 in the former city, and threatened through the mere 
 force of public sentiment to either destroy the com- 
 bination or to force it into a general war of rates 
 which would have affected equally all the seaboard 
 cities. The danger, however, was for the time being 
 removed, and the acquiescence of the Grand Trunk 
 secured in the usual way. 
 
 Encouraged by the success with which, under the 
 lead of their new commissioner, they had effected a 
 division of the business from the sea-board to the in- 
 terior, the representatives of the trunk lines now 
 turned their attention to the current which flowed in 
 the other direction, from the West to the East. 
 Experience had shown that the problem of control- 
 ling the west-bound shipments was one sufficiently 
 difficult to solve ; it was, however, simplicity itself 
 compared with that which presented itself in connec- 
 tion with east-bound shipments. These, in the first 
 place, as is well known, constitute the vast bulk of the 
 entire movement. Consisting chiefly of agricultural 
 products, they require the use of an immense mass 
 of rolling stock at certain seasons of the year, and of 
 comparatively little at other seasons. The move- 
 ment then goes on from an immense number of 
 points, and through a great many channels, some 
 natural and others artificial, but all competing. 
 The consequence is that every conceivable agent of 
 competition is brought into play. The utmost lati-
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 tude for the uncontrolled action of these competing 
 forces is further secured through the fundamental 
 principle of the whole pro-rating railroad system, that 
 the agent of the connecting line at the shipping 
 terminus makes the rate, which the intermediate 
 lines and the line at the point of delivery accept. In 
 other words, the rates on east-bound freight at the 
 western points of shipment were made by the well- 
 nigh innumerable agents of multifarious and often irre- 
 sponsible companies ; and all that the intermediate and 
 eastern companies had to do with the matter was to 
 haul and deliver the goods, receiving their proportion 
 of the freight-money for so doing, according to the 
 distance hauled. Under these conditions, if any, an 
 uncontrollable competition was naturally to be ex- 
 pected. No combination to control the rates at 
 which the business should be done seemed practica- 
 ble. Nevertheless the attempt was made on the ba- 
 sis of Colonel Fink's New York combination. In 
 February and March, 1878, a succession of meetings 
 were held, which were attended by the representatives 
 of no less than forty different corporations operating 
 some 25,000 miles of road, or about one-third of the 
 whole system of the United States. After some pre- 
 liminary difficulties had been disposed of a plan was 
 adopted. Seven points of general railroad converg- 
 ence at the West were selected. The representatives 
 of the roads running east from these points met and 
 agreed upon a division of the tonnage through and 
 from such points, which was to hold good for a period 
 8*
 
 178 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 of three months, to try the experiment. The rate 
 from Chicago to New York was then fixed upon as 
 the basis upon which rates from all other points were 
 to be computed. For the lest the machinery was 
 precisely the same as that already described in the 
 case of the New York combination. Daily returns 
 were made from each of the pooling centres to a chief 
 commissioner whose office was at Chicago, and a 
 corresponding division of tonnage was effected 
 through him. All questions which arose were re- 
 ferred to him for adjustment, and consequently the 
 rate established for the time being at Chicago regu- 
 lated the rates charged all through the great interior 
 field of railroad competition. The difficulty with 
 this arrangement, from an interior point of view, 
 was, of course, its lack of any cohesive force. It 
 depended on the good will and cooperation of too 
 many persons. Nevertheless, an executory force, 
 and a powerful one also, was not wanting. It was 
 furnished by the trunk lines. Their position enabled 
 them, if they saw fit, to give a very effective support 
 to any order of the western commissioner. This arose 
 from the fact that they are the stems to which the 
 numerous western connections are branches, and ev- 
 erything which the latter collect has to be delivered 
 over to some one of the five trunk lines to reach a 
 seaboard destination. If, therefore, acting in support 
 of the western combination, the trunk line combina- 
 tion had absolutely refused to connect with any road 
 which failed to maintain rates, except on arbitrary
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 terms, the result must have been that such road, 
 shut up in its own territory, would, soon or late, have 
 been forced to submit. 
 
 The three months during which it had been agreed 
 that this plan of apportionment should be tried ex- 
 pired in June, 1878. At a meeting of those repre- 
 senting the roads interested in it, held in New York, 
 it was then pronounced a failure, and abandoned ; 
 the commissioner himself admitting that he had been 
 powerless either to enforce rates or to punish those 
 who had defiantly violated the compact. Whether 
 the cause of failure was due to the absence of the 
 qualities essential to success in the commissioner him- 
 self, did not appear ; but it was apparent that the 
 trunk line combination had not seen fit to exert its 
 power to Turther continue the experiment at that 
 time. It allowed the western connections to begin 
 another war among themselves, simply fixing its own 
 share of the joint rate, which was sufficiently large to 
 leave the combatants a somewhat beggarly margin to 
 fight over. Nevertheless, the idea of a trunk-line 
 Protectorate had been developed, and its feasibility 
 proved. The direction of the next attempt is thus 
 very clearly indicated. 
 
 The combinations which have been described are 
 representative. Capital is trying to protect itself; 
 and will succeed in doing it. The stress of com- 
 petition has been too great, and in its own way is re- 
 sulting in combination. It is not necessary to mul- 
 tiply examples. If it were they could be found in
 
 180 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 any direction, for during the last two years, there is 
 almost no section of the country or branch of trade 
 which has not been " pooled." The " Omaha pool," 
 the " Colorado pool," the " Southwestern Rate As- 
 sociation," the " Southern Railway and Steamship 
 Association," are examples of these combinations 
 working over sections of territory ; the " Coal Com- 
 bination," the " Chicago Cattle pool," the " Oil pool," 
 are examples of their working over branches of busi- 
 ness. They are based upon the same fundamental 
 principles ; whether a division of business, or a divis- 
 ion of the money receipts from business. They are 
 directed to the same end, the control of competition. 
 They differ only in details. The effect of these com- 
 binations and their evident tendency to development 
 remain to be considered. t 
 
 It is, of course, unnecessary to say that all combi- 
 nations of the character of those which have been 
 described are looked upon with much popular dis- 
 trust, and are held to be against well established con- 
 siderations of public policy. In the minds of the 
 great majority, and not without reason, the idea of 
 any industrial combination is closely connected with 
 that of monopoly, and monopoly with extortion. In 
 view of this fact, it is very pertinently asked, Why 
 should a railroad combination, avowedly intended to 
 hold competition in check, if not to put an end to it, 
 produce any result other than the natural and obvious 
 one of raising prices ? Who or what is to protect the 
 community against the extortions of these great cor-
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. l8l 
 
 porations, should they cease to quarrel and compete 
 among themselves ? In the first place, conceding all 
 its evils and objectionable features, its inherent 
 wastefulness, its harsh inequities, its violent fluctua- 
 tions, the question still remains an open one, wheth- 
 er competition, as it has hitherto existed, is not after 
 all at least for America the best and the final solu- 
 tion of the railroad problem. If, indeed, from this 
 point of view, any railroad problem can be said to ex- 
 ist. The considerations which lead to the conclusion 
 that it may be, have been very clearly stated in a 
 recent public document : 
 
