Boston City (part 4 of 67)

The change in the method of making boots and shoes, from the old fashion of the cobbler to the modern factory, has also been greatly pro¬ moted by the application of the skill and capital of Boston. The McKay and Wickersham sewing-machines, and the Sturtevant pegging machinery are examples of Boston inventions which have been of the utmost influence. The revolution began however in 1850, with the application of the Howe and Singer sewing-machines to stitching the upper leather. By these and other applications of science this art has been developed. To what extent Boston capital has been employed in this branch of the modern factory system it is impossible to define. The masters of the craft have changed from city to country, and from country to city, and with each new invention the conditions have changed. The art is singular in this, - that while it is at present, and has long been, the leading industry of the State, it has always been conducted by individual enterprise, and never with success under the corporate system. It requires the close application of personal interest, constant and most intelligent personal direction ; and in every branch, from the preparation of the skin and tanning of the hide to the finish of the boot or shoe, there is a necessary combination of mechanism and manual dexterity essential to success. Hence there has always been a marked in¬ tellectual activity in the working people in this art, which has distinguished them from many of their associates. In the old Abolition days, when it cost something to be true to the principles of liberty, the shoemakers furnished more than their quota of energetic and aggressive men, and in the final struggle they were not wanting. This branch of industry has had its centre in Boston. It has grown by a process of evolution from the handicraft of the shop, until it has become a rare combination of mechanism and manual skill in the great factory. It is in one respect an example of the greatest efficiency of capital, the amount required for its establishment being very small in ratio to the annual product, and the earnings of the operatives being higher than in any other branch of work that nearly approaches it in magnitude.

Watch-making is another example of an art in which all the conditions have been radically changed by the application of machinery invented in Boston. Prior to 1852, each watch had been a thing by itself, in all its parts a handicraft; but at this time A. L. Denison and Edward Howard conceived the method of applying machine tools of most ingenious kind, and making all the parts interchangeable. Then the watch factory was called into existence. This art is one which, although conducted in the factory sys¬ tem, yet calls for the highest manual dexterity on the part of the men and women who do the work; and also for the application of the higher mathe- matics to the various problems and methods of improvement that con¬ stantly occur in it. It has worked a complete change in the markets of the world ; and the watches made at Waltham, where Boston capital has in large measure been applied, are adopted in the railway service of India and of other countries, after being subjected to the most exhaustive com¬ petition with other kinds.

In connection with this art, another inconspicuous application of Boston capital may be named. When the watches of home manufacture began to be very numerous, a demand sprang up for the little pasteboard boxes in which they are packed. Six years previous to his invention of machines for watch-making Mr. Denison had invented a simple machine for cutting the forms of these boxes. In the year 1850 his brother took charge of this work; soon after, the making of tags, labels, cardboard, and other similar articles was added, most ingenious and substantially unique machinery was applied to the work, and a large export trade was established, - until now more than five hundred persons are employed in Boston, while work is sent out to families in the country, giving regular employment to as many more.

Another application of the factory system may be found in the bag manufacture, established in Boston by Mr. Henry S. Chase, about the year 1850. The woven seamless bag for grain had then but lately come into use, when the application of the sewing-machine called attention to the possibility of meeting the demand for bags for other uses, the scope of which was hardly dreamed of by the projectors of the enterprise. This was in the early days of the sewing-machine, and before the reputation of the standard makers had been made. The plan was conceived of build¬ ing sewing-machines specially adapted to this work; and this was accom¬ plished by Mr. John E. Bachelder, - a partner with Mr. Chase, - whose inventions, made during its progress, were adopted by the leading makers of other sewing-machines, and constituted an important element in their final success. The next necessity was for a printing-press which should both print the labels upon the cloth and cut it at the same time into lengths and shapes suited to each special purpose. This also was soon accomplished. The work done in Boston is still large; but as the de¬ mand for bags is chiefly in the West, the original firm, as well as others, have established large factories in St. Louis, Chicago, and other places, until it is estimated that two hundred thousand bags are now made every day from textile fabrics, to contain flour, hams, salt, and for the innumer¬ able uses to which they are applied. The work has hardly begun, as bags are rapidly displacing barrels in the export traffic in flour, being cheaper, more easily handled, and capable of much more compact stow¬ age. Thus this art forms a not unimportant element in our great export of the product of wheat.

special manufacture, may be found in the elevator, which has become an essential part of the apparatus of every large warehouse and hotel. The first elevator for the use of a hotel was made by the late Otis Tufts of Boston, and applied in the Fifth Avenue Hotel of New York. It worked by means of a large screw operating vertically through the cab ; and al¬ though quite different in its mechanism from those now in use, this elevator was the germ of a system which has altered all the conditions of the use of city buildings throughout this country, and has greatly changed the con¬ ditions affecting the distribution of population.

No record of the application of Boston capital to manufactures would be complete which failed to include the piano. It may not be claimed that Jonas Chickering actually established this work, but to him belongs its great development. He began business on his own account in 1823, and con¬ tinued in charge of it until his death in 1853, since which time his sons have conducted it. Under this honored name more than sixty thousand pianos have been made since April, 1823. In 1880 nearly three thou¬ sand were added to the list.

Another characteristic application of Boston capital to manufactures has been in respect to reed organs. In 1854 Messrs. Mason & Hamlin began business on a very small scale, in the manufacture of melodeons, so called, - that being the best instrument of the class then known. It very soon proved to be an imperfect and unsatisfactory instrument, and experiments were instituted for an improvement. At first, progress was very slow; and it was not until the year 1861 that they succeeded in making a satisfactory cabinet or parlor organ, substantially in its present form. The merits of the new instrument were immediately recognized, and its sale extended not only to all parts of the United States, but to all parts of the civilized world. Others followed the lead of these makers; and the business has increased, until there are manufactured annually in the United States between sev¬ enty and eighty thousand cabinet or parlor organs, valued at $5,000,000, or more. Of these the original projectors manufacture between ten and twelve thousand ; and a large portion of the remainder is also made in Boston at the present time. In both these branches, - pianos and organs, - various ingenious machines have been applied to several parts of the work; but it still remains in great measure a craft calling for especial skill, and for the application of brain and hand together in order to assure success, - the machinery being the lesser factor, and the special skill of the artisan the greater.

After this consideration of the special branches of work which have been gradually brought into the factory system during a comparatively recent period, - which are but a few of the characteristic branches of man¬ ufacture, in the conventional sense, which have originated in Boston, - one may not be surprised to find in the data of Carroll D. Wright's admirable census of Massachusetts for 1875 the proof that the value of the product of "Manufactures and Related Occupations in Suffolk County" (com¬ prising Boston and Chelsea) exceeded that of any other county in Massa¬ chusetts by over $40,000,000. It amounted to $140,809,856, out of a total for the State of $592,331,962.

In another respect it is proved that the principal and most beneficent application of Boston capital to manufactures has been within its own limits, by the fact that the number of persons employed therein in 1875 was larger than in any other county, comprising forty-six thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven, out of a total of two hundred and sixty-six thousand three hundred and thirty-nine; while the wages or earnings of the persons employed averaged very much higher. The average in the whole State was $475.76 per annum; in Suffolk County, $616.23. The next highest average was in Plymouth County, $472.62 ; Worcester County next, $453.96; and Middlesex fourth, $452.55.

Boston also stands as the example of the greatest diversity of occupa¬ tion in the manufacturing and mechanic arts. These establishments vary in their importance, from the single one in which one hundred dollars of capital are devoted to the annual production of one hundred and fifty dol¬ lars' worth of " insect bellows " to the three hundred and thirty-four in which somewhat less than five million dollars' worth of capital is applied to the annual manufacture of nearly sixteen million dollars' worth of clothing. They include those devoted to the making of pianos (in which art, as has been said, the late Jonas Chickering first gave reputation to American in¬ struments, and established the name of Boston), as well as those in which Boston crackers are made, - the latter still a handicraft calling for special skill not yet attained in any other city. They comprise among their num¬ ber the works of Mr. E. S. Ritchie, whose mariner's compass carries the name of Boston, under many a foreign flag, to the great harbors of the world where the flag of our own country now seldom appears.

The number of separate titles under which Mr. Wright listed the manu¬ factures of the city in 1875 was 381 ; the number of establishments, 2,616; the value of the products, $112,214,147. Under the head of " Related Occupations " the number of titles was 142 ; of establishments, 3,033 ; value of products $23,717,357. Total, - titles, 523 ; establishments, 5,649 ; value of products, $135,931,504.

Among the counties of Massachusetts, Essex County stands second to Suffolk in the diversity of its occupations ; and among the cities, Worcester stands next to Boston.

