and never received a dollar from, any person connected with the Western
Railroad. That may be; but it is well known that Mr. D. L. Harris,
president of the Connecticut River Railroad, has been for years the
"_fidus Achates_" of Mr. Bird in "fighting the Tunnel," his colleague in
the "Third House," his companion at the Hoosac Mountain, and the guide
of his inexperienced feet in the wilderness of facts and speculations of
civil engineering. It is not so well known, but nevertheless true, that
Mr. Harris is made director and president of the Connecticut River
Railroad by the influence and vote of Chester W. Chapin, president of
the Western road. His zeal in the service of his benefactor has been
manifested by an active hostility to the Tunnel, as persistent and
unscrupulous as that of Mr. Bird; and, were it possible for that
gentleman ever to act from other than disinterested motives, or a sense
of public duty, his intimate relations with Mr. Harris might justify a
suspicion that the "sinews of war" might be supplied through that
channel. At all events, we may be permitted to say that, if these two
men have organized and led the opposition to the Tunnel every winter for
the last ten years, printed thousands and thousands of pamphlets, and
spent a considerable part of each year in the lobby, and all this at
their own cost, from a sense of public duty, then they have better
deserved statues in front of the State House than Webster or Mann; and
the Western Railroad management is even meaner than it has been
generally considered. A corporation must indeed be without a soul, which
can look upon such sublime virtue, and suffer it to pay its own
expenses. But enough of Mr. Bird and his motives.
The statements we have made in regard to the necessity of a new route
are, in every particular fully confirmed by a memorial which has been
recently addressed to our Legislature from the Albany Board of Trade,
through a committee of seven of their number. The gentlemen comprising
this board are not theorists, but practical, clear-headed and reliable
business men, who have been compelled by the urgent demands of yearly
increasing business, to appeal to the people of Massachusetts for aid
and relief.
From a table in their memorial, it appears, that, while the increase,
during the last fifteen years, of miles of railroad in eleven other
States through which Western products press to the seaboard, averaged
169 per cent, that of Massachusetts was only 26 per cent. But we proceed
to quote from the memorial:--
"Twelve years of experience have convinced us that the Western
Railroad is wholly inadequate to the prompt, rapid and cheap
transportation of the commodities so extensively consumed by the
people of the New England States. To illustrate the diversion of
trade from the natural route to Boston via Albany, occasioned by
the incapacity of the Western road to meet the wants of commerce,
we call your attention to the article of flour. We collate our
facts from reports of the Boston Board of Trade and the official
reports of the Western Railroad. In 1865, the Western road,
according to its own report, transported from Albany and Troy to
Boston, one hundred and fifty thousand barrels less than it did in
1847, nearly twenty years ago. During the thirteen years, including
1848 and 1860, the average of its transportation of this article,
per annum, between the Hudson and Boston was 287,698 barrels. For
the same period, there were received in Boston, via other and more
circuitous routes, an average per annum of 670,233 barrels. The
next four years, including 1861 and 1864, the average per annum by
the Western road was 572,637 barrels. Boston received from other
routes an average, per annum for the same period, of 824,937
barrels.
Now, we hold that, by the natural laws of trade, most of this vast
quantity of flour, which reaches Boston in these roundabout ways,
would have left the Hudson river at Albany and Troy, had the
requisite facilities for a cheap and rapid transportation been
afforded. About one-fourth of the average quantity received in
Boston from other routes, for the four years named above, reached
that place via the Grand Trunk Railway and Portland, aggregating
956,945 barrels. Taking Detroit as the starting point, the
distance from there to Boston via Portland, is 228 miles greater
than the route to Boston via Albany. Yet, owing to the inadequate
railroad facilities between Albany and Boston, the consignors of
this flour prefer to send it via Portland, and pay the charges on
228 miles of additional distance. What is true of the article of
flour is equally true of all the staple commodities produced at the
West and consumed by the New England States. Large quantities were
last year turned aside at Rochester and other points in our own
State, to say nothing of points west of Buffalo, and sent to Boston
and contiguous localities via the New York and Erie Railroad.
Boston is even now receiving flour from Albany, Troy and
Schenectady, by way of Rutland, a distance of some fifty miles
further than by the Western road.
We have no words but of commendation for the noble work which your
State is pushing with such energy to open a still shorter route to
the Hudson. We have no feelings of jealousy toward the new route,
because it terminates in another city than Albany; a healthy
rivalry will do more than moral suasion, to wake up the old route
from that lethargy which seems so near akin to death. Had the
Hoosac Tunnel been completed twelve years ago, we have reason to
believe it probable that the people of Massachusetts alone would
have saved an amount in the way of cheap transportation, nearly if
not quite sufficient to equal its cost.
