Chapter II By Water
When the Virginia colonists reached the shores of America, they sailed up the James River until they found a peninsula extending into the river and there they built Jamestown. When the Pilgrims completed their explorations of the shores of Cape Cod Bay, they chose the harbor of Plymouth as the best situation for their colony. Lord Baltimore established the Maryland colony at St. Mary’s on an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. The Dutch founded New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The first settlements in each of the colonies were made on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, or but a few miles up large rivers. Why? The colonists had come to this new world in European vessels which could only bring them to the shore. Here they chose the most convenient place and built their town.
Thus these settlers were in the very beginning familiar with travel by water. But what a poor, inconvenient means of travel it was! The Jamestown colonists, one hundred and five in number, were tossed upon the stormy ocean for more than four months, enduring all the hardships of a severe winter in vessels that to-day would seldom venture upon the ocean, even in coastwise trade. Compare the two months and more of life on the Mayflower, where the passengers were crowded into the closest quarters, with the short six or seven days’ trip to or from England to-day on the ocean steamers, where travelers find comforts and conveniences almost greater than those they are accustomed to at home.
Although the emigrants suffered greatly in these voyages across the Atlantic Ocean, the day of the return of the vessels to England was a sad one. When the last glimpse of the receding ship had vanished, the homesick watchers realized as never before their isolation—their separation from everybody and everything in which they were interested. Until vessels should again arrive from across the ocean they would be thrown entirely upon their own resources. The settlers were thus very dependent upon the ships that crossed the Atlantic so infrequently and with such difficulty.
Soon after the settlement, however, some of the colonies began to build vessels of their own. The forests provided lumber in great quantity and of the best quality. The first vessel to be built by the Massachusetts Bay Colony was launched at Medford the next year after the settlement of Boston. This small vessel was owned by Governor Winthrop and was appropriately called the Blessing of the Bay. The same year a Dutch ship, twenty times as large, was constructed at New Amsterdam.
A large part of the colonial shipbuilding was confined to New England, the Blessing of the Bay being but a leader in a long line. Within two years a ship as large as the Mayflower was built at Boston, and another twice as large at Salem. Within thirty-five years Boston had one hundred and thirty sail on the sea. New York built fewer but larger ships. Philadelphia was a leading shipbuilding town, and many vessels were constructed in the Carolinas.
The activity of the colonists in thus providing means for travel by water was not limited to ocean shipbuilding. The rivers, the inland roads, already prepared by nature, were used from the very beginning. As the settlements grew, both in population and in numbers, travel between them became more and more necessary, and the rivers and streams came more and more into use. The settlers were wise enough to follow the example of the Indians and to make themselves at once familiar with canoes and small boats of every description.
The earliest form of water travel was, perhaps, the raft. It was usually made of floating logs or bundles of brush tied together. To-day, even, rafts of single logs, merely pointed at the ends, are found in Australia, as well as rafts of reeds. On the coast of Peru rafts seventy feet long and twenty feet broad are common,—large enough to use sails as well as paddles.
The next step was to use the single log, made hollow by gradually burning it out or by slowly chipping away pieces with some sharp implement. On the Atlantic coast the most common form of canoe was the dugout, made from the cedar log; and singularly enough the same tree was most frequently used on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, especially near Puget Sound. These Western boats were frequently of great size, some on the Alaskan coast being ninety feet in length and propelled by forty paddles. The Indians had found these dugouts very serviceable, and as the European colonists began to travel over the same rivers and streams they patterned their river craft after those of the red men.
The lighter form of the canoe was preferred, where serviceable, to the dugout. This was made of a light but strong framework covered by bark or skins. That used by the Esquimaux was of sealskin stretched over whalebone. But the more common form was the Indian birch-bark canoe, which rapidly became very popular among the colonial hunters and trappers. No better description of the birch canoe can be found than that which the children’s poet, Longfellow, gives in “Hiawatha.”
“‘Give me of your bark, O Birch Tree!
Of your yellow bark, O Birch Tree!
Growing by the rushing river,
Tall and stately in the valley!
I a light canoe will build me,
Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing,
That shall float upon the river,
Like a yellow leaf in Autumn,
Like a yellow water-lily!
“‘Lay aside your cloak, O Birch Tree!
Lay aside your white-skin wrapper,
For the Summer-time is coming,
And the sun is warm in heaven,
And you need no white-skin wrapper!’
“With his knife the tree he girdled;
Just beneath its lowest branches,
Just above the roots, he cut it,
Till the sap came oozing outward;
Down the trunk, from top to bottom,
Sheer he cleft the bark asunder,
With a wooden wedge he raised it,
Stripped it from the trunk unbroken.
“‘Give me of your boughs, O Cedar!
Of your strong and pliant branches,
My canoe to make more steady,
Make more strong and firm beneath me!’
“Down he hewed the boughs of cedar,
Shaped them straightway to a framework,
Like two bows he formed and shaped them,
Like two bended bows together.
“‘Give me of your roots, O Tamarack!
Of your fibrous roots, O Larch Tree!
My canoe to bind together,
So to bind the ends together
That the water may not enter,
That the river may not wet me!’
“From the earth he tore the fibres,
Tore the rough roots of the Larch Tree,
Closely sewed the bark together,
Bound it closely to the framework.
“‘Give me of your balm, O Fir Tree.
Of your balsam and your resin,
So to close the seams together
That the water may not enter,
That the river may not wet me!’
“And he took the tears of balsam,
Took the resin of the fir tree,
Smeared therewith each seam and fissure,
Made each crevice safe from water.
“Thus the Birch Canoe was builded
In the valley, by the river,
In the bosom of the forest;
And the forest’s life was in it,
All its mystery and its magic,
All the lightness of the birch tree,
All the toughness of the cedar,
All the Larch’s supple sinews;
And it floated on the river
Like a yellow leaf in Autumn,
Like a yellow water-lily.”
CHAPTER III.
STAGECOACHES.
Both by land and by water the methods of travel among the early colonists were extremely rude. From the early days of the settlements until the Independence of the United States the improvement was very slow. During the seventeenth century practically all of the long-distance traveling was by water. Schooners made regular trips from New England to Virginia, and smaller sloops or “packets” ran to New York from the different towns to the eastward. These vessels were dependent, of course, upon the wind, and the length of the journey varied greatly. Perhaps a packet might sail from New Haven to New York in two days, but calms or contrary winds might delay the trip, and make it a week in going from port to port.
On land, however, the facilities for travel slowly but surely improved. An interesting account of the rudeness and hardships of New England land journeys is furnished by the journal of Sarah Knight, who went from Boston to New York on horseback nearly two hundred years ago. The roads were openings in the forest, made by cutting down trees, and were often blocked by fallen trunks. The streams that must be crossed caused the most trouble. “We came,” she wrote, “to a river which they generally ride thro’; but I dare not venture; so the post got a ladd and cannoo to carry me to t’other side, and he rid thro’ and led my hors. The cannoo was very small and shallow, so that when we were in she seemed ready to take in water, which greatly terrified mee and caused mee to be very circumspect, sitting with my hands fast on each side, my eyes stedy, not daring so much as to lodg my tongue a hair’s breadth more on one side of my mouth than t’other, nor so much as think on Lott’s wife, for a wry thought would have oversett our wherey.” For a woman to undertake such a journey was very unusual, and after her return she wrote with a diamond on the glass of a window these lines:
“Through many toils and many frights,
I have returned, poor Sarah Knights.
Over great rocks and many stones
God has preserved from fractured bones.”
About the time that this long journey was made, carriages began to come into use. The most common of these were the large coach, the “calash,” and a lighter, two-wheeled vehicle, with a calash top, similar to a chaise. But these carriages were for a time only used within the towns themselves, where the large number of houses required the building of better roads and streets. Comparatively few persons could afford to own private carriages, and their use was therefore not general for many years. Before the middle of the eighteenth century, however, carriages became more common. Broader and better roads had been built, and longer journeys could be made. As early as 1725, carriages had been driven from the Connecticut River to Boston, and overland travel began to be more customary.
The first roads that could be called suitable for carriage travel were for the most part toll roads. Instead of being made by the towns or counties, or by the colonies, they were built by corporations. These companies were granted the privilege of charging toll from every traveler over their roads for the purpose of paying a profit to the members of the company, as well as to keep the roads in repair. In the same way corporations built bridges, charging a small toll upon every one who crossed them. Thus travel was improved, time was saved, and less discomfort was caused the travelers.
In the eighteenth century public carriages began to come into use. Previously if any one wished to travel by land, he found it necessary to own or hire horses. If he made a voyage by sea, he could pay his fare on some vessel that made the trip he wished to take. This means of public transportation, this carrying a person or his goods for pay, had been limited, however, to water travel. There were no regular conveyances running from town to town by land which would carry passengers or freight.
The town of Plymouth had been settled nearly a hundred years before the first line of stagecoaches in any part of the country was put in operation. This “stage wagon” ran between Boston and Bristol ferry, where it connected with the packet line to Newport and New York. Three years later a stage line began to run from Boston to Newport, making one trip each way every week. The driver advertised to carry “bundles of goods, merchandise, books, men, women, and children.”
Travel was slow, much slower than seems possible to-day. The roads were still very poor, in fact scarcely fit to be called roads. Little by little new stage lines were established, nearly always in connection with some packet line. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century, however, opportunities to travel by stage were few and the time required great. Three weeks were needed to make the trip from Boston to Philadelphia, even under the most favorable conditions.
Less than three years before the battle of Lexington, the first stage was run between New York and Boston. The first trip was begun on Monday, July 13th, and the journey’s end was not reached until Saturday, July 25th. Thirteen days were thus required for a trip which may now be made in five or six hours. As the amount of travel increased new lines were formed, the roads were improved, and stages were run more frequently and more rapidly. Sixty years after the first trip was made between New York and Boston the time had been cut down from thirteen days to one day and five hours; more than a hundred lines of coaches were then regularly running out of Boston.
In spite, however, of every improvement, travel by stage a hundred years ago was no simple or pleasant matter. Professor McMaster says: “The stagecoach was little better than a huge covered box mounted on springs. It had neither glass windows nor door nor steps nor closed sides. The roof was upheld by eight posts which rose from the body of the vehicle, and the body was commonly breast-high. From the top were hung curtains of leather, to be drawn up when the day was fine and let down and buttoned when rainy or cold. Within were four seats. Without was the baggage. When the baggage had all been weighed and strapped on the coach, when the horses had been attached, the eleven passengers were summoned, and, clambering to their seats through the front of the stage, sat down with their faces toward the driver’s seat.”
The coach would set out from the inn with the horses on a gallop, which would continue until a steep hill was reached. Then would follow the slow pacing up the hill, the gallop down again, the dragging through a stretch of muddy road, the careful fording of a river, the watering of the horses every few miles, and the rapid gallop up to the next inn. Here the mail pouches would be taken out and in, perhaps a change of coaches made or more frequently of horses only, a delay for a little gossip, and the stage would be off again. This was all very exhilarating and agreeable in pleasant, warm weather, but how fatiguing in the cold and snows of winter, and even during a chilly summer storm.
These public conveyances were used only when necessary. Private carriages were much preferred to the stagecoach, as being a more comfortable as well as a safer mode of travel. The story is told of one young lady who was visiting near Boston, eighty years ago. She was very anxious to return to her home, but her father was unable to come for her. Her mother wrote: “Your papa would not trust your life in the stage. It is a very unsafe and improper conveyance for young ladies. Many have been the accidents, many the cripples made by accidents in these vehicles. As soon as your papa can, you may be sure he will go or send for you.”
Whether the traveler went by stage or in his private carriage, it was necessary to stop at the inns. The taverns had a great deal to do with making journeys pleasant or disagreeable. As a general rule, the New England inns were kept by leading men, and in most cases the innkeeper was required to obtain recommendations from the selectmen of the town before he could get a license or a permission to establish and keep the tavern. Even the smaller New England villages boasted of inns that compared favorably with the hotels of the large towns. A Frenchman, traveling through the United States early in this century, wrote in highest praise of the inns of New England, whose windows were without shutters, and whose doors had neither locks nor keys, and yet where no harm ever came to the traveler. He admired “the great room, with its low ceiling and neatly sanded floor; its bright pewter dishes and stout-backed, slat-bottomed chairs ranged along its walls; its long table; and its huge fireplace, with the benches on either side.”
He had less praise for the inns of the rest of the country. The buildings were poor, the fare was coarse, and the beds were bad. The roofs leaked, the windows were sometimes mere openings in the wall; the bedding was unclean and extremely uninviting.
If a traveler were compelled to stop at the Southern inns, he found his journey far from agreeable. Fortunately for him the Southern planter was the most hospitable of persons. “At his home strangers were heartily welcome and nobly entertained. Some bade their slaves ask in any traveler that might be seen passing by. Some kept servants on the watch to give notice of every approaching horseman or of the distant rumble of a coming coach and four.” On the plantation the traveler was always treated as a most intimate friend, and in the cheery comfort of the mansion he forgot, for the time being, the trials and hardships of travel by land.
CHAPTER IV.
STEAMBOATS.
The idea of payment for transportation is very old. Thousands of years ago we read of vessels sailing upon the Mediterranean Sea prepared to transport persons or freight for sums of money. Where this idea originated is not known, but it may have occurred to a savage for the first time in some such way as the following:
A hunter lived on the banks of a river in Asia. One day he shot a duck which fell to the ground on the opposite shore. The hunter needed the bird, for he was hungry, but how was he to obtain it? The river was very deep at this point, and he could not swim. He knew that there was a shallow place five miles up the stream, where he might ford the river, and another ford five miles below. But to cross by either of these would require a journey of ten miles to the bird and ten miles back, just to get across a narrow river. He remembered that a big log lay upon a sand-bar in the river not far from where he was. He took a pole, pried off the log and rolled it into the water. Then seating himself on it he poled himself across, obtained the duck, and soon reached his home again. Here was the first water travel.
A few days later he heard a cry from over the river. Looking up, he saw a man who desired to cross. The stranger called to him to get his log and take him over, as he had carried himself. The hunter saw that the stranger had a deer on his shoulder. He was hungry, and therefore called out: “Give me the hind leg and half the loin of your deer for my labor, and I will bring you safely over.” The stranger promptly agreed, and the hunter poled across the river. In some such way doubtless was the first payment made for transportation, and the idea soon became common that it was just and proper to charge a fare for carrying freight and passengers.
What powers have we found used in transportation up to a hundred years ago? First there was human power, either walking or plying oars or paddles. This energy is limited; walking is necessarily a slow process, and rowing is seldom a rapid mode of travel. Then came horse power, used first to carry travelers or goods and later to draw carriages and wagons, conveying passengers and freight. Horse power is superior to human power both in speed and in endurance, but it also has its limits and often fails at important times.