The application of machinery to the arts of life, the development of manufactures, the concentration of the work under the factory system, the division of labor, and the diversity of occupation which have marked the conditions of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and especially of the town and city of Boston, have been a process of natural and necessary evolution. The various changes which have occurred in this progress have been in some measure effected by war and by legislation. Some branches of manufacture have been developed more rapidly than they might have been by changes in the laws for the collection of revenue, while others have been retarded or even destroyed by the same statutes. It would be out of place in this work to do more than call attention to this fact, in or¬ der that the place of Boston may be defined as the great example, within the State, of that necessary diversity of occupation which must exist among a free and civilized people, whatever the statute policy or method of col¬ lecting revenue may be. In like manner in the great cities of the West, - the industrial centres of States in which the possibilities of agriculture are vastly greater than in Massachusetts, - the development of manufactures is proceeding with great rapidity, and many of the applications of machin¬ ery and of the factory system which originated with us are now carried on in these Western cities on a yet grander scale. In fact it is rapidly be¬ coming apparent that so long as the legal obstructions to commerce, to ship-building, and ship-owning are permitted to continue in force, the city that is flanked on one side by the sea is at the wrong end of a railroad as compared to its sister city in the interior.

We may now make a brief record of the most conspicuous example of the application of Boston capital to manufactures, using the -latter word in its most conventional and limited sense, in its application to the con¬ struction of the textile factory. The history of this work is marked by broad lines, and has been well written by many persons ; but this memo¬ rial would be incomplete without a repetition of some of its most salient points.

Although the linen fabric in which the mummies of Egypt are wrapped is the oldest known example of the textile art, it is fair to infer that a fabric made of cotton was the first spun and woven by human fingers, as cotton is indigenous in Central Asia, whence our ancestors are supposed to have migrated; and also because the fibre of cotton requires no artificial preparation, like wool and flax, in order that it may be spun. It is in the power of any one to spin a thread with the fingers from a ripe boll of unginned cotton, then to double and twist it into a strong strand, and by tying the ends of a warp to a set of reeds, to throw in the weft by means of a "picker stick," which might be prepared with a flint implement so as to serve its purpose. In the course of the development of the art there have been only two original inventions which can be traced to their source, - the extension of the strand, commonly called " spinning by rollers," which was applied by Arkwright, though probably not invented by him ; and the saw-gin, invented by Eli Whitney. All the other appliances consist of modifications of pre-historic machines. These two inventions created the modern cotton factory, yet both are still imperfect in important particulars; and the cotton fabric which meets the highest requirements of art is still the product of the human finger and of the hand loom, - the Dacca muslin of India, sometimes called " woven wind."

The germ of the modern cotton factory was established by Samuel Slater, the son of a land agent of Jedediah Stratt, the partner of Arkwright. He had been an apprentice in the " art of cotton spinning," and, migrating to this country in the latter part of the last century, became not only the founder of the art of cotton spinning, but, as has been well said by Mr. John L. Hayes in one of his articles on the textile arts, he also became the founder of "the manufacture of American textile machinery; " and thus not only established the modern cotton factory, but the modern woollen and worsted factory as well.

The germ of the woollen factory had existed from a very early date in the numerous fulling-mills in which the homespun cloth of our ancestors was finished, and at a later period in the carding-mills in which the wool was prepared for spinning on the hand-wheel; but there was no complete example of the modern woollen factory in all its parts until 1830, when the Middlesex Mills were constructed, mainly by Boston capital, at Lowell.

The first application of power to the spinning of wool had been made at Peacedale, R. I., in 1819, in a factory established in 1800 by Rowland Hazard, and by his sons Isaac P. and Rowland G., the latter of whom still devotes his great ability not only to the material but to the mental progress of the country. The power-loom was also first introduced for weaving broad woollen goods in the same factory in 1828. The woollen manufac¬ ture is almost coeval with the settlement of the country, and the proto¬ type of the modern factory was to be found, as already said, in the fulling and carding mills from a very early date. In 1737, two thousand persons, or about one tenth part of the population of Boston, were engaged in mak¬ ing cards for carding wool, to supply the need of New England.

Up to 1814 the work of the cotton factory had been confined to spin¬ ning yarn which was woven upon hand-looms in the homes of the people ; but a little later the power-loom was introduced and applied to cotton fabrics by the late Francis C. Lowell of Boston, whose attention had been called to it while dwelling abroad in 1811 and 1812, and who returned to this country in 1813. He at once found associates among his fellow-citizens of Boston ; and, securing the services of Paul Moody, began the construc¬ tion of the modern cotton factory at Waltham. Soon followed the found¬ ing of Lowell: the starting of the Merrimack Mills, in September, 1823, completed the introduction of the cotton manufacture into the United States in its modern form. To repeat the names of Jackson, Boott, Lawrence, Lowell, Batchelder, and many others, would be but to name those who succeeded the great merchants of an older time, and by whom the capital of Boston was in part diverted from the commerce in which it had been mainly engaged, up to the time of the embargo of 1809-1811 and the war of Great Britain in 1812, to the establishment of textile manufactures in the modern factory. These restrictions upon commerce, as well as the interruption of it caused by the war, had produced great reverses of for¬ tune and hardships among the people of New England; and the estab-

Boston As A Centre Oe Manufacturing Capital

It was not until a much later date than the first inception of this method that it became the subject of political contention, and led to the great legis-

Vol. Iv. - 14

1 [This portrait follows a likeness by Stuart, belonging to Mr. Appleton's son-in-law, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and is by his kind per¬ mission engraved. Mr. Appleton was born Oct. 6, 1779, and died July 14, 1861. See the memoir of Mr. Appleton in the Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings , October, 1861, p. 249, pre¬ pared by the Hon. R. C. Winthrop ; also the latter's Speeches , 1852-1867, p. 502; the notice of Mr. Appleton in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, January, 1862 ; and Monumental Memorials of the Appleton Family, VOL. IV. - 14.

by Dr. John Appleton, 1S67, who also issued in 1864 a tabular pedigree of the family. Mr. Appleton's children by his first wife, Maria Theresa Gold of Pittsfield, were : Thomas Gold (H.C. 1S31), well known for his benefactions and interest in art; Mary, who married R. J. Mack¬ intosh, son of Sir James ; Charles Sedgwick, who died 1S35 ; and Fanny, wife of Mr. Long¬ fellow, who died July 10, 1861. By a second wife, Harriot C. Sumner, Mr. Appleton was the father of William S., Harriot, and Nathan. - Ed.]

lative conflicts which have not yet ended. Nathan Appleton and Abbott Lawrence, two of the founders of the factory system, with other men whose names are as historic as these two in connection with the work done by Bos¬ ton capital, took part, Oct. 2, 1820, in a great meeting in Faneuil Hall, in pro¬ testing against the perversion of the revenue system in such way as to make the development of the factory system the main purpose of the statute and the collection of revenue the incident. James Perkins, Samuel P. Gardner, William Shimmin, John Dorr, and William Sturgis were the committee who framed the resolutions, and Daniel Webster was the speaker who sustained them. The identity of the interests of merchants, manufacturers, farmers, and mechanics was never presented more forcibly before or since. Mr. Webster deprecated the vacillating policy which might ensue if the meas¬ ures then pressed mainly by the South were adopted. He could " hardly conceive of anything worse than a policy which should place the great in¬ terests of the country in hostility to one another, - a policy which should keep them in constant conflict, and bring them every year to fight their battles in the committee rooms of the House of Representatives at Wash¬ ington. . . . For his part, he believed that the principle of leaving such things very much to their own course, in a country like ours, was the only true policy; and that we could no more improve the order and habit and composition of society by an artificial balancing of trades and occupations than we could improve the natural atmosphere by means of the condensers and rarefiers of the chemists."

This remarkable speech, which is not included in any published collec¬ tion of Webster's speeches, and can be referred to only as it appeared in the columns of the Boston Daily Advertiser of Oct. 11, 1820, represented the solid sense of the great merchants as well as of the great manufacturers who had introduced the textile arts into Massachusetts under the factory system. Unfortunately their views did not prevail; the measures forced on New England by the South with the hope of making an almost exclu¬ sive home market for cotton were carried, and the capital of Boston and of Massachusetts was adjusted to the new conditions. Up to that time a very simple and moderate revenue system had prevailed, under which all the arts of peace had proceeded in their development in due order; the reaction which ensued after the war of 1812 had been overcome; but since then the application of capital to manufactures has been subject to constant vacillation and change in the revenue laws. Since 1820 there have been thirty-three separate acts of legislation for the collection of revenue from customs, many of them gravely altering the conditions, especially in the textile arts.

But the application of new capital to the new conditions has been con¬ stant; and although we have now the most complex and obstructive system of taxation, both National and State, that ever prevailed in a civilized country, - a system which must be changed as the absolutely necessary condition precedent to any true reform of the civil service, - our manufac-

I he dangers of artificially or prematurely imposing the factory system upon the State by special legislation, which Mr. Webster and his associates so much feared, have not been as great as he anticipated. He said that " two generations, in his opinion, would change the whole face of New England society." In little more than two generations since that speech was made, the face of New England society has been changed in even greater measure than Mr. Webster could have foreseen; the whole sys¬ tem of agriculture which he then knew has been profoundly altered by the introduction of the railroad; foreign commerce, of the kind that he wit¬ nessed and sustained, has almost disappeared, and the factory system has been adopted not only in textile manufactures, but in almost all other branches of industry ; yet the State and the city still maintain their pros¬ perity, and the changes of legislation have only altered the distribution of property and changed in some measure the conditions of progress.

