Address of welcome, delivered at Atchison, Kansas, July 1st, 1886,
at a meeting of the “Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen.”
MR. CHAIRMAN: Within the past half-century, the employments of men have
multiplied enormously. Thousands of people are now eagerly toiling, with
hand and brain, at occupations that, within the life-time of many living
men, were not dreamed of. The telegraph and the telephone, now
furnishing a vast multitude of men and women with employment, are among
the most recent contributions to the world’s industry, convenience and
happiness. And within the present century that marvelous machine with
which you are so familiar, the locomotive, took form and shape in the
inventive brain of Robert Stephenson.
It is doubtful whether any invention of any age—with the possible
exception of that great motive power of all modern life, the
printing-press—has wrought such changes in the life, work and thought of
mankind as has the locomotive. It has annihilated distances; it has
wedded the oceans flowing on either side of great continents; it has
crowded the most remote and inaccessible regions with busy and
prosperous life; it has transformed all the methods and systems of human
labor and activity; it has so assimilated different peoples by the
speedy and direct communication it has afforded them, that the world is
becoming cosmopolitan; and it has created a new employment, engaging a
vast army of trained and skilled workmen.
One is amazed, on looking up the facts, to learn how brief is the time
in which this marvelous revolution has been wrought, and how vast is the
business conducted on the iron net which now checkers almost the entire
surface of the civilized world. Thousands of men are still living who
read the contemporary accounts of Stephenson’s first successful
experiment. His queer old locomotive, the _Rocket_, made its trial trip
in September, 1829, not quite fifty-seven years ago, and the first
successful railroad, that from Liverpool to Manchester, England, was
formally opened on the 15th of September, 1830. Contemporaneous
experiments were made in this country, however, and on the 30th of
August, 1830, a trial was made of a locomotive built by the late Peter
Cooper, of New York, on a road from Baltimore to Ellicott’s Mills. Mr.
Cooper’s locomotive, however, was a diminutive machine of only one-horse
power, and on the return trip to Baltimore it was beaten in speed by a
pair of horses. Exactly four months after the opening of the Liverpool
and Manchester road, or on the 15th day of January, 1831, a railroad
running out of Charleston, South Carolina, was formally opened, the
motive power being a small locomotive built at West Point, New York; and
on the 9th of August of the same year a trial trip was made on a road
from Albany to Schenectady, New York.
These, however, were all mere experiments, and they were not attended
with remarkable success. The locomotives used were small machines,
difficult to regulate, feeble in power, and dangerous to those in charge
of them. The first really successful railroad in this country was not
opened until the 16th of May, 1834, and it ran from Boston to Newton,
Massachusetts, a distance of about eight miles.
Our railway system is, therefore, the growth of only a little more than
fifty years. Thousands of living men have witnessed its beginning and
its development to its present vast proportions. And what a marvel it
is! There are now within the limits of the United States fully 160,000
miles of railway track, or enough to reach around the globe nearly seven
times. Fully 30,000 locomotives drag the commerce of the continent over
these lines, and 20,000 passenger cars and fully 900,000 freight cars
are employed in transporting the travelers and merchandise of the
country. In 1884—correct statistics of later date not having been
compiled—the freight trains of the United States ran an aggregate of
334,814,529 miles, and the passenger trains an aggregate of 206,516,118
miles. During that year the railways carried 334,570,766 passengers and
390,074,749 tons of freight. In conducting this vast business—the
magnitude of which the human mind can hardly measure or
comprehend—250,456 persons were employed.
In this State, which has just completed the first quarter-century of its
existence, there are 5,117 miles of railway track, over which more than
three million passengers and seven million tons of freight are annually
carried; and nearly 700 locomotives and over 7,000 people are employed
in conducting this gigantic business.
You are representatives, therefore, of a great army of men employed in
the mightiest work of modern times, and it affords me pleasure to meet
and greet you. I know of no human vocation requiring greater skill,
fidelity, sobriety, endurance and courage than does the work of the men
who are employed on our railways, and I am glad to add that, in my
judgment, there is no body of men in this country who more fairly and
fully meet the requirements of their arduous and responsible station
than do those who run the trains of our railways.
And this is especially true of the men who ride at the front, on that
marvel of modern mechanism, the locomotive. Theirs is the post of danger
and of responsibility, and singularly brave, cool, thoughtful, watchful,
intelligent men they grow to be. You will all, I presume, become
locomotive engineers. The way to the engineer’s seat, I am informed, is
from the fireman’s side. I hope promotion will not be slow. The
engineers, it is said, are the best paid body of skilled workmen in
America. I hope this is true. If it is not, it ought to be, for
certainly no body of skilled workmen in America occupy a more
responsible position, nor, in my judgment, is there a body of workmen in
America who more faithfully and nobly discharge the duties of their
post. The engineers and the firemen who ride with them are employed in a
work that is not only arduous but dangerous as well; in a work that
requires steady nerve, watchful eye, quick thought, prompt action, and
at times, the undaunted and self-sacrificing spirit of a martyr.
In war, an army rests securely in its camp by day, and sleeps peacefully
in its tents during the night, trusting confidently in the vigilance,
fidelity and courage of the pickets at the front, who never sleep. So
the railroad train, crowded with passengers or loaded with valuable
freight, rushes along over hills and through valleys, while in the cab
at its front sits its pickets, the engineer and fireman, sleepless and
alert. Those who ride as passengers place implicit confidence in the
vigilance, the courage and the resources of the pickets in the cab. They
talk and laugh, read or sleep, never thinking of danger, because they
know that watchful eyes are on the track, and that everything that human
foresight, care and skill can do to avert disaster, will be done. None
of them, perhaps, fully realize the mental and physical strain the men
in the cab endure. But when the invisible but ever-present perils of the
track take tangible form, and the engineer and fireman at their posts of
duty, and faithful to its trusts, even when they look death in the face,
are hurled over the embankment or against an obstruction, then all
realize the constant dangers they face, and applaud the faithful heroism
of their daily life.
To talk to you of your duties and responsibilities is, however,
unnecessary. You understand them far better than do I, and the history
of railway operations in this country shows how intelligently and
faithfully you discharge them. I come before you, not to lecture or
instruct you, but at the request of your local committee, to meet and
welcome the chief officers of your organization. I very cheerfully do
this. In Atchison, where so many of your fellow-craftsmen live, and in
this State, which in a few years will have more miles of railway within
its limits than any other State of the Union, the representatives of any
large body of trainmen will always meet with a cordial welcome. I hope
your visit will be an agreeable one, and that you will return to your
homes carrying with you only pleasant memories of your brief sojourn in
this always hospitable city, and of those whose acquaintance you formed
while here.