Then use was made of the wind, which, blowing against stretches of canvas, propelled vessels. Here was no human power to become wearied; no horse power to fail at the wrong time. Vessels need not stop at night in order to sleep, nor even at noon in order to take dinner. But the wind is fickle; it does not always blow; it frequently blows from the wrong direction; it often blows too much. Human power, horse power, wind power, each was insufficient or unsatisfactory, and the time was ripe for some power stronger and less fickle to produce more rapid transportation.
When the necessity of a new power became great, the needed energy and a way to use it were soon found. Near the close of the eighteenth century a number of men, unacquainted with each other’s ideas, began to experiment with steam as a means for propelling vessels. Why had they not begun earlier? For two reasons. The demand for quicker water travel had but just commenced, and the fact that steam could practically be used as a motive power was only beginning to be understood.
It so happened that James Watt’s steam engine was perfected just as the treaty of peace with Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the United States. Now American inventors were able to make use of the steam engine to aid travel and transportation. At once they began work. Samuel Morey built a steamboat on the upper Connecticut River; James Rumsey experimented on the Potomac; John Fitch on the Delaware, and William Longstreet on the Savannah; Oliver Evans was at work in Philadelphia, and John Stevens on the Hudson.
One of these boats used the steam engine to move oars; another pumped water in at the bow and forced it out again at the stern; a third had a wheel in the stern; and a fourth had a paddle wheel on each side. Some of the vessels used upright, and some horizontal engines. Most of these inventors succeeded in running their boats against the tide or the current of rivers, and proved that steam could be thus used. Each may be said to have invented a steamboat. But these men were all without means; they did not succeed in awakening the interest of wealthy men; and the public cared little about such inventions. Therefore each of these steamboats was given up in turn and soon forgotten; the eighteenth century passed away, and no practical result had appeared. It is natural to have more interest in the account of an invention which proved of practical value than in the stories of even successful attempts which were given up almost as soon as made.
Robert Fulton was born in Pennsylvania just as Watt began his study of the steam engine. Almost as soon as Watt had completed his improvements on the engine, Fulton came of age, and went to England to study painting with Benjamin West, the famous American artist. In the midst of his art studies he became interested in mechanical pursuits. He attracted the attention of some English scientists, and, by their encouragement, he abandoned painting and devoted himself to inventing. But who knows how much assistance his skill in drawing may have been to him in his preparations of plans and models?
Joel Barlow, a noted American poet, was then living in France, and upon his invitation Fulton spent several years in his home in Paris. Here he devoted his time to boats, as he had already done in London. His schemes were of various kinds. He planned diving boats, steamboats, and canal boats, and was particularly interested in a boat which he called a marine torpedo. This boat he planned to be used to injure vessels in naval warfare. For a time he neglected the steamboat, and bent every energy to persuade the French Government to adopt the torpedo. Afterward he urged his marine boats upon the English and American governments, but in vain. He did not realize the enormously greater future value of the steamboat.
In time, however, Fulton finished his plans, and a steamboat was built for him upon the river Seine. The next step was to enlist the coöperation of some one with power and means by proving that the invention was valuable. Fulton accordingly sought to bring the boat to the attention of the French Emperor. He succeeded in awakening Napoleon’s interest. It was just at the time that the emperor was planning to take his great army across the Channel to attack England. He saw that steamboats, if of practical value, would be serviceable to him in these plans. Accordingly he directed a scientific committee to attend a public trial of the boat.
A day was set for the examination. Fulton had worked steadily for weeks, seeking to make every part as perfect as possible. The night before the appointed day, Fulton retired for rest, but sleep would not come to his eyes. His thoughts were so completely fixed upon his invention and what the next day meant to him that he could not control them. Not until morning began to dawn did he catch a nap, and then only to be immediately awakened by a knock at his door.
A messenger had come to tell him that his boat was at the bottom of the river. The iron machinery had proved too heavy for the little sixteen-foot boat, and had broken through. Fulton’s hopes were at an end. Before he could build another boat and make another engine the opportunity would be past. His disappointment was intense. However, he did not despair, but was soon ready to try again.
Doubtless the failure was a blessing in disguise. The boat was probably too small to make a successful trip. The next time he would have a larger vessel. Instead of again trying to arouse French interest, he decided to make the next experiment at home.
Robert R. Livingston, our minister to France, who together with James Monroe purchased for the United States the great province of Louisiana, had long been interested in the possibilities of steam navigation. He entered into Fulton’s plans and assisted him in every way. Soon after the disaster on the Seine both men returned to America, and the next six months were spent in building a boat and in putting into it a steam engine which they had especially ordered in Birmingham, England. A grant had been obtained from the New York legislature which gave them the exclusive right to run steam vessels on any of the waters of the State.
The new boat was a hundred and thirty feet in length, or eight times as long as that lost in the Seine. It was called the Clermont, after the country home of Livingston. It was a side-paddle steamboat, with wheels fifteen feet in diameter and four feet wide. The trial trip was announced for August 7th, 1807, and at one o’clock in the afternoon the Clermont stood at the wharf in New York ready for the journey.
Was the trial to succeed or fail? To succeed, the Clermont must steam up the Hudson River at a speed of, at least, four miles an hour. The trip proposed was from New York to Albany, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, and return. This trip was regularly made by sailing packets, and the average time was four days. Could the Clermont reach Albany in thirty-seven hours, or a day and a half? Unfortunately, a north wind was blowing, which would greatly decrease the speed.
Fulton and Livingston were confident that it could be done. The steamboat left the wharf and slowly sailed up the river. Soon the faults natural to a new invention began to show themselves. The rudder did not work as it ought; the wheels were unprotected by a covering; the vessel sank too far in the water. But the trial, in spite of all the odds against it, was successful. The one hundred and fifty miles were made in thirty-two hours, with five hours to spare from the limit set. If we subtract the time spent in stops, but twenty-eight and a half hours were used, making an average of more than five miles an hour.
The first long steamboat trip had been accomplished. The indifference of the public at once changed to enthusiasm. Fulton was immediately urged to make regular trips, and, although the Clermont needed many improvements, he consented. The next winter, however, the boat was removed from the river for repairs; but in the spring regular trips were resumed, and the steamboat became a new and permanent means of transportation.
There was abundant opportunity to improve the steamboat and develop its use. At first Fulton’s Clermont alone steamed up and down the Hudson River. Soon, however, other steamboats were built to run in opposition to the sailing packets. Steamers began to ply on Lake Champlain and on the Delaware River. Three years after the first voyage of the Clermont, a steamboat was making three trips a week from New York to New Brunswick, New Jersey; here the traveler took stage for Bordentown on the Delaware River, whence another boat carried him to Philadelphia. Two years later steam ferryboats ran between New York and the Jersey shore.
The first river steamboat was launched at Pittsburg, and was sent down the Ohio and the Mississippi to New Orleans in 1811. Three years later the Ætna steamed from Pittsburg to New Orleans, and back to Louisville. The same year a steamboat was built on the Lakes to run from Buffalo to Detroit, and a company was organized to start a steamship line from New York to Charleston. Five years afterward the steamship Savannah, using both steam and sails, crossed the Atlantic Ocean. She made but slow time, and the great space required to hold the fuel left little room for freight. Year by year, however, improvements were made on the vessels and quicker time was the result. Finally, anthracite coal came into general use, and thirty years after the trial trip of the Clermont, the steamers Sirius and the Great Western began regular trips between Liverpool and New York. The day of steam navigation had come, and from that time on the vexatious delays due to fickle winds no longer need be a cause of trouble.
CHAPTER V.
CANALS.
Ninety years ago, two brothers, James and John, found it necessary to make the long journey from their home in New York City to Kentucky. They had frequently traveled through the country, and were familiar with stages and packets. This time they proposed to make their first trip on the steamboat, since the Clermont was again making its regular runs. It was advertised to leave New York at one o’clock on Wednesday. The brothers felt no need of haste in their preparations for the journey, and it was nearly two o’clock before they came in sight of the wharf. Just then John made the remark that they were very foolish to arrive so early.
“We shall have to wait an hour or two,” he said; “the boat won’t be ready to start before three o’clock at the earliest.”
“I am not so sure,” was the reply. “Perhaps the steamboat will not be as late as the packets.”
When they reached the wharf, no steamboat was there. Far up the river they saw, slowly moving off in the distance, a vessel, which they knew must be the Clermont, from the line of smoke that lay behind it. Immediately they began to inquire what it meant and were told, “Oh! that is one of Fulton’s notions. He has given strict orders that the boat shall always leave the wharf exactly on advertised time.” This was a novelty almost as great as the steamboat itself. Sailing vessels had been dependent upon the wind, and stages upon the conditions of the roads and the weather; neither made any pretence of running upon schedule time. Fulton’s idea of punctuality was new and caused much grumbling for a time; but with the coming of the railroads it became an absolute necessity.
What were the two men to do? But two things could be done. They might take passage on a packet, or wait for the next trip of the Clermont. They decided to wait, as they were anxious to try the steamboat; they had had enough experience with the slow sailing vessels, and their poor accommodations. They did not permit themselves to be late a second time. In fact, the clocks had hardly struck twelve when they stepped aboard the Clermont.
The hour before the departure of the boat was spent in examining it from stem to stern. The original Clermont had been greatly improved. The wheels were now properly protected; a rudder, specially adapted to the boat and the river, had been constructed. Most noticeable were the accommodations for the passengers, which were almost elegant when compared with the poor quarters of the packets. In fact the Clermont had become “a floating palace, gay with ornamental painting, gilding, and polished woods.”
At one o’clock sharp the boat quietly left the wharf. The wind was blowing freshly down the river and the tide was going out. A packet started at the same moment from a neighboring pier. The steamboat at once turned its prow up the stream, but the packet headed for the Jersey shore, as it could sail against the wind only by making long tacks. This greatly increased the distance it had to travel, and before sunset the Clermont had left the packet many miles behind.
The next morning everything was still going smoothly when the two passengers saw a little way ahead another packet, which had left New York before the steamboat. This sloop was making tacks like those they had watched the previous afternoon, and the Clermont was rapidly gaining on it. Suddenly John exclaimed, “What are they doing? Are they trying to run us down?” It was evident that the packet was coming straight for the steamboat; but the captain of the Clermont shut off steam at once and the packet passed its bow without doing harm.
Soon a sloop was met coming down the river. Again came the exclamation from John, “They are surely trying to run into us!” He had hardly spoken when the crash came; the packet struck the wheel box, tore it open, and then, sliding along the side of the steamboat, passed away down the river. On inquiry John ascertained that this was merely an illustration of the envy of the owners of packets, who feared that they would lose all their business. No serious damage was done, however, and the steamboat proceeded on its way.
The Clermont arrived at Albany at seven o’clock Thursday evening and the brothers spent the night at an inn. The next morning, after an early breakfast, a stage was taken which in a few hours carried them to Schenectady. This part of the journey was quickly made, as the road was one of the best in the country. On reaching Schenectady the travelers learned that they must wait till the next noon to take a boat up the Mohawk River. The hours slowly dragged along, another night was spent at an inn, and about three o’clock the next afternoon the slow trip up the Mohawk began. Two days later they reached Utica, and another stage took them, the next day, to Rome. From this village two days’ sail carried them across the Oneida Lake, and down the Oswego River to Oswego on the banks of Lake Ontario.
After a delay of thirty-six hours a lake packet was found ready for them, which in time arrived at Lewiston at the mouth of the Niagara River, and so on they went, by land to Buffalo, by water to Erie, by land again to one of the branches of the Alleghany River, and down this to Pittsburg. From Pittsburg one of the flat-bottomed Western river boats, borne along by the current, conveyed them to Louisville, at the Falls of the Ohio.
Thus was made, in several weeks, a trip from New York to Louisville, which to-day requires scarcely more than twenty-four hours. Ten times had changes been made in the conveyances used. A steamboat, river rowboats, lake packets, Western flatboats and stages, were all needed, and nights and days even were spent at inns. Slow and cumbrous was travel in those days and very expensive. There was little traveling for pleasure, and only the most important business was worth the hardships and discomforts of such travel.
If it was costly for passengers to travel, it was even more expensive to carry freight. Enormous charges were placed upon all transportation of goods. New and better roads were being built in all directions, but these did little to reduce the cost of transporting goods. The cheapest routes continued to be by the rivers, as the expense of building good roads and keeping them in repair added to freight charges. The charges for freight transportation were so great that it prevented entirely the moving of many goods.
The people in Pennsylvania desired the salt which was obtained in New York, but it cost $2.50 a bushel to carry salt three hundred miles. Citizens of Philadelphia would have purchased flour which was raised about the sources of the Susquehanna River had it not cost $1.50 a barrel to carry it to Philadelphia. Hundreds of families were weekly moving westward into the new country across the Alleghany Mountains; they could not afford to take their household goods with them. The freight charges from New York to Buffalo were $120 a ton; from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, $125.
Something new in the line of transportation was needed; some way by which freight could be carried at less expense. Private companies were building new toll roads—but these did not accomplish the purpose. Different States expended money in improving the highways, and still the expense of transportation was enormous. The national Government also took part in the work and constructed a highway from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling, on the Ohio River—but this was merely a single road over the mountains, and freight charges were as high as ever.
What could be done? Of course the roads everywhere must be improved and new ones built—all of which would take many years. But was there not some way to avoid carrying so much freight in wagons drawn by horses? Wherever there were rivers these could be used. Was it possible to make rivers, or at least to make water-ways, upon which boats might be used? The people of the United States began to talk of canals, and soon enthusiasm for canal building became universal.
What is a canal? It is a trench cut in the ground, filled with water deep enough for a well-laden boat, and wide enough for boats to pass each other. On one bank is a path, called the towpath, upon which horses or mules travel, pulling a canal boat behind them by means of a long rope. In most canals it is found necessary to lift the boats over higher land or up to a higher level. This is done by locks, which are built where the two levels of the canal come together. These locks are shut off from each part of the canal by gates. When the lower gates are shut and the upper gates open, water is let into the lock from the upper canal until on a level with it. Then a canal boat from the upper canal enters the lock. The upper gates are closed, the lower gates opened, and the water runs out of the lock. The boat, remaining on top of the water, sinks to the lower level and is ready to proceed on its course. In traveling the other way the process is turned about. The boat enters the lock and rises with the water which is let in from above until it is on the upper level.