At that time no rule had become established, but for many years after, and as late as 1840, the amount of capital needed to establish a textile fac¬ tory was more than double what is now required ; the customary hours of labor were thirteen, sometimes even fourteen per day, against ten at the present time; the labor was continuous, and the product of yarn or cloth was only one half what it is now per day, - less than one half what it now is per hour, - while wages were only one half what they now are. The factory was low studded and ill ventilated, and all the conditions of the work were arduous.

As the obstructions to commerce caused by the war, the embargo, and revenue changes diverted capital from its previous uses, the occupations of the factory took the place of those which had previously been followed, and for a long period the textile factories, as well as others, were filled almost wholly by the natives of New England. As late as i860 there was here and there a cotton or woollen factory in which the operatives were mostly native ; but with the application of machinery to other pursuits, and the greater demands of trade, work was found, especially for women, either at higher wages or else under conditions of life which the American women preferred. Presently the factory operatives became mostly of foreign birth, - English, Irish, and German ; and a little later their places were again taken by the French Canadians, who now constitute the larger proportion of the opera¬ tives in the textile factories which are worked by Boston capital.

Among the strange anomalies of our day, reference may be made to the singular fact that a section of country may still be reached within fortyeight hours' ride from Boston which is now only just being opened by the railroad, and which neither the factory system nor the fabrics of the factory itself have yet penetrated. In the very heart of the country, a sparse popu¬ lation inhabiting the fertile valleys of the Alleghanies and the hill-sides of the lateral mountain ranges of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Caroio8 linas still clothe themselves in the product of the hand-loom, and the whirr of the spinning-wheel may be heard now, as it was of old in New England, in every household. Cut off from their fellows by the surrounding pall of slavery, the free people of these mountains have brought the industry of the eighteenth, and some of the customs of the seventeenth, down even to the end of the nineteenth century ; so that one may study all the changes which have occurred in the industry of New England in two hundred years by passing from the heart of western North Carolina northerly through Virginia and Maryland to Pennsylvania. Just as he may find between the top of Roan Mountain in North Carolina and the sea toward the east nearly all the flora and fauna which may be found from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, so he may pass from the spinning-wheel, the hand-loom, the domestic still, and the wayside iron-furnace worked with charcoal, through small yarn-mills and coarse weaving-mills and by the lesser iron-works to the larger factories of northern Virginia and Maryland, until he reaches the great factories and works of Pennsylvania.

In this short journey he may witness the working of the great economic laws by which human welfare is assured in the end, however much it may have been retarded by obstructive statutes enforcing slavery or preventing commerce among men and nations. He may prove one proposition which underlies all progress; namely, that the more completely the productions of the factory, the field, the forest, or the mine are compassed by the applica¬ tion of machinery, the less the number of persons needed in the art, the shorter the hours of labor, the higher the wages or earnings, and the lower the cost of the finished commodity. In a seven-days' journey the citizen of Boston may still study the industrial facts of two hundred and fifty years' progress, and witness with his own eyes most of the arduous conditions of life to which his ancestors were subjected; while the citizens of the late slave-stricken States may in an equal time, by visiting New England, find evidence of the opportunity for welfare and progress which has been opened to them only within the present generation by the removal of the curse of slavery.

The writer has attempted to bring into view the necessary development of manufactures in a free community; first, as handicrafts, sometimes pur¬ sued in the factory, but mainly in the workshops and homes of the people ; second, in the modern factory, in which complex machinery operated by water or steam power is applied, and the work is so divided that it may happen that a single small cam must pass through various processes and machines operated by sixty different persons, before it is ready for its place in the sewing-machine of which it forms a part.

This development has proceeded in Boston under the grave disadvan¬ tages of frequent change in the system of national taxation, by which the direction in which its citizens might safely use their capital has been con¬ stantly altered. It has witnessed many periods like those predicted by Mr. Webster in the great speech to which reference has been made, when

" agriculturists have been taxed to-day to sustain manufactures, com¬ merce taxed to-morrow to sustain agriculture, and then impositions pro¬ posed upon both manufactures and agriculture to sustain commerce," by means of subsidies and bounties. The first chapter of the next Memorial History may record the fact, that, soon after this Memorial was written, the conclusion had become general which was presented by Mr. Webster more than sixty years since, as the spokesman of the great merchants and manu¬ facturers of Boston by whom that Faneuil Hall meeting was then called, " that when government had exhausted its invention in these modes of legislation, it found the result less favorable than the original and natural course of things," and they were then given up.

Fortunately for this nation, the perpetuity of the Union of these States was assured by that provision of the Constitution which forbids any State law being passed, interfering with or obstructing commerce between the sev¬ eral States. The commerce of a continent thus united must ever be vastly greater than any foreign traffic across the sea ; and under its beneficent work¬ ing the conditions of manufacturing in Boston, and the application of its capital, have been fostered and promoted more than they could be harmed by the interruption to its foreign commerce, on which the town so much de¬ pended in its early history. The railrqad has overcome the obstacles of time and distance ; and by bringing the cost of moving a year's subsistence of flour and meat a thousand miles to the measure of a single day's work of a good mechanic, it has effected a vast development of manufactures in and around the city, thus giving employment to persons who without this power would have been forced to labor arduously in the effort to glean a more scanty subsistence from our sterile soil. Coincident with the working of the railway have come the application of steam power, the use of gas, the elevator, and the application of complex machinery to every variety of work. Under the combined action of these forces the upper stories of the great warehouses of the new city have become one vast factory.

But the necessity or convenience of living near their work has caused an unwholesome concentration of the working people in the narrow streets of the older parts of the city. Within the municipal limits, however, are still great areas of almost unoccupied territory, in which the mink may be trapped and musk-rats are the most numerous inhabitants. When the next Memo¬ rial History is written, the record of the last two decades of the nineteenth century will cover the effects of the telephone, of the elevated railroad, of the diffusion of steam-power over wide areas, of the electric light, and perhaps of the transmission of power by electricity. It may then, possibly, be writ¬ ten that at about the present date, or a little later, the manufactures of Boston were moved from the upper stories of the crowded centre, and were spread over the whole area of its territory in low and broad factories, well lighted and ventilated, to which the power and the light were trans¬ mitted from the seaboard where the coal was landed ; and that at the same time the working people were transferred from the unwholesome streets, courts, and tenement-houses in which they had been confined to detached dwellings, each occupying its own small parcel of land ; while the owners and managers remained in the central offices, using the telephone in the direction of the work, and passing quickly to the factory over elevated roadways, free from the obstruction of snow or of the city traffic, and on cars worked by electricity.

To this record of the change in the city factory system, it may perhaps be added that the rediscovered method of saving green crops in pits had made it possible for the working people in the factories to spend the greater leisure which the constant improvement in machinery in their factory work had enabled them to enjoy, in keeping cows and poultry, and in establishing gardens on small parcels of land which had never before sufficed for such purposes. In such event, it may be written that the more the few had gained in wealth the more the many gained in welfare ; that both capitalist and laborer had learned, once for all, that all interests are harmonious; and that personal liberty, under laws enacted for the sole purposes of pro¬ moting education and establishing justice, with the least possible interfer¬ ence with the freely chosen pursuits of the people, had proved to be the key to the greatest prosperity of all classes of society.

The Canal And Railroad Enterprise Of Boston

-L work, and the consequences more or less remote which it involved were at the time matter for very serious reflection to those having the ma¬ terial future of Boston at heart. So far as the interior of the continent and the commerce of the great lakes were concerned, these were questions by themselves. They hardly came within the New England business horizon. What the more far-seeing Bostonians then had in view was the supremacy of their city as a local centre. This, the success of the Erie Canal greatly jeopardized; for that canal was part of a growing system of interior com¬ munication, which system had now in turn received from it a strong impe¬ tus. Canal navigation, however, naturally followed the course of the rivers, and none of the considerable New England rivers were tributary to Boston. On the contrary, the Blackstone flowed by Providence, and the Connecticut by Hartford; both of which towns were but stopping-places on the way to New York. It was obvious, therefore, that a natural development of any New England canal-system would make all the interior counties of Massa¬ chusetts tributary to New York, and leave Boston isolated.