We have spoken more freely in this paper than might be considered
becoming in us, but for the fact that in the day of its need,
Albany, along with Massachusetts, came to the aid of the Western
Railroad. And now that we are suffering so much from its
insufficiency to meet the public want, we trust the presentation of
these views and facts will not be regarded as obtrusive, but rather
as properly coming from those, who, with you, aided to produce a
common benefit, and are now suffering with you from a common
cause."
The cost of the whole work was estimated by the commissioners in their
first report, at $5,719,330, the estimate being based upon ordinary
labor at one dollar a day, and of materials at a corresponding rate.
Nothing has yet occurred to invalidate this estimate, excepting the
advance of the cost of material and labor, an incidental misfortune
common to every public, as well as private enterprise, requiring labor
and material, which has been prosecuted during the last three years. It
is certain that these high rates will greatly decline, perhaps nearly to
their former level within a year; but admitting that the Commissioners'
estimate should be swelled through these incidental causes to the sum of
eight millions, would such an increase of expense justify the
abandonment of this great enterprise, upon which so much has already
been expended, and at the very period in its progress when the most
formidable obstacles in its way have been surmounted, and its success
become a certainty? Had the Western Railroad been utterly destroyed last
year by a rebel raid, as were some Southern roads by the march of
Sherman, or by any conceivable cause, would the consideration of
twenty-five, or thirty, or even forty millions, prevent its being
rebuilt at once? Why then should two millions stand in the way of the
Tunnel line, which is now a greater necessity than the Western road was
at the time of its construction?
The time required to complete the work, without the aid of machinery,
was estimated by the Commissioners at eleven years and four months; and
with the aid of such machine drills and power as had already been
applied with success at Mt. Cenis, at seven years and a half. The work
at Mt. Cenis was commenced in 1857, and up to July, 1861, 2142 feet had
been excavated by hand labor; the machine drills were then applied, and
the Italian government has recently announced that the work will be
finished by the close of the year 1870. It will be seven and a half
miles long. The Hoosac Tunnel will be about four and a half miles long,
and at the present time it has been excavated 4675 feet, and shafts have
been sunk to the depth of 575 feet. The machine drills will be applied
in a few days; but they are drills which will do twice, and possibly
three times the work of those at Mt. Cenis.
To the sound judgment, energy, and untiring perseverance of Mr. Brooks,
and the inventive genius and skill of Mr. Stephen F. Gates, of Boston,
and Mr. Charles Burleigh, of Fitchburg, belongs the credit of perfecting
a pneumatic drill, by means of which our great tunnel will be completed
much within the time named by the Commissioners, and with a reduction of
their estimate of its cost by hand labor of several hundred thousand
dollars. We have seen this drill operated by compressed air, at the rate
of two hundred blows a minute, each blow given with a force of more than
five hundred pounds, cut an inch and a quarter hole in a block of Hoosac
rock, thirty-eight inches in thirteen minutes, without changing its
points. Its superiority over the Mt. Cenis drill consists in its
lightness, automatic feed, and smaller size. The Mt. Cenis drill is
eight feet long, and weighs six hundred pounds, and the whole machine
moves forward in feeding. The Hoosac drill is four feet long, weighs two
hundred and eight pounds, and can be handled by two men. In feeding, the
drill alone advances, and in such manner as to accommodate itself to any
kind of rock it may encounter, whether hard or soft. Its points are
sharpened in a die by half a dozen blows of the hammer. It will do the
work of twenty men; and, finally, sixteen of them can be applied to a
surface upon which only nine of the Mt. Cenis drills can be used.
The operation of this drill has already been witnessed by hundreds of
persons, among them machinists, engineers, and stone masons, and not one
of them entertains a doubt that it will do all which is claimed for it
by the inventors. But the carriages are nearly ready, and these little
machines will shortly be put to their work. The friends of the Tunnel
have no fears of the result.
* * * * *
Massachusetts has always led her sister States. At the call to arms, her
sons have been first in the field, and first to die for the common
good. Her schools and colleges, her institutions of charity, and her
statutes have furnished models for the new states of the great West, and
for foreign republics. In her manufactures and mechanic arts, in the
products of her inventive genius, in maritime enterprise, in the
building of canals and railroads, and in every undertaking to develop
the resources and promote the prosperity of the country, she has been
first and foremost. With so proud a record, and with almost exhaustless
means at her command, we do not believe our noble state is yet ready to
abandon the lead; nor that the consideration of a few millions of
dollars will prevent her from breaking down the barrier which divides us
from the West, and by which the great stream of Western traffic has been
so long checked and diverted. Rather let us trust that, by wise
legislation, a liberal policy, and a cordial support of the gentlemen to
whom the conduct of this enterprise is entrusted, the great work of De
Witt Clinton will be perfected, and the noble design of Loammi Baldwin
executed, by the completion of the Hoosac Tunnel, before it shall be
announced from Sardinia that the Alps are pierced and France and Italy
have joined hands under the Grand Vallon.