Canals, with their locks, are simple and easily built. The expense lies mainly in digging the trench. When the canal is once finished the cost of running is very slight, and freight can be carried much more cheaply than over roads, or even by the natural rivers. Canal travel is very slow, however, as the boat is drawn by a horse at a slow walk. Therefore a canal is used, for the most part, to carry freight, especially freight not very perishable. Garden vegetables, fruit, and meats, for example, are not carried on canals to any great distance; on the other hand, the length of time used in conveying salt, or flour, or household goods, is not of so much importance.
Plans for canals sprang up all at once throughout the country. The Middlesex canal in Massachusetts and the Blackstone canal between Providence and Worcester were among the first built. The Delaware and Hudson canal in New York, and the Chesapeake and Delaware in Maryland were of early importance. In time nearly every Atlantic State had one or more canals as aids to transportation. Many of them were of additional importance because they connected neighboring bays, and could furnish opportunities for water travel, even when the harbors might be blockaded in time of war.
The greatest and by far the most important is the Erie canal, which connects Buffalo on Lake Erie with Albany on the Hudson River. This canal was due to the energy and persistence of Governor De Witt Clinton, who dug the first shovelful of earth in 1817, and made the first trip over the completed canal in 1825. There was great opposition to building this canal at the expense of the State, and the nickname of “Clinton’s Big Ditch” was frequently applied to it.
Governor Clinton was wiser, however, than his opponents. Every cent spent on this canal, which is 363 miles long, 40 feet wide, and 4 feet deep, was wisely spent. On the day that it was finished the great prosperity of New York City began. A large part of the trade and commerce between the East and the West was carried over the Erie canal, because it furnished the cheapest route. Freight charges between Buffalo and Albany fell at once to less than one-quarter their former rates, and continued to decrease until they became less than $10 a ton.
Thus far had travel and transportation improved. From walking, horseback riding, and rowboats, slow changes had led to stages, packets, steamboats, and canals. From the simple Indian trail, like the Bay Path, had grown up the great highways, like the National Road. From slow and difficult journeys between neighboring towns, traveling had become easy from Maine to Florida, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. Was there any chance for further improvement?
CHAPTER VI.
RAILROADS.
Up to this time progress had been more marked upon the water than upon the land. On the land travelers were still limited to human power and horse power. On the water, however, not only human power and wind were used, but also horse power and even steam power. The steamboat was thought to be the most rapid means of transit possible. No energy was known greater than that of steam; therefore no new source of power was expected.
If steam could aid water navigation, could it not be used in land travel? This question was ever present in the minds of inventors, mechanics, and travelers on both sides of the ocean. Little by little an answer was obtained, and the field of steam was enlarged. Even before Fulton’s trial trip, the first step in the direction of the railroad was taken, though steam had nothing to do with this first practical experiment.
The city of Boston was built upon three hills, two of which have now been almost entirely moved away. Upon the third, called Beacon Hill, was built the State House. Early in this century the top of this hill was lowered by carrying away the gravel. For this purpose a tramway was built. This consisted of two sets of rails or tracks from the top to the bottom of the hill, upon which cars were used. The full car on one track ran down of its own weight, pulling up the empty car on the other track. This was the first use of rails in this country.
The first permanent tramway was built in Pennsylvania. Thomas Leifer owned a stone quarry about three-quarters of a mile from the nearest wharf on the Delaware River. He desired to carry his stone to tide water more easily than by the ordinary methods. Accordingly he built a tramway from the quarry to the wharf, and placed upon the tracks an ordinary wagon. To this he attached horses and had what we should call a horse car. The rails made a smooth road over which his horses could draw five tons as easily as one ton over the common roads. This tram was used regularly for eighteen years.
One-half of the steam railroad had now been invented. The tramway was the railroad—now steam must be applied. That was all. But that was not so easy as it would seem now. Year after year passed and no one attempted it. Doubtless many persons felt certain that the steam railroads were coming some time and that they would be of value, just as to-day many people expect that travel through the air is coming some time. At the same time there were many who did not believe that steam could be used for land travel at all; while others did not care to have it come for fear that travel would be made too speedy.
One of the leading English magazines took occasion to express its opinion concerning a proposed railway: “What can be more absurd and ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stage coaches! We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve’s rockets as trust themselves to the mercy of a machine going at such a rate. We trust that Parliament will, in all railways it may sanction, limit the speed to eight or nine miles an hour, which is as great as can be ventured on with safety.” What would this writer say to the safety of the trains of to-day, as they make forty fifty, sixty, and even seventy miles an hour?
Many of the inventions which have done the most for mankind have been made by Americans, but we owe the locomotive to an Englishman. George Stephenson from early boyhood devoted himself to the study of engines and machinery. When but thirteen years of age he assisted his father in the care of an engine at a coal mine near Newcastle. Working by day as an engineman, and studying by night in a night school, he prepared himself for his future work. He won the confidence of his employers, especially that of Lord Ravensworth, who supplied him with funds to build a “traveling engine” to run on the rails of the tramroad between the mines and the shipping port, nine miles distant. July 25th, 1814, Stephenson made a successful trip with his locomotive, “My Lord,” which pulled the coal cars at the rate of four miles an hour.
Stephenson felt that this locomotive was but a beginning. He told his friends that “there was no limit to the speed of such an engine, if the works could be made to stand.” He was still pursuing his studies and experiments when he was appointed engineer of a proposed railroad between Stockton and Darlington. The directors of the road had planned to pull their cars by horses, but they were won over by Stephenson to agree to try an engine. Eleven years after the trial trip of his first engine, Stephenson was ready to exhibit a locomotive upon a railroad joining two towns for the purpose of transporting passengers and freight.
A short time before the trial trip, Stephenson made a prediction concerning the future of his invention. “I venture to tell you,” he said, “that I think that you will live to see the day when railways will supersede almost all other methods of conveyance in this country—when mail coaches will go by railway, and railroads will become the great highways for the king and all his subjects. The time is coming when it will be cheaper for a working man to travel on a railway than to walk on foot. I know that there are great and almost insurmountable difficulties to be encountered, but what I have said will come to pass as sure as you now hear me.”
The Stockton and Darlington Railway was three years in process of construction, and the day of its opening, September 27th, 1825, was an important one in the history of travel. Imagine that first train load—the locomotive, guided by Stephenson himself, six freight cars, a car carrying “distinguished guests,” twenty-one coal cars crammed with passengers, and six more freight cars all loaded. Ahead of the train, or procession, as it might be called, rode a man on horseback, carrying a flag bearing the motto, “The private risk is the public benefit.” When the train started, crowds of people ran along by its side, for a time easily keeping up with it. Finally, however, Stephenson called to the horseman to get out of the way and, putting on steam, drove the engine at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. The future of the locomotive was assured.
Americans were ready for new methods of traveling. Three years after the opening of the first passenger steam-railway in England, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad began to construct a line from Baltimore westward, and in two years fourteen miles were opened to travel. For a year, however, horses were used as motive power; in 1831, the road advertised for locomotives. Meanwhile an engine, called the “Stombridge Lion,” was brought over from England, in 1829, and used on a line built by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. It was found to be too heavy and was abandoned. The second locomotive used in this country, “The Best Friend of Charleston,” was built in New York City, and was run on the South Carolina Railroad.
The locomotive and the railroad had come, such as they were. The locomotive had its boiler and its smokestack, its cylinders and driving wheels; but it had no cab for the engineer and the fireman, and no brake to stop the train. The tender was but a flat car, carrying fuel and water. The cars were merely stagecoaches made to run on rails, and in no way were the passengers protected from the smoke and cinders of the burning wood. Yet this poor, inconvenient railroad was a great advance in itself, and it foretold greater advances in the days to come.
In 1835, five years after the opening of the first steam railroad in the United States, there were twenty-three roads and over a thousand miles of track. After 1835, an average of nearly four hundred miles was built yearly until 1848. From that time until the beginning of the Civil War, railroad construction proceeded with great rapidity, nearly two thousand miles of railroad being built each year. In 1849, a continuous line of railroad was completed between New York and Boston. Two years later two distinct lines were finished, connecting New York and Buffalo. At the end of another two years, through connection was had between New York and Chicago. At the same time railroads were being built in all sections east of the Mississippi River.
After peace was restored in 1865, came a great period of railroad building. During ten years the number of miles of railroad more than doubled, nearly four thousand miles being built each year. This was the period when the continuous lines, which had already reached the Missouri River, were continued across the continent. After five years of labor the Union Pacific Railroad, starting at Omaha, Nebraska, met at Ogden, Utah, the Central Pacific, which had been built from Sacramento, California. May 10th, 1869, the last spike was driven and the Pacific coast was bound to the Atlantic by bands of steel.
Since the completion of the Union and Central Pacific railroads, four other through lines have been constructed across the Rocky Mountains, within the territory of the United States, and one in Canada. It is now possible to go from ocean to ocean in less than five days, and to have such a choice of routes that neither the cold of winter nor the heat of summer need be troublesome.
At last the limit of rapid traveling seems to have been reached. Walking and horseback riding are indulged in only for pleasure and health; stagecoaches are used only for short lines where the railroad has not yet come; but all the long-distance traveling is now done behind the locomotive. Journeys of weeks have become trips of a few days, days have been lessened to hours, and the country has become knit together by rapid transit. Is there a chance for further improvement?
CHAPTER VII.
MODERN WATER TRAVEL.
James Greenleaf arrived in Duluth, one bright June day, four hundred and five years after the discovery of America. For nearly forty years he had been a missionary among the Indians of the British Northwest, but he had finally been persuaded to take a well-earned rest. Leaving his little settlement of red men, and taking a canoe, he had paddled up stream, carried his canoe over a portage, and paddled down a river until he reached Lake Superior, where a small sailboat had taken him to the flourishing city at the western end of the lake.
At the hotel he found, as he expected, his nephew, Henry Towne. Mr. Towne was a commercial traveler, always “on the road,” as he would say, for a large furniture establishment in New York. In a letter to his uncle he had stated that business would call him to Minnesota at just that time, and that he would make the journey with his uncle from Duluth to New York.
The next day the two men started. The nephew had made all the necessary arrangements, having purchased tickets and engaged staterooms on the line of steamboats that connect Duluth with Buffalo. The first sight of the steamboat caused Mr. Greenleaf to exclaim at its size.
“It is not much like the steamboat that I took on the Hudson in the spring of 1856,” he said. “I imagine, however, that I shall see greater differences than this, the further I go.”
As the two men made a tour through the steamboat, the older gave expression to his thoughts in many ways.
“We did not have the saloon in those old days, when I did my traveling. Whenever we did not care to remain on the open deck there was no parlor to which we could go. No orchestra helped to while away our hours. No piano or organ added the charm of music to our journey.”
“But you had a state room to which you could retire,” replied his companion, as they came to the rooms numbered 240 and 242, which numbers were on the keys that they had obtained at the purser’s.
“Yes,” said his uncle, “a tiny room, six feet by six, with narrow little berths, and two small stools. I can assure you that it was nothing like these comfortable sleeping rooms, brilliantly lighted, with regulation beds, convenient toilet arrangements, and carpeted floors. However, I do not imagine that the machinery will let me sleep any better now than then.”
The next morning, as the travelers went down to breakfast, the younger man asked, “Well, uncle, how did you sleep?”
“Never better,” was the reply. “I tell you, Henry, I want to look at the machinery, after breakfast. It must be somewhat unlike the engine of my day, or the boat, large though it is, would have more of a jar.”
When the two men stood above the mammoth engine and noted the smooth working parts, the regular and even motion of the great piston rods in and out of the cylinders, the quietness and gentleness with which each movement took place, the uncle said: “More improvements have been made on the engine of forty years ago than had then been made on that of the Clermont. And we used to think that the steamboats of our day were as much superior to Fulton’s boat as his was ahead of Fitch’s steam-moved paddles.”
We cannot take note of all the novel sensations that came to the old missionary, nor can we pause to relate many of the conversations between the two men. We can record a few only of the greater changes which were discussed as they continued their journey, and mention some of the comments called forth by the scenes through which Mr. Greenleaf was passing.
On the afternoon of the second day the steamboat passed through the locks of the canal at Sault Ste. Marie.
“Uncle,” remarked the drummer, “how does this canal compare with the Delaware and Hudson canal, with which you were familiar?”
“How can they be compared?” replied his uncle. “That was a long trench, hardly more than a scratch on the surface of the ground. This is broad and deep, though not long.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Towne, “but there is no new principle here. This canal is somewhat wider and deeper; its locks and gates are somewhat larger. Still it is only a canal.”
“But we could not make such a hole in our day. We could not afford to hire men enough to dig it; it must have required many years to make this excavation.”
“Oh; this canal was not made as large as this when it was first built. It has been enlarged since. But you know that we do not do all our digging now by hand. Steam shovels do the work for us. That gives us a great advantage over the day laborer with his pick and shovel.”
“What strikes me as most noticeable,” said Mr. Greenleaf, “is the number of vessels waiting on both sides of the lock. What causes such a crowd to-day, particularly?”
“This is no unusual number,” replied Mr. Towne. “You do not realize what a traffic there is on the great lakes. It is stated that the tonnage passing through this canal is greater than that through any other strait on the face of the globe. This growth is very recent and very rapid.”
“But what causes the traffic and where are all the vessels going?” asked the missionary.
“The great bulk of the freight,” answered the younger man, “is grain from the Northwest, and iron, copper, coal, and lumber, now being obtained in vast quantities south of Lake Superior. So long as the steamboats can carry freight more cheaply than the steam cars, grain and ores will take this route. Sometime we shall have canals large enough for ocean steamers, which will connect the great lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. Then we can load our freight at Chicago or Duluth and not change it until it is unloaded at some English or European port.”
The next day, as the steamboat was lying at the wharf at Detroit, conversation was turned to the great ferryboats plying across the river.
“I notice great changes in the steam ferries, since last I crossed the North River at New York,” remarked Mr. Greenleaf.
“Yes,” was the reply, “but you see only improvements. The ferryboats are larger and you might almost say clumsier; that is all.”
“I do not think so,” returned the missionary. “There must be some new invention to enable entire trains, with cars filled with passengers, to be carried across such a river as this.”
“Of course,” said his nephew, “the boat must be strong and large. However, the ferry docks have been improved. Now, when the boat is fastened, the wharf can be raised and lowered, until it is exactly on the level of the boat. Then not only passengers, but wagons and steam cars can pass from one to the other almost without knowledge of the change.”
“How far have these cars come that I see on the ferry?”
“That,” said the drummer, “is one of the through trains from Montreal to Chicago. The ferryboat next beyond, going the other way, bears a train containing cars bound for New York and Boston.”
