Part 4 (1/2)
CHAPTER IX. The Dawn Of The Iron Age
Despite the superiority of the new iron age that quickly followed the widespreading ca.n.a.l movement, there was a generous spirit and a chivalry in the ”good old days” of the stagecoach, the Conestoga, and the lazy ca.n.a.l boat, which did not to an equal degree pervade the iron age of the railroad. When machinery takes the place of human brawn and patience, there is an indefinable eclipse of human interest. Somehow, cogs and levers and differentials do not have the same appeal as fingers and eyes and muscles. The old days of coach and ca.n.a.l boat had a picturesqueness and a comrades.h.i.+p of their own. In the turmoil and confusion and odd mixing of every kind of humanity along the lines of travel in the days of the hurtling coach-and-six, a friendliness, a robust sympathy, a ready interest in the successful and the unfortunate, a knowledge of how the other half lives, and a familiarity with men as well as with mere places, was common to all who took the road. As Thackeray so vividly describes it:
”The land rang yet with the tooting horns and rattling teams of mail-coaches; a gay sight was the road in those days, before steam-engines arose and flung its hostelry and chivalry over. To travel in coaches, to know coachmen and guards, to be familiar with inns along the road, to laugh with the jolly hostess in the bar, to chuck the pretty chamber-maid under the chin, were the delight of men who were young not very long ago. The road was an inst.i.tution, the ring was an inst.i.tution. Men rallied around them; and, not without a kind of conservatism expatiated on the benefits with which they endowed the country, and the evils which would occur when they should be no more decay of British spirit, decay of manly pluck, ruin of the breed of horses, and so forth and so forth. To give and take a black eye was not unusual nor derogatory in a gentleman: to drive a stage-coach the enjoyment, the emulation, of generous youth. Is there any young fellow of the present time, who aspires to take the place of a stoker? One sees occasionally in the country a dismal old drag with a lonely driver. Where are you, charioteers? Where are you, O rattling Quicksilver, O swift Defiance? You are pa.s.sed by racers stronger and swifter than you. Your lamps are out, and the music of your horns has died away.”
Behind this change from the older and more picturesque days which is thus lamented there lay potent economic forces and a strong commercial rivalry between different parts of the country. The Atlantic States were all rivals of each other, reaching out by one bold stroke after another across forest, mountain, and river to the gigantic and fruitful West. Step after step the inevitable conquest went on. Foremost in time marched the st.u.r.dy pack-hors.e.m.e.n, blazing the way for the heavier forces quietly biding their time in the rear-the Conestogas, the steamboat, the ca.n.a.l boat, and, last and greatest of them all, the locomotive.
Through a long preliminary period the princ.i.p.al center of interest was the Potomac Valley, towards whose strategic head Virginia and Maryland, by river-improvement and road-building, were directing their commercial routes in amiable rivalry for the conquest of the Western trade. Suddenly out from the southern region of the Middle Atlantic States went the c.u.mberland National Road to the Ohio. New York instantly, in her zone, took up the challenge and thrust her great Erie Ca.n.a.l across to the Great Lakes. In rapid succession, Pennsylvania and Maryland and Virginia, eager not to be outdone in winning the struggle for Western trade, sent their ca.n.a.ls into the Alleghanies toward the Ohio.
It soon developed, however, that Baltimore, both powerful and ambitious, was seriously handicapped. In order to retain her commanding position as the metropolis of Western trade she was compelled to resort to a new and untried method of transportation which marks an era in American history.
It seems plain that the Southern rivals of New York City-Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Alexandria-had relied for a while on the deterring effect of a host of critics who warned all men that a ca.n.a.l of such proportions as the Erie was not practicable, that no State could bear the financial drain which its construction would involve, that theories which had proved practical on a small scale would fail in so large an undertaking, that the ca.n.a.l would be clogged by floods or frozen up for half of each year, and that commerce would ignore artificial courses and cling to natural channels. But the answer of the Empire State to her rivals was the homely but triumphant cry ”Low Bridge!”-the warning to pa.s.sengers on the decks of ca.n.a.l boats as they approached the numerous bridges which spanned the route. When this cry pa.s.sed into a byword it afforded positive proof that the Erie Ca.n.a.l traffic was firmly established. The words rang in the counting-houses of Philadelphia and out and along the Lancaster and the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh turnpikes-”Low Bridge! Low Bridge!” Pennsylvania had granted, it has been pointed out, that her Southern neighbors might have their share of the Ohio Valley trade but maintained that the splendid commerce of the Great Lakes was her own peculiar heritage. Men of Baltimore who had dominated the energetic policy of stone-road building in their State heard this alarming challenge from the North. The echo ran ”Low Bridge!” in the poor decaying locks of the Potomac Company where, according to the committee once appointed to examine that enterprise, flood-tides ”gave the only navigation that was enjoyed.” Were their efforts to keep the Chesapeake metropolis in the lead to be set at naught?
