IN WHICH RAILROADS MULTIPLY
The all but defunct Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh, of 1880, was not a
property to attract any considerable amount of attention from the
financiers and big railroaders, who had located themselves in the city of
New York. A local and feeding line of but some four hundred miles of
trackage--and most of that in an utterly wretched and deplorable
condition--it commanded neither the attention nor the respect of the
metropolis. The Vanderbilts in their comfortable offices in the still-new
Grand Central Depot, snapped their fingers contemptuously at it. They
would have but little of it. They did not need it. It fed their prosperous
main line anyway. As we have already seen, William H. Vanderbilt had at
one time acquired a considerable interest in the Utica & Black River
Railroad. Twice he had actually moved toward securing control of that snug
little property. It seemed to be a far more logical feeder to the New York
Central than the Rome road might ever become. Yet, eventually Mr.
Vanderbilt sold his Black River stock.
"I am not going to dissipate my energies in sundries," he then told one of
his cronies. "I am going to stick by the main line hereafter."
As I have already intimated if he had succeeded in acquiring the Utica &
Black River, there at the beginning of the eighties the entire railroad
history of the North Country might have been changed, down to this very
day. It was in that uncertain hour that the elaborate but ill-fated West
Shore was being builded through from New York to Buffalo--a route ten
miles shorter than the main line of the New York Central. The West Shore
needed feeders, very greatly needed them, and it was having a hard time
getting them. Remember too, if you will, that if the Utica & Black River
had become the sole Northern New York feeding line of the New York
Central, it is entirely probable and consistent that the Rome, Watertown &
Ogdensburgh would have been an extremely valuable and essential factor of
the West Shore. The greater part of the state of New York would then have
been placed upon a competitive railroad basis. Instead of being, as it is
to-day, largely upon the monopolistic basis.
* * * * *
The Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh of 1890 was an extremely different
railroad from the woe-begone and utterly wretched property that had borne
that name but a decade earlier. Reorganized, to a large extent rebuilded,
it was a reincarnation of the excellent rail highway which the citizens of
Watertown and other communities of the North Country had built for
themselves away back there at the beginning of the fifties. Charles
Parsons was never a popular figure in Northern New York. He made no
efforts toward popularity. Yet simple justice compels the recognition of
the fact, that in the rebuilding of the R. W. & O. he accomplished a very
large constructive work. He had relaid and reballasted hundreds of miles
of main line track and put down not only many miles of sidings but also a
considerable quantity of new main line; between Norwood and Massena
Springs, between Oswego and Syracuse, between Windsor Beach and Rochester,
chief among these extensions. He had built new bridges by the dozens;
purchased and rebuilded cars and locomotives by the hundreds. It was
almost as if he had built a brand new railroad.
Now--in 1890--he had 643 main line miles of as good a railroad, generally
speaking, as one might find in the entire land. The Rome road owned an
even hundred locomotives, ninety-eight passenger-cars, thirty-five
baggage-cars, and 2609 freight-cars of one type or another. It was a
monopoly within its territory. Its busy main-stem stretched all the way
from Suspension Bridge (with excellent western connections) to Norwood and
Massena Springs (each with excellent eastern connections). It was in a
superb strategic position as a competitor for through freight from the
interior of the land to the Atlantic seaboard ports--either Boston, or
Portland, or Montreal. Parsons was unusually expert in his traffic
strategy. Frequently he went so far and dared so much that the line of the
four-leaved clover gradually became something of a thorn in the side of
some of its larger competitors. Parsons in competitive territory was a
rate-smasher. He did not hesitate to put the screws upon the territory
wherein his road was a purely monopolistic carrier. There are citizens
dwelling in the northern portions of Jefferson county who still
remember--and with bitterness in their memories--how he helped put the
Keene mines out of business.
In an earlier chapter of this book I referred to the large part that James
Sterling had played in the upbuilding of this iron industry. After several
successive failures the mines had, sometime in the seventies, been put
upon a basis, seemingly permanent. Their ore was good--and popular. At the
time that Parsons first assumed control of the Rome road, the Keene mines
were shipping out from six to eight carloads of hematite daily--to
connecting lines at Syracuse, at Sterling and at Charlotte--at an average
rate of $1.25 a ton. Parsons advanced the rate to $1.50 a ton, and they
quit. They have remained idle ever since; their abandoned shaft-houses
melancholy reminders of a vanished enterprise. Yet the ore is still there,
in vast quantities; richer than the Messaba and in the opinion of many
experts, extending up to and under the St. Lawrence, and into the province
of Ontario.