“Well, well! This is convenient,” said the missionary. “The passengers are saved much trouble by not being required to gather up all their traveling bundles, leave the cars for the boat, and the boat for a new set of cars. We should have thought this a great gain, forty years ago.”
“But do you realize what an inconvenience this ferry causes? Much time is wasted, not only because of the slow movement of the boats, but also from the necessary delays in embarking and disembarking the cars.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But what would you do? Here is the river and it is too wide for a bridge.”
“Oh, no!” replied Mr. Towne. “The bridge could be built, but it would be expensive and would not pay. But what do you think of a tunnel?”
“A tunnel? What do you mean?” said the other man, with a touch of surprise in his voice for the first time. “A tunnel? Where? Not under the river?
“Yes,” answered his nephew, “a tunnel under the river. There is one, a few miles north, at Port Huron. There the train, instead of being delayed hours by the ferry, passes at almost full speed directly under the river, proceeding on its way as though the river were not there.”
“Is not that something new?” asked Mr. Greenleaf.
“Yes. It was opened only a half-dozen years ago. It is said to be the greatest river tunnel in the world. It is a little over a mile long and is fifteen feet below the bed of the St. Clair River. Half a mile of it is directly under the water, yet no one passing through it would realize that it was different from any one of the hundreds of tunnels through which the railroads of this country pass. It is but a natural following out of such tunnels as the five-mile tunnel under the Hoosac Mountains in Massachusetts, or the three-quarter-mile tunnels in Jersey City, or the score of tunnels on the line of the Southern Railway over the Blue Ridge in North Carolina. It is a great tunnel to-day, of course, but when the North River tunnel is finished, from New York to Jersey City, this will be of little account in comparison.”
Detroit was soon left, Lake Erie was reached, and night came on. The next morning the steamboat reached its journey’s end at Buffalo. Our friends hastened across the city and were soon seated in a sleeper, on the train for New York.
CHAPTER VIII.
MODERN LAND TRAVEL.
Soon after the train had started from the Buffalo station conversation began between Mr. Greenleaf and his nephew. “The steam is the same as in my day,” remarked the former; “the steam pushes the piston in just the same way; there is no change in this direction. But all else is new.”
“Yes,” said the drummer, “you must see great changes; tell me some of them.”
“Very well,” was the reply. “The most noticeable thing about a railroad train used to be the jerking motion. We seemed to be going ‘bump-i-ty-bump’ all the time; and starting and stopping a train would often throw us off our feet.”
“Various improvements,” said Mr. Towne, “have helped to produce this easy-riding motion. The roadbeds are laid with much greater care—long experience and numerous experiments have provided us with the best rails; but more especially the absence of jar is due to steel springs, and also to the breaks and couplers. When one car was attached to another by two bolts thrust through a ring, nothing was firm, as the bolts would slide forward and back with every motion of the car. The new automatic couplers hold the two cars more firmly together. Again, the old hand brakes have been replaced by the automatic air brake.”
“Yes, I have heard of that, but I do not understand it. Can you explain it to me?”
“I think so. George Westinghouse, Jr., about thirty years ago, took out a patent for the air brake. This alone has been enough to make him famous, although he has twelve hundred patents issued in his name. The Westinghouse air brake is now almost universally used. Some of the surplus steam in the locomotive pumps air into tanks in the cars, which air presses upon a piston, that moves a rod against the brakes. Thus the brakes can be held against the wheels with great force at the will of the engineer.”
“Well, the next thing that I notice,” said the missionary, “is the improved comfort of the passengers. The cinders filled the cars in the old days; the air within was always bad; the candles gave more smoke than light; and in winter, the stoves at the end of the cars gave no heat in the center.”
“Yes, all that is changed,” replied the younger man. “Spark arresters keep out the cinders; the overhead ventilators give us good air; bright light, almost like that of day, surrounds us in the evening; and, when wanted, the engine supplies steam in pipes running the entire length of the car, which gives even and ample heat.”
“This car is wider than ours used to be, is it not?” queried Mr. Greenleaf.
“Yes,” was the reply. “When the first Pullman sleeping car, the ‘Pioneer,’ was run on the Chicago and Alton Railroad, it was wider and higher than the ordinary coaches. Several bridges had to be raised to allow the car to pass under; and all the station platforms were altered to permit it to pass. Since then, as Pullmans and Wagners have come into use on so many roads, many changes in bridges have been found necessary, and station platforms have almost universally been cut down to the ground.”
“Did I understand you to say that this is a sleeper?” asked Mr. Greenleaf. “Our sleeping cars, few and far between as they were, had berths or bunks three tiers high, fitted in on each side of the car, making it useless except to sleep in.”
“That was the great feature of Mr. Pullman’s invention,” was the reply. “He saw that few railroad companies would care to go to the expense of running cars which could only be used for sleeping purposes. He was familiar with the ’old-fashioned, stuffy cars, where men sat in stiff-backed seats and dozed and yawned and waited for morning. By putting people to sleep this wide-awake man made a fortune.’ You are sitting on the bed now. But here comes the porter to make up the berths next to us. The lady wishes to put her little boy to sleep.”
With much interest Mr. Greenleaf watched the porter make a sleeping room out of a sitting room. In a trice the cushions in the seats and backs were twisted about and laid from seat to seat, making a bed. With a jump, the porter stood on the arm of the seat, and turned a knob in the roof. Down came another bed, a few feet above the first. From this was pulled a triangular board which was placed between the beds and the next seats. Sheets, blankets, and pillows, which had been shut up in the roof, were soon properly spread out, and two good beds were the result. Curtains were found above the upper bed, which, hung upon poles, shut the beds off from the car aisle. Behind these the mother undressed her child and put him to bed.
Just at this moment a man went through the car crying “First call for dinner.” Mr. Towne immediately jumped to his feet and said, “Let us go and get good seats.”
“You have forgotten your hat, Henry,” said his uncle.
“I don’t need it. Come, hurry,” said Henry.
Perplexed, the old man followed his nephew through three cars to the dining car, where they were soon seated at a little table, in front of a large window, from which everything they passed could be seen. It is not necessary to describe the dining room, for it was merely a well-furnished restaurant. The men ordered what they desired, and settled back to wait until their dinner was brought on.
“How is it, Henry, that we did not feel the wind as we passed from car to car? You hurried me so fast that I did not have time to notice.”
“Don’t you see,” said the drummer, “how attaching a dining car to a train required another change also? There used to be a rule of every railroad company forbidding the passengers to go from car to car while the train was in motion. When the company put on the ‘diner,’ it invited the people to break its own rule. So vestibule cars came next. Side doors are built on the car platforms and with these closed the regular car doors can be left open. Thus one can walk the entire length of the train, through sleeper, parlor car, dining car, smoking saloon, library, bath room, barber shop, and writing room, without once going out of doors. This is a modern vestibule train.”
One more interesting discussion took place the next morning as they were nearing New York City.
“Tell me something about modern bridges,” said Mr. Greenleaf.
“Oh! I am afraid that is too long a story to tell during the time that we have left. There seems to be no limit to the engineering skill of to-day. The world-famous structures are being surpassed every little while by new ones. To-morrow you must see the Brooklyn Bridge. We have supposed that this great suspension bridge with its sixteen hundred feet from tower to tower was about the limit. But the cantilever bridge over the Forth in Scotland has a span more than a hundred feet longer than the East River bridge. When the North River bridge is built to Jersey City, with its proposed span of three thousand feet, these other great bridges will be small in comparison.
“Our bridges are mostly of steel rather than wood nowadays,” he continued. “Since the Portage viaduct on the Erie road, which was eight hundred feet long and two hundred and thirty feet above the river, and contained a million and a half feet of lumber, was wholly burned in 1875, wooden bridges have usually been but temporary affairs. In these days of frequent trains, the engineer’s skill is needed on the shorter bridges as well as on these enormous structures. Iron towers were put in place of stone towers, and iron beams in place of wooden ones, at the Niagara Suspension Bridge, without interfering with the trains. I read the other day how a new iron bridge took the place of an old wooden one. It was built across the river by the side of the railroad track; during the night, when there was less travel than during the daytime, the old bridge was moved off, the new one took its place, and in a few minutes trains were running over it. Whatever engineering work is needed nowadays, some one will soon be found prepared to provide it.”
At last the train entered the long cut and series of tunnels, which finally brought it to the Grand Central station on Forty-Second Street, New York City. Hurried along by the crowd, the aged sightseer hardly had an opportunity to make a remark about the immensity and grandeur of the brick station.
“But this station is poor and far behind the times,” said Mr. Towne. “You should see some of the more modern ones that have recently been erected, or wait for the new New York station, which must soon be built. But let us hasten; I want to get home.”
The young drummer, accustomed to travel of all kinds, familiar with crowds, and wont to make his way anywhere, did not realize that his companion was having difficulty in keeping up with him as he hastened along the street. Receiving no answer to a question that he asked, he glanced around to find that his uncle was not with him. Inwardly accusing himself of remissness in forgetting his companion’s lack of experience, he turned and rapidly retraced his steps. He found his uncle standing on a corner, not daring to cross the street; to the relief of the latter, he decided to take a horse car across town.
Leaving the car at Sixth Avenue, the two men climbed the stairs to the elevated road. They had hardly purchased their tickets when a train drew up at the little station and a minute afterward they were off for Harlem. The horse-car ride, followed by that on the elevated road, started a discussion concerning street-car traffic. The horse car was remembered by the old missionary, who remarked that it came before the steam railroad.
Mr. Towne replied, “Yes. But its day is nearly over. New York City does not seem to have fully outgrown this slow street travel, but elsewhere more rapid transit is the rule. New York is coming to it, however. The elevated roads cannot carry all the travel—the horse cars are too slow—the size of the city demands something more than we now have.”
“What do you expect will be done?” asked Mr. Greenleaf.
“We shall have to build a tunnel, an underground railway, a subway. Of course our roads must be either above ground, on the ground level, or below ground. The elevated roads have shown themselves to be unpleasant and annoying. It is not agreeable to look into the upper-story windows of dwellings, nor do people enjoy living on streets where the elevated road runs. Rapid transit is impossible in the street, where cross streets continually delay the cars, and where wagons and carriages of all sorts are regularly passing. The subway is the best method, the only decent way left open.”
“Would not such a tunnel be dark and damp, dirty and unhealthy in every sense?” asked his uncle.
“Oh! no,” was the reply. “Boston has recently completed a subway, something like a mile and a half long, with two branches, which has proved its great advantages. Sheltered in winter, cool in summer, never blocked by teams nor interfered with by snow or ice, brilliantly lighted, with air wholesome and dry, and less liable to accidents than any other device yet tested, the Boston Subway is a great success.
“Did you say that there was no smoke?” again asked Mr. Greenleaf.
“No smoke at all. The cars are run by electricity, and cinders are therefore entirely absent.”
“Are electric cars coming into general use?” was the next question.
“Yes; throughout the country,” replied Mr. Towne. “New York even now has its electric roads up town. Horse cars have been replaced by electric cars in almost every city. Cable cars are used in some places, but the electric is preferred. The last few years have seen a wonderful development in electricity in every way, but in no respect greater than in the increase of electric railways. For shorter lines they are competing with the steam cars, and seem to be winning the day. Some steam roads are equipping their lines for electric service, and report successful results so far as tried. Whether the electric car will wholly replace the steam car, time only will tell.”
“What a relief it must be to ride in a street car and not be obliged to pity the poor horses as they tug and strain to pull the heavy loads!” added the old missionary.
“You know, I suppose,” replied the drummer, “that not only from the street cars, but in other ways the horse is being retired. The bicycle has supplanted the horse and buggy for use in thousands of families, besides being where horses could never be afforded. And now we have automobiles, or horseless carriages, run by gasoline, naphtha, or electric motors. These are expensive, and comparatively few can yet afford them for private use. They are being used to a considerable extent in large cities, especially here in New York, for public service or for the delivery of goods from our large stores. But the expenses will gradually lessen, and perhaps the day when the horse is to rest has begun.”
“All this is wonderful,” remarked his uncle. “We may walk still, if we wish. We may ride a horse or drive a carriage. We may take the stagecoach, or a private coach, or tally-ho. We may journey across the continent in palace steam cars. We may ride through a city on horse cars, or cable cars, or electric cars. We may travel on elevated tracks or underground. We may pedal our bicycles or ride in horseless carriages. We find good carriage roads, and excellent roadbeds for our railroads. Bridges and tunnels carry us over and under rivers, across ravines and through mountains. On the water, the canoe and the rowboat, the sailing vessel and the steamship, are at our disposal. Naphtha launches and electric yachts glide across the water. Harbors are dredged, lighthouses are erected, breakwaters are constructed, and canals are built, all for the use of travelers and commerce. The last years of the nineteenth century form an era in travel of which the world never dreamed.”
SECTION VI.—LETTERS.
Chapter I.
LANGUAGE.
What is the difference between a dog and a boy, or, rather, what is the difference between the brute creation and mankind? It is as natural for a dog to think as for a boy; he sees and hears and touches, smells and tastes as well as does the boy; he remembers and, in a certain way, he may be said to reason; he loves and hates and fears; he is pleased and frightened; is revengeful; has his likes and dislikes, his tastes and prejudices; indeed, a dog, or a horse, or an elephant has many points of resemblance to a boy or a man. But there are essential points of difference.
One of the most important differences is that man has the power of speech which is not possessed by the brute creation. This power of speech is a great boon to mankind, one held in common by all peoples in all ages.
Talking or conversation suggests at least two persons, the speaker and the hearer, and involves the use of the vocal organs on the part of the talker and the ear, the instrument of hearing, on the part of the listener. This power of communicating thought, as has been said, is universal with the human race.
In childhood one learns the language of his parents and of the people where he lives. In this country, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia, most of the people speak the English language; in France, the French tongue; in Russia, the Russian; in Germany, the German; in Turkey, the Arabic; and so on. This common speech forms a great bond of unity between all people of the same race, and by means of it we communicate our ideas one to another.
There is another language differing widely from the gift of speech, yet quite as important for the welfare of the human race. Barbarous and savage tribes are dependent upon speech alone, but in civilized countries the people have acquired another art, that of writing, or of using a written language. In speech arbitrary sounds represent ideas. In writing arbitrary symbols or characters, called letters and words, are used. They are observed by the eye and not by the ear. This written language is as extended, as sharp, as definite, as full and complete, as is the language of speech. Moreover, it has a great advantage over speech. Words can be spoken only to a person immediately present, but words can be written and conveyed to one who is absent. No matter how far apart two persons are, each can communicate his ideas to the other just as well as if they were near.