 " The evils incident to competition are sharply defined and 
 incisive, but the benefits it affords are substantial and pervading. 
 The beneficent law of supply and demand where it operates 
 most freely may not secure systematic justice, and yet the whole 
 world concedes that, so far as it is operative, it secures substan- 
 tial justice. This is all that can be expected in the present con- 
 dition of human affairs. Competition may not make all things 
 even, but it affords a nearer approach to equitable dealing among 
 men than any substitute which has yet been proposed for the 
 natural laws of trade. The very instability of competition is the 
 surest safeguard of the public interests. When competition 
 ceases to be irresponsible, monopoly will step in, unless it be 
 substituted by the autocratic rule of a combination sufficiently 
 powerful to control all the transportation lines of the country. 
 Any arbitrary rule in whatever manner formulated, or by what- 
 ever agency exercised, would prove to be an impotent substitute 
 for the great beneficent law of competition in the irresponsibility 
 and instability of which is embraced that conservatism which 
 inheres in the untrammelled operations of natural forces. 
 
 " So intimately are the interests of transportation and of trade
 
 1 82 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 connected, that it is impossible to eliminate competition between 
 the railroads without doing violence to commercial interests, and 
 thereby working greater evils than those sought to be re- 
 moved. . . . 
 
 " It has been supposed that in the contests between the trunk 
 lines the strongest company or combination of companies inva- 
 riably remains master of the field. It has, however, come to be 
 almost an aphorism among railroad managers that the weakest 
 line determines the rates. ... It has also been supposed 
 that the combination between the railroads of the country is 
 yearly becoming closer and more powerful. The facts which 
 have been hereinbefore adduced seem to indicate, however, that 
 the extension of the railway system has tended to create new 
 elements of competition, and to render the adjustment of through 
 routes more difficult. Every trunk line has many interests 
 outside of, and which cannot possibly be embraced within the 
 terms of any combination with other trunk lines ; and it has 
 been found that sooner or later these collateral interests lead to 
 the infraction of any conditions which the ingenuity of railroad 
 managers has yet been able to devise. The difficulty appears 
 to be that, heretofore, competing companies, in attempting to 
 protect themselves, have failed to arrive at a clear understanding 
 of the nature and limits of their mutual interests. 
 
 " As the promoters of the great railroad organizations connect- 
 ing the West with the seaboard have pushed their lines westward, 
 they have seen their control over ' through rates ' gradually be- 
 coming weaker and weaker, and the idea has been suggested in 
 the interests of the railroad companies, by able men, that the 
 roads ought to invoke some external aid in order to maintain 
 remunerative rates, or at least to avoid the necessity of at times 
 carrying through freight at an absolute loss. Evidently, it would 
 be detrimental to the public interests if the railroads of the coun- 
 try were to become crippled by their own excesses, but, in view 
 of the beneficial results which have been realized from the regu- 
 lating influence which competition has exerted over rates, in
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 183 
 
 the great commerce between the West and the East, and be- 
 tween all important centres of trade which enjoy the advantages 
 of two or more rival lines, the people will watch with favor the 
 gradual extension of the railway system by which means the 
 limits of the local or non-competitive traffic are being con- 
 tracted, and the limits of competitive traffic enlarged. 
 
 " It appears probable as the facilities of transportation are 
 more widely extended many injurious discriminations will disap- 
 pear, and that the legitimate limits of the traffic of rival com- 
 panies will become more clearly defined. It is also to be hoped 
 that the various companies will, upon enlightened views of self- 
 interest, formulate and acquiesce in such regulations with respect 
 to their common interests as to prevent the occurrence of those 
 sudden changes of rates which cause erratic diversions of traffic 
 from one line to another ; results which tend to destroy confi- 
 dence not only in railroad securities, but in the value of the 
 entire property of commercial cities. Such changes of rates 
 tend to depress and not to advance commerce."* 
 
 The opening and closing considerations pre- 
 sented in this extract are somewhat at variance. A 
 combination which will be equal to the difficult task 
 of preventing " the occurrence of those sudden 
 changes of rates which cause erratic diversions of 
 traffic," and which would yet not be " sufficiently 
 powerful to control all the transportation lines of the 
 country," such a combination as this would be one 
 difficult at least to devise. That the law of compe- 
 tition where it can have full play is a most beneficent 
 one in its operations, few would care to deny. As 
 respects the railroad system, however, the whole 
 
 * First Annual Report on the Internal Commerce of the United 
 States, by Joseph Nimmo, Jr., pp. 88-91.
 
 1 84 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 problem happens to be embraced in the question, 
 Can this law from the nature of the case there find full 
 scope for its operations? If it can, there is an end of 
 the matter. There is then no problem at all to con- 
 sider, for competition will settle the whole difficulty. 
 But, on the other hand, does not competition in the 
 case of the railroad system, necessarily, while working 
 with excessive violence, work most unequally? In 
 fine, is not discrimination, somewhere and against 
 some one, the logical and inevitable result of every un- 
 controlled railroad competition ? And is it not mat- 
 ter of experience, that the fiercer the competition 
 grows, the harsher the discrimination becomes? If 
 this is so, can such results be classed as among the 
 usual results of a " great beneficent law ? " This is the 
 whole-question, if there is any question ; and it will not 
 do to beg it. That " the weakest line determines the 
 rates," is true ; but it would also seem, from the ex- 
 perience of the past, that it will continue to deter- 
 mine them only so long as the stronger line does 
 not see its advantage in absorbing it through lease, 
 consolidation, or purchase. A railroad war which 
 does not end in a consolidation of lines or in the 
 absorption, through some process, of one line by 
 another, is an indecisive war, and, judging by all 
 recent experience, will almost inevitably be renewed, 
 soon or late. That the absorption does not all 
 take place at once, and that the combining pro- 
 cess is not yet over, merely proves that all rail- 
 road, like other wars, are not decisive, and that great
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 1 8$ 
 
 processes take time for their completion. So also it 
 is true that the limits of local or non-competitive 
 traffic are undergoing a steady contraction ; but it is 
 this very fact which has precipitated the recent 
 destructive railroad wars. These, in their turn, have 
 then rapidly led to scherrfes of combination between 
 the trunk lines, while the smaller independent lines, 
 exhausted by competition, have been forced to lose 
 their identity in one or another of the contending 
 systems. The consolidating and combining influences 
 of the last ten years have, indeed, produced results 
 not to be mistaken. There are, also, very significant 
 indications that the railroad system of this country is 
 now on the threshold of a most active and unprece- 
 dented development in that way. This subject, how- 
 ever, will more naturally be referred to in another 
 connection.* 
 
 Nevertheless, the history of railroad development 
 from the beginning has been little else than a con- 
 stant succession of surprises. That which was most 
 confidently predicted has rarely come to pass. It 
 may well be, therefore, that in the present case those 
 conditions which one class of observers regard as 
 wholly transitional may by degrees be found to con- 
 tain in them the elements of permanence ; while, on 
 the other hand, those indications which have led an- 
 other class of observers to refer to events now taking 
 place as " incidents in a phase of the process of de- 
 
 * See pp. 195-7.
 