* * * * *
Oddly enough, as Keene quit other mine districts of Northern New York
began to open up. It had been known for many years that in the
neighborhood of the small village of Harrisville in the north part of
Lewis county there were valuable deposits of black, magnetic iron ore. To
reach these beds, to open and to develop them had long been the dream of
certain North Country men, notably George Gilbert, of Carthage and Joseph
Pahud, of Harrisville. As far back as 1866, a line had been surveyed from
Carthage to Harrisville, twenty-one miles. Yet, it was not until twenty
years later that a standard railroad was put down between these two
villages.
In the meantime--to be exact, in the summer of 1869--the so-called
"wooden railroad" was built for the ten miles between Carthage and Natural
Bridge. Literally this line--its corporate name was the Black River & St.
Lawrence Railway Company--had rails hewn and smoothed from maple. It was
so very crude that it was doomed to failure from the beginning. Yet its
right-of-way served a similar purpose for the Carthage & Adirondack
Railroad which was organized in 1883, and which opened its line through to
Jayville, thirty miles distant three years later; and on to Bensons Mines
in the fall of 1889. A little later it was completed to Newton Falls, its
present terminus.
One other small railroad was built out from Carthage a few years later. It
deserves at least a paragraph of reference. The quiet old-fashioned North
Country village of Copenhagen, situated upon the historic State Road from
Utica to Sackett's Harbor, between Lowville and Watertown, had not ceased
to regret how the building of the Black River road--which quite naturally
had followed the water-level of the river valley--had completely passed it
by. Copenhagen also wanted a railroad. It waited for forty years after the
completion of the Utica & Black River before its desire was fulfilled.
Then, by almost superhuman effort on the part of its citizens, as well as
those of Carthage, it built its railroad to that village, eleven miles
distant. A former citizen of the town, one Jimmy March, who had won fame
and success as a contractor in New York City, bought a second-hand
passenger-coach from the Erie Railroad and presented it to the Carthage &
Copenhagen. A locomotive was purchased with a few work-cars and a brave
but almost hopeless transportation effort begun.
The Carthage & Copenhagen already has ceased to exist. The recent
development of the state highways and with them, of the motor-truck and
the motor omnibus sealed its fate. In 1917 it was abandoned and its track
torn up, for its wartime value in scrap iron: Its little yellow depot at
Copenhagen still stands. And upon it, but two or three years ago, there
still was affixed the blue and white signs of the telegraph company and
the express company. Yet no longer a track led to it; only a half-hidden
and weed-grown row of rotting ties, stretching away off in the distance
toward Carthage. In truth it has become but a mere mockery of a railroad
depot.
The day of the small railroad apparently is gone; its fate sealed. True it
is that the little railroad from Norwood to Waddington and the one that
the Lewis family built from Lowville to Croghan and Beaver Falls are both
still in operation, but these have large local industries to serve--they
are, in fact, hardly more than independently operating industrial sidings.
So, too, has continued the branch road from Gouverneur to Edwards, which
Engineer Bockus helped open in 1893 and upon which he has run ever since.
* * * * *
Charles Parsons had but little use for the small railroad. He thought of
railroads in large units indeed. His thought of the Rome, Watertown &
Ogdensburgh was, forever and a day, as a trunk-line, nothing less.
Sometimes he talked, rather airily to be sure, of buying the Ogdensburgh &
Lake Champlain or even the Wabash. Yet, in reality, he would have had
nothing of either of these somewhat moribund properties. He did not need
them. They were not germane to a single one of his plans. For one, and the
most important thing, neither of them could stand alone. The R. W. & O.
could. In the largest sense, it was a self-contained property; with its
monopolistic control of a huge territory, rich in basic wealth and still
in a period of healthy and continued growth.