This written language has still greater usefulness. By means of it wise men of all countries who have had great thoughts, thoughts of value to the whole human race, have been enabled to put those thoughts into a permanent form. Thus they have been preserved and handed down from generation to generation, so that we inherit to-day the wealth of all the ages. We can make ourselves familiar with the great thoughts uttered by Jesus, by Socrates, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Milton, Burke, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Emerson, Longfellow, and countless others, so that they become our own property. Moreover, when the eye gathers up these grand truths from the printed page, they are not absorbed, they still remain there. They may be used and transmitted again and again in the same book and upon the same page, even to future generations.
On one occasion King Solomon said: “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” The second part of this sentence is certainly very true, but that is not saying anything against study, for anything that is worth doing is a cause of weariness. When we get weary the best thing is to get thoroughly rested, and after that to work until we become weary again. It does not injure a strong, well person to get healthily tired; on the contrary, the weariness which comes from normal exercise of the hands or the brain is better than inactive ease.
What did Solomon mean when he made this sage remark, “Of making many books there is no end”? Under what circumstances was the remark made? We may not be able to answer the last question literally, but we may be permitted to imagine the circumstances. Let us suppose that the Queen of Sheba had made her famous visit to Jerusalem. She had heard in her own country of the acts and the wisdom of Solomon, and had come to the kingdom of Israel to see, with her own eyes, if these reports were true. She heard his wisdom from his own lips, for he “told her all her questions.”
Then the Queen of Sheba had said to Solomon: “It was a true report which I heard in mine own land of thine acts, and of thy wisdom: howbeit, I believed not their words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and, behold, the one half of the greatness of thy wisdom was not told me; for thou exceedest the fame that I heard. Happy are thy men, and happy are these thy servants, which stand continually before thee, and hear thy wisdom. Blessed be the Lord thy God, which delighted in thee to set thee on his throne, to be king for the Lord thy God.”
The Queen had gone home, and early one morning Solomon had risen from his couch and gone up to the flat roof of his house on Mount Zion just as the sun was rising. There in his meditations he thought to himself that the Queen of Sheba had paid him great honor and that he ought in courtesy to send her a suitable present. What should it be? He was impressed with the idea that he would send her a copy of the sacred books then in the keeping of the high priest. What present could be more appropriate, more honorable to him, more welcome to her, or more acceptable to Jehovah, the God of his people Israel?
If he sent her a copy of these books it surely ought to be a perfect copy. Books were not printed in those days; they were written with the pen, or rather with the stylus. Solomon called a servant and said to him, “Send for the chief of the scribes. Bring him here.” He came, and the king directed him to select only those scribes that could do perfect work, and to set them at the task of making the finest possible copy of the books of Moses and the other sacred books.
Month after month went by, until finally the work was finished and the scribes were ushered into the royal presence, bearing in their arms the product of their long-continued labor. Roll after roll of the finest parchment was submitted to Solomon for inspection. Each skin began with an illuminated letter, and the whole work was done in the highest style of the art.
Well pleased was Solomon when these rolls were all properly packed, secured from rain, placed upon the backs of camels, and the caravan, with a military escort, had set out for the distant land of Sheba. Then again in the gray of the morning Solomon was at his meditations upon the housetop. Again he called a messenger who should summon to his presence the chief of the scribes.
“What was the cost of making the copy of our sacred writings for the Queen of Sheba? How many shekels have been paid to the scribes for their work?”
When the chief scribe had found out he reported it to the king. “Is it indeed so much?” said the king; and when he had thought how many months it had taken for that large number of scribes to make a single copy of the sacred books, then he exclaimed: “Of making many books there is no end.”
CHAPTER II.
THE PRINTING PRESS.
The times have changed since King Solomon’s day. The art of printing has been discovered. Now it would be possible to make not merely one copy but thousands of copies, not only of the sacred books of the Jews in the time of Solomon, but of the entire Bible as we have it to-day. Not in the months required by the Jewish scribes, but in a single month, thousands of copies of the whole Bible could be printed from the type set in a single establishment in Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. Surely, before the art of printing one might truly say, “Of making books there is no end.” But to-day our modern press sends out its volumes by millions, so that no longer is there any truth in this apparently wise statement of Solomon. It was true in his day, but times have changed.
Two visitors were wending their way through Machinery Hall at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Clatter, clatter, clatter—clatter, clatter, clatter—jigger, jigger, jigger—jigger, jigger, jigger. What was that great machine that they were approaching? It was the Walter press, invented in London for the London Times,—“The Thunderer.” Well, well! the press does thunder, literally, does it not? It was printing that day’s issue of the New York Times, and there were coming from that press about twelve thousand copies of the double-size sheet in an hour. Well might it make a racket if it accomplished such a work as that.
After the visitors were done admiring it they passed on, and a little beyond came suddenly upon another printing press which was doing its work in comparative silence. Before them stood a double Hoe perfecting press, printing the Philadelphia Times, turning off thirty thousand copies per hour. These came out from the machine, folded ready for the wrappers or for the newsboy to take upon his arm and run out into the street to sell! So marvelous was the work of the American press. The original invention was surprising, but the progress that has been made in making type, setting it, electrotyping and inking, and making paper, as well as in the presswork, is beyond the power of description.
There are vague, indefinite stories of printing by the Chinese a thousand years before Christ. The Greeks and Romans made metal stamps with characters engraved in relief. It was not, however, until about the middle of the fifteenth century that movable types were made with which books could be printed. The period between 1450 and 1500 witnessed a rapid advance of civilization in Europe. It was marked by a great revival of classical learning and art, and announced the dawn of modern civilization. At that time Europe began to come out into the light of reason, learning, and both civil and religious liberty. The mariner’s compass had been invented; gunpowder had been discovered; and now the art of printing came into use. It would seem that no one man invented this art in the way that Stephenson invented the locomotive and Whitney the cotton gin. It grew up, one man doing a little, and another something more, until the system was brought to its present wonderful efficiency.
It has been said that Coster of Haarlem, Holland, invented wooden types about 1428 and metal types a little later. About 1440 John Faust did a little printing, and others also have claimed the invention. John Gutenberg is the only claimant who is known to have received honor during his life time as the true inventor. The evidence would seem to show that he was engaged in his secret process before the year 1440. He certainly had a printing office in 1448 at Mentz. About this time Faust came into possession of this printing office and managed it until his death. Among the earliest books printed were, “Letters of Indulgence,” two editions of the Bible, and a Latin dictionary.
John Baskerville, an Englishman, devoted his life and fortune to the improvement of printing. He was born in 1706 and died in 1775. He published an edition of Vergil in royal quarto, which was then and is still considered a wonderful specimen of beautiful printing. His English Bible, Book of Common Prayer, and editions of various classics are still admired and greatly sought. A Baskerville classic is difficult to find in these days and it commands a high price; when one is found it shows great skill, judgment, and taste.
Baskerville made types much superior in distinctness and elegance to any that had previously been used. He improved greatly the lines of the letters, their style and appearance, making them as artistic as possible. To this end he planned in detail the style of all type which he used. He experimented also in the manufacture of ink to get that which had the most permanent color. He superintended the manufacture of the paper he used in order to obtain a finished surface best adapted to receive the impressions of the type.
Printing in America during the colonial days was subject to much difficulty. The first printing press in our country was set up at Cambridge in the house of the president of Harvard College, Rev. Henry Dunster, in 1639. Eliot’s Bible in the Indian language was printed upon this press between 1660 and 1663. This same printing establishment is still in existence and has been known for many years as the University Press.
The first Bible printed in America in any European language was a German Bible issued in 1743 by Christopher Sower in Germantown, Pennsylvania. This was a wonderful work for those early days. It was a large quarto Bible, consisting of 1,284 pages, and it took four years to complete the printing of it.
How quaint the early printing press would appear to us of to-day! It was used with very little change for one hundred and fifty years. The “forms” of type were placed upon wood or stone beds surrounded by frames called “coffins,” moved in and out by hand with great labor, and after each impression the platen which had pressed the paper down upon the type had to be screwed up again with a bar. The presses which Benjamin Franklin used were made with wooden framework of the simplest possible construction. Iron frames were first used in England just one hundred years ago.
Franklin, in his Autobiography, tells the story of his attempt to set up a printing establishment in Philadelphia. At first he found it difficult to obtain any work, but finally he was given the job of printing forty sheets of a “History of the Friends.” The price offered was low, but Franklin and his partner, Meredith, decided to accept it as a beginning.
Franklin set up the type for a sheet each day, while Meredith “worked it off at the press” the next day. The type had to be distributed every evening in order that it might be ready for the next day’s composition. Therefore it was often late at night before Franklin finished his day’s task, perhaps eleven o’clock or even later.
Other little jobs came in to delay the printers, but Franklin was determined to do a sheet a day of the history. One night, just as his work was done, one of the forms was accidentally broken, and two pages “reduced to pi.” Franklin, late as it was, distributed the pi and composed the form again before going to bed.
Such industry and perseverance were sure to bring success in the end. Though, in the clubs and markets, every one was saying that the establishment must fail, since the two other printers in town had barely enough to do, yet Dr. Baird was nearer right; he used to say: “The industry of that Franklin is superior to any I ever saw of the kind; I see him at work when I go home from the club, and he is at work again before his neighbors are out of bed.”
To-day we have a great variety of printing presses which embody both science and art in skillful fashion. These range from the smallest size of hand presses, through numberless grades, varying in size, strength, power, rapidity, and ease of running, to the modern newspaper press and folder and the wonderful color printing press. One of the newspaper presses will print at one impression, from a single set of stereotype plates, papers of four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, or sixteen pages, at the rate of twelve thousand per hour, all cut at the top, pasted, and folded, with the supplement inserted at its proper place. With duplicate sets of plates, it will print sets of four, six, or eight page papers at the rate of twenty-four thousand per hour.
Let us look for a moment at the method of inking the type. Until a comparatively recent date the inking was all done by hand, by means of an inking pad. The ink is now spread over the type with almost perfect regularity by means of flexible rollers.
Great improvements have been made in typesetting. Several late inventions largely take the place of the old-fashioned setting by hand. One of these which is much used in newspaper work, and to some extent upon books and magazines, is called the linotype. By pressing the key of the proper letter upon a keyboard arranged something like a typewriter, the letter is pushed down, and when a line of letters and words has been completed, and the words properly spaced, this matrix is pressed down upon the melted type metal. The line is already stereotyped for use.
The recent processes of stereotyping and electrotyping have added greatly to the cheapness, accuracy, and beauty of printing. Nearly all books formerly printed from movable type are now either stereotyped or electrotyped, so that edition after edition may be printed from the same plates.
The art of printing has been called the “Divine Art.” It is “the art preservative of all arts.” To a large extent all civilization depends upon the art of printing.
CHAPTER III.
THE POSTAL SYSTEM.
We have already seen that letters may be written and sent by mail to distant countries or cities. To send a letter to any place in our own country will cost us but two cents; to any country in Europe, but five cents. Indeed, we may send a letter to any one of the countries within the postal league,—and this includes most of the countries of Asia and South America, some parts of Africa and many islands of the sea,—for the same simple postage of five cents.
But the time was when nothing of the kind could have been done. In the “long ago” there was no post-office system in any country; no mails, regular or irregular, were sent from one place to another.
The modern postal system evidently grew out of the practice among kings of sending couriers to carry messages from one to another. In the early times some powerful rulers organized a staff of government couriers. After a time it came about that these government couriers began to carry letters from private individuals of high rank to their friends. So, in the process of time, this grew into a permanent system; that is, the government couriers were accustomed to carry private correspondence as well as the missives of the king.
This transmission of letters by special couriers sent out by the king dates back to very early times. Explorations in Egypt have brought to light specimens of these letters dating back to a period of two thousand and even three thousand years ago. Upon what do you suppose those letters, sent so long ago and preserved to the present time, were written? They could not have been written upon paper, for paper was not known in those days, and could not have been preserved through so many ages; neither were they written upon parchment or upon the skins of animals. These letters which have stood the test of time for twenty or twenty-five centuries were written upon tablets of clay or of stone.
The development of the modern postal system seems to have been begun in Great Britain. Some of the account books of the kings of England who lived about six hundred years ago have been preserved to the present time. In these are found records of letter-carrying on regular lines and at stated intervals. From this beginning the English postal system increased in efficiency and importance; when the colonists came to America they early made arrangements for the carrying of letters.
The records of the General Court of Massachusetts show that in 1639 it was enacted “that notice be given Richard Fairbanks that his house in Boston is to be the place appointed for all letters which are brought from beyond the seas or are to be sent thither to be left with him, and he is to care for them, that they are to be delivered or sent according to the directions; he is allowed for every letter a penny, and must answer all mistakes from his own neglect of this kind.” In 1657 the colonial law of Virginia required “that every planter was to provide a messenger to convey the dispatches as they arrived, to the next plantation and so on, paying and forfeiting a hogshead of tobacco for default.”
In 1672 it was agreed between some of the colonies along the coast that a post be sent once a month from New York to Boston. How should we be able to-day to transact business under such conditions? Now we have many mails a day between these two cities. Gradually the postal system was extended, and in 1730, Colonel Spotswood of Virginia was made Postmaster-General of the colonies by the British Government. In 1753, Dr. Franklin was made Postmaster-General. Franklin was very efficient in this office; he visited nearly all of the offices in the country in person, and introduced many improvements. In 1774, by his loyalty to the colonies, Franklin incurred the enmity of the British Government and was dismissed from the office. The next year, however, he was appointed Postmaster-General by the Continental Congress. In 1792, regular rates of letter postage were fixed by Congress, based on the distance to be sent.
The writer remembers that when he was a boy he received a letter from his mother fifteen miles away for which he had to pay six cents postage. At another time a letter was received from his sister who was a little over thirty miles away, for which he had to pay eight cents; and when a schoolmate who lived more than sixty miles distant sent him a letter, he had to pay the postmaster ten cents in order to get it. These letters were written on coarse, heavy paper with quill pens. The letter was folded, and the fold of one side was tucked into the fold of the other side so as to leave but one thickness of paper outside of that fold. The letter was sealed by a wafer or by sealing wax dropped upon the paper where the two edges came together, and stamped with a seal. On the opposite side the letter was properly addressed. There were no envelopes in those days.
See what changes have taken place within the memory of persons still living. To-day we write a letter, fold it, insert it in an envelope, and place on it a two-cent stamp; the carrier comes to the house, puts the letter in his pouch, carries it to the post office, and it is sent to California or any of the United States, Mexico or Canada, and delivered to the person to whom it is addressed.
