ROADS AND RAILROADS
=341. Commercial importance of the subjects of the chapter.=—“Of all
inventions, the alphabet and the printing-press alone excepted, those
inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization
of our species.” Macaulay’s celebrated sentence applies to civilization
in general. With regard to the material civilization depending upon
commerce, certainly no factor has been of greater importance than
improvement in the means of transportation and communication. An
improvement in these means has been effected during the past century,
without a parallel in the world’s history; and a description of the
changes deserves the most careful attention of the student in the short
space which can be allowed the subject.
=342. Statistical survey of development.=—For a convenient means of
reference I introduce, in this place, a statistical table (on opposite
page) showing the development of the most important modern instruments
of transportation and communication.
=343. Improvement in the condition of roads.=—Aside from the stretches
of canal which had been brought into operation, the universal means of
inland transportation about 1800 was the road. Some reference has been
made in an earlier chapter to the condition of English highways in the
eighteenth century, and to the improvements which marked that period.
Conditions on the Continent were worse than those in England. French
roads were mere tracks in the first part of the eighteenth century,
and for the most part were still hopelessly bad at its close, when the
system of maintaining the roads by forced labor was abolished.
From near the close of the eighteenth century, however, we may date
the beginning of a period of rapid improvement in the roads of western
Europe. The turnpike system, which allowed tolls to be charged for
the use of improved highways, encouraged the investment of capital in
these undertakings. The teachings of Telford and Macadam, two great
road-engineers who emphasized the necessity of using good materials
and securing proper drainage, were generally applied. In the period
from 1800 to 1850 the roads of Europe were reformed to meet the demands
which commerce made upon them, before the introduction of the railroad,
and were put in the excellent condition which attracts the attention
of American travelers to-day. The cost of freight transportation was
reduced to half or less of what it had been, and the speed of passenger
service increased correspondingly. An Englishman, Porter, notes that in
1798 he occupied nineteen hours in traveling eighty miles by what was
considered a “fast coach”; when he wrote, in 1838, the trip was made in
eight hours.
=====+========================+========================
| SHIPPING | RAILWAYS
| MILLION TONS | TELEGRAPHS CABLES
+-----+------------------+------------------------
|Sail | Steam | Carrying | Thousand Miles
| | | Power |
-----+-----+-------+----------+-------+--------+-------
1800 | 4.0 | | 4.0 | | |
| | | | | |
1820 | 5.8 | .02 | 5.8 | | |
| | | | | |
1830 | 7.1 | .1 | 7.5 | .2 | |
| | | | | |
1840 | 9.0 | .3 | 10.4 | 5.4 | |
| | | | | |
1850 |11.4 | .8 | 14.9 | 23.9 | 5. | .02
| | | | | |
1860 |14.8 | 1.7 | 21.7 | 67.3 | 100. | 1.5
| | | | | |
1870 |12.9 | 3.0 | 25.1 | 139.8 | 281. | 15.
| | | | | |
1880 |14.4 | 5.8 | 37.9 | 224.9 | 440. | 49.
| | | | | |
1890 | 9.1 | 8.2 | 42.3 | 390.0 | 768. | 132.
| | | | | |
1900 | 6.6 | 13.8 | 62.1 | 500.0 | 1,180 | 200.
| | | | | |
1910 | 4.6 | 22.0 | 92.8 | 637.0 | 1,307 | 291.
| | | | | |
1913 | 3.8 | 26.5 | 109.9 | 690.0 | 1,462 | 330.
=====+=====+=======+==========+=======+========+=======
=344. Importance of roads in the present transportation system.=—A
word of warning may be advisable before we leave this subject to study
more recent means of transportation. Not many years ago a French
economist estimated that not one twentieth of the settlements of the
inhabited world were within less than a day’s distance from a railroad.
Even in the most advanced countries the extent of roads far exceeds
that of railroads, and only in the rarest cases do products reach the
consumer without having traversed a stretch of common road. The road,
therefore, takes a place in our modern economy more important than, in
our carelessness, we generally admit.
The unit for measuring the expense of transportation is the cost of
moving a ton one mile; on a modern American railroad the average cost
of a ton-mile is less than one cent. Even on the excellent roads of
Europe the cost is ten cents or more; while it has been estimated that
the average cost of moving farm produce to market over the common roads
of the United States is twenty-five cents per ton-mile. Assuming that
the average haul is twelve miles, and that three hundred million tons
are carried in a year, the expense reaches the total of nine hundred
million dollars, a sum greater than the operating expenses of all the
railroads of the United States before 1900.