 186 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 velopment," may prove to have been mere surface 
 movements, significant of nothing. 
 
 Meanwhile, the combinations of railroads, whether 
 they are going to result in any thing more than they 
 now are or not, do exist and do challenge the public 
 consideration. That they* have rapidly developed of 
 late, is apparent. That they may develop yet more 
 in the immediate future, is very probable. They in- 
 volve in their continued existence the whole ques- 
 tion of competition between railroads ; and, whether 
 they are to grow into a system or not, the results, 
 so far as the public are concerned, which may nat- 
 urally be expected to flow from them, either in their 
 present or their possible form, are well worthy of 
 discussion. 
 
 Contrary to the general and popular conviction, 
 an increasing number of those who have given most 
 thought to the subject, whether as railroad officers 
 or simply from the general economical and political 
 points of view, are disposed to conclude that, so far 
 from being necessarily against public policy, a prop- 
 erly regulated combination of railroad companies, for 
 the avowed purpose of controlling competition, might 
 prove a most useful public agency. These persons 
 contend that railroad competition, if it has not al- 
 ready done its work, will have done it at a time now 
 by no means remote. An enormous developing 
 force, during the period of construction, its import- 
 ance will be much less in the later periods of more 
 stable adjustment. Under these circumstances, and
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. l8/ 
 
 recognizing the fact that the period of organization 
 is now succeeding that of construction, these persons 
 are disposed to see in regulated combination the 
 surest, if not, indeed, the only way of reaching a sys- 
 tem in which the advantages of railroad competition 
 may, so far as possible, be secured ; and its abuses, 
 such as waste, discrimination, instability, and bank- 
 ruptcy, be greatly modified if not wholly gotten rid 
 of. In conducting its traffic, they argue, each road 
 or combination of roads is now a law unto itself. It 
 may work in concert with other roads or combina- 
 tions, or it may refuse to do so. It may make rates 
 to one place, where it may think it for its interest that 
 business should go, and may refuse to make them to 
 another place where it is for its interest that business 
 should not go. All this is essentially wrong. Yet the 
 business community of America, from one end of the 
 country to the other, has been from the beginning so 
 thoroughly accustomed to the extreme instabilities 
 of railroad competition, that it has wholly lost sight 
 of what its own interest requires. What it needs is 
 certainty, a stable economy in transportation, 
 something that can be reckoned on in all business 
 calculations, a fixed quantity in the problem. This, 
 of all results the most desirable, is now even looked 
 upon with apprehension. There is an idea, the re- 
 sult of long habit, in the public mind, that, so far as 
 transportation is concerned, prosperity is to be secured 
 through a succession of temporary local advantages, 
 an unending cutting of rates. The idea of a great
 
 1 88 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 system of internal transportation at once reasonable, 
 equitable, and certain, permitting traffic to flow and 
 interchanges to be made just how and where the in- 
 terests of buyer and seller dictate, never discrimi- 
 nating, rarely, and then only slowly, fluctuating, 
 this is a conception very far removed from the reality, 
 and it may well be doubted whether now it even com- 
 mends itself when stated to the average man of busi- 
 ness. He clings, on the contrary, to the burden of 
 inequalities to which he is accustomed, and is in- 
 clined to doubt whether he could live without them. 
 It is as if a mariner had become so habituated to a 
 constant succession of squalls and simooms, that he 
 questioned whether it would be possible to satisfac- 
 torily navigate a ship in trade-winds ; especially it 
 the trade-winds blew for all. Accordingly, equal 
 rates, no matter how reasonable, the moment they 
 are applied are looked upon by the favored points of 
 competition, like Chicago or New York, as in some 
 way an outrage. These points have become so accus- 
 tomed to discrimination against others and in their 
 own favor that they regard it as a species of vested 
 interest. Their boards of trade call upon their 
 legislatures to secure it to them. They have even 
 gone further than this, and presented the somewhat 
 ludicrous spectacle of modern communities claiming 
 that their own want of enterprise and wasteful 
 methods of doing business should be prevented from 
 bringing forth their legitimate results through an un- 
 ending railroad war. So possessed are they, in-
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 189 
 
 deed, with this idea, that it may safely be predicted 
 that the principle of absolute freedom and strict im- 
 partiality in the management of the railroad system 
 of America as a whole will only be reached as a re- 
 sult of long discussion and in the face of strenuous 
 resistance. Meamvhile, until it can be reached, those 
 composing the business public, as well as the stock- 
 holding class, must reconcile themselves as best they 
 can to frequent repetitions on an increasing scale of 
 those wild fluctuations and ruinous discriminations 
 which have just been described in detail in the 
 account of the railroad complications since 1873. 
 Nothing of the sort exists in any other portion of the 
 world. 
 
 If, however, any approach is ever to be made to- 
 wards that ideal state of affairs which has just been 
 suggested, it can apparently be made only in one 
 way. The abuses incident to unhealthy railroad 
 competition must cease ; and undoubtedly the first 
 step towards getting rid of those abuses is to render 
 the railroad system, throughout all its parts, amena- 
 ble to some healthy control. The present com- 
 petitive chaos must be reduced into something like 
 obedience to law. Yet this apparently can only be 
 effected when the system is changed into one 
 orderly, confederated whole. To attempt to bring 
 it about during an epoch of wars, and local pools, 
 and conflicts for traffic, would be as futile as it would 
 have been to enact a code of laws, unsupported by 
 force, for the government of the Scotch Highland
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 clans in the sixteenth century, or a parcel of native 
 African tribes now. A confederation, or even a 
 general combination among all the railroad corpora- 
 tions having some degree of binding force, might, 
 therefore, as has been suggested, not improbably 
 prove the first step in the direction of a better and 
 more stable order of things. But to lead to any re- 
 sults at once permanent and good this confederation 
 must, in three respects, differ radically from every- 
 thing of the same sort which^has hitherto preceded 
 it : it must be legal ; it must be public ; it must be 
 responsible. 
 
 Tried by this standard, it is safe to say that none 
 of the combinations now existing are consistent either 
 with sound views of public policy, or have in them 
 the elements of permanence. They are, in the first 
 place, secret combinations of quasi public agencies ; 
 in the next place, as respects the ends they have in 
 view and the means they use to attain those ends, 
 they are amenable to no law ; and, finally, they are 
 all in greater or less degree irresponsible even to 
 public opinion. They fail, moreover, even to accom- 
 plish the one result which, if practically brought about, 
 might justify their existence, they do not afford to 
 the community a reasonable and equable system of 
 charges for carriage, permitting an unchecked flow of 
 travel and commerce, the continuation of which 
 may with safety be calculated upon. A local and 
 makeshift character is apparent in them all, and is 
 not ignored even by those who are parties to them.
 
 - THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. IQI 
 
 Indeed, every disturbing element which has hereto- 
 fore broken up other combinations is latent in those 
 now existing ; the individuality of organization, the 
 distinct separation of traffic, the armies of local freight 
 agents, the extending of connections. While the 
 processes of pooling are going on and during the very 
 periods of truce, there is not a single considerable 
 line in any one of the combinations which is not 
 always anxiously looking about to strengthen itself 
 in case of an ever-expected renewal of war. Under 
 these circumstances, they will probably last only so 
 long as the recollection of recent losses and the 
 costly pressure of the last railroad war is fresh in the 
 minds of stockholders and officials. Indeed, it is safe 
 to say that the greatest of all these combinations, 
 that of the trunk lines, is held together only by the 
 personal influence and force of character of one man, 
 its commissioner, Colonel Fink. 
 
 The difficulties which stand in the way of any 
 permanent organization oa beneficial character can, 
 moreover, hardly be exaggerated. They are indeed 
 so numerous and so great that it is regarded as little 
 short of visionary to suggest that they can ever be 
 overcome. In the first place there is no one legally 
 authorized to enforce the peace between the high 
 contracting parties. Each reserves the right to con- 
 strue any agreement to suit itself, and in the last re- 
 sort to refuse obedience to the decision of any one. 
 There is no court of common arbitrament with the 
 sheriffs officer behind it. Without this, all railroad
 
 1 92 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 combinations in this country, where a division of ter- 
 ritory is impracticable, will prove but temporary. 
 Even were they, under certain conditions, practica- 
 ble, they are now rendered more than precarious, 
 owing to the fact that the whole complicated system 
 under which through or competitive railroad business 
 is done is curiously vicious and extravagant, and must 
 be radically reformed as a preliminary to any final set- 
 tlement. It now implies the presence of a vast army 
 of subordinates whose very existence depends on that 
 not being done, which those controlling the lines 
 which feed them are continually trying to do. To 
 realize the truth of this fact, it is but necessary for 
 any person to walk down the leading business streets 
 of any considerable town in the country. He will 
 see that a great number of expensive offices bear the 
 signs of railroad and of car and dispatch companies, 
 and at them tickets can be purchased and rates of 
 freight made which are binding on all the connecting 
 lines. The rents, salaries aftd perquisites of the army 
 of retainers who occupy these offices come out of the 
 railroad corporations, and the interests of the re- 
 tainers and the corporations are- exactly antagonistic, 
 the first are always working to bring about railroad 
 wars, in which business with them is brisk, while the 
 last are always striving to effect combinations. 
 
 Beyond and behind all this, however, the railroad 
 corporations of the United States have from the be- 
 ginning enjoyed a sort of lawless independence. Cor- 
 porations, like communities, accustomed to this, neces-
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 193 
 
 sarily remain for a long time restive under any sense 
 of control. They need constantly to feel that a police- 
 man's eye is upon them, and that there is a station- 
 house in the next street. No one or two great corpo- 
 rations have yet been developed with power sufficient 
 to assume a coercive protectorate over the others and 
 to compel obedience. The combination of the trunk 
 lines and their recent action towards their connec- 
 tions in the West is the first approach yet made to- 
 wards this result. But without the cohesive influence 
 of some such protectorate there is in all voluntary 
 combinations a natural tendency to anarchy. In the 
 absence, therefore, of any compelling force to secure 
 order and subordination, the mill of competition has 
 got to keep on grinding for some time yet. Its work 
 is not done. Indeed it will not be done until, through 
 the process of its grinding, the great principle of the 
 survival of the fittest is finally ground out. 
 
 This process is unlikely to prove a rapid one, 
 for order is not easily established in any community 
 which has been long in a state of anarchy. In such 
 cases the demoralization becomes general ; the tone 
 of the individual deteriorates. This is what is now 
 the matter with the railroad system in America. 
 Lawlessness and violence among themselves, the 
 continual effort of each member to protect itself and 
 to secure the advantage over others, have, as they 
 usually do, bred a general spirit of distrust, bad faith 
 and cunning, until railroad officials have become 
 hardly better than a race of horse-jockeys on a large 
 9
 
 194 THE FAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 scale. There are notable individual exceptions to this 
 statement, but, taken as a whole, the tone among 
 them is indisputably low. There is none of that steady 
 confidence in each other, that easy good faith, that 
 esprit de corps, upon which alone system and order 
 can rest. On the contrary, the leading idea in the 
 mind of the active railroad agent is that some one 
 is always cheating him, or that he is never getting 
 his share in something. If he enters into an agree- 
 ment, his life is passed in watching the other parties 
 to it, lest by some cunning device they keep it in 
 form and break it in spirit. Peace is with him always 
 a condition of semi-warfare ; while honor for its own 
 sake and good faith apart from self-interest are, in a 
 business point of view, symptoms of youth and defec- 
 tive education. Under such circumstances, what is 
 there but force upon which to build ? It was the 
 absence of the element of force which caused .the 
 failure of the Saratoga association, and probably will 
 cause the failure of those which have succeeded it. 
 Taken as a whole, the American railroad system is in 
 much the same condition as Mexico and Spain are 
 politically. In each case a Caesar or a Napoleon is 
 necessary. When, however, the time is ripe and the 
 man comes, the course of affairs can even now be 
 foreshadowed ; for it is always pretty much the same. 
 Instead of the wretched condition of chronic semi- 
 warfare which now exists, there will be one decisive 
 struggle, in which, from the beginning to the end, 
 the fighting will be forced. There will be no patched-
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 1 95 
 
 up truces, made only to be broken, for the object of 
 that struggle will be the complete ruin of some one 
 in the shortest possible time. Then will come the 
 combination of a few who will be sufficiently power- 
 ful to restrain the many. The result, expressed in 
 few words, would be a railroad federation under a pro- 
 tectorate. The united action of the great through 
 lines is necessary to bring this about ; and how to 
 secure that action is now the problem. If the elder 
 Vanderbilt were alive and in the full possession of his 
 powers he probably would solve the difficulty in the 
 way most natural to him. Meanwhile, although Com- 
 modore Vanderbilt is dead, there are very significant 
 indications that his work is going on. His vast prop- 
 erty, in the peculiar shape in which he left it and as it 
 is now handled, seems to be little else than an accu- 
 mulating fund devoted to bringing about a consolida- 
 tion of railroad interests on the largest possible scale. 
 The New York Central is the basis upon which this 
 superstructure rests. The Vanderbilt interest in the 
 property is so great that practically the earnings of 
 this road, instead of being dissipated among innumer- 
 able stockholders, as is the case with the other trunk 
 lines, are continually applied to securing the control of 
 other and connecting lines, first the Lake Shore, 
 then the Canada Southern, then the Michigan Cen- 
 tral. Scarcely during the last few years has one of 
 these connections been absorbed before rumor has 
 announced that operations have been begun upon 
 another. The Erie, the Atlantic & Great Western
 
 196 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 and the Wabash are supposed to be the next in order. 
 The precedent established by the father in buying up 
 the Hudson River road in one lump in order to put 
 a stop to its competition with the Harlem, is appa- 
 rently being followed on a larger scale by the son. 
 
