The reading of your paper on 'Railway Communication,' has given me
great pleasure: your remarks about American railways are very well in
the main, but the speed of travel is misstated, as it ranges from
forty to fifty miles an hour; unless it be an omnibus railway, like
the Haarlem, where they stop for passengers every few hundred yards.
The Hudson River Railway, which passes by our mill at Yonkers, almost
frightens my brother out of his wits by its speed, and he takes the
steam-boat now to avoid it. The trains go very fast, but it is a
superb road, and very safe, as the servants of the company, with their
flags and lanterns, line the road the whole distance. They have twenty
trains a day. The Erie Railway is also finished from New York to Lake
Erie; the traffic on this line is immense, freight often lying two
weeks before it can be put through. Its income is over three and a
half million dollars. We have only one class of passengers, except
emigrant trains: the fare generally ranges from a cent and a quarter
to two cents a mile--on some of the shorter roads, as high as three or
four cents. All the carriages are lined with mahogany and silk plush.
The locomotives on our long roads weigh from twenty to forty tons. The
fact is, that anything said about our physical development on data
collected at any one period, is quite likely to be false or absurd
within a twelvemonth. Though in the midst of it, and not one of the
excitable kind, I am often astonished at it myself. I have several
times mentioned that you would hardly know New York, or find any of
your old landmarks; and yet New York would be comparatively a mean
city, if you took away what had been built within a year. Steam-ships
shew another phase of it: three years ago, we hardly had the shadow of
one; now--and I have looked into the matter very carefully--I would
not, as a commercial speculation merely, exchange forty of the best of
our steam-ships for any other forty in the world: of course I don't
refer to war-steamers. Some of the California steam-ships are perfect
pictures in model, and put the Collins' Line into the shade. By the
way, did you ever notice their passenger-list?--from 300 to 600 at a
trip; and one vessel last year took 1125 passengers, paying very
nearly half her cost in a single trip. In the summer, they slept about
the decks like ants in a hill. A good education, including a college
one to those who have the proper capacity, is open to every poor child
in this city, free of cost. The immense sums necessary to pay for all
this, are voted by the people themselves out of their own
pocket.--_Private Letter from New York._
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