Volume Iii Part 11 (2/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Two rail cars that look like ordinary wagons with iron wheels. One is pulled by a horse, the other by a primitive steam engine.]

Trial between Peter Cooper's Locomotive ”Tom Thumb” and one of Stockton's and Stokes' Horse Cars. From ”History of the First Locomotive in America.”

The first figured muslin woven by the power-loom in America, and perhaps in the world, was produced at Central Falls, R. I., in 1829. Calico printing began at Lowell the same year, also the manufacture of cutlery at Worcester, of sewing-silk at Mansfield, Conn., of galvanized iron in New York City. With the new decade chloroform was invented, in 1831, being first used as a medicine, not as an anaesthetic. Reaping machines were on trial the same year, and three years later machine-made wood screws were turned out at Providence. About the same time, 1832, pins were made by machinery, hosiery was woven by a power-loom process, and Colt perfected his revolver. In 1837 bra.s.s clocks were put upon the American market, and by 1840 extensively exported. Also in 1837 Nashua was making machinists' tools. By 1839 the manufacture of iron with hard coal was a p.r.o.nounced success. In 1840 daguerreotypes began to appear.

Steam fire-engines were seen the next year.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Peter Cooper's Locomotive, 1829.]

So early as 1816 the New York and Philadelphia stages made the distance from city to city between sun and sun. The National Road from c.u.mberland was finished to Wheeling in 1820, having been fourteen years in construction and costing $17,000,000. It was subsequently extended westward across Ohio and Indiana. It was thirty-five feet wide, thoroughly macadamized, and had no grade of above five degrees. Over parts of this road no less than 150 six-horse teams pa.s.sed daily, besides four or five four-horse mail and pa.s.senger coaches. In Jackson's time, when for some months there was talk of war with France and extra measures were thought proper for a.s.suring the loyalty of Louisiana, swift mail connections were made with the Mississippi by the National Road. Its entire length was laid out into sections of sixty-three miles apiece, each with three boys and nine horses, only six hours and eighteen minutes being allowed for traversing a section, viz., a rate of about ten miles an hour. Great men and even presidents travelled by the public coaches of this road, though many of them used their own carriages. James K. Polk often made the journey from Nashville to Was.h.i.+ngton in his private carriage. Keeping down the c.u.mberland River to the Ohio, and up this to Wheeling, he would strike into the National Road eastward to c.u.mberland, Md. He came thus so late as 1845, to be inaugurated as President; only at this time he used the new railway from c.u.mberland to the Relay House, where he changed to the other new railway which had already joined Baltimore with Was.h.i.+ngton.

[Ill.u.s.tration: One side is an image of a rail car, the other a signature.]

Obverse and Reverse of a Ticket used in 1838 on the New York & Harlem Railroad.

The first omnibus made its appearance in New York in 1830, the name itself originating from the word painted upon this vehicle. The first street railway was laid two years later. The era of the stage coach was at this time beginning to end, that of ca.n.a.ls and railroads opening. Yet in the remoter sections of the country the old coach was destined to hold its place for decades still. Where roads were fair it would not uncommonly make one hundred miles between early morning and late evening, as between Boston and Springfield, Springfield and Albany. So soon as available the ca.n.a.l packet was a much more easy and elegant means of travel. The Erie Ca.n.a.l was begun in 1817, finished to Rochester in 1823, the first boat arriving October 8th. The year 1825 carried it to Buffalo. The Blackstone Ca.n.a.l, between Worcester and Providence, was opened its whole length in 1828; the next year many others, as the Chesapeake and Delaware, the c.u.mberland and Oxford in Maine, the Farmington in Connecticut, the Oswego, connecting the Erie Ca.n.a.l with Lake Ontario, also the Delaware and Hudson, one hundred and eight miles long, from Honesdale, Pa., to Hudson River. The Welland Ca.n.a.l was completed in 1830.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Two horses pulling a rail car.]

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 1830.