 While this is going on in the East under the 
 Vanderbilt lead, two other and precisely similar 
 " one-man " combinations are assuming shape, the 
 one in the central region of the country west of the 
 Missouri, and the other on the -Pacific slope. They, 
 also, are built upon the principle of devoting the 
 earnings to the development of the business, and not 
 to the support of stockholders. Accordingly compe- 
 tition does not now exist within the sphere of influ- 
 ence of these combinations, and its existence is rap- 
 idly becoming impossible ; for, as soon as it makes 
 itself felt, the competing line is bought out of the 
 way. In this way the Union Pacific combination 
 now controls seven corporations owning and operating 
 3,000 miles of track in the heart of the continent, 
 an absolutely controlling interest ; while on the 
 western coast the Pacific Central occupies an even 
 more commanding position. 
 
 In presence of such a policy as is common to all 
 these interests, backed by such resources, the " fight- 
 ing " superintendent finds his proper level. His day 
 is over. The period of indecisive railroad wars is 
 drawing to a close. The development in these cases 
 is moreover made with ready money ; that is, the 
 earnings of the combinations are continually accumu-
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 1 97 
 
 lated in the business. There is no toppling super- 
 structure of debt. Those earnings aggregate millions 
 a year. In view of these facts there would seem to 
 be some ground for supposing, as was suggested in 
 another connection, that the railroad system of this 
 country is now on the threshold of a most active and 
 unprecedented consolidating development, and that 
 the question of the survival of the fittest among rail- 
 roads may here be decided at a less remote day than 
 is usually supposed. 
 
 But, however this ma}* be, it is a question of the 
 future and certainly has no immediate bearing on 
 the existing combinations. Of these the only one 
 which seems entitled to any thoughtful consideration 
 is the Southern Railroad and Steamship Association. 
 So far as the public is concerned, everything essential 
 as a safeguard against abuse seems in the case of that 
 association to be provided. It is a complete, but not 
 a secret combination. It exists in the full light of 
 publicity. The purposes for which it was organized 
 are openly avowed, and its every transaction is, or 
 may easily be made, matter of general observation. 
 To secure this result it would only be necessary to 
 give it legal recognition. By its originators it is con- 
 fidently claimed that, if properly developed and 
 recognized by legislation, it would afford a complete 
 and practical solution of the American railroad prob- 
 lem. Whether it would or no, it is certainly a great 
 advance on any other form of solution which has yet 
 been suggested. It is at once far more philosophi-
 
 198 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 cal, more practical, and more in consonance with 
 American political usages and modes of thought. 
 Indeed, it is not easy to point out any respect in 
 which it might not fairly be accepted as the natural 
 and logical outgrowth of American railroad develop- 
 ment, as it has gone on up to this time. The diffi- 
 culty with all of the many other solutions which have 
 from time to time been suggested has been that they 
 disregarded what had gone before ; they were none 
 of them in the nature of a logical sequence or natural 
 outgrowth. Those who originated them sought to 
 deal with a vast and complicated system as if it were 
 so much plastic material, to be handled and shaped 
 at will. Both the scheme for the state ownership of 
 railroads, and the measures of Granger legislation 
 failed and were abandoned, for this reason, they 
 were not sequences ; and while the first could not 
 stand the test of discussion, the last broke down in 
 practice. The idea of regulating all railroads through 
 the state ownership of one, the Belgian system, 
 was some years ago brought forward, and urged on 
 legislative attention by the Massachusetts commis- 
 sion as at least worthy of careful inquiry. Subse- 
 quently it was examined into more carefully in con- 
 nection with a Massachusetts enterprise in which the 
 state already held a controlling interest, and the 
 practical difficulties and objections, both political and 
 financial, which presented themselves were of such a 
 nature that those engaged in the investigation, al- 
 though one of them was a member of the commission
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 199 
 
 and as such committed to the theory, unanimously 
 found themselves compelled " by the logic of their in- 
 vestigations, regardless of preconceived theories," to 
 another result. 
 
 Irresponsible and secret combinations among rail- 
 roads always have existed, and, so long as the rail- 
 road system continues as it now is, they unquestion- 
 ably always will exist. No law can make two cor- 
 porations, any more than two individuals, actively 
 undersell each other in any market if they do not 
 wish to do so. But they can only cease doing so by 
 agreeing in public or in private on a price, below 
 which neither will sell. If they cannot do this pub-" 
 licly, they will assuredly do it secretly. This is what, 
 with alternations of conflict, the railroad companies 
 always have done in one way or another ; and this is 
 what they are now doing and must always continue 
 to do, until a complete change of conditions is 
 brought about. Against this practice, the moment 
 it begins to assume any character of responsibility or 
 permanence, statutes innumerable have been aimed, 
 and clauses strictly interdicting it have of late been 
 incorporated into several state constitutions. The ex- 
 perience of the last few years, if it has proved nothing 
 else, has conclusively demonstrated how utterly im- 
 potent and futile such enactments and provisions 
 necessarily are. Starting, then, from this point ac- 
 cepting what is and what must continue to be the 
 fundamental idea of the Southern Steamship and 
 Railroad Association is to legalize a practice which
 
 200 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 the law cannot prevent, and, by so doing to enable 
 the railroads to confederate themselves in a manner 
 which shall be at once both public and responsible. 
 This is the railroad side of the question. The other 
 side of the question that of the public admits of a 
 statement equally clear. Its essential point, how- 
 ever, is that, through this process, and this process 
 only, can the railroad system as an organized whole 
 be brought face to face with any public and controll- 
 ing force, whether of law or public opinion. Once 
 let the railroad companies confederate in accordance 
 with law, and the process through which this all-im- 
 portant confronting result would be brought about is 
 apparent. The confederation would be a responsible 
 one, with power to enforce its own decisions upon its 
 own members. The principles upon which it could act, 
 as a creature of the law, would be formulated in the 
 law. It could compel obedience, but obedience only 
 to legal decrees, and the question in each case would 
 be whether the decree was legal. At exactly this 
 point the machinery for state supervision would come 
 into play in the form of a special tribunal ; like those 
 which have already been provided in England and 
 France, or that now being matured in the Prussian 
 parliament. The field of discussion before this tri- 
 bunal would be commensurate with the whole sub- 
 ject of transportation by rail, including questions not 
 only of law but of economy. Then, at last, the cor- 
 rect principles governing railroad traffic would be 
 in course of rapid development. The essential fea-
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 2OI 
 
 tures of what constitutes discrimination and extor- 
 tion would gradually be formulated into rules, and 
 the moment that is accomplished competition will 
 work equitably. This result must follow. It must 
 follow, from the fact that competition is now almost 
 entirely local. That is, a competitive rate to or from 
 one point, in no way necessarily affects rates to or 
 from other points, a local variation does not cause 
 the whole schedule to move up or down. This is 
 what makes discrimination. Could the system be 
 confederated and equalized, however, such would 
 not be the case. An established tariff, intended to 
 be public and permanent, would then have to be 
 fixed upon, just as it is to-day fixed upon in each of 
 the local pools which have been described. This tariff, 
 however, would, of necessity, fluctuate throughout 
 under the pressure of competition at any one point. 
 For instance, a lake-rate to be met at Chicago would 
 affect the land-rate from Louisville ; if it did not, 
 one point would be discriminated against, as it now 
 perpetually is, in favor of the other. In like manner 
 a river-rate from St. Louis would affect the land-rate 
 from Chicago. Thus the principle of the all-pervading 
 action of competition would be generally established 
 through a confederation, as it is locally established 
 through combinations to-day. In this way, full effect 
 would be given to that natural and healthy competi- 
 tion which is now so successfully localized, while 
 railroad discrimination would be effectually repressed. 
 Discrimination being thus disposed of, it would then 
 9*
 