There could be but one answer to the challenge, and that was to rival ca.n.a.l with ca.n.a.l. These more southerly States, confronted by the towering ranges of the Alleghanies to the westward, showed a courage which was superb, although, as time proved in the case of Maryland, they might well have taken more counsel of their fears. Pennsylvania acted swiftly. Though its western waterway-the roaring Juniata, which entered the Susquehanna near Harrisburg-had a drop from head to mouth greater than that of the entire New York ca.n.a.l, and, though the mountains of the Altoona region loomed straight up nearly three thousand feet, Pennsylvania overcame the lowlands by main strength and the mountain peaks by strategy and was sending ca.n.a.l boats from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh within nine years of the completion of the Erie Ca.n.a.l.
The eastern division of the Pennsylvania Ca.n.a.l, known as the Union Ca.n.a.l, from Reading on the Schuylkill to Middletown on the Susquehanna, was completed in 1827. The Juniata section was then driven on up to Hollidaysburg. Beyond the mountain barrier, the Conemaugh, the Kiskiminitas, and the Allegheny were followed to Pittsburgh. But the greatest feat in the whole enterprise was the conquest of the mountain section, from Hollidaysburg to Johnstown. This was accomplished by the building of five inclined planes on each slope, each plane averaging about 2300 feet in length and 200 feet in height. Up or down these slopes and along the intermediate level sections cars and giant cradles (built to be lowered into locks where they could take an entire ca.n.a.l boat as a load) were to be hauled or lowered by horsepower, and later, by steam. After the plans had been drawn up by Sylvester Welch and Moncure Robinson, the Pennsylvania Legislature authorized the work in 1831, and traffic over this aerial route was begun in March, 1834. In autumn of that year, the stanch boat Hit or Miss, from the Lackawanna country, owned by Jesse Crisman and captained by Major Williams, made the journey across the whole length of the ca.n.a.l. It rested for a night on the Alleghany summit ”like Noah's Ark on Ararat,” wrote Sherman Day, ”descended the next morning into the Valley of the Mississippi, and sailed for St. Louis.”
Well did Robert Stephenson, the famous English engineer, say that, in boldness of design and difficulty of execution, this Pennsylvania scheme of mastering the Alleghanies could be compared with no modern triumph short of the feats performed at the Simplon Pa.s.s and Mont Cenis. Before long this line of communication became a very popular thoroughfare; even Charles d.i.c.kens ”heartily enjoyed” it-in retrospect-and left interesting impressions of his journey over it:
”Even the running up, bare-necked, at five o'clock in the morning from the tainted cabin to the dirty deck; scooping up the icy water, plunging one's head into it, and drawing it out, all fresh and glowing with the cold; was a good thing. The fast, brisk walk upon the towing-path, between that time and breakfast, when every vein and artery seemed to tingle with health; the exquisite beauty of the opening day, when light came gleaming off from everything; the lazy motion of the boat, when one lay idly on the deck, looking through, rather than at, the deep blue sky; the gliding on, at night, so noiselessly, past frowning hills, sullen with dark trees, and sometimes angry in one red burning spot high up, where unseen men lay crouching round a fire; the s.h.i.+ning out of the bright stars, undisturbed by noise of wheels or steam, or any other sound than the liquid rippling of the water as the boat went on; all these were pure delights.” *
* ”American Notes” (Gads.h.i.+ll Edition), pp. 180-181.
d.i.c.kens also thus graphically depicts the unique experience of being carried over the mountain peaks on the aerial railway:
”There are ten inclined planes; five ascending and five descending; the carriages are dragged up the former, and let slowly down the latter, by means of stationary engines; the comparatively level s.p.a.ces between being traversed, sometimes by horse, and sometimes by engine power, as the case demands. Occasionally the rails are laid upon the extreme verge of a giddy precipice; and looking from the carriage window, the traveler gazes sheer down, without a stone or sc.r.a.p of fence between, into the mountain depths below. The journey is very carefully made, however; only two carriages traveling together; and while proper precautions are taken, is not to be dreaded for its dangers.
”It was very pretty traveling thus, at a rapid pace along the heights of the mountain in a keen wind, to look down into a valley full of light and softness; catching glimpses, through the tree-tops, of scattered cabins; children running to the doors; dogs bursting out to bark, whom we could see without hearing; terrified pigs scampering homewards; families sitting out in their rude gardens; cows gazing upward with a stupid indifference; men in their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves looking on at their unfinished houses, planning out tomorrow's work; and we riding onward, high abode them, like a whirl-wind. It was amusing, too, when we had dined, and rattled down a steep pa.s.s, having no other motive power than the weight of the carriages themselves, to see the engine released, long after us, come buzzing down alone, like a great insect, its back of green and gold so s.h.i.+ning in the sun, that if it had spread a pair of wings and soared away, no one would have had occasion, as I fancied, for the least surprise. But it stopped short of us in a very business-like manner when we reached the ca.n.a.l; and, before we left the wharf, went panting up this hill again, with the pa.s.sengers who had waited our arrival for the means of traversing the road by which we had come.” *
* Op. cit.
This Pennsylvania route was likewise famous because it included the first tunnel in America; but with the advance of years, tunnel, planes, and ca.n.a.l were supplanted by what was to become in time the Pennsylvania Railroad, the pride of the State and one of the great highways of the nation.