Postage stamps were not used on mail matter by government direction until the year 1840, and it was not until 1847 that the Government issued the first stamps for general use. Prior to that, however, individual postmasters, on their own responsibility, had printed and sold postage stamps. Within a few years their use became quite general in many countries.
About the year 1850, it was noticed that stamps of different colors and design were received in the mails from various parts of the world. Then the idea of collecting stamps came into vogue. After a time children and young people generally began to collect and to study stamps. Every minute variation of paper, with style of printing, gum, water mark, and other differences was considered as making a different issue, and in some cases as many as fifty distinct styles of a single stamp have been collected.
An extra fee of ten cents secures the immediate special delivery by messenger of any letter thus sent. Merchandise parcels can be sent as well as letters and papers. There is a money order system and at the present time a great deal of thought is put upon the question of post-office savings banks, which have already been successfully established in Great Britain and other countries of Europe.
By the Constitution of the United States, Congress has power “to establish post-offices and post-roads.” Before roads were common between one State and another, the mail was carried on horseback. Later, mail wagons were used to convey the mails from one office to another. As stagecoaches multiplied they were used as mail wagons, the Government paying the stage company a sum of money for carrying the mail pouches.
The general introduction of railroads modified this system of mail carriage. Almost every railroad has become a postal road, the mail being carried upon its trains. Most of the trains upon the main lines of railroads have each a postal car fitted up with the proper conveniences for receiving and delivering the mail at the various stations and sorting it while the train is moving.
Suppose a mail pouch to be received at New Haven; before reaching Bridgeport its contents are sorted; all that is to go to Bridgeport is put into a separate pouch and dropped off at that place; that which is to go to Greenwich is put into another pouch and left there, and so on. The mail of New York City is put into various pouches according to its destination. The mail matter for the sub-offices, like Station A and Station B, is put into separate pouches and sent from the railroad station on 42d Street directly to these offices, while that for the central office is so sorted that there is no delay in sending it out after its arrival at the office. The letters for lock boxes are placed together by sections, while those for carriers are put up in divisions so as to be delivered at once to the several carriers. Meantime mail matter which is to go beyond New York is put into proper pouches so that one can be dropped off at Trenton, another at Philadelphia, and so on.
It will readily be seen that vast improvements have been made in postal arrangements. The condition of the United States postal system has been greatly improved each year. It seems almost marvelous that the mail service is so reliable and that the transmission of mail matter is so expeditious and satisfactory. If mail matter should happen to be lost, which is very rarely the case, the facilities for finding it are sometimes quite surprising, as the following incident will show.
A young lady in Iowa sent by mail a piece of crocheted edging to her cousin in Dorchester, which is a part of Boston, Massachusetts. The contents slipped out somewhere and the wrapper was delivered to its proper address, but without the edging. A letter had already been received in which the sending of the article was mentioned, so that the receiver knew from whom the wrapper came. She notified the sub-postmaster in charge of the Dorchester office, and he began the system of tracing by means of blanks prepared for that purpose. He wrote out the description of the article and the facts of the case, and sent these blanks to the postmaster at Boston. The Boston postmaster forwarded them to Chicago; from Chicago the blanks were sent to the several offices west of Chicago until they reached the point of departure, in Iowa. No trace was found to answer the description, and the blanks came back to Chicago. They were then sent eastward. At Cleveland the missing article was found and forwarded to the postmaster at Chicago, whence the blanks had last been sent out. The Chicago postmaster forwarded the same to Boston with the missing article; from Boston the description and the merchandise were sent to Dorchester. Meantime the family had moved to Salem, and the Dorchester postmaster forwarded them to Salem. The receiver secured the missing article and receipted for the same, while the description with its various entries of travel, from Dorchester to Boston, from Boston to Chicago, from Chicago to the various offices in Iowa, then back to Chicago, thence to the different offices as far as Cleveland, and then from Cleveland to Chicago, Boston, Dorchester, and Salem, furnished a document of considerable interest.
In 1790 there were 70 post offices and 1,875 miles of post roads. That year the number of letters and papers delivered did not exceed 2,000,000. In 1890, one hundred years afterward, there were more than 65,000 post offices and more than 30,000 mail routes. During that year more than 10,000,000,000 pieces of mail matter were handled. The receipts and expenditures of the post-office department in the United States amount annually to about $75,000,000.
This résumé of the postal service plainly shows the energy, enterprise, and intelligence of our people, the success attained by our Government, and the tremendous growth and development of our country.
CHAPTER IV.
SIGNALING.
The transmission of letters from one point to another always requires time. Even when a letter is dropped into the post office it will not go until the next regular mail. It was long ago seen that occasions frequently arose when it was necessary to send messages quickly. This was especially important in times of war, when each army desired to know immediately the movements of the enemy. This necessity led to various devices for transmitting messages instantaneously. Any form of signaling would be satisfactory if the signals were visible to the eye of the distant observer.
The earliest method of signaling was the use of the beacon fire or the sending of messages by light. In the early colonial period in this country, during the anxious times of Indian hostilities, beacon poles were here and there set up and from them large kettles were suspended which held combustible matter. The burning of this material conveyed the intelligence that danger was at hand.
One of the earliest beacon poles was erected on Beacon Hill, in Boston, about 1634. A watchman was constantly at the place to give the signal on the approach of danger. That beacon pole was a tall mast, firmly supported, about seventy feet in height. Tree nails were driven into it to enable the watchman to ascend, and near its top an iron crane projected which supported an iron skeleton frame. In this frame was placed a barrel of tar to be fired when the occasion required the signal. This beacon was more than two hundred feet above the sea level, and the light of it, therefore, could be seen for a great distance inland. Many of the early settlements in New England were made upon the tops of hills in order that the people might the more quickly and easily see the approach of Indians and signal the news to other settlements by bonfires.
A second method of signaling was by the use of the semaphore. This was invented by Claude Chappe and was adopted by the French Government in 1794. It consists of an upright post, which supports a horizontal bar or arm, which can be put at various angles. In order to carry out this system of signaling, stations must previously be agreed upon and signal officers constantly on duty. If the intelligence was to be conveyed to a considerable distance intermediate stations must be had. The second station received the signal from the first and transmitted it to the third, and so on. This proved to be a very difficult operation and was never extensively used.
A third and successful form of signaling was by the motion of flags. During our Civil War the army made much use of military signals. The system was devised by Major Myer and was continued through the war, not only in the army but on naval vessels. When the stations were less than five miles apart signaling was considered to be at very short range. Messages have been sent ten miles by means of a pocket handkerchief attached to a twelve-foot rod. With the regular flags and staffs used by the signal corps during the war, signals were often read twenty-five miles away, and it is said that single words have been read at a distance of forty miles.
In the early spring of 1863 General Peck was in command of the Union forces at Suffolk, Virginia. He had under him about ten thousand men and had thoroughly fortified the place by a connected system of forts, redoubts, and breast-works. His outmost signal station was placed on an elevated plateau across the Nansemond River. This station was made by sawing off the top of a tall pine tree and placing thereon a small platform surrounded by a railing. The signal officer would tie his horse at the foot of the tree and mount to the platform by a rope ladder.
Early one morning in March, this signal officer suddenly observed the head of a column of troops emerging from the woods in the rear. This was the advance guard of two Confederate corps under General Longstreet. Instantly he caught up his signal flag and as quickly as possible signaled to the town the approach of the enemy. Picking up his signal book he hurried down the ladder, mounted his horse and galloped away. Before he could reach his saddle, however, the Confederates were within rifle range and fired at him. They did not succeed in hitting him and he escaped safely to his friends.
The signal had been seen and was quickly repeated to all parts of the fortified town. The drums instantly beat the long roll and, within five minutes from the time his signal was given, and before General Longstreet could swing out his light battery and open fire, the entire Federal force was under arms and the artillery in the nearest battery had opened a raking fire. The briskness of this fire from the Federal battery soon obliged Longstreet to withdraw his forces to the cover of the woods. Had it not been for the promptness of the signal officer it is possible that the town might have been captured.
A notable use of this system of army signals occurred in the campaign of General Miles against the Apaches in New Mexico and Arizona in 1886. He established a system of thirteen signal stations in that country, over which, during a period of four months, more than eighteen hundred messages were sent. The savages were surprised and confounded by the way intelligence of their movements became known hundreds of miles distant.
As early as 1861 Moses G. Farmer introduced a successful method of signaling which afterward was employed by the officers of the United States Coast Survey on Lake Superior. This system was by means of mirrors which were able to reflect the sunlight between stations ninety miles apart. This method is called the heliographic system. The French have used it among the islands of the Indian Ocean where the stations are on mountain peaks sometimes 135 miles apart. Even this long-range signaling has been surpassed by our own Signal Corps, which has succeeded in sending messages by our method from Mount Uncompahgre in Colorado to Mount Ellen in Utah, a distance of 183 miles. During the siege of Paris, messages by the use of the calcium light, concentrated and directed by lenses, were sent from one point to another.
A very unique form of signaling was employed by New York State at the opening of the Erie Canal, in 1825. The cannon, which had been captured by Commodore Perry at the time of his famous victory on Lake Erie, were placed at intervals along the line of the canal. When the first canal boat started from Buffalo, the first cannon was fired. When the sound was heard at the second cannon, that was discharged; and so on, the entire length of the canal. Two hours after the start at Buffalo the news had reached New York.
All these various methods of communication at long range have proved more or less objectionable and unsatisfactory. It was natural, therefore, that as soon as it was known that electricity could be conducted by wires from one place to another, experiments should be begun in the hope of finding some possible means of conveying intelligence by it. Perhaps the earliest suggestion was in a letter published in The Scots Magazine, of February, 1753. The letter was signed “C. M.”, which probably meant Charles Morrison, a young Scotch surgeon. He proposed to use as many insulated conductors as there were letters in the alphabet. Each wire was to represent one letter only, and the message would be sent by charging the several wires in succession so that the operator in receiving it would be obliged to notice the order of movement among the wires. From that simple beginning inventors proceeded to suggest first one thing and then another, but they found so many difficulties that it seemed impossible to overcome them all.
CHAPTER V.
THE TELEGRAPH.
On the second day of April, 1872, in the city of New York, the life of a benefactor of his race, an aged man who had seen more than fourscore years of mingled trial and triumph, was ended. That man was Prof. Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph. His name is as widely known the world over as that of Washington, or Cæsar, or Aristotle. His long life had been extremely checkered. He had passed through troubles, trials, anxieties, disappointments, bereavements; he had been subject to persecutions, losses, poverty, toil, discouragements; he had met with successes, gains, wealth, luxury, honors, fame; and finally the homage of republics, kingdoms, empires had been laid at his feet. He was never cast down, never unduly elated. He bore all his poverty and disappointments and wore all his honors and wealth with the “grace of a Christian and the calmness of a philosopher.”
Professor Morse was born at the foot of Breed’s Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts, April 27th, 1791. He was the oldest of three brothers. His father was a very distinguished man in his day; for more than thirty years the pastor of a church in Charlestown, a noted preacher, a good historian, the author of many books, and, particularly, the father of the science of geography in the United States. Professor Morse inherited from both his father and his mother those traits of character which enabled him to succeed in his great life work, in spite of discouragements, obstacles, and opposition. His ancestors were all noted for their “intelligence, energy, original thinking, perseverance, and integrity.”
How we would like to step into the little schoolroom and see Samuel at his first school. He was four years of age. His teacher was known as “Old Ma’am Rand,” an invalid who could not leave her chair. She governed the uneasy little urchins with a long rattan that would reach across the small room where she kept her school. At seven years of age Samuel was sent to Andover to a preparatory school, kept by Mr. Foster; here he fitted for Phillips Academy and, in that famous institution, under the direction of Mark Newman, he prepared for Yale College, where he was graduated in 1810.
While in college he was under the instruction of Jeremiah Day in natural philosophy and paid great attention to the subject of electricity, getting everything that was known about it at that time. Professor Day said: “Morse was often present in my laboratory during my preparatory arrangements and experiments, and thus was made acquainted with them.” On leaving college Morse had a burning ambition to be a portrait painter. He put himself under the instruction of Washington Allston, and went with him to England to pursue his favorite study. Is it not a little singular that Morse, who invented the telegraph, was a student under Allston, and that Robert Fulton, who invented the American steamboat, was a student under West, another famous American painter?
One day Mr. Allston introduced young Morse to Benjamin West, whose fame at that time was as wide as the world of art. West was in his studio painting his “Christ Rejected.” After a time he began a critical examination of Mr. Morse’s hands and at length said: “Let me tie you with this cord, and take that place while I paint the hands of our Saviour.” Morse of course complied; West finished his work and, releasing him, said, “You may say now, if you please, you had a hand in this picture.”
Morse had many interesting experiences in England during his four years’ study under Allston. He returned to America in 1815, and from that time for about fifteen years devoted himself to painting and inventing. He was for some time professor of the fine arts in the University of the City of New York, and during all these years he paid much attention to the study of electricity.
After three years spent in Europe, he returned in 1832 on the packet ship Sully. In the early part of the voyage, one day at the dinner table, the conversation turned to the subject of electro-magnetism. Professor Morse remarked: “If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted by electricity.”
His mind could think of nothing else; this one idea had taken complete possession of his soul; all that he had learned in former years, his experiments with Professor Day at Yale College, and his later studies, were all revived and drawn upon for ways and means to accomplish the thing he had in mind. He withdrew from the table and went upon deck. He was in mid-ocean, the sky everywhere above him, the sea everywhere below him. As the lightning comes out of the east and shines unto the west, so swift and so far was that instrument to work which was taking shape in his mind.
He could not fail, for patience, perseverance, and hope were hereditary traits in his character. He was just at the maturity of manhood, forty-one years of age; from that time this one idea absorbed his mind. All his powers were concentrated upon this one subject, the electric telegraph.
Now began a series of experiences such as probably no other man ever passed through. Scarcely did any one ever suffer so much, endure so much, fail so many times to accomplish his darling object, as did Morse. He completed his invention; he perfected it. He devised his alphabet consisting of long and short marks and dots; he obtained a patent for it; but he had not the money to put the invention in operation. Years of trouble and even abject poverty followed. He was so reduced at one time that he was without food for twenty-four hours. He applied to Congress again and again for a grant to enable him to build and put in operation a trial line between Baltimore and Washington.
On the morning of the 4th of March, 1843, as Professor Morse came down to breakfast, at his hotel in Washington, a young lady met him and said:
“I have come to congratulate you, sir.”
“For what, my dear friend?” asked the professor.
“On the passage of your bill.”