 202 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 only remain to guard against extortion. That would 
 not, apparently, be difficult. In the first place, it 
 would probably be found that the effect of natural 
 competition would, once the play of its forces was 
 made all-pervading, afford the necessary protection. 
 If it did not, the extortion would have to be practiced 
 openly, and by a responsible agent upon whom the 
 whole force of public opinion might and would be di- 
 rected. Should this fail to produce the desired effect, 
 the central agency being responsible to the law as well 
 as to public opinion, recourse could finally be had to 
 legislation. Beyond this, it does not seem worth while 
 at present to carry the discussion. The first step is, 
 necessarily, to accustom the public mind to the idea 
 that railroad combinations possibly may be an evil 
 only because they are unrecognized, and that the 
 proper way to deal with them may, perhaps, be 
 through regulation and not through prohibition. 
 
 In pursuing the discussion, however, care must 
 be taken lest the argument against competition is 
 carried too far, or is not properly understood. It 
 will not do to rush from one extreme to the other. 
 The natural question which has already been sug- 
 gested must be clearly borne in mind : Why should 
 a railroad combination, avowedly intended to hold 
 competition in check, if not to put an end to it, pro- 
 duce any result other than the natural and obvious 
 one of raising prices? Who or what is to protect the 
 community against the extortions of these great cor- 
 porations, should they cease to quarrel and compete
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 2O$ 
 
 among themselves ? And, in the first place, it must 
 be frankly acknowledged that the argument against 
 railroad competition can only be advanced subject to 
 great limitations. Undoubtedly the fierce struggles 
 between rival corporations which marked the history 
 of railroad development, both here and in England, 
 were very prominent factors in the work of forcing 
 the systems of the two countries up to their present 
 degree of efficiency. Railroad competition has been 
 a great educator for railroad men. It has not only 
 taught them how much they could do, but also how 
 very cheaply they could do it. Under the strong 
 stimulus of rivalry they have done not only what they 
 declared were impossibilities, but what they really 
 believed to be such. None the less, extraordinary 
 as these results have been, they have been reached 
 only at an excessive cost ; a cost so excessive as to 
 show clearly that the process is one which cannot be 
 continued indefinitely. Under the incessant strain 
 of competition the number of competitors is being 
 steadily reduced. The present question, therefore, 
 is not whether good results have ever been secured 
 through railroad competition, but whether the same 
 or even better results may not now be secured 
 through other and less costly processes. During the 
 last forty years the railroad system has grown, and 
 experience has grown with it. During that time, 
 also, competition has to a degree expended its force, 
 and is now obviously working its way out to a final 
 result. If that result is to be a legalized confedera-
 
 204 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 tion it must be borne clearly in mind that, while 
 railroad competition would cease, the influence of 
 every other form of competition, sea, lake, river and 
 canal, would through the machinery of that confed- 
 eracy be economized and extended to its utmost pos- 
 sible limit. If the confederacy were touched by com- 
 petition at one point, it would feel it at all points. 
 Throughout, its rates would rise and fall together. 
 Thus if one form of competition should cease, another 
 would be prodigiously quickened. 
 
 But allowing even the monopoly to become com- 
 plete, and having only such forms and degrees of re- 
 straint as law, usage, public sentiment and self-inter- 
 est can supply, we are by no means without analo- 
 gous cases having a very close bearing on the argu- 
 ment. In our cities, for instance, as regards the 
 supply of gas, it is found cheaper and better for the 
 community to have to do with one company than 
 with several. So also as respects the supply of 
 water. In this country it is now usual for cities and 
 towns to construct their own water works. If this, 
 however, were not the case, few would be disposed 
 to deny that a city having to do with a single aque- 
 duct company would be apt to have a much more 
 satisfactory service than one which sought to divide 
 it among many. Carrying now the argument directly 
 into the case of railroads, and having recourse again 
 to experience, we find that railroad competition has 
 been tried all over the world, and that everywhere, 
 consciously or unconsciously, but with one consent,
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 2O$ 
 
 it is slowly but surely being abandoned. In its 
 place the principle of responsible and regulated mo- 
 nopoly is asserting itself. The same process, varied 
 only by the differing economical, social, and political 
 habits and modes of thought of the people, is going 
 on in France, in Belgium, in Germany, and in Great 
 Britain. The experience of the three first named 
 countries bears much less strongly than that of Eng- 
 land on the particular conditions existing in America, 
 yet even for us their experience is not without its 
 significance. In France we see six great corpora- 
 tions dividing the country into as many distinct ter- 
 ritories, and each of the six directly responsible for 
 the territory served by it ; while both these corpora- 
 tions and the government view with undisguised ap- 
 prehension the recent appearance of a competing, 
 though subsidiary, system. In Prussia, a plan of 
 close government supervision through a special cabi- 
 net officer, a member of the ministry, is now being 
 matured, while elsewhere in Germany the lines are 
 rapidly passing into the hands of the governments, 
 or under their more immediate control. Apart, how- 
 ever, from this, the German experience in one respect 
 deserves peculiar notice. The local and governmen- 
 tal subdivisions of Germany, more than those of any 
 other country of Europe, resemble our federated sys- 
 tem of states. Placed in the centre of Europe, 
 Germany is a species o( thoroughfare, while at the 
 same time the individual members of its railroad sys- 
 tem belong under different jurisdictions. Here, then,
 
 206 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 every condition is found which is likely to incite 
 an uncontrolled railroad competition. To a degree 
 it existed, at one period, but "the German temper 
 and habits of thought are so different from the 
 American that competition there speedily resulted in 
 combination. The German railroad union, including 
 as it does nearly one hundred different manage- 
 ments, operating twenty-six thousand miles of track, 
 actually accomplishes many of the results which the 
 Saratoga and Atlanta combinations were designed 
 to accomplish. It makes all necessary arrange- 
 ments respecting joint traffic, settles questions of 
 fares and freight, and substitutes arbitration for wars 
 of rates. It has to a certain degree introduced uni- 
 formity and stability into the system. The fact that 
 such an association is easily formed in Germany, and 
 is formed only with the greatest difficulty in America, 
 proves nothing except the powerful influence of na- 
 tional thought and temper. A certain amount of 
 waste and confusion sufficed to bring a system into 
 being in the one case; the present question is, how 
 much more waste and how much greater degree of 
 confusion will be necessary to bring a somewhat sim- 
 ilar system into being in the other case? 
 