It has been proved by actual test that the same force which draws one
ton on a muddy earth road will draw four tons on a hard macadam road.
One of the greatest improvements in transportation is still, in large
part, neglected by the American people; and intelligent energy will
find in no field richer results than in the reform of our common roads.
Such a reform would economize time and force, would reduce wear and
tear, and would greatly better the business position of the farmer by
enabling him to choose his own time for marketing his goods and making
his purchases.
=345. Advantage of transportation by water; canals.=—The student may,
perhaps, remember that in the Middle Ages the expense of transportation
by road led people to choose rivers for conveying their goods, whenever
this was practicable. It has been estimated that a horse which could
carry on its back two or three centner (a centner is about 110 lbs.)
could with equal exertion drag twenty centner on a highway, or 1,200
through dead-water. This enormous gain in efficiency, resulting from
the avoidance of the slightest difference in level and from the
reduction of force wasted in friction, suggested to people in early
times the idea of establishing channels for water where none had
previously existed, that is, of building canals. Locks, for controlling
the flow and level of the water, were invented toward the end of the
Middle Ages, and a considerable extent of canals had been constructed
on the Continent before the Bridgewater canal, described above, was
opened in England. The real era of the canal, however, was in the
period which may be limited roughly by the dates 1750 and 1850.
=346. Development of canals, 1750-1850.=—Immense amounts of capital
were invested in canals in this period of their great importance; and
the European and American systems of barge canals were constructed
substantially on the lines which they have since retained. A traveler
could then, as now, voyage through most parts of central and eastern
Europe without leaving a canal-boat. Of a country like England, endowed
by nature with advantages for water communication, it could be said in
1838 that no spot south of the county of Durham was more than fifteen
miles from the means of water conveyance. Factories were established
along the canals, as now along the railroads. Canals relieved the
highways of a large part of the growing traffic, carried many raw
materials which could not have borne the expense of transportation by
road, and enjoyed even a considerable share of passenger traffic.
=347. Relative decline in importance of canals.=—Of canals as of roads
it may be said that their days of usefulness are far from past. One
class, indeed, that of the great ship canals, has grown rapidly in
importance in recent years. Many economists believe that even the barge
canals should be maintained and improved. There is still an active
canal traffic in Europe, especially in Germany, and in the last-named
country a notable project for extending the canal system is under
consideration. The future of canals seems to depend largely on the
introduction of improved forms of motor (electricity, gasoline).
[Illustration:
WATERWAYS OF
NORTH CENTRAL EUROPE
_Bormay Eng. Co., N. Y._
]
The canal has certainly yielded the place of first importance in
internal transportation to the railroad. Its great merit, cheapness,
has declined in importance with the reduction of railroad rates, while
its drawbacks are felt more and more under the conditions of modern
business. The canal is not only much slower and more uncertain than the
railroad; its vital weakness is the fact that in temperate climates its
usefulness is destroyed during at least a part of the winter. Since
1850 canal systems have grown slowly, if at all, and in some countries
they have declined greatly. Nearly half of the English canals are now
controlled by the railroads; some are closed and out of repair, and
traffic is diverted from others by heavy tolls.
=348. Origin of the steam railroad.=—Soon after 1800 the American
inventor, Evans, asserted more than once that he could manage to drive
wagons on railways by steam. He expressed an idea that was by no means
new, and that was then floating in the minds of many men. He said
truly, however, that one step in a generation is enough, and that the
monstrous leap from bad roads to steam railways could not be taken
at once. Roads were improved, canals were extended, and still there
was a demand for better means of transportation. Rails, first of wood
and then of iron, had long been laid to enable horses to draw heavier
loads at mines and quarries. George Stephenson, among others, conceived
the idea of applying steam as the motive power on these railways, and
distinguished himself above all predecessors by constructing, in 1814,
a locomotive, _Puffing Billy_, which proved capable of hauling coal
over a stretch of nine miles, from the mine to tide-water. Stephenson
improved his original model, especially by the introduction of the
steam blast to help the draft and so increase the power of the boiler;
and in 1825 secured the adoption of the locomotive on the Stockton and
Darlington Railway in Yorkshire. The call for this improvement had now
become pressing. The port of Liverpool and the important manufacturing
center, Manchester, distant only about thirty miles, were now connected
by three canals, yet these were so crowded with traffic that it took
sometimes a month for cotton to reach the factories from the sea.