In the year before Pennsylvania investigated her western water route, a joint bill was introduced into the legislatures of the Potomac Valley States, proposing a Potomac Ca.n.a.l Company which should construct a Chesapeake and Ohio ca.n.a.l at the expense of Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. The plan was of vital moment to Alexandria and Georgetown on the Potomac, but unless a lateral ca.n.a.l could be built to Baltimore, that city-which paid a third of Maryland's taxes-would be called on to supply a great sum to benefit only her chief rivals. The bitter struggle which now developed is one of the most significant in commercial history because of its sequel.
The conditions underlying this rivalry must not be lost sight of. Baltimore had done more than any other Eastern city to ally herself with the West and to obtain its trade. She had instinctively responded to every move made by her rivals in the great game. If Pennsylvania promoted a Lancaster Turnpike, Baltimore threw out her superb Baltimore-Reisterstown boulevard, though her northern road to Philadelphia remained the slough that Brissot and Baily had found it. If New York projected an Erie Ca.n.a.l, Baltimore successfully championed the building of a c.u.mberland Road by a governmental G.o.dmother. So thoroughly and quickly, indeed, did she link her system of stone roads to that great artery, that even today many well-informed writers seem to be under the impression that the c.u.mberland Road ran from the Ohio to Was.h.i.+ngton and Baltimore. Now, with ca.n.a.ls building to the north of her and ca.n.a.ls to the south of her, what of her prestige and future?
For the moment Baltimore compromised by agreeing to a Chesapeake and Ohio ca.n.a.l which, by a lateral branch, should still lead to her market square. Her scheme embraced a vision of conquest regal in its sweep, beyond that of any rival, and comprehending two ideas worthy of the most fa.r.s.eeing strategist and the most astute politician. It called not only for the building of a transmontane ca.n.a.l to the Ohio but also for a connecting ca.n.a.l from the Ohio to the Great Lakes. Not only would the trade of the Northwest be secured by this means-for this southerly route would not be affected by winter frosts as would those of Pennsylvania and New York-but the good G.o.dmother at Was.h.i.+ngton would be almost certain to champion it and help to build it since the proposed route was so thoroughly interstate in character. With the backing of Maryland, Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and probably several States bordering the Inland Lakes, government aid in the undertaking seemed feasible and proper.
Theoretically the daring scheme captured the admiration of all who were to be benefited by it. At a great banquet at Was.h.i.+ngton, late in 1823, the project was launched. Adams, Clay, and Calhoun took the opportunity to ally themselves with it by robustly declaring themselves in favor of widespread internal improvements. Even the G.o.dmother smiled upon it for, following Monroe's recommendation, Congress without hesitation voted thirty thousand dollars for the preliminary survey from Was.h.i.+ngton to Pittsburgh. Quickly the Chesapeake and Ohio Ca.n.a.l Company and the connecting Maryland Ca.n.a.l Company were formed, and steps were taken to have Ohio promote an Ohio and Lake Erie Company.
As high as were the hopes awakened by this movement, just so deep was the dejection and chagrin into which its advocates were thrown upon receiving the report of the engineers who made the preliminary survey. The estimated cost ran towards a quarter of a billion, four times the capital stock of the company; and there were not lacking those who pointed out that the Erie Ca.n.a.l had cost more than double the original appropriation made for it.
The situation was aggravated for Baltimore by the fact that Maryland and Virginia were willing to take half a loaf if they could not get a whole one: in other words, they were willing to build the ca.n.a.l up the Potomac to c.u.mberland and stop there. Baltimore, even if linked to this partial scheme, would lose her water connection with the West, the one prized a.s.set which the project had held out, and her Potomac Valley rivals would, on this contracted plan, be in a particularly advantageous position to surpa.s.s her. But the last blow was yet to come. Engineers reported that a lateral ca.n.a.l connecting the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay was not feasible. It was consequently of little moment whether the Chesapeake and Ohio Ca.n.a.l could be built across the Alleghanies or not, for, even if it could have been carried through the Great Plains or to the Pacific, Baltimore was, for topographical reasons, out of the running.
The men of Baltimore now gave one of the most striking ill.u.s.trations of spirit and pluck ever exhibited by the people of any city. They refused to accept defeat. If engineering science held a means of overcoming the natural disadvantages of their position, they were determined to adopt that means, come what would of hards.h.i.+p, difficulty, and expenditure. If roads and ca.n.a.ls would not serve the city on the Chesapeake, what of the railroad on which so many experiments were being made in England?
The idea of controlling the trade of the West by railroads was not new. As early as February, 1825, certain astute Pennsylvanians had advocated building a railroad to Pittsburgh instead of a ca.n.a.l, and in a memorial to the Legislature they had set forth the theory that a railroad could be built in one-third of the time and could be operated with one-third of the number of employees required by a ca.n.a.l, that it would never be frozen, and that its cost of construction would be less. But these arguments did not influence the majority, who felt that to follow the line of least resistance and to do as others had done would involve the least hazard. But Baltimore, with her back against the wall, did not have the alternative of a ca.n.a.l. It was a leap into the unknown for her or commercial stagnation.