The problem of 1825 was, then, how to overcome, or, if not to overcome, at least to counteract in so far as might be, the natural disadvantages of situation. Nor was this problem now presented for the first time. The scale was merely somewhat enlarged. As respects diversion of traffic, the Merrimac had once threatened to be to Boston what the Blackstone and Connecticut were now becoming. Improvements in the channel of that river had made it inevitable that, unless something was done to control events, the whole interior of New Hampshire would look to Portsmouth as its point of distribution, instead of to Boston. The Middlesex Canal had then solved the difficulty. This, the first considerable thing of the sort undertaken in America, had been projected very shortly after the close of the Revolutionary struggle : indeed, it was characteristic of the people that just so soon as politics and war ceased to occupy their whole thoughts, their surplus mental activity directed itself towards questions of internal improve¬ ment. The idea of a canal, intended to connect the upper waters of the Merrimac with Boston Harbor, was then conceived.

The act incorporating the company authorized to build this canal passed the Legislature in June, 1793, and received the signature of Governor Han¬ cock, then in the last year of his life. Among the corporators were James Winthrop of Cambridge, Oliver Prescott of Groton, James Sullivan of Bos¬ ton, and Jonathan Porter of Medford. No amount of capital or number of shares of stock was fixed. The original plan was to connect the Merrimac at some point in Chelmsford with the Mystic at a point in Medford ; but the charter was subsequently so amended that the southern outlet was at tidewater in Charlestown, on the Charles. The surveys were made by an English engineer named Weston, educated in the James Brindley school of canal constructors ; and it is said that the first levelling instrument ever made use of in America was used in the location of the Middlesex Canal.1 The whole process of the work was superintended by Loammi Baldwin, the elder of the name. Baldwin was a native of Woburn, and had been a colonel in the Revolutionary army. A son of his, also a civil engineer, later bore the same name and title, which thus became closely associated with all the early schemes of internal improvement in Massachusetts.2

Twenty-seven miles in length, this canal, in going northward from tide¬ water, ascended one hundred and seven feet by means of thirteen locks. It reached its highest altitude in North Billerica, where it drew its supply of water from the Concord River. Then crossing that river it descended twenty-one feet, by means of three locks, striking the Merrimac above the Pawtucket Falls, in what was then East Chelmsford, subsequently, in 1824, incorporated as Lowell. The bed of the canal was four feet deep and thirty wide. It was navigated by boats of twenty-four tons burden, which occupied twelve hours in the average passage through it ; and, by means of improve¬ ments in the Merrimac, water-connection was made as far north as Concord, New Hampshire, some seventy-five miles from Boston.

While the Middlesex Canal was in course of construction, a project for a similar work to connect Worcester County with the seaboard at Boston was also agitated. Its route even had been surveyed by General Knox, of Rev¬ olutionary fame, in 1791. It encountered however another project, much better designed, for a canal along the Blackstone to Providence ; and, be¬ tween the jealousies excited by the two conflicting schemes, nothing at this time came of either.

2 The surname is, however, more familiar in became the progenitor of the famous Baldwin another connection. One autumn day, while sur- apple ; which seems likely to perpetuate its disveying the route of the Middlesex Canal in Bill- coverer's name long after the canal he built, erica, old Colonel Baldwin chanced across an already abandoned and filled up, shall be forgotapple tree, the fruit of which was very red and ten. [See Colonel Wilder's chapter in this volhandsome ; upon trial he found it, also, to be so ume. - Ed.]

In 1825, therefore, the whole practical experience of the people of Boston in the matter of canals had been limited to the Middlesex. Neither had that experience been of at all an encouraging nature. The canal itself, and the river improvements of the Merrimac necessarily involved in the enterprise, cost together upwards of half a million of dollars, - a very large sum for the time, When the whole assessed valuation of Boston was but fif¬ teen millions. It meant probably much more than an investment of twenty millions would have meant in 1880. Begun in 1794, the canal was opened to traffic in 1803, and during the next thirty years was of great commercial use in bringing to Boston the lumber and produce of the region tributary to the upper Merrimac, and carrying general merchandise back; but the terri¬ torial area thus drained and supplied was after all insignificant in extent, and neither rich nor populous. The gross annual income of the canal company was accordingly never much over $20,000, and during the first fifteen years of operation no dividends were paid on its stock. After 1818, and until the railroad was built, they averaged about one and a half per cent a year. They then ceased altogether. Financially, therefore, the un¬ dertaking was far from being a success. After 1835 traffic fell rapidly off, and the receipts failed to meet the expenses of repair; consequently, busi¬ ness was finally suspended on June 1, 1853, and in 1859 the charter of the company was declared forfeited.1

The Middlesex Canal had, therefore, been twenty-two years in operation, when in October, 1825, Governor De Witt Clinton, of New York, made his triumphal passage in a state barge from Lake Ontario to the mouth of the Hudson, and symbolized the union of the two by mingling their waters. The people of Massachusetts, however, had not waited for this event before they began to bestir themselves. While practical men were turning over the plans and estimates for a canal like the Middlesex, as far at least as Wor¬ cester County, and possibly to the Connecticut, some of the more visionary had suddenly enlarged the horizon, and were looking to the Hudson. In fact, stimulated thereto by the eager confidence of these believers in the possibilities of the future, the Legislature had already, by a resolve which bore date on Feb. 25, 1825, provided for a commission "to ascertain the practicability of making a canal from Boston Harbor to Connecticut River," and " of extending the same to some point on the Hudson River in the State of New York, in the vicinity of the junction of the Erie Canal with that river." The report of that commission, a bulky document, for those days, of two hundred and sixty pages, was transmitted to the Legislature by Governor Lincoln, on Jan. 11, 1826. Subsequent experience has lent a peculiar interest and significance to it. It illustrates very forcibly the dif¬ ference between estimates and actual cost.

1 [Caleb Eddy published an Historical Sketch Charlestown , 1S80. See also Amory's James of the Middlesex Canal in 1843; and this and Sullivan, i. and ii.; and Drake's Landmarks of various other bibliographical items regarding Middlesex , and History of Middlesex County. - it are given in Hunnewell's Bibliography of Ed.]

The surveys were made by the younger Colonel Loammi Baldwin, the elder having died in 1807, and were in two parts. One covered the route from Boston to the Connecticut River; the other, that from the Connecticut to the Hudson. The eastern part of the proposed work presented, com¬ paratively speaking, few difficulties. There were two practicable lines found, - the southern by way of Worcester, and the northern by way of Fitchburg. The northern, or Miller's River route, was finally recommended for two reasons: (1) because the Berkshire Hills, west of the Connecticut, could be passed only at one point, and that in direct continuation of the Miller's River route; and (2) because it was "to be presumed that when boats have passed down the [Connecticut] River over the serious difficulties which exist from the mouth of Miller's River, they will continue on to Hart¬ ford, - the channel being clear and the distance short, - rather than pro¬ ceed to Boston; and consequently all the country above Miller's River, instead, as is ardently desired, of looking to the latter city as a great market for sale and purchase, may gradually seek and ultimately find one in another direction, which would render a canal that shall intersect Connecticut River at Springfield of little comparative consequence to Boston."

A strong preference accordingly was expressed for the northern line. The rise and fall to be overcome was reported at one thousand nine hundred and fifty-six feet, calling for about four hundred locks. The approximate cost of the work was estimated at $3,000,000, - of which $20,000, it was thought, would suffice for land damages and water rights, and $20,000 more for building the necessary reservoirs. The cost of the canal proper was estimated at an average of $8,000 per mile.

Crossing the Connecticut, the problem became in one sense far more difficult to solve, though in another sense it was almost distressingly simple. There was but one point at which the Berkshire range could be penetrated by a canal at all, and that was at the point where the Deerfield River, on the east side of the Hoosac Mountain, and the Iioosac River, on its west side, are but four miles apart, - the point where the Hoosac Tunnel now is, the idea of which was thus first suggested. The canal-tunnel project was adopted by Colonel Baldwin as the only alternative to a system of locks crossing the hills through the Stamford and Reedsborough gorge in the same vicinity, but beyond the Vermont line. Not that he considered this last method of overcoming the difficulty at all impracticable. On the con¬ trary, his surveys, he claimed, made its feasibility very probable. His objections were based on the increased length of route involved, the conse¬ quent cost, and the loss of time in operating. There would have to be, he argued, two hundred and twenty locks in eighteen miles of canal, requiring two days in the passage. The cost of these extra eighteen miles of lockage was estimated at $2,090,000. The tunnel, on the contrary, would require only one hour and twenty minutes in its passage, " provided it is furnished with a towing path, which should be the case." is difficult to ascertain with much exactness, although great exertions have been made to collect information on the subject." In view, however, of the subsequent experience of the State in piercing that very mountain, Colonel Baldwin's now long-forgotten original estimate is one of the curiosities of engineering literature. It was made, it is true, when the purchasing value of the dollar, as respects both labor and material, was much greater than it now is ; but on the other hand this advantage was far more than off-set by the facts that tunnelling had not then become a science, and that the work was to be done by hand-drilling, with the use of no explosive more power¬ ful than gunpowder. Indeed, it may, in the light of subsequent experience, well be doubted whether under such circumstances it was, humanly speak¬ ing, possible to tunnel the mountain at any cost. Colonel Baldwin, however, made his estimates with caution, availing himself of all the light which ex¬ perience could then afford. He said: " In a tunnel four miles in length, of the size named, there will be two hundred and eleven thousand two hun¬ dred cubic yards of stone to excavate, which at $4.25 per cubic yard amounts to $920,832." But in reaching this result the highest price which any tunnel has cost per cubic yard had been assumed, in order to put his estimate "beyond a doubt." He then added: "Thus it appears that the construction of a tunnel will be $1,169,168 less than the expense of cross¬ ing the mountain in Vermont."