The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, with a
locomotive, the _Rocket_, which made twenty-nine miles an hour, may be
taken as the completion of the period of experiment, and the beginning
of the railroad era.
=349. Early period of the railroad.=—Though steam locomotion after
1830 was a proved success, and though railroads were rapidly extended,
and 1,600 miles had been brought into operation in 1835, the men of
the time had still much to learn concerning their new instrument of
transportation. Some men expected from it a speed of 75 or 100 miles
an hour, while the State Engineer of Virginia took it as an admitted
fact “that a rate of speed of more than six miles an hour would exceed
the bounds set by prudence, though some of the sanguine advocates
of railways extend this limit to nine miles an hour.” In certain
localities the steam railroad, from the start, performed great service
in freight carriage. At the Pennsylvania coal mines, for instance, it
reduced the cost of hauling a ton nine miles to the river from $4.00
to $.25. Still the cost in general was high; a charge of ten cents per
ton-mile was authorized in some early charters; and few people believed
that the railroad could compete successfully with the canal in the
transportation of ordinary freight.
=350. Improvements in locomotives.=—The technical improvements which
have extended the usefulness of the railroad far beyond the dreams of
its earlier promoters have been comparatively simple. Mere increase in
size of locomotives and cars has been the greatest factor in increased
efficiency. The engine which Peter Cooper constructed for experiment
on the Baltimore and Ohio, about 1830, had a boiler the size of a flour
barrel, weighed less than a ton, and was about the size of a modern
hand-car. It was of little practical use. The development from early
engines of the class of the _Rocket_, to those of modern American
practice, is shown in the following figures:
===========+=============+=======================
| Weight | Hauling Power on Level
-----------+-------------+-----------------------
Early | 5 to 6 tons | 40 tons
Improved | 25 | 1,200
Modern | 50 | 2,400
===========+=============+=======================
In 1914 the average weight of the simple locomotive in the United
States was 82 tons. Not only does a large locomotive put to more
economical use the heat applied; the large train, also, costs far less
in proportion for the services of men employed in running it.
=351. Importance of steel in railroad construction.=—To many readers
practical devices like the air-brake, further reducing the cost and
increasing the efficiency of operation, will be familiar. One factor
in improvement, however, is not so apparent, and deserves special
attention by reason of its commanding importance. The railroad in its
modern form would be impossible if Bessemer and others had not taught
the world to make steel cheaply. Iron rails, even under comparatively
light loads, wore out and had to be replaced constantly. Steel rails,
introduced gradually after 1860, could bear double the load on each
wheel, and still outlive many iron rails. The modern rail, simple
as it appears, is both in material and in proportions a great feat
of engineering, “a beam whose every dimension and curve and angle
are exactly suited to the tremendous work it has to do.” Steel rails
and steel bridges have made possible the economy of the colossal
locomotives of modern times. Steel has enabled men, instead of building
10-ton cars to carry 10 tons of cargo, to build 12-ton cars to carry
20, or 14-ton to carry 30; each improvement of this kind represents a
saving in the dead weight of the train, and a consequent reduction in
cost. Steel has furnished a material for the bridges over which the
cars are carried, enabling a span of 500 feet to be constructed as
readily as a span of 250 feet, with the iron formerly employed.
[Illustration:
GROWTH
OF THE
EUROPEAN
RAILROADS
BORMAY ENG. CO.
The size of the small circles indicates the railroad mileage of each
country at ten year intervals. To facilitate comparison, the circles
for 1850 are printed black, and those for 1890 are shaded. Note the
disproportion of mileage and area.
