1819-22. EARLY RAILROADS' SCHEMES. 139 on level railroads at the rate of a mile in three minutes, and of using vehicles so large that passengers might walk in them without stooping, and be furnished with accommodations for taking their meals and their rest during the passage, as in packets. The boldness of his aims marked him out as a dreamer on whom practical congressmen were not disposed to waste either time and money, and, with the reference of the memorial to the proper committee, Dearborn and his railway were forgotten. Stevens meanwhile had not lost heart. After failing in New York and New Jersey, he turned to Pennsylvania, and addressed a letter † on railroads to the Mayor of Philadelphia, who sent it to Councils, a body which manifested not the slightest interest in the matter. With business men, however, he fared better. To them the situation was serious. The New York canal was well under way. The appearance of the steamboat on the Mississippi put it within the power of the West to ignore the East, and trade directly with the world through New Orleans. If western trade was to be held against such competition, some cheap means of transportation to Pittsburg must be opened, and this the railroad seemed likely to furnish. It was not so costly as a turnpike; it would not freeze in winter, as did the water in the canals. Some men of means and prominence were persuaded to give the enterprise a trial, and in December, 1822, Stevens and his friends applied to the Legislature for a charter. To have attempted to build a railroad across the State of Pennsylvania from the Delaware to the Ohio would have been rash in the extreme. Half the distance was all they thought of covering, and, as there were good pikes from Philadelphia to Harrisburg and a canal almost completed from the Schuylkill to the Susquehanna, the proposed railroad was to begin at Harrisburg and end at Pittsburg. The House of Representatives, however, would not hear of this. * “For obtaining these results, he relies on carriages propelled by steam, on level railroads, and contemplates that they be furnished with accommodation for passengers to take their meals and their rest during the passage, as in packets; that they be sufficiently high for persons to walk in without stooping, and so capacious as to accommodate twenty, thirty, or more passengers, with their baggage." January 5, 1821. The valuable trade of the Susquehanna valley, despite turnpikes and canals, was flowing steadily to Baltimore, and, in hope of diverting it to Philadelphia, the House insisted that the railroad should extend from Philadelphia to Columbia, a town on the Susquehanna, twenty-seven miles south of Harrisburg, and carried their point.* The preamble of the act of incorporation sets forth that John Stevens had memorialized the Legislature for authority to build a railroad; that he had made many discoveries and improvements in the manner of building such highways; and that it was because of such improvements that the privileges asked for were granted. Some of these privileges now seem curious enough. The charter was to be in force for ten years; the rails were to cross all pikes and roads on causeways; and the company might charge seven cents a ton per mile on freight moving westward and half that sum on freight bound east. With the granting of the charter the enterprise came to a standstill. The community seemed to be ignorant of what was meant by a railroad. Indeed, when a correspondent of one of the newspapers asked, "What is a railroad?" the editor answered, "Perhaps some other correspondent can tell." Nobody did tell, and the public remained unenlightened till the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvement within the Commonwealth published such information as it could gather concerning railroads in Great Britain. A committee of the society took the pains to explain that it had purchased treatises and essays on the subject, and had consulted well-informed individuals, only to find that, while many valuable facts were obtained, no counected view could be given. The society, therefore, had determined to send an agent to Europe to inspect and report on the railroads then in use, with a view to enabling the public to understand one of the most valuable internal improvements of the day, and in the meantime to call attention to the best description that * Journal of the Senate, 1822-23. Journal of the House of Representatives, 1822-'23. Laws of Pennsylvania, Chapter CXLVIII, 1823. In the United States Gazette for April 30, 1823, is a long article indorsing the proposed railroad, but no description. 1825. EARLY RAILROADS' SCHEMES. 141 had come to hand.* Accompanying the text were cuts showing plans and cross sections of the rails and road-bed. The information thus given to the public was immediately increased. Some one in Baltimore wrote two papers on the construction of railroads, and the manner of drawing wagons along them by steam locomotives,† and deposited a model of a track with locomotive and cars in the Exchange Reading Rooms. Somebody in Philadelphia published a series of essays on Railways, Roads, and Canals. The Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvements printed the report of its agent, strongly indorsing railroads "a report which the friends of canals made haste to attack and refute, only to be in turn answered. In the midst of the discussion one public meeting was held at Philadelphia to consider the expediency of building a railway from the Schuylkill to the Delaware, and another to discuss the project of joining the two rivers near the city by a canal. Each approved its own scheme, and each instructed a committee to prepare plans and estimates of cost. Such part of the community as took any interest in the commercial