 In Belgium alone has railroad competition proved 
 a permanent advantage ; and it has proved so there 
 for the simple reason that the competition between 
 railroads in Belgium, unlike that in the United States, 
 was never uncontrolled. A hand was always on the 
 regulator. The government, as the largest owner of
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 2O/ 
 
 railroads, was itself the chief competitor, and as such 
 its action was certain, equitable, and justly distri- 
 buted. It could not show preferences, or discriminate, 
 or make good the losses sustained in righting over a 
 divided business out of profits exported from an ex- 
 clusive business. Regulated in this way, competi- 
 tion could be kept alive and made beneficial. It 
 did not wear itself out by its own excesses. 
 
 Of all foreign experiences, however, that of Eng- 
 land most resembles our own. The only essential 
 difference is that England is wealthier and infinitely 
 more compact than the United States, so that, as 
 respects railroads, causes produced their results much 
 more quickly there than here. Nowhere, however, 
 is the present tendency towards the concentration 
 of railroad interests in a few hands more apparent 
 than in England. The mill of competition has there 
 about fulfilled its allotted work. The whole English 
 railway system has now passed into the hands of a 
 few great companies, by whom the country is prac- 
 tically divided into separate districts. These are 
 literally in the hands of monopolies. The practical 
 result of this consolidation, as compared with the 
 old-fashioned competition, was set forth in two con- 
 crete cases by the parliamentary committee on rail- 
 way amalgamation of 1872, in language which has 
 already been quoted, but which in this connection 
 will bear repetition. 
 
 The North-Eastern railway " is composed of 
 thirty-seven lines, several of which formerly com*
 
 208 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 peted with each other. Before their amalgamation 
 they had, generally speaking, high rates and fares, 
 and low dividends. The system is now the most 
 complete monopoly in the United Kingdom ; from 
 the Tyne to the H umber, with one local exception, 
 it has the country to itself, arid it has the lowest 
 fares and the highest dividends of any large English 
 railway. It has had little or no litigation with other 
 companies. While complaints have been heard 
 from Lancashire and Yorkshire, where there are so- 
 called competing lines, no witness has appeared to 
 complain of the North-Eastern ; and the general 
 feeling in the district it serves appears favorable to 
 its management." * 
 
 There is scarcely a section of the United States 
 which could not tell of an experience very like 
 the English one just referred to. Massachusetts, 
 for instance, could supply a well-known case in 
 point. Of two sections of that state lying north 
 and south of the city of Boston, the one known 
 as the Cape Ann and the other as the Cape Cod dis- 
 trict, the first has from the beginning been served by 
 two rival lines whose whole history has been one 
 long trial of strength, resulting at last in the abso- 
 lute ruin of one and in the severe crippling of 
 the other. How many millions of dollars were reck- 
 lessly squandered in the long course of the struggle, 
 it is impossible to compute. While the Cape Ann 
 
 * Report from Select Committee on Railway Companies Amalga- 
 mation (1872), page xxvii.
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 district has thus enjoyed the benefits of railroad 
 competition, the southern or Cape Cod district has, 
 on the other hand, been served by a single consoli- 
 dated corporation, the cardinal principle with which 
 has been monopoly. It appropriated to itself a cer- 
 tain district, and that district it undertook to furnish 
 with all reasonable railroad facilities ; but within the 
 limits of its own territory it did not propose to tol- 
 erate any rival. The result in these two cases, 
 whether in accordance with theory or not, is confir- 
 matory of experience. Between its two rival cor- 
 porations the northern district was through years 
 converted into a battle-ground, and turned upside 
 down ; rates fluctuated wildly and varied every- 
 where ; common tariffs were made and not observed, 
 and profits were pooled ; bits of connecting road 
 were seized hold of by the one combatant or the 
 other, and were perverted from serving the commu- 
 nity into being engines of attack or defence. As to 
 the two companies, with that impenetrable stupidity 
 which usually characterizes the lover of petty inde- 
 pendence, they sturdily preferred to lose thousands 
 in conflict rather than incur the risk of being over- t 
 reached in negotiation by so much as a dollar. 
 Each of them absolutely threw away enough money 
 to buy up the other in that stupid fighting in which 
 thick-headed presidents and " smart " superintend- 
 ents uniformly delight. The one meant " to get 
 even with the other," and both were resolved, 
 no matter how much it cost, to have its "share
 
 210 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 of the business." Between them they ruined the 
 business, dissatisfied every one, and then came 
 to terms with each other. Meanwhile, in the south- 
 eastern section of the state peace certainly pre- 
 vailed, if not absolute contentment. As respects 
 railroads this last it is not well to expect, and, if 
 expected, it will not be found. Nevertheless it is 
 certainly true that, according to general experi- 
 ence, the nearest approach to it is reached, not only 
 abroad but here, through the course pursued in this 
 case. The reliance on competition seems to give 
 throughout a false direction to public opinion as 
 respects railroads. They are looked upon as some- 
 thing alien, if not hostile. The public welfare is as- 
 sociated in the popular mind with their misfortunes. 
 On the other hand the intelligent and peaceful ope- 
 ration of a consolidated company is generally fol- 
 lowed by a sense of responsibility on the one side, 
 and of ultimate friendliness on the other. 
 
 Besides the economical arguments which are so 
 difficult to be overcome in this discussion, there are 
 certain other objections to any such solution of the 
 railroad problem as that suggested, which cannot be 
 ignored. They have at least a strong hold on the 
 popular ear and mind. In their character they are 
 political or sentimental. As respects those of the 
 first description, it is certainly not too much to say 
 that jealousy of great corporations is a cardinal arti- 
 cle in American political faith. There is reason for 
 it, too ; and in this respect recent scandals have
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 211 
 
 given to railroad corporations a peculiar and un- 
 pleasant prominence. Neither is this instinctive 
 jealousy confined to America. It is only a very 
 few years since the present Sir Henry Tyler in 
 one of the reports of the Board of Trade of Great 
 Britain, formulated the proposition that the time 
 was at hand when " the state must control the 
 railroads or else the railroads would control the 
 state." Yet when the parliamentary committee on 
 amalgamations considered this question in 1872, 
 they were obliged to report that the " growth of the 
 corporations had not brought with it the evils gen- 
 erally anticipated." The fact is that in this, as in so 
 many other instances, the truth of Mr. Disraeli's 
 aphorism, that "in politics it is the unexpected 
 which is apt to occur," received fresh illustration. 
 In this country, as well as in Great Britain, those 
 wise people who so earnestly point out the dangers 
 incident to railroad concentration wholly ignore the 
 important practical fact that concentration not only 
 brings with it a corresponding increase of jealousy, 
 but also an equally increased sense of responsibility. 
 It is not the few great corporations which are politi- 
 cally dangerous, but the many log-rolling little ones. 
 No one who has had experience in dealing before a 
 legislative body with questions affecting railroad in- 
 terests has failed to realize this fact. The burden 
 of responsibility almost of popular odium which 
 the large corporation bears, the ease with which a 
 senseless cry can be raised against it, is even, as
 