These conclusions did not at the time pass unchallenged. David Henshaw, a prominent Democratic politician, afterward collector of the port of Boston, argued in the columns of the Courier , that on one basis of estimate the time required to complete the work would be fifty-two years ; and upon another basis it would be one hundred and eighty-two years. The last esti¬ mate would probably, under the circumstances of the time, have proved the more nearly accurate of the two, had the work been attempted ; which it fortunately was not. The idea, however, thus thrown out by Colonel Baldwin obtained a lodgment in the public mind. It was, it is true, years before it germinated; but when it did germinate, as will presently be seen, it gave in later times and under altered conditions a false and disastrous direction to the thoughts and energies of the State. Just fifty years 1 after Colonel Baldwin's report was presented, the Hoosac Tunnel was opened through the mountain from side to side. Instead, however, of having proved " not more difficult than the cut on the ' Mountain Ridge ' on the Erie Canal," which would have made its total expense $370,000, it had in fact cost at least thirty times that amount, and some ten-fold that original estimate which was " beyond a doubt." And yet Colonel Baldwin's report was extremely conservative in tone, and undoubtedly justified by everything, - except the stubborn facts of subsequent experience.

The entire cost of the canal from Boston to the Hudson, including the tunnel, was estimated at $6,023,172. The commissioners of 1825, therefore, presented as part of their report a financial scheme. As it was proposed to construct only the canal to the Connecticut at once, the amount required was but $3,000,000, - the annual interest upon which, estimated at $150,000, was to be provided for by a canal fund. This fund it was proposed to raise from six different sources, the discussion of one of which - a State lottery - affords a suggestive illustration of the great progress in ethics, as well as in finance, which has since been made in Massachusetts.1

The report of the canal commissioners was laid before the Legislature in January, 1826. Perhaps that body was alarmed at the magnitude of the scheme; or it may have been discouraged at the length of time which would be required to carry it out: possibly the argument in regard to lotteries failed to commend itself to all. In any event nothing further was done; and, in disregard of the Governor's recommendations, not only was a resolve , authorizing further surveys laid upon the table, but that under which the surveys had already been made was repealed. The canal project was, how¬ ever, by no means abandoned ; it had its friends, and they were active and in earnest. It so happened, however, that in this very Legislature it en¬ countered another project from which it would hardly have been supposed that it had anything to fear, but which soon gave a wholly new direction to men's thoughts.

On June 17 in the previous year the corner-stone of the Bunker-Hill Monument had been laid by Lafayette. The occasion was a memorable one, and among those who took part in it was Gridley Bryant, a builder by trade, but also a self-educated engineer. Born in Scituate in 1789, Bryant was at this time thirty-six years of age ; and in the ceremony of lay¬ ing the corner-stone he officiated as master builder. A man of the George Stephenson type, - inventive, energetic, and full of resource, - Bryant had

1 The commissioners say : " Enquiries have been prosecuted to ascertain the sum annually expended in this State for the purchase of lot¬ tery tickets, and from the best information which can be obtained, there is no doubt that it amounts to over $250,000 ; and this large expenditure has been made when there is a law of the Com¬ monwealth prohibiting the traffic altogether ; which shews conclusively that the public voice is against legislative interference or restraint.

" Having been arranged under the generic term gambling an effort has been made, from the purest and best motives, to discountenance and suppress lotteries ; but it now becomes a serious question of investigation, whether too harsh an epithet has not been given to one of the ordinary modes of raising funds, under the sanction of the highest legislative enactments, both in Europe and this country, for literary, eleemosynary, and various other great and excellent purposes. If it has been proved that the legal countenance which this State has formerly given still induces a disregard of existing statutes, is it not more politic so to amend them as shall secure to the

" It may be said, with sufficient plausibility, that if an unabatable evil does exist, let it be converted to the best possible purposes. All constructive crimes, including such as come within the antiquated systems of sumptuary jurisprudence, are not deemed by the people as immoral, per se ; and it is an axiom in ethics as well as legislation, that doubtful or imaginary offences should not hastily be made penal. . . .

" The Commissioners would be the last among their fellow-citizens to sanction immorality, or impair the omnipotence of justice ; but with deference offer such remarks as may tend to the development of truth, the confirmation of what shall be found salutary, and the rejection of that which is supererogatory in our generally most excellent code of laws.

" Should a lottery be resorted to as one of the means of raising funds, it can be affirmed with confidence that twenty thousand dollars may be thus annually obtained, and probably a much greater sum." - Report , pp. 177, 178.

read accounts of what was then going on in England, and bethought him¬ self how he could turn it to use in the work he had in hand here. That work was the building of the monument; and long after its completion he thus told his own story : -

" I had, previous to [the laying of the corner-stone] purchased a stone-quarry (the funds being furnished by I)r. John C. Warren) for the express purpose of procuring the granite for constructing this monument. This quarry was in Quincy, nearly four miles from water-carriage. This suggested to me the idea of a railroad (the Man¬ chester and Liverpool Railroad being in contemplation at that time, but was not begun until the spring following) ; accordingly, in the fall of eighteen hundred and twentyfive I consulted Thomas H. Perkins, William Sullivan, Amos Lawrence, Isaac P. Davis, and David Moody, all of Boston, in reference to it. These gentlemen thought the project visionary and chimerical ; but, being anxious to aid the Bunker-Hill Monu¬ ment, consented that I might see what could be done. I awaited the meeting of our Legislature in the winter of 1825-26, and after every delay and obstruction

1 [This cut follows a likeness owned by his Works of the Civil and Military Engineers of son, G. J. F. Bryant, Esq., and painted when America , which contains another likeness of him his father was about forty-five years old. The taken at a later age, was printed separately in memoir of Gridley Bryant in Stuart's Lives and Boston in 1871. - Ed.]

that could be thrown in the way, I finally obtained a charter, although there was great opposition in the House. The questions were asked, ' What do we know about railroads? Who ever heard of such a thing? Is it right to take people's land for a project that no one knows anything about? We have corporations enough al¬ ready.' Such and similar objections were made, and various restrictions were im¬ posed ; but it finally passed by a small majority only. Unfavorable as the charter was, it was admitted that it was obtained by my exertions ; but it was owing to the munificence and public spirit of Colonel T. H. Perkins that we were indebted for the whole enterprise. None of the first-named gentlemen ever paid any assessments-, and the whole stock finally fell into the hands of Colonel Perkins. ... I surveyed several routes from the quarry purchased (called the Bunker-Hill Quarry) to the nearest tide-water; and- finally the present location was decided upon. I commenced the work on the first day of April, 1826, and on the seventh day of October following the first train of cars passed over the whole length of the road."

1 [An engraving of a portrait of Colonel Per¬ kins by Gambadella.is prefixed to T. G. Cary's Life of Thomas H. Perkins , 1856. It was painted about 1837, when the Colonel was seventy-seven years old. The above cut follows a photograph of it furnished by Colonel Henry Lee. The origi¬ nal belongs to Colonel Perkins's eldest daughter,

Mrs. Samuel Cabot of Brookline. Mason, Stu¬ art, p. 239, records portraits of Colonel T. H. Perkins by that artist, owned by Mrs. T. G. Cary and by Mrs. Wm. H. Gardiner. Both of these show an earlier age; as does a fine fulllength by Sully, owned by the Boston Athenaeum. - Ed.].