Salt-water transportation had meantime been much facilitated by the use of steam. It had been thought a great achievement when, in 1817, the Black Ball line of packet s.h.i.+ps between New York and Liverpool was regularly established, consisting of four vessels of from four hundred to five hundred tons apiece. But two years later a steams.h.i.+p crossed the Atlantic to Liverpool from Savannah. It took her twenty-five days--longer than the time in which the distance often used to be accomplished under sail. In 1822 there was a regular steamboat between Norfolk and New York, though no steamboat was owned in Boston till 1828.

The Atlantic was first crossed exclusively by steam-power in 1838, and the first successful propeller used in 1839. The last-named year also witnessed the beginning of a permanent express line between Boston and New York, by the Stonington route. The next year, the Adams Express Company was founded, doing its first business between these two cities over the Springfield route, in compet.i.tion with that by the Stonington.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Old Boston & Worcester Railway Ticket (about 1837).]

But all these improvements were soon to be overshadowed by the work of the railway and locomotive. The first road of rails in America was in the Lehigh coal district of Pennsylvania. Its date is uncertain, but not later than 1825. In 1826, October 7th, the second began operation, at Quincy, Ma.s.s., transporting granite from the quarries to tide-water, about three miles. This experiment attracted great attention, showing how much heavier loads could be transported over rails than upon common roads, and with how much greater ease and less expense ordinary weights could be carried. The same had been demonstrated in England before.

Locomotives were not yet used in either country, but only horse-power.

The conviction spread rapidly that not only highway transportation but even that by ca.n.a.ls would soon be, for all large burdens, either quite superseded or of secondary importance. In 1827 the Maryland Legislature chartered a railroad from Baltimore to Wheeling. The projectors, though regarding it a bold act, promised an average rate between the two cities of at least four miles per hour. Subscriptions were offered for more than twice the amount of the stock. The Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature the same year appointed commissioners to look out a railway route between Boston and Hudson River. Also in this year a railway was completed at Mauch Chunk, Pa., for transporting coal to the landing on the Lehigh.

The descent was by gravity, mules being used to haul back the cars.

In most country parts, the new railway projects encountered great hostility. Engineers were not infrequently clubbed from the fields as they sought to survey. Learned articles appeared in the papers arguing against the need of railways and exhibiting the perils attending them.

When steam came to be used, these scruples were re-enforced by the alleged danger that the new system of travel would do away with the market for oats and for horses, and that stage-drivers would seek wages in vain.

The first trip by a locomotive was in 1828, over the Carbondale and Honesdale route in Pennsylvania. The engine was of English make, and run by Mr. Horatio Allen, who had had it built. This was a year before the first steam railroad was opened in England. July 4, 1828, construction upon the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was begun. It, like the other early roads, was built of stone cross-ties, with wooden rails topped with heavy straps of iron. Such ties were soon replaced by wooden ones, as less likely to be split by frost, but the wooden rail with its iron strap might be seen on branch lines, for instance, between Monocacy Bridge and Frederick City, Md., so late as the Civil War.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Horizontal and verical view of a articulated locaomotive.]

The ”South Carolina,” 1831, and plan of its running gear.

The first railroad for pa.s.sengers in this country went into operation between Charleston and Hamburg, S. C., in 1830. The locomotive had been gotten up in New York, the first of American make. It had four wheels and an upright boiler. This year the railroad between Albany and Schenectady was begun, and fourteen miles of the Baltimore & Ohio opened for use. In 1831 Philadelphia was joined to Pittsburgh by a line of communication consisting of a railway to Columbia, a ca.n.a.l thence to Hollidaysburg, another railway thence over the Alleghanies to Johnstown, and then on by ca.n.a.l. The railway over the mountains consisted of inclined planes mounted by the use of stationary engines. It is interesting to notice the view which universally prevailed at first, that the locomotive could not climb grades, and that where this was necessary stationary engines would have to be used. Not till 1836 was it demonstrated that locomotives could climb. Up to the same date, also, locomotives had burned wood, but this was now found inferior to coal, and began to be given up except where it was much the cheaper fuel.

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