That bill was for the appropriation by Congress of $30,000 for the purpose of “constructing a line of electric-magnetic telegraph” under the direction of Professor Morse. The bill had passed the House some days before. It had been favorably reported to the Senate, but there were a hundred and forty bills before it upon the calendar which were to be taken up in their regular order. Professor Morse had remained in the Senate chamber till late in the evening. His friends informed him that it was impossible for the bill to be reached, as the Senate was to adjourn at midnight. He had, therefore, retired to his hotel thoroughly discouraged. Imagine then, if you can, his surprise and his joy when Miss Ellsworth the daughter of his friend, Hon. H. L. Ellsworth, of Connecticut, the commissioner of patents, told him that in the closing moments of the session the bill had passed without a division.
He had invented the recording electric telegraph eleven years before on board the packet ship Sully, upon his return voyage from Europe. He had spent eleven years in perfecting his plans, and in striving to secure the means for placing this great invention before the American people. During this time he had converted all his property into money and used all that money in pushing the enterprise. His only hope now was the bill before Congress. That bill had passed! With streaming eyes Professor Morse thanked Miss Ellsworth for her joyous announcement, and promised her that she should dictate the first message which should be sent over the wires.
And so it came to pass that on the 24th of May, 1844, these words furnished by Miss Ellsworth were telegraphed by Professor Morse from the Capitol at Washington, to his friend and assistant, Mr. Alfred Vail, at Baltimore, and immediately repeated back again:
“What hath God wrought!”
Well may we believe that the inventor spoke from the heart when he said years later: “No words could have been selected more expressive of the disposition of my own mind at that time, to ascribe all the honor to Him to whom it truly belongs.”
A singular circumstance brought this invention to the attention of the people of the whole country as hardly anything else could have done. The National Democratic convention was in session at Baltimore. They had unanimously nominated James K. Polk for the Presidency. They then nominated Silas Wright as their candidate for Vice-President. This information was immediately telegraphed by Mr. Vail to Professor Morse and at once communicated by him to Mr. Wright, then in the Senate chamber. A few minutes later the convention was astonished by receiving a telegram from Mr. Wright, declining the nomination. The members were incredulous and declared that it was a trick of Mr. Wright’s enemies. They voted to send a committee to Washington to interview Mr. Wright, and adjourned until the next morning.
On the return of this committee the truth of the message was corroborated, and thus this new telegraph, just completed, with a line just open for public patronage, was advertised through the delegates of this national convention to the people of every State in the Union. Astonishment was the sensation of the hour. The work bordered upon the miraculous. Ordinarily the motto is true that “To see is to believe,” but this result staggered everybody.
Although the invention was complete and now in practical operation, yet Professor Morse’s trials were not over. He received the congratulations of his friends, but he was also brought to the notice of his enemies. Let us pass over these trials and give attention to the more pleasant duty of considering his triumphs. The telegraph rapidly came into general use between the great cities of the country. Nor was its use confined to America; almost immediately it was successfully introduced into the various countries of Europe.
In 1854, the Supreme Court of the United States decided unanimously in favor of Professor Morse on all points involving his right to the claim of having been the original inventor of the electro-magnetic telegraph. In 1846, Yale College conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.). He was made a member of various learned societies in France, Belgium, and the United States. He received a diamond decoration from the Sultan of Turkey, a gold snuff box containing the Prussian gold medal for scientific merit, the great gold medal of Arts and Science from Würtemberg, and the great gold medal of Science and Art from the Emperor of Austria. Other honors were conferred upon him by Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Great Britain. At the instance of Napoleon III., Emperor of the French, representatives from various countries met in Paris in 1858 and decided upon a collective testimonial to Professor Morse, and the result of their deliberations was a vote of 400,000 francs.
No invention in ancient or modern times has wrought such a revolution—a revolution in all business, in commerce, trade, manufacturing and the mechanic arts, in politics, government, and in religious affairs. It is not given to mortal man to comprehend the greatness, to duly appreciate the grandeur, or to measure the utility of this remarkable invention. Over the mountains, through the valleys, under the seas flies the electric current, conveying all-important items of news from place to place, from country to country, from continent to continent.
“This electric chain from East to West
More than mere metal, more than mammon can,
Binds us together—kinsmen, in the best;
Brethren as one; and looking far beyond
The world in an electric union blest.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE ATLANTIC CABLE.
The growth of the telegraph was very much like that of the railroad. In 1844, the first line was opened, as we have seen, between Baltimore and Washington, a distance of forty miles. Within a few years lines were extended to the principal cities of the United States. In 1847, the Morse telegraph was introduced into Germany and rapidly spread over the entire continent of Europe. For the most part the wires were placed by the side of the railroad tracks,—wherever the railroad penetrated the telegraph went also.
Before many years had passed time was in a sense obliterated. Whatever happened in New York might be immediately known in Chicago. Incidents that took place in New Orleans might be narrated in Boston almost as soon as they occurred. London and Rome, Madrid and St. Petersburg, were united by the lightning rapidity of the telegraphic current. Meanwhile London and New York were as far apart as ever. News could be conveyed between the two hemispheres only by the comparatively slow-moving steamers. The next step in the development of communication must be the connecting of Europe with America by a telegraph wire.
The year before the passage of the act by which Congress provided Professor Morse with the means for completing the first telegraph line, he had stretched a wire under the water from Castle Garden, New York City, to Governor’s Island in the harbor. He had thus proved that telegraph messages could be sent under water. Ten years later a “submarine telegraph” was constructed, connecting England with the continent of Europe. Other short submarine cables were laid and successfully operated. To undertake, however, to lay a cable from Europe to America, thousands of miles long and hundreds of fathoms below the surface of the ocean, was an entirely different matter. A few enthusiastic men, among them Professor Morse, believed that it could be done, but the majority of people viewed it as an impossibility.
Was there any other way to connect the two worlds by an electric wire? Might it not be possible to build a telegraph line from Europe, starting from some point in Russia, across Northern Asia, to the Behring Straits? Might not a comparatively short cable be laid to Russian America (for Alaska had not then been sold to the United States), which could connect with a telegraph line to be erected across the continent to New York City?
Think of the magnitude of this proposition! In place of laying a submarine cable across the Atlantic Ocean it was proposed to traverse the entire circuit of the earth, except the Atlantic, by a telegraph line. It was proposed to construct across the wilds of Siberia, where no railroad had been built, a telegraph line thousands of miles in length; and, besides laying a cable, to build another line of great length from the Aleutian Islands to the Pacific coast of the United States, and thence across the Rockies, where at that time there was no railroad.
The undertaking was a great one, but a company was formed for the purpose of erecting a Russian-American telegraph. Experienced men were selected from English and American telegraphers and sent to Siberia to push the work. The prospects of success for the great enterprise were favorable when the news arrived that the long-talked-of Atlantic cable was at last laid and in complete working order. The Russian-American telegraph could not hope to compete with the cable, and the project was abandoned.
To Cyrus W. Field belongs the honor of pushing forward to successful completion the Atlantic cable. At the early age of fifteen Cyrus left the parsonage at Stockbridge, Connecticut, the home of his father, Rev. David Dudley Field, for New York. On arriving in the city he obtained employment as an errand boy in the dry-goods establishment of A. T. Stewart. Three years later, when he decided to give up his place as clerk in the store, the proprietor showed his appreciation of the boy’s merits by urging him to remain, making him a liberal offer if he would do so. He decided to make a change, however, and was soon engaged with a brother in Lee, Massachusetts.
When young Field was twenty years of age he went into business for himself, and for the next thirteen years was known as one of New York’s successful merchants. He then retired from active business, but found it a difficult task to do nothing. After a long voyage to South America, he returned to New York, where he gladly welcomed the opportunity that then came to busy himself.
The Newfoundland Electric Telegraph Company had been engaged for a year in the work of erecting a line on that island, preparatory to connecting it with the mainland by a cable. The company was compelled to stop work, however, for lack of the necessary means to continue. The leading member of the company, Frederick N. Gisborne, appealed to Mr. Field for material assistance. After several interviews, in the course of which he became deeply interested in the scheme, Mr. Field came to the conclusion not only that the plan of connecting Newfoundland with the United States was feasible, but also that Newfoundland was the best starting point for a cable to Ireland.
With characteristic energy Mr. Field went at once to work. He formed a new company and obtained extensive privileges from the governments of Newfoundland, Prince Edwards Island, and the State of Maine. Many months were spent in erecting the land telegraph across Newfoundland, over wild marsh and waste moor, rocks, hills, and forests. A cable, obtained in England, was unsuccessfully laid across the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1855. The next year a second attempt was successful. The preliminary work was now completed.
More means and more influence were needed. Mr. Field organized in London the Atlantic Telegraph Company, and showed his own faith by personally subscribing for one-quarter of the stock. The governments of Great Britain and the United States liberally aided the new company and furnished ships for laying down the cable.
On the 7th of August, 1857, the Niagara and the Agamemnon sailed from Ireland, each carrying 1,250 miles of cable. The Niagara began paying out her line and all went well for three days. At nine o’clock on the evening of the tenth, however, the cable ceased working. Three hours later the electric current returned, to the intense relief of all; but before morning came the cry, “Stop her! back her! the cable has parted!”
With flags at half-mast the ships returned to Ireland. Half a million dollars had been lost already. Disheartened, but not discouraged, the company voted to increase its capital and try again the next year. This time the two steamers sailed directly to mid-ocean, spliced the two parts of the cable, and sailed away from each other, the Agamemnon for Ireland and the Niagara for Newfoundland. On the 17th of August the extremities of the cable were connected with the instruments and the work was done. In the space of thirty-five minutes there was flashed under the ocean the message:
“Europe and America are united by telegraph. Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace; good will toward men.”
Messages and replies from the Queen to the President of the United States and from the mayor of London to the mayor of New York followed. The American people were wild with enthusiasm; they declared the Atlantic cable to be the greatest achievement of the age, and they heaped boundless praise upon the head of the persistent and courageous Field. Eighteen days afterward, the signals became unintelligible and the first Atlantic cable ceased to work.
Was all the time and money so far spent thrown away? No! for this first experiment paved the way for another and successful attempt. It is said also that one message, sent during these few days, saved the commercial world no less a sum than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. For the time being, however, the project of an Atlantic cable was allowed to remain quiet.
Mr. Field was financially ruined. The Civil War in the United States occupied the thoughts of all for several years. But in time the company was ready to try again. A newly prepared cable was made, the twenty-three hundred miles of which weighed more than four thousand tons. The largest vessel in the world, the Great Eastern, was employed to carry and lay it. On July 23d, 1865, the steamer started from Ireland and continued on its westward course until August 2d; then the cable parted, more than a thousand miles from the starting point. Nine days were spent in attempts to grapple for the cable, but all in vain.
The next year the Great Eastern again set sail, with a new cable and with sufficient wire to complete the cable of the previous year, if possible. In fourteen days the steamer entered the harbor in Newfoundland. Two months later the same steamer again reached Newfoundland, having captured the missing end of the other wire, thereby completing two cables from Europe to America.
July 27th, 1866, was a joyous day in the life of Cyrus W. Field. For thirteen years he had thought of little else but the submarine cable. Failure after failure had not discouraged him; loss of property only stimulated him to further efforts. Now success had come. The new cable was more substantial than the other of eight years before. That had failed, but this would succeed. It did succeed. From that day to this telegraphic communication between Europe and America has been constant.
Submarine cables are now in extensive operation in all parts of the world. More than half a dozen cross the Atlantic, and lines have been constructed from England to India, from India to Australia, and from the United States to Mexico and South America. At the present time there are perhaps two hundred cables belonging to companies, and about five hundred belonging to government systems. These cables, all told, cover a distance of nearly a hundred thousand miles.
A recent incident is told that shows something of the greatness of the telegraph. In June, 1897, a great celebration took place in London, in honor of the sixty years that Queen Victoria had been upon the British throne. The Queen rode in a procession through streets packed with millions of people. Just as she left the palace she pressed an electric button. Instantly this message was sent to her colonies all over the world:
“From my heart I thank my beloved people. May God bless them. Victoria, R. I.”
To forty different points in her empire sped the electric message. In sixteen minutes a reply came from Ottawa in Canada; then one by one answers came in from more remote provinces; until, before the Queen reached London Bridge, the Cape of Good Hope, the Gold Coast of Africa, and the great continent of Australia had sent responses to her message.
CHAPTER VII.
THE TELEPHONE.
When the telegraph was invented, years ago, it seemed little less than a miracle that a message could be dictated in one city and received almost instantaneously in another city far distant from the sender. Scientists, however, began at once on the invention of something more wonderful. The telegraph lacks in one respect. By it messages must be sent exactly as dictated and cannot be corrected until the reply is received. In a sense, sending and receiving messages by telegraph is a form of conversation, but a conversation at arm’s-length. To carry on a real conversation at long distances would be a great advance. An instrument prepared for this purpose would be called a telephone.
In 1875 Alexander Graham Bell invented the first successful electric telephone. This was exhibited at Salem, Massachusetts, and at Philadelphia at the Centennial Exhibition, and a patent for it was obtained. The apparatus of Bell’s telephone is very simple, and practically consists of four parts: the battery, the wire which runs from the speaker to the hearer, a diaphragm against which the vibrations of the air produced by the voice of the speaker strike, and another diaphragm at the other end of the wire which reproduces similar vibrations and sends them to the ear of the listener. Elisha Gray of Boston made a similar invention and applied for a patent two hours after Bell’s application was filed. The invention of Mr. Bell has proved a decided success. All telephonic operations, since this invention, have been based upon the instrument which he patented in 1876.
Mr. Bell was the son of a distinguished Scotch educator, Alexander Melville Bell. The father is noted for the invention of a new method for improving impediments in speech. This system of instruction is called “Bell’s Visible Speech.” It is used with great success in teaching deaf-mutes to speak.
His son Alexander was born in Edinburgh in 1847 and was educated at the University of Edinburgh. He removed to London when he was twenty years of age and was for a time in the University there. Three years later he went to Canada with his father, and at the age of twenty-five took up his residence in the United States, and became professor of vocal physiology in Boston University. He had been in this country but three years when he made his great invention, and its complete success gave him immense wealth. Later he invented the “photophone,” in which a vibratory beam of light is substituted for a wire in conveying speech. This instrument has attracted much attention but has not proved of practical use. Professor Bell is a member of various learned societies and has published many scientific papers. His present home is in Washington.
Within ten years the art of telephoning has rapidly developed. This has stimulated inventions and brought into use a vast number of special contrivances for local and long-distance transmission. The principal inventors of these new contrivances are Bell, Berliner, Edison, Hughes, Dolbear, Gray, Blake, and Peirce.