Bryant might also have added that this event, brought about by him, gave the death-blow to the great Massachusetts Canal project, backed as it was by surveys and estimates and the reports of commissioners, and the recommendations of the executive itself. A railroad party had, in fact, already come into existence as opposed to the canal party ; and the op¬ posing forces in the Legislature so held each other in equilibrium that it seemed for a time as if nothing at all would be done. Governor Lincoln, in his message at the opening of the June session of the Legislature, had called attention to this fact ; and, himself a warm advocate of canals, en¬ deavored to point out that, in urging their construction, no " exclusive char¬ acter of improvement [was] contemplated." The advocates of railroads were in a majority in the House, while the Senate was conservative. A petition had been presented by Colonel Perkins and others praying that surveys might be made for a railway from Boston to the Hudson; and on motion of Dr. Abner Phelps, one of the representatives from Boston, a joint committee to sit during the recess, and " consider the practicability and ex¬ pediency of constructing" such a railway, was ordered on the part of the House. The order, however, was non-concurred in by the Senate, and had finally to be so amended as to provide for a select committee of the Llouse alone. It was composed of Dr. Abner Phelps, George W. Adams, of Bos¬ ton, - a son of President J. O. Adams, - and Emory Washburn, of Wor¬ cester, afterward Governor. This was the first concerted action looking to the construction of a commercial railway through the State. That it was now taken was also unquestionably due to Bryant's success in obtain¬ ing his charter for the smaller enterprise, which, having a distinct object in view both practical and patriotic, had not aroused conservative appre¬ hensions.1

At the time, Bryant's work excited an almost unequalled interest throughout the country, and it is still mentioned in every school history of the United States as the commencement of an epoch. It was in fact a pioneer American undertaking, the originator of which had closely studied that English railway literature which was then coming into exist¬ ence. Although Stephenson had already, in a rude way, introduced loco¬ motive steam-power on the Stockton & Darlington road, Bryant made no attempt at anything of that sort. Indeed, had he done so he would have

1 How completely uninformed the public mind then was on the subject of railways is, however, well illustrated by the following in¬ cident. Dr. Phelps was an enthusiast, and, like most enthusiasts, probably somewhat wearisome to others. It so happened that about the time his special committee was appointed John Adams died. A number of members of the Legislature went out to attend his funeral at Quincy ; and, after it was over, they returned to Boston by way of Milton, in order to look at Gridley Bry¬ ant's railway, then in process of construction. Dr. Phelps was of the party ; as also was Mr.

Webster. The two had some conversation on the new project, which resulted in the latter finally remarking: "Well, it is certainly a sub¬ ject for very grave consideration whether roads for general travel cannot be made as you pro¬ pose." A less profound or more non-committal response in reply to a man possessed with a hob¬ by could not easily have been framed. Yet Dr. Phelps, who apparently had been made some¬ what sensitive by ridicule, derived from it, as he afterward stated in a letter giving an account of these events, "great encouragement and satis¬ faction." ruined his enterprise. His views were confined to horse power, and he built an improved tramway rather than a modern railroad. The really memorable thing about it was his ingenuity in devising the appliances nec¬ essary to its successful operation. These were very remarkable, including as they did the switch, the portable derrick, the turn-table, and the movable truck for the eight-wheel railroad-car. All these contrivances subsequently passed into general use; and the movable truck having, six years later, - in 1834, - been patented by other parties, became the subject of a litigation which occupied the courts for five years, and cost, it is said, some $250,000. The claim of Bryant as its inventor was sustained. He had, however, no legal right to any royalty on its use, nor did he ever receive anything from it. He died quite poor in 1867.

The Granite Railway, including its branches, was four miles in length, and cost $50,000. It began at the quarry end with an inclined plane, by means of which eighty-four feet vertical fall was here accomplished in three hundred and fifteen feet of gradual descent. The road then dropped gently down to tide-water level by grades of sixty-six, thirteen, and twenty-six feet to the mile. As the traffic was all in the direction of these grades, single horses could of course move with ease just as heavy loads as the structure would bear; the only difficulties being to retard the loaded cars going down, and to draw the unloaded cars back. The road was constructed of stone sleepers, or ties, eight feet apart, upon which were laid longitudi¬ nal wooden rails, protected by strap-iron plates three inches wide and one fourth of an inch thick. The wooden rails were subsequently replaced by stone. This railway was operated, always by horse-power, for about forty years. At last, it having then been for a time in disuse, its franchise was purchased by the Old Colony Railroad Company; the ancient structure was completely demolished, and a modern railroad was built on the right of way. This was formally opened for traffic on Oct. 9, 1871, - forty-five years and two days after the original opening in 1826. There is a certain historical fitness in the fact that, through the incorporation of the Granite

1 [This is a fac-simile of a contemporary cut of stone. See Snow's Geography of Boston, 1830, showing the method of transporting large blocks p. 159. - Ed.]

With the appointment of the Phelps committee the railroad question in Massachusetts passed into its first, or educational, stage. This lasted four years, and until the granting of the charters for the Providence and Lowell roads in 1830. It was a tedious intermediate period. The necessity for do¬ ing something was becoming more and more apparent. The impulse given to New York by the rapid development of traffic through the Erie Canal had already drawn all the interests and connections of the western part of the State in that direction ; and the central counties, following the course of the Connecticut, were rapidly following. So far as the commercial situa¬ tion was concerned, the future of Boston must indeed at this time have seemed almost hopeless. Meanwhile, the sentiment of the State moved very slowly. On all questions touching property, especially property in land, the Legislature of Massachusetts has always been a singularly conser¬ vative body. It is so still ; but during the years of the railroad discussion it was infinitely more so than now. It was in fact then a regular squirarchy. The large manufacturing towns of the interior were just coming into life, and had not yet begun to exercise much political influence. The State as a whole was still agricultural and commercial. The representatives of the commercial towns were, however, few in number, and opposed to them were the country gentry, - a colonial type which has since almost disap¬ peared, but which in 1826 yet continued to be the traditional power in the General Courts. As regularly as the sessions were held, the same represen¬ tative men of this class appeared, and the part taken by them in the con¬ duct of business was an active one. They were the leaders of the landed interest; and the landed interest was the dominant interest. These men had many Stirling qualities, but for mental receptiveness they were not re¬ markable. Moving them was a slow process. The schemes, also, that were advanced during this period were all based on the precedent of the Erie Canal. That was a Government project, carried through on the public credit; private enterprise had little to do with it. It was a monument to Governor De Witt Clinton and to the Legislatures influenced by him. Accordingly, all the canals and railroads now recommended by commit¬ tees, and commissions, and boards of public works looked to State aid for encouragement; and the Legislature did not evince the slightest disposition to extend any such aid. The country representatives listened to the exhor¬ tations of Dr. Phelps, even though backed by the recommendations of Gov¬ ernor Lincoln, with stolid indifference. As the result proved, also, it was well that they did so. Their instinctive unreasoning conservatism, though exasperating to the last degree then, as many times before and since, did the State good service. Private enterprise had constructed the Middlesex Canal and the Granite Railway. The brilliant success of the Erie Canal had for the moment leek the more active minds of the community away from these safe precedents, and it required an experience drawn from actual VOL. iv. - 16.

results in another quarter to bring people back to them. That experience for Boston was to be furnished by the merchants and manufacturers of Liverpool and Manchester in September, 1830. Meanwhile, during the interval, and before they made up their minds to help themselves, the lead¬ ers of public opinion in Boston employed their time and exercised their patience in trying to enlighten a succession of country members.

Dr. Abner Phelps made a report on behalf of the committee of which he was chairman, in January, 1827. lie had gotten together a great many facts, and, arguing from them, proposed the building of what amounted to a magnified Granite Railway. In urging this scheme, as decidedly prefer¬ able to that of a canal, he yet followed the idea of a canal so closely that provision was made for paths for the drivers on each side of the road. Accordingly, the committee pronounced themselves satisfied " not only of the practicability, but of the expediency, of building a railway from Boston to the Hudson; " and they reported resolves for the appointment of three commissioners and an engineer to make surveys, plans, estimates, etc.

The reception by a portion of the press, at least, of his report and the conclusions embodied in it could scarcely have been satisfactory to Dr. Phelps and his colleagues on the committee. Mr. Joseph T. Buckingham, for instance, then editor of the Boston Courier , did not hesitate to write of it as follows in his paper of June 27, 1827: -

" Alcibiades, or some other great man of antiquity, it is said, cut off his dog's tail that quidnuncs might not become extinct from want of excitement. Some such notion we doubt not moved one or two of our natural and experimental philosophers to get up the project of a railroad from Boston to Albany, - a project which every one knows, who knows the simplest rule in arithmetic, to be impracticable, but at an expense little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts ; and which, if practicable, every person of common-sense knows would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon."

The Legislature did not treat the report quite so disrespectfully as Mr. Buckingham had done ; but they paid no regard to its recommendations. Before being prorogued, however, they passed an act creating a " Board of Internal Improvements," to consist of three members, who were to employ an engineer and examine routes for canals and railways generally; and sub¬ sequently this board was directed to survey a railway route from Boston to the Rhode Island line, and a canal route to the Blackstone. The members of the board were appointed, Willard Phillips, of Salem, being one of them ; but, as the only provision for their compensation, over expenses, was the modest one of four dollars a day, they apparently did not devote their whole energies to the work in hand. They appear to have made but one report, and that only on a local canal.