]
=352. Development of the railroad system after 1850.=—Improvements in
the construction, the equipment, and the operation of railroads, for
the mere suggestion of which there is scarcely space here, explain the
rapid growth of the railroad system shown in the figures at the opening
of the chapter. It will be noted that over 99 per cent of mileage has
been constructed since 1840, and that even in 1850 the world had made
but a mere beginning in railroad construction. About the middle of the
century began a movement toward the consolidation of existing lines,
which had formerly been operated in short stretches by independent
companies. The student should note that this consolidation proceeded
largely along the length of railroads, not in the modern fashion by
the union of parallel and competing lines; and it is almost impossible
to exaggerate the benefits that resulted, in increased efficiency
of management, improved service, and lower rates. About this time
(1854) the first railroad was built across the Alps; the Union and
Central Pacific route was opened in 1869, beginning the era of the
transcontinental roads; and investors and engineers, who found the
older and more advanced sections adequately supplied with railroads,
began now to build lines far out into new territory, to open up fresh
land and develop new trade.
=353. Importance of railroads at present.=—Some attention will be paid
hereafter to the decisive influence which the railroad has exercised
on recent commercial development; and in the history of commerce in
particular countries the thoughtful student will not fail to recognize
this influence even when it is not specifically pointed out. In leaving
the subject at this point, however, the student may be grateful for
a summary estimate of the relative importance of railroads and other
instruments of production in our modern life. A good authority has
estimated that one quarter or even one third of the total invested
capital of civilized nations has taken the form of railroads. It is
doubtful whether the manufacturing establishments of the world are
equal in value to its railroads; while the world’s whole stock of money
would buy but a fraction of them. The railroads of the United States
carried in 1900 a thousand million tons of freight at a cost of a
thousand million dollars, and at the rate of less than three quarters
of a cent per ton-mile. The student may, from these figures, estimate
the service of railroads to the average individual in the country, and
may rest assured that the work they do could not be accomplished by the
means in use a century ago, even if the whole annual product of the
country were squandered in the attempt to carry it on.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. See the suggestion on the treatment of the statistics in sect. 315.
Combine the statistics of the sections 315 and 342 in one chart, if
practicable. See below, sect. 354, for the explanation of carrying
power; a steamer is estimated to have four times the efficiency of a
sailing vessel, in this table.
2. What is the cost of transportation over roads in your vicinity?
What system of construction and maintenance is pursued?
3. Write an essay on one of the following topics, from the circulars
of the Office of Road Inquiry, U. S. Department of Agriculture.
(Copies may probably be secured gratis on application.)
(_a_) The proper method of constructing and repairing earth roads.
[Circular no. 8.]
(_b_) Methods of constructing macadamized roads. [No. 21.]
(_c_) Repair of macadamized roads. [No. 30.]
(_d_) The best system of maintaining roads. [No. 24.]
(_e_) Systems of State aid. [No. 32, Minn.; No. 35, N. Y.]
4. Effect on the agriculture of the U. S. of the present roads.
[Report of the U. S. Industrial Commission, 1900, vol. 10, pp.
ccix-ccxvi.]
5. The place of canals in the transportation system of a modern
European state. [O. Eltzbacher, The lesson of the German waterways,
Contemporary Review, Dec., 1904, 86: 778-797.]
6. Early history of the railroad. [See a biography of Stephenson, by
Smiles, or in one of the encyclopedias or biographical dictionaries.]
7. Early locomotives. [Thurston, Hist., chap. 4.]
8. American improvements in locomotives and cars. [Amer. Railway, p.
100 ff.]
9. Improvements in railroad construction. [Same, p. 1 ff.]
10. Feats of railroad construction. [Same, p. 47 ff.; Vernon-Harcourt,
chap. 2.]
11. Modern bridges. [Vernon-Harcourt, chaps. 6, 7.]
12. Modern railroad management in the United States. [Amer. Railway,
149 ff.]
13. Development of railroad organization and its effects. [Same, pp.
344-359.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A good article on the history of highways will be found in the
Edinburgh Review, 1864, vol. 119, p. 340 ff. See also Smiles’ Lives
of the engineers, and, for conditions in England before the railroad,
Stanley Harris, Old coaching days, London, 1882, or W. O. Tristram’s
book on the same subject, London, 1893.
For the bibliography of canals and railroads see Bowker and Iles,
and Palgrave’s Dictionary. Among the many books the following will
probably be most serviceable: E. J. James, Canal and railway; J. S.
Jeans, Water-ways; E. R. Johnson, *Railways; A. T. Hadley, *Railroad
transportation. All of these include historical and descriptive
matter, along with economic criticism. **The American Railway, made
up of articles contributed by various authors to Scribner’s Magazine,
has much matter of value and interest to the student of the history of
commerce.