 212 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 compared with smaller corporations, out of all pro- 
 portion to its increased strength. So much has 
 been written and declaimed on this subject, however, 
 that it is well to be as distinct as possible in dealing 
 with it. The popular apprehension of imaginary 
 dangers to be apprehended from railroad consolida- 
 tion is not well considered. With those who have 
 most reflected on the subject it is safe to say that 
 the idea of a combination of all the railroad interests 
 of the country into the hands of three or four corpo- 
 rations, even though they might practically be the 
 creatures of a triumvirate's will, would excite no 
 apprehension. That corporation, or those who com- 
 posed that triumvirate, would retain power only by 
 most carefully abstaining from all abuse of power. 
 Little as those who expatiate on the subject seem 
 to realize it, it is nevertheless true that with each 
 new railroad the Vanderbilt or the Jay Gould or the 
 Huntingdon interest acquires, the more cautious and 
 conservative they become. They realize the respon- 
 sibilities and dangers of their position, if their critics 
 do not. The only present difficulty is that those 
 who undertake to represent the community neither 
 understand the situation, nor know how to take ad- 
 vantage of it. 
 
 Finally it remains to consider the sentimental 
 objections. The combination of railroads, it is 
 claimed, is unrepublican, through it the dynasty of 
 the " Railroad Kings " is insidiously asserting itself. 
 This argument is of the kind which sets refutation
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 21 3 
 
 at defiance. Not infrequently it is met with in the 
 columns of the press, but it is an argument appro- 
 priately addressed only to that discouragingly large 
 class among whom words are money and not coun- 
 ters. It is unmitigated cant, and deserves only to 
 be treated as such. There is a principle much 
 nearer the foundation of republican institutions than 
 any jealousy or apprehension of Railroad Kings 
 the great principle of not unnecessarily meddling. 
 After all, men and systems can best develop them- 
 selves in their own way, and it is hardly worth while 
 either to continually prognosticate evil, or to pass 
 one's life in fighting shadows. 
 
 Briefly reviewing the whole ground which has 
 now been traversed, it is obvious that the tendency 
 of events and drift of discussion are everywhere the 
 same away from a reliance on the beneficial effect to 
 be derived from the uncontrolled competition be- 
 tween railroads. In America only does any consid- 
 erable body of reflecting persons continue to have 
 faith in it. In France and in Belgium the principle 
 never was recognized, and the later tendency is dis- 
 tinct and strong against its admission. In Great 
 Britain, where it originated, it is now definitely 
 abandoned. In Germany the highest authorities 
 incline towards the idea oT a confederation of rail- 
 roads directly confronting the imperial government 
 and responsible to it. The movement, however, 
 seems to have its limits, and those tolerably well de-
 
 214 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 fined. The idea of state-ownership can hardly be said 
 to be growing. On the contrary, in those countries like 
 France and Germany, where recourse would natu- 
 rally be had to this solution of the problem, the ten- 
 dency seems now rather to be towards a close regu- 
 lation of the railroads by the government, without 
 its owning them : while in other countries, where 
 the institutions are of a more popular character, a 
 system of public supervision is assuming shape. 
 Thus supervision would seem to be the limit of de- 
 velopment on the one side, and regulation on the 
 other. 
 
 Owing to the extremely complicated character of 
 the American railroad system, rendering anything 
 like a territorial division among corporations impos- 
 sible, results here work their way out slowly. When 
 they do work their way out, however, it is apt to be 
 on a large scale and in a way not easily susceptible of 
 change. So far as any progress has yet been made, 
 it is obviously in the direction indicated, the de- 
 velopment of government supervision on the one 
 side, and the concentration of railroads to escape 
 competition on the other. The manner, indeed, in 
 which, starting from different stand-points of inter- 
 est and opposite sections of the country, the Massa- 
 chusetts commission and the Southern Railroad and 
 Steamship Association have unconsciously worked 
 towards a common ground, is noticeable. On the 
 one hand the whole effort of the commission has 
 been to develop a tribunal which, in all questions
 
 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 21$ 
 
 affecting the relations of the railroad system to the 
 community, should secure publicity and that correct 
 understanding of the principles upon which only 
 legislation of any permanent value can be based, and 
 which is reached through intelligent public investi- 
 gation. That secured, all else might safely be left to 
 take its own course. A sufficient responsibility 
 would be secured to afford a guarantee against abuse. 
 On the other hand the fundamental idea of the asso- 
 ciation, without the realization of which it remains 
 incomplete, is to so confederate the railroad system 
 that the members of it should be amenable to con- 
 trol and that responsibility should attach to it. 
 Could the two results be brought about, the machin- 
 ery would be complete. The confederated railroad 
 system would confront the government tribunal,-and 
 be directly responsible to public opinion. This is 
 almost precisely the result arrived at in France and in 
 Great Britain, and is that contemplated in Germany. 
 It would be altogether premature to predict with 
 any confidence that this or a similar result will speed- 
 ily be reached in this country. Judging by experi- 
 ence, it is more probable that the development on 
 the side of the railroad system will far outstrip that 
 on the side of the government. The popular dis- 
 belief in the possibility of any permanent combina- 
 tion of the railroads, at once general and effective, is 
 so complete that no provision will be made for it. 
 Should one be brought about it will, however, in all 
 probability, once it assumes shape, assume it very
 
 2l6 THE RAILROAD PROBLEM. 
 
 rapidly. In that case no great degree of public in- 
 jury would necessarily be sustained, but the difficulty 
 of thereafter restoring the necessary equilibrium 
 would be materially increased. Another and more 
 persistent political movement of the Granger charac- 
 ter might and probably would become a necessity. 
 As opposed, however, to an overshadowing commer- 
 cial interest, so concentrated that all eyes and pas- 
 sions could be brought to bear upon it, this is not 
 likely to be a movement difficult to originate or easy 
 to resist. 
 
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 TORY TO 1851. 
 
 UNITED STATES TREASURY STATISTICS. 
 
 LITERARY CHRONOLOGY, ARRANGED IN TA- 
 BLES: HEBREW, GREEK, LATIN AND 
 ITALIAN, BRITISH, GERMAN, FRENCH, 
 SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE, DUTCH, 
 
 ARABIAN, PERSIAN AND TURKISH, 
 
 AMERICAN. 
 HEATHEN DEITIES AND HEROES AND HER 
 
 OINES OF ANTIQUITY. 
 TABULAR VIEWS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY. 
 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX, GENERAL. 
 
 THE SAME OF ARTISTS. 
 
 SCHOOLS OF PAINTING IN CHRONOLOGICAL 
 
 TABLES. 
 
 SWEDISH, DANISH, POLISH. RUSSIAN, 
 
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 PART II 
 
 THE CYCLOPAEDIA OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 A RECORD OF THE LIVES OF EMINENT MEN 
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