At its June session the Legislature was again besieged with petitions from Boston on the railway subject. They were now headed by Josiah Quincy, then Mayor of the city. In compliance with these petitions a resolve was passed providing for two commissioners and an engineer, to report plans, surveys, and estimates for a railway on the best practicable route from Bos¬ ton to the Hudson. This resolve was made effective by an appropriation of $10,000; and something accordingly came of it. The commissioners submitted their report towards the end of January, 1828; and in it, while as practical men, fearful of seeming to favor anything which might give a visionary air to their recommendations, they spoke only of a road to be exclusively operated by animal power, they did discuss the possibility of movable engines. The report also contained the usual estimates of cost and traffic, and accurate instrumental surveys of portions of the projected routes. Of far more value than all this, however, was a reference to what was then going on in England, where a mania for railroad construc¬ tion had three years before broken out; the commissioners quoted from , the famous Quarterly Review article of March, 1825, - that article which, though intelligent and progressive in its whole tone, earned an immortality of ridicule by the unfortunate prophecy that the writer of it would " as soon expect people to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as trust themselves " to be " whirled at the rate of eighteen or twenty miles an hour by means of a high-pressure engine." The article referred, however, to the fact that in a single month associations had been formed in England " for construction of three thousand miles of these iron roads, at an expense of ^20,000,000 sterling." Without intending it, therefore, the commissioners here pointed out to those composing the business community of Boston the course they also were to pursue. The time had not yet come however, when, recurring to sound principles, these were to stop trying to educate farmers, and put their hands in their own pockets, and their shoulders to the wheel.

In the Legislature this report of the commissioners took the regular course. It was referred to the proper committee, which, " after mature examination of the facts and statements contained " in it, got so far as to express an opinion that the question of railroad construction had "assumed a new and greater importance." The canal scheme was however now defi¬ nitely dismissed. The public mind had, therefore, at last gotten away from one portion of the mischievous New York precedent, and it only remained for it to get rid of the other portion of it, - that which had led to the belief that nothing was practicable except through the action of Government. The policy of the State was now fixed in favor of a railroad system. Accordingly, in March, an act was passed creating a Board of Directors of Internal Improvements, to consist of nine persons, who were to serve with¬ out compensation. The members of this board were chosen by the Legis¬ lature, and Governor Lincoln was put first upon it; its real moving spirit, however, was Nathan Hale, of Boston. Mr. Hale at that time edited the Daily Advertiser , and his services as a railroad educator during these and the following years were very great. At a later period he became the presi¬ dent of the company which built the first Boston road opened to traffic, - for in those days everything connected with the nascent system had to be improvised; and, just as during the Revolution physicians, farmers, and booksellers were turned into generals, so half a century later editors and merchants served as railroad presidents, while mechanics and schoolmasters became engineers and surveyors.

Nathan Hale.1

The new Board of Directors organized at once, and in January of the next year (1829) still another report, and one more elaborate than any which had preceded, was laid before the Legislature. This report and the accompanying surveys furnished the basis on which the locations of the earlier Boston roads were subsequently made. It was the work of Mr. Hale, and is a clear, well-written, business-like document. In it the routes, the traffic, and the financial prospects of the proposed lines were discussed, and the construction of a double-track railway was recommended, in which Bryant's methods at Quincy were to be closely followed. The rails, the space between which was to be graded for a horse path, were to be of strap-iron, secured on longitudinal blocks of granite five feet apart. The question of motive power was fairly considered, and the future possibili¬ ties of steam recognized. The famous Rainhill trials near Liverpool were not made until nine months after this report was presented, and accordingly the success of the locomotive engine was not yet established. The con¬ struction of a railway to be operated by horse power alone was, therefore, still contemplated.

With this report the educational period came to a close. Great progress had already been made in the direction of a reliance on private enterprise, but the Directors of Internal Improvements could only see their way to looking to it for a portion of the means required. They said emphatically that " the assistance of the Government in some manner and to some ex¬ tent, in aid of individual enterprise and exertion, must be given to the work." Governor Lincoln, also, in his message, recommended a stock sys¬ tem guaranteed by the State. Most fortunately even these repeated and importunate recommendations failed to overcome the conservatism of the country representatives. They seemed impervious to either argument or entreaty. The Legislature of 1829 adjourned accordingly without taking any definite action on the report.

Before the Legislature of 1830 met, the performances of George Steph¬ enson's "Rocket" had signalled to the world the advent of a new era. Mr. Hale, as editor, now supplemented his work as a director on the Board of Internal Improvements. He spread before the people of the State, in the columns of the Advertiser , every detail of the Rainhill trials. The result was immediate. All the slow educational work of the six preceding years seemed to bear fruit in a day, - not in the Legislature, but in the market¬ place. Individual enterprise at last came to the front, and when the Legislature met in January, 1830, petitions for the incorporation of private railroad companies were presented to it.

The struggle, however, was not yet quite over. Legislative conservatism now took a new form. The objections which Bryant had been obliged to overcome in getting the charter for the Granite Railway five years before were repeated again. The science of railroad financiering as since devel¬ oped was then as little understood as that of railroad construction. The first condition to the building of a road on the basis now proposed was the raising the necessary money. The decision in the great case of the Charles¬ town bridges, in which the charter for the original bridge had been held not to be exclusive, so that a new bridge had been built parallel to the old one, destroying it as a property, - this decision had been rendered only one year before, and was consequently very fresh in the minds of stock¬ holders. If members from the country, therefore, were conservative, cap¬ italists on their side were timid. Hence a tedious legislative contest yet ensued. On the one hand, the private enterprise which stood ready to build the roads insisted, before doing so, on having a franchise guaranteeing ex¬ clusive railroad rights between termini; on the other hand, the Legislature refused to grant any such monopoly. At last, however, in the case of one route, - that between Boston and Lowell, - the exclusive right asked for was conceded for a period of forty years. Accordingly, the charter was in this case accepted, the company speedily organized, and books of subscrip¬ tion for the first Boston railroad were opened.

The great ceremony of the Manchester and Liverpool opening took place in November, 1830, and Mr. Hale took care to lay before the readers of the Advertiser a full account of it. The business community of Boston were quite alive to the importance of the event, and the growth of feeling was now rapid. As people got more eager for railroads, they insisted less on exclusive privileges. In this matter, therefore, legislative conservatism again happily prevailed, and when the Legislature met in June two more Boston roads were incorporated, - those to Providence and to Worcester. The sys¬ tem of roads which was destined to make Boston a future railroad centre was fairly inaugurated. Neither in thus getting at last in motion had Boston or its business community shown any marked degree of enterprise, public or private. The early progressive spirit shown in the Middlesex Canal and the Granite Railway had not been sustained. In America these were both Boston ideas ; but, once originated, they had been most eagerly picked up elsewhere, and other places were now in advance. A portion of the present New York Central road had, for instance, been chartered in 1825 ; and it was completed, and a trial trip with a steam locomotive made over it on the 9th of August, 1831, only forty-seven days after the charter of the Boston & Worcester had become a law, and nearly three years before a locomotive was used upon its tracks. South Carolina was in advance even of New York, for an iron railroad had been completed there before the Boston & Lowell was fairly organized. So also charters had been ob¬ tained and the work of construction begun on railroads terminating in Baltimore and Philadelphia, in 1827 and 1828, while Boston was then, and for two years after, engaged in educating local public opinion. The city, in fact, lost its railroad lead in 1826, and, as will presently be seen, it was not destined to regain it.

The Lowell was the first organized of the Boston roads, as well as the first upon which the work of construction was actually begun.1 Close behind it

1 Patrick T. Jackson and Kirk Boott were the moving spirits in the construction of the Boston & Lowell road. The stock was in shares of $500 each originally, and was mainly taken by those interested in the Lowell manufactories. It was consequently held in larger blocks than was usual in those days. Mr. Jackson was an original subscriber for 124 shares, Edwin Munroe for ioo, John Lowell for 94, Geo. W. Lyman and Geo. W. Pratt for 75 each, and William

Appleton for 50. The engineer of the line was Major Geo. W. Whistler, who afterward was the engineer of the Western, and finally passed into the railroad service of the Russian Govern¬ ment. The Boston & Lowell was originally built with " fish-belly " rails, laid on stone sleep¬ ers, which were supported on parallel masonwork walls sunken in the road-bed. Colonel Baldwin had satisfied himself by mathematical calculations that any less solid permanent way followed the Worcester and the Providence. In those days, however, when everything connected with construction had to be learned as the work went on, the progress made was not rapid. The country through which the routes lay was nowhere difficult, but the only actual experience obtainable of any real value was that of the Manchester & Liverpool road; and a trip of inquiry to Europe was a more considerable matter then than now. Under such circumstances twelve miles a year was looked upon as suf¬ ficiently rapid construction, though apparently it did not satisfy all parties interested. Indeed, so great was the distrust still felt in these undertakings that in January, 1833, Mr. Francis Stanton got the signatures of the holders of one thousand shares in the Boston & Worcester to a call for a stock¬ holders' meeting, to consider the question of stopping the work and aban¬ doning the enterprise. At last, however, in the spring of 1835, all of the three lines approached completion at about the same time. The first locomotive set in motion in Massachusetts was on the Boston & Worcester tracks in the latter part of March, 1834. Rails were then laid as far out as Newton, some nine or ten miles from Boston, and the company delayed opening for travel this completed section of its road only because it was compelled to await the arrival of an engine-driver, imported from England to take charge of the English-built locomotive. At last, on the 4th of April, a locomotive was actually put to work on a gravel train ; and the next day the president of the company let it be known through the columns of his newspaper that "the engine worked with ease, was perfectly manage¬ able, and showed power enough to work at any desirable speed." Three days later, on the 7th, a party of the directors and their friends, some fifty or sixty in number, went out on a trial trip as far as Davis's tavern in would not sustain the rolling stock ; so that the locomotive, when in motion, would always be overcoming an ascent caused by the sinking of the road under its weight. At a later day wood had, of course, to be substituted for stone, and gravel for mason-work. The earliest locomo¬ tive used on the road was imported from Stephenson's then famous works at Newcastleupon-Tyne. A man to run it was also brought over ; but, as usual, he proved a useless fellow, and, when the locomotive had been duplicated at the Lowell machine shops, he pretended not to be able to make the American locomotives work satisfactorily. lie was accordingly one day summarily sent about his business by Major Whistler, who was a man with whom it was dangerous to trifle. After that the Lowell loco¬ motives did as well as the English.