Nearly all of the telephone business of our country is carried on under licenses from the American Bell Telephone Company. The telephone lines at present in the United States would aggregate a distance of more than six hundred thousand miles, and there are more than half a million instruments in our country alone. The longest telephone line extends from Portland, Maine, via Boston, New York, and Chicago, to Milwaukee, a distance of more than thirteen hundred miles.
Let us consider for a moment the wonders of this marvelous invention, as compared with another no less marvelous in its way.
In 1867 Anson Burlingame was appointed by the Chinese Government special envoy to the United States and the great European governments, with power to frame treaties of friendship with those nations. This was an honor never before conferred on a foreigner. Mr. Burlingame accepted the appointment and, at the head of a large mission of distinguished Chinese officials, arrived in this country early in 1868, negotiated with our Government the “Burlingame Treaty,” proceeded the same year to England, thence to France, the next year to Denmark, Sweden, Holland, and Prussia, and finally reached Russia early in 1870. He died in St. Petersburg after a few days’ illness, on the 23d of February.
Now see what the telegraph did. His death occurred about half-past nine in the morning. As soon as possible the fact was telegraphed to our minister in Paris. He forwarded the news to our minister in London; by him it was cabled across the Atlantic, transmitted from the cable to Washington and delivered to Nathaniel P. Banks, a member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts. General Banks read the dispatch to the House, and delivered offhand an extended eulogy upon the distinguished son of Massachusetts. That speech of General Banks was written out, sent to the telegraph office, transmitted by the electric current to the various cities of the country, put into type, printed in the evening newspapers, and the writer of this chapter read it at four o’clock in the afternoon of the same day that Mr. Burlingame died. This was done as early as 1870.
But what is that compared to the greater wonders of the telephone? That a man can “talk into” the little instrument, and his voice be heard and recognized, and his words understood, by his friend in a city five hundred or one thousand miles away, is indeed a miracle. Consider for a moment what is done by means of the switchboard in the central telephone office of a great city. Every one of the thousands of subscribers has his own instrument for transmitting and receiving messages. One of these subscribers rings a bell in his house or his business office which rings another bell at the central station; the attendant inquires “Hello! what number?” and receives a reply, “four, naught, eight, Tremont.” The attendant by a simple switch, turned by a touch of the hand, makes the connection and rings the bell of that subscriber whose number is “408 Tremont.” Number “408 Tremont” steps to the instrument and in a quiet voice says “Hello! who is it?” Thus these two persons are placed in direct communication, and can talk with each other, back and forth, as long as they please.
This conversation is carried on between two different sections of the city where these two men live, but the same conversation may with equal ease be carried on between Boston and New York, between Boston and Washington, or between New York and Chicago. Thus time and distance are annihilated and the whole world stands, as it were, face to face.
But the marvel does not end here. The above conversation is carried on by means of a continuous wire which runs from one place to the other. If there are parallel wires, strange to say, the vibrations carried on in the one wire are liable to create, by induction, similar vibrations in the parallel wire. Here is an illustration:
Nearly twenty years ago, soon after the invention came into use, three gentlemen in Providence, Rhode Island, put up a private line between their three houses, making a circuit. Upon this line they carried on experiments and made a number of important discoveries. The evening was the time when they principally used their private telephone line. On a certain Tuesday evening these three gentlemen, conversing one with another, suddenly found themselves listening to strains of music. All three of them heard the same thing: the sound of a cornet and of one or two other musical instruments; then singing and a soprano voice. They wrote down the names of the pieces that were sung and the tunes that were played upon the instruments. They had no knowledge of the source of these sounds.
The next day, and for days following, these gentlemen went about the city inquiring of their friends everywhere if they knew of a concert on that Tuesday night where such pieces were sung and such tunes were played. Nobody had any knowledge of the affair. At length one of the gentlemen published an article in the Providence Journal, describing what he had heard through his telephone wire on that Tuesday evening, giving the date, and asking any one who could inform him what the concert was and where it was, to give him the desired information. Then it transpired that this concert was a telephonic experiment.
The performers were at Saratoga, New York, and they were connected by a telephone wire with friends in New York City. The experiment had plainly demonstrated that the sounds made in singing and in playing numerous instruments could be clearly understood, by means of the telephone, from Saratoga to New York City. But it proved more than this. The vibrations in that telephone wire between Saratoga and New York induced the same vibrations in the parallel wire of the Western Union Telegraph Company. These vibrations were continued through New York City to Providence and onward. The private telephone line of these gentlemen was parallel to the wire of the Western Union Company which had been thus affected, and these vibrations were picked off from the telegraph wire and conveyed by this parallel telephone wire to the receivers at these three houses.
What will be the next wonderful invention? The telegraph transmits your thoughts and delivers them in writing; the telephone transmits your thoughts and delivers them to the ear by sounds. Some day, perhaps, you may step into a cabinet in Boston and have your photograph taken in New York City by aid of an electric wire, the telephote. Just as the telephone transmits the sounds, the telephote may transmit the light and give not only light and shade, but the colors of the solar spectrum.
CHAPTER VIII.
CONCLUSION.
We have now considered six groups of topics connected with the growth and development of our country. We have looked into the houses of the Indians and of the settlers in the colonial times, and into the larger and more elaborate homes of to-day. We have considered improved means of heating and better methods of lighting. We have noticed improvements in machinery for planting, cultivating, and harvesting the products of the soil. We have seen the great advance that has been made in the manufacture of our clothing, through improved cotton and woolen machinery and the sewing machine. We have traveled by land and by water, at home and abroad, on foot, on horseback, in stagecoaches, by canals, steamboats, and railroads. Finally we have read and thought and studied about language, the printing press, our postal system, the telegraph and the telephone.
We have seen our country when it was wholly east of the Mississippi River, whereas now it is extended even to the great western ocean. A century ago our territory embraced about eight hundred thousand square miles; now it is nearly five times as great, with large areas of recently acquired Spanish islands to be added to that. The population of the United States in 1790 was less than four millions; a hundred years later it was sixty-three millions. It is now probably between seventy and seventy-five millions. Our exports then were about fifty million dollars in value; this year they are more than one thousand millions. A century since, we imported into this country goods to the value of about seventy million dollars. This was largely in excess of our exports. To-day our exports are of far greater value than our imports.
At the beginning of our national government we were almost altogether engaged in the pursuits of agriculture. Now our people are largely massed in cities and large towns, while our mechanical and manufacturing interests are of immense proportions.
A hundred years ago the people speaking the seven principal languages of Europe numbered about one hundred and fifty millions. To-day they number about four hundred millions. The present number is therefore almost three times that of a century ago. At that time the English-speaking people ranked fifth among the seven, and numbered but twenty millions. To-day they lead the list, and number one hundred and twenty millions; there are six times as many people to-day using the English language as there were a century ago. The inhabitants of our country outnumber all other English-speaking people in the whole world.
Our country occupies, all things considered, the best portion of the world. This includes the Atlantic slope, the great Mississippi basin, and the Pacific slope, and our whole territory, except our new colonial possessions, lies within the north temperate zone. We therefore have a great variety of soil and climate; the soil is the most fertile and the climate the most salubrious of the whole earth. We have an almost infinite variety of productions and our people are engaged in the entire round of human industries.
The United States has made vast strides in industry, in wealth, in intelligence, and in the comforts of life. Civilization has rapidly advanced during the whole of this century. If the great contest of the future is to be between the Anglo-Saxon race and the rest of the world, surely this great republic must have the leading position in that contest.
The American people to-day form a nation of readers. In newspapers, magazines, and books of all sorts and upon every subject the American press is prolific. We have a system of public schools well established in every State and every Territory of our Union, and supported by taxation, and very generally the children are obliged by compulsory laws to attend school. We are living in an age of great activity and rapid advancement. The young people of our republic who are attending school to-day are to be congratulated upon their good fortune; and it becomes them to magnify their opportunities, to appreciate their advantages, and to be especially loyal to their country, its government, and its institutions.
Ætna, 213
Air brakes, 236
Allen, Nicholas, 48
Allston, Washington, 272
Ancient writing, 249
Arc light, 87
Arnold, Edwin, 169
Atlantic Telegraph Co., 281
Automobile, 243
Axe, 25
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 226
Baskerville, John, 254
Bay-Path, 192
Bell, Alexander Graham, 286
Bicycle, 243
Binder, 120
Blackstone canal, 221
Boulton and Watt, 179
Brooklyn bridge, 239
Brush, Charles Francis, 85
Burlingame, Anson, 288
Cable, Atlantic, 278
Cable cars, 242
Cables, submarine, 284
Cabot, John, 18
Calashes, 201
Canals, 215
Candelabra, 71
Candles, 67
Canoe, 197
Carrying fire, 52
Central Pacific Railroad, 228
Chappe, Claude, 266
Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, 221
Chicago and Alton Railroad, 236
Chimneys, 31
Clayton, John, 81
“Clermont,” 212, 215
“Clinton’s big ditch,” 221
Coal, 44
anthracite, 47
bituminous, 47
sea, 45
Coffee, 139
Colonial conditions, 143
Colonial cooking, 29, 30
Colonial homes, 24
Conant, Roger, 124
Cooking, colonial, 29, 30
Corliss, George H., 175, 179
Corn, Indian, 105
Cotton, 150, 153
Cotton gin, 148-151
Darling, Grace, 92-94
Delaware and Hudson canal, 221
Dinner, a modern, 131
Dodge, John Adams, 174
Drake, E. L., 78
Dugout, 197
Dunster, Rev. Henry, 254
Dutch ovens, 27
Dynamo, 85
Edison, Thomas A., 86
Electric cars, 242
Electric lighting, 85
Electrotyping, 257
Eliot’s Indian Bible, 254
Ellsworth, Miss, 274
Erie canal, 221
Evans, Oliver, 209
Fabius, 63
Fairbanks, Richard, 259
Faraday, Michael, 85
Farmer, Moses G., 268
Faust, John, 253
Field, Cyrus W., 280
Fire, 14
Fire, carrying, 52
Fireplace, Pennsylvania, 34
Fireplaces, 26
Fishing, whale, 73
Fitch, John, 209
Flail, 109, 120, 123
Flax, 147
Flint, 53
Foods, uncultivated, 99
Fork, 118
Franklin, Benjamin, 34, 68
Franklin press, 255
Franklin stove, 34
Freight, cost of transportation, 218
Fuel, 37
Fulton, Robert, 210, 272
Furnaces, 36
Gang plow, 114
Gas, illuminating, 81
Gasometer, 83
Gideon, 63
Gin, cotton, 148-151
Gore, Obadiah, 48
Greene, Nathaniel, 148
Greenough, J. J., 175
Grist mills, 145
Grover, William O., 175
Gutenberg, John, 254
Hannibal, 63
Harvesting, implements for, 117
Heat, 11
Hennepin, Father, 46
Hoe, 109
Hoe perfecting press, 253
Homes, colonial, 24
Homes, Indian, 17
Hood, Thomas, 173
Horseback, 191
Howe, Elias, 175
Hunt, Walter, 175
Illuminating gas, 81
Implements for harvesting, 117
for planting, 111
Incandescent light, 87
Indian Bible, Eliot’s, 254
Indian corn, 105
Indian homes, 17
Inns, 205
Iroquois, 19
Irrigation, 127, 128
Jackson, Andrew, 156
Jewel, Marshall, 170
Kerosene, 77
Kitchen, a New England, 10
Knight, Sarah, 200
Lamp, modern, 76
Lamps, ancient, 65
Language, 247
Leather, 164
Leifer, Thomas, 224
Letters, 247
Lewis, Ida, 94
Light, arc, 87
Lighthouses, 90
Lighting, electric, 85
Linotype, 257
Livingston, Robert R., 212
Log cabin, 26
Longstreet, William, 209
Loom, 147
Lord of Padua, 32
Mail car, 262
Matches, 51
McCormick, Cyrus H., 122
Menlo Park, 87
Message, first, across the Atlantic, 282
Middlesex canal, 221
Miles, General, in New Mexico, 268
Modern land travel, 235
water travel, 229
Money orders, 261
Morey, Samuel, 209
Morse, Samuel F. B., 270
his titles and honors, 276
Mower, 117
Murdoch, William, 82
Myer, Major, 266
Needles, 172
Nott, Eliphalet, 159
Ogle, Henry, 122
Oil wells, 79
Ovens, Dutch, 27
Padua, Lord of, 32
Peck, General, at Suffolk, 267
Pepper, 132
Pine knots, 62
Planter, 115
Planting, implements for, 111
Plow, 109, 112
Plow, sulky, 114
Postage stamps, 261
Postal system, 258
Postmaster-general, 260
Power of speech, 247
Printing press, Franklin, 255
modern, 246
Prometheus, 15
Pruning hook, 109
Pullman sleeper, 237
Queen of Sheba, 249
Railroad train, old-style, 227
Railroads, 223
Rake, 118
Raleigh, Walter, 106
“Rand, Old Ma’am,” 271
Range, 36
Reaper, 120
Rumford, Count, 33-35
Rumsey, James, 209
Scholfield, Arthur, 160
Scholfield, John, 160
Scots Magazine, 269
Scribe, ancient, 251
Scythe, 109, 117
Sea coal, 45
Sewing machines, 175
Shoemaker, Colonel, 48
Signal station, Suffolk, 267
Signaling, 265
Singer, Isaac M., 175
Slater, John F., 156
Slater, Samuel, 153
Soil, 124
Solomon, 249
Sower, 114
Sower, Christopher, 255
Special delivery, 261
Spotswood, Colonel, 260
Squanto, 108
Stagecoaches, 200
Steamboats, 207
Steam engine, 178
Stephenson, George, 225
Stereotyping, 257
Stevens, John, 209
Stockton and Darlington Railway, 226
Stoves, 36
Subway, Boston, 242
Sulky plow, 114
“Sully,” packet ship, 272
Suspension bridge, Niagara, 240
Taverns, 206
Telegraph, 270
Telephone, 286
Telephone incident, 290
Thimmonier, Barthélemy, 176
Thompson, Benjamin, 33
Thompson, Elihu, 86
Thresher, 121
Threshing, 123
Tinder box, 53
Torches, 61
Travel by horseback, 191
by land, 187
by water, 194
Uncultivated foods, 99
Union Pacific Railroad, 228
United States post offices, 264
University press, 255
Vestal Virgin, 14
Victoria Jubilee, 284
Vinegar, 135
Walter press, 252
Watt, James, 179
Wells, oil, 79
West, Benjamin, 272
Westinghouse, George, Jr., 236
Whale fishing, 73
Whale oil, 72
Whitman, Marcus, 168
Whitney, Eli, 149
Wilson, Allen B., 175
Wool, 158