and industrial welfare of the State was thus rent into two opposing factions-the friends and advocates of canals and the friends and advocates of railroads. For the time being the victory was with the friends of canals. Forced on by public feeling, the Legislature of Pennsylvania, in 1824, empowered the Governor to appoint three commissioners to explore a route from Philadelphia to the Ohio. The result of the exploration was a recommendation that the Alleghany and the Conemaugh rivers on the west side of the mountains, and the Susquehanna and the Juniata on the east side, should * Abstract of a review of the plans submitted to the Highland Society, Edinburgh, for the premium or award of a piece of plate, valued at fifty guineas, for the best essay, model, or drawing which might tend to the advancement of the railway system. These papers may be found in the Baltimore American for March, 1825. That describing the use of steam and giving a cut of the locomotive and train was reprinted in the United States Gazette, March 9, 1825. United States Gazette, March 24, 28, 30, 1825. # United States Gazette, August 12, and September 5, 16, 1825. Lycoming Gazette, August 24, 1825. be opened to the foot of the mountains by canal and slackwater navigation, and that they should be joined by a canal passing through a tunnel four miles long under the Alleghanies. Lest the Legislature might not know what a tunnel was, the commissioners described it as "a passage like a well dug horizontally through a hill or mountain." The utmost interest in the work of the commissioners was manifested all over the State. In January, 1824, a public meeting at Philadelphia * called for canals from the Susquehanna to Lake Erie and to the Ohio, and petitioned the Legislature not to delay the work. In May another meeting issued a call for a Canal Convention to be held at Harrisburg in August. Fifty-six counties sent delegates, who declared that canals were needed; that the money appropriated for them would not be an expenditure, but an investment; that all local objects leading to a diffusive and unconnected use of public funds ought to give way for the present; and that public opinion would fully sustain the Legislature in all its efforts in behalf of internal improvements. The Legislature had already established a regular board of canal commissioners," and a year later ordered them to proceed at once to build "The Pennsylvania Canal" at State expense, and made a first appropriation of money. On July fourth, 1826, ground was broken at Harrisburg, and Pennsylvania, after a long struggle, began the construction of her highway to the West. Now that the State was seriously at work, the old idea of the railroad revived, and in 1826 the charter granted to Stevens was repealed, and the Columbia, Lancaster, and Philadelphia Railroad was incorporated, only to share the fate of its predecessor. Then the State, convinced that private enterprise was not equal to the task of railroad-building on a great scale, took the work into her own hands, bade the canal commissioners make surveys for such a road || and build it from Philadelphia through Lancaster to Columbia, and, if possible, finish the work in two years. By the same act they were instructed to examine a route for a railroad over the Alleghany A * American Daily Advertiser, January 28, 1825. Ibid., February 10, 1825. Ibid., August 9, 1825. # April 11, 1825. | 1827. A 1828. 1826. THE BEGINNING OF RAILROADS. 143 Mountains from Huntingdon on the east to Johnstown on the west side a route which in time became celebrated as the Portage Railroad, and was long one of the engineering wonders of America. Two years had wrought a marvellous change in the place which railroads held in public estimation. The scheme which in 1823 and 1826 seemed too visionary to be seriously thought of, and which failed because nobody was rash enough to advance the needed money, was high in favor in 1828 all over the seaboard States. New York had chartered the Mohawk and Hudson to join Albany and Schenectady, and had given the company authority to use "the power and force of steam, of animals, or of any mechanical or other power." * Massachusetts had incorporated the Granite Railway Company,† whose track was to extend from Quincy to tide-water,‡ had appointed a Board of Commissioners of Internal Improvements to survey one route for a railway from Boston to the boundary line of Rhode Island and another from the same city to the boundary line of New York near Albany,|| and had listened to reports urging that each road when built should be operated by horse power. In New York city a railway up the Hudson was seriously meditated. The objectors protested that it would never pay; but the projectors declared that success was certain, because rails could be used in winter when ice made transportation by water impossible. At Hoboken John Stevens built a circular railway, and demonstrated be A # * Laws of New York, Chapter CCLIII, 1826. + Laws of Massachusetts, Chapter CLXXXIII, 1826. In many treatises on the history of railways, the Quincy road is called the first railway in America. This is a mistake. As early as 1809 Thomas Leiper built a railway from his quarry to the Delaware, and used it for eighteen years. History of the People of the United States, vol. iii, pp. 494, 495. Later still, but before 1823, Conroe, of Philadelphia, had another from his ice-house to the Delaware. Railways had long been used on the bridges of Pennsylvania to reduce the jar of rolling loads, while many of the fire companies in Philadelphia had tracks across the sidewalks in front of their houses. #Resolves of the General Court of Massachusetts, Chapter LXXXVI, March 2, 1827. Ibid., Chapter VII, June 14, 1827. ▲ Ibid., Chapters XLVI and XLVIII. |