Though at the time of the construction of the railroad Lowell was considered a large manu¬ facturing place, its business seems now to have been curiously small. The income derived by the Middlesex Canal Company from transportation between that place and Boston did not, for in¬ stance, in 1830, exceed $ 4,000 . The whole num¬ ber of passengers passing between the two points annually was estimated at 37,500, and the tons of freight at 11,870 from Boston to Lowell, and 3,347 from Lowell to Boston. When the rail¬ road company was organized, it was estimated that the gross annual receipts of the road, when in operation, would be $58,514. This, of course, was largely exceeded, the gross receipts of the year 1835, - during a portion of which only was the road in operation, - amounting to $65,000. The next year they were $165,000. They have since shown a steady increase, reaching $500,000 in 1859, $1,000,000 in 1870, and in 1880 they were $1,380,000. The company paid dividends from the beginning, and for thirty years never failed to do so. They were passed in the years 1S75-77. The average rate of dividend has been about 6)4 per cent. The market value of the stock has fluctuated widely, having fallen from $135 per share in 1835, when the road went into operation, to $86 the next year. By 1843 the price had got back to $132, and it then fluctuated along until 1S55, when it fell to $62. In 1868 it had risen to $146, and in 1876 it had fallen again to $45. In 1880 it stood at $120.

rsnur. Passenger Car? will continue to run daily from llie .1. Drpol near Washington street, to Novvlon, at 6 and 10 o'clock, A.M. and at 3£ o'clock, P. M. am)

Tickets for the passage either way may be had at th« Ticket Office, No. 017, VVaslijitglon street ; price cents each ; and lor the return passage, of the Maslerof the Cars, Newton.

Newton. " They returned," the Advertiser stated the next day, " in thirtynine minutes, including a stop of about six minutes for the purpose of attaching five cars loaded with earth. The engine travelled with ease at month later, on the 12th of May, there appeared in the columns of the Advertiser the annexed new form of no¬ tice. The regular passenger railroad service to and from Boston did not, however, be¬ gin until four days later, on the morning of May 1 6, 1834. It consisted of the six trains specified in the advertisement. Thirty-five years later, it was reported that the daily service thus begun had then so increased that two passenger trains, carrying upon the average three hundred persons, entered or left the city in each five minutes of the fourteen active hours of the working day.

Opened to Newton in the middle of May, by the end of June the Boston & Worcester road was ready for use as far as Needham. It was formally opened to that point on July 7. The further extension to Hopkinton was completed by September; and the 21st of the month the passenger service was extended to that point. On the day previous there was quite a celebra¬ tion there, which was attended by the Governor, John Davis, his predecessor in the office, Levi Lincoln, and other distinguished personages. The party from Boston was some two hundred in number, and they went to Hopkin¬ ton in a train of seven of the company's largest passenger cars, leaving the city at 7 A. M. " The weather," as the Advertiser of the following day stated, " was unusually fine ; and the sweetness of the atmosphere, the rapidity of the motion, and the beauty and novelty of the scenery which was succes¬ sively presented to view, appeared to produce in all the party an agree¬ able exhilaration of spirits." At Hopkinton the train was received with firing of cannon ; and the party of visitors, under escort of a company of riflemen, proceeded to Captain Stone's tavern, where a collation was 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."

The formal opening to travel was on Saturday, July 4, 1835 ; and on that day the four locomotives, which constituted the company's whole motivepower, passed twice each way the entire length of the road. Some fifteen hundred passengers were carried. On the 6th the event was formally cele¬ brated at Worcester.1

1 On this occasion Mr. Henry Williams, of Boston, a director of the company, took occasion, in response to one of the sentiments, to allude "with much feeling to the difficulties with which the enterprise had to contend at the outset with¬ out 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.'" This was true of the Boston & Wor¬ cester in a far greater degree than of either the Boston & Lowell or the Boston & Providence. At the time of the completion of the road, the largest holder of its stock had two hundred and fifty shares ; the average holding was about thirty shares.

Among the early directors of the company were David Henshaw, George Bond, Thomas Motley, Daniel Denny, and George Morey. Mr. Nathan Hale was chosen president at the time the company was organized in July, 1831, and held the office until June, 1849; when he was succeeded by Thomas Hopkinson.

As an enterprise the Boston & Worcester was profitable from the outset. The first divi¬ dend of two per cent was paid simultaneously with the opening of the road through to Wor¬ cester ; and after that semi-annual dividends, never falling below three per cent, were regu¬ larly paid until January, 1S68, when the Boston & Albany consolidation took place. The aver¬ age rate of dividend throughout the independent existence of the company was a fraction less than seven per cent per annum.

The estimate of gross annual receipts at the time the road was built was $142,500. The first complete year of operation was 1836: the gross receipts were then $183,000. The subsequent increase was steady. In 1840 the receipts were $267,000; in 1850 they were $758,000; in 1855 they had reached a million. They did not in¬ crease much after that, until the breaking out of the War of the Rebellion. In 1861 they were $928,000 ; and when the war closed in 1865 they were $1,700,000. In the year preceding the con¬ solidation they were $1,940,000. The capital stock had been meanwhile increased from the original amount of $1,250,000 in 1836, to $5,000,000. In other words, the receipts had increased over twelvefold, while the capital had increased but fourfold. The net receipts were forty-three per VOL. IV. - 17.

cent of the gross in 1837, and forty per cent in 1S67. The market value of the stock was neces¬ sarily always high, ranging from $75 per share in 1837 and in 1857, to $160 in 1863.

2 Among those most forward in originating the Boston and Providence road were Thomas B. Wales, John Bryant, Joseph W. Revere, and Abbott Lawrence. The stock of the company was originally allotted to the petitioners for the charter, and was deemed a desirable investment. No difficulty was accordingly found in placing it. It has always been held by a large number of shareholders, and in small lots. In 1835 the largest individual holder had but seventy-five shares; in 1880 the largest single holding was three hundred and fifty-two shares, and there were 1,600 stockholders in all. Mr. Wales was the first president of the company, and was succeeded in 1835 by W. W. Woolsey, of New York, father of President Woolsey of Yale College.

The road was very well built, and was for¬ tunate enough to escape the mistake of a too solid substructure, into which the builders of the Boston & Lowell fell. This was due to the sagacity of its engineer, Captain McNeill, who was sent abroad to examine the Manchester & Liverpool road ; and in doing so was shrewd enough to anticipate the paradox of the elastic road-bed. The original rails laid down were of English manufacture, and weighed fifty-five pounds to the yard. The iron was so excellent in quality that the last of it was not taken out of the tracks until i860. The first superintend¬ ent of the road was General William Raymond Lee, who also assisted Captain McNeill in its construction.

So far as extensions or consolidation with other lines is concerned, the policy of the Boston and Providence has always been very conserva¬ tive. It owned and operated forty-three miles of road in 1835; and but sixty-seven miles in 1880. As an enterprise it was from the beginning very profitable. Its original cost was $1,600,000. Its gross earnings have steadily increased from $347,466 in 1836, to $685,630 in i860, $1,049,125 in 1870, and $1,323,985 in 1S80. The average rate of dividend paid to the holders of the stock has been over seven per cent ; and in the course of forty-five years only three semi-annual divi¬ dends were passed, - those between January,

By means of the road to Providence, also, Boston was placed in direct steam communication by way of Long Island Sound with New York, and the time required for a trip between the two cities was reduced to about fourteen hours. It could be accomplished between the rising and the setting of an April sun. The first epoch of construction in the Boston railroad system did not, however, close with the opening of these three initial lines. It extended, on the contrary, to the closing days of 1841, when at length the Western road was finished, and Boston placed, as Dr. Phelps had pro¬ posed in the original scheme outlined in his report of 1827, in direct con¬ nection with Albany and all that net-work of interior communication which there found an outlet.