Once, there at the beginning of the nineties, Grand Trunk made tentative
offers for the control of the rebuilded property. It hinted at a
willingness to pay par for such an interest. Parsons paid no attention to
the offer. Some people said that he was waiting for the Canadian Pacific
to come along and buy his road; there have always been plans for
international bridges across the St. Lawrence; all the way from Cape
Vincent to Morristown.
But even Canadian Pacific was not the big thing in Parsons' mind. I think
it may be safely said that from the middle of the eighties he had realized
the necessity that would yet confront the Vanderbilts of owning the Rome,
Watertown & Ogdensburgh. At that earlier time they were having their hands
full with the aftermath of their victorious but terribly costly battle
with the West Shore. It would be some years before they would be in a
position to go further afield than their own main line territory. But
Parsons could wait--wait and upbuild his property. And show his constant
independence of the New York Central.
In a hundred different ways he showed this. More than ever he became a
thorn in the side of the bigger road. He slashed more through rates--and
raised more of the local ones to make good the loss to his treasury.
Northern New York groaned, and yet was helpless. Parsons laughed at it. As
far as possible he kept out of it. He cut the wires. His right-hand man,
Hiram M. Britton, began breaking physically under the pressure and the
criticism, finally was forced to leave his desk altogether to seek,
vainly, the restoration of his health in Europe.
Mr. E. S. Bowen succeeded Mr. Britton as General Manager of the road. A
quiet, gentle sort of a man--a native of Lock Haven, Pa., and a former
General Superintendent of the Erie--of far less dominant personality than
his predecessor. He came quite too late upon the property to make a large
personal impress upon it. The memories that he left of himself are mostly
negative. He was thorough, conscientious, apparently seeking to please, in
an all but impossible situation. He was the last General Manager of the
Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh Railroad.
* * * * *
The steadily increasing clamor of the North Country against the road and
its management brought a man up from the South with a definite scheme for
building a competitive relief line into it. His name was Austin Corbin,
and while primarily he was always promoter rather than railroader, he did
have one or two railroad successes distinctly to his credit. In control of
the Long Island, his had been the vision that planned the creation of a
great ocean terminal at Fort Pond Bay, near Montauk Point. From here
Corbin saw four-day steamers plying that would connect America and Europe.
A day would be saved in not bringing these fast super-craft in and out of
the crowded harbor of New York. It was a fascinating plan and one which
still is revived every few years.
Corbin did some distinctly creative work upon the Long Island; and yet
forever was promoter, rather than railroader. He had associated with
himself, A. A. McLeod, who a little later was to achieve a spectacular
notoriety by successfully uniting--for a short time--such conservative
properties as Reading, Lehigh Valley and Boston & Maine into a single,
sprawling, top-heavy railroad. Together these men had picked up for a song
an unhappy railroad, which stretched more than halfway across New York
State and which was known as the Utica, Ithaca & Elmira. Corbin acquired
this road in 1882. It was a wonder. It reached neither Utica nor Ithaca
nor Elmira. Starting at Horseheads, four or five miles north of Elmira, it
twisted and turned itself through the hills of the Southern Tier and of
Central New York, narrowly missing Ithaca--which steadily and consistently
refused to build itself up the hill to meet it--threading Cortland and
finally terminating at Canastota.
This road came almost as a gift to Corbin and his associates. Its sole
value was that in its brief course it intersected nearly all of the
important railroads in New York state; the Pennsylvania, Erie, Lehigh
Valley, Lackawanna, and the New York Central. Corbin renamed the road,
Elmira, Cortland & Northern, and in 1887, extended it north from Canastota
to Camden, intersecting the Ontario & Western and the Rome road. He was
then within about fifty miles of Watertown. At about the same time he gave
his property its own entrance well within the heart of Elmira.
Vainly Corbin tried to peddle this road either to the Pennsylvania or to
the Vanderbilts. He finally offered it to them at the assumption of its
mortgage-bonds and its fixed charges. Even then it fell dead. As a last
resource he determined upon Watertown. Word of that small but growing
city's traffic plight had come to him. He jumped aboard a train and went
up to the rich county-seat of Jefferson, cultivated the friendship of its
men of affairs. Alluringly he spoke to them of the road he owned, of its
rare connections, its peculiar value as a coal-carrier, his ambition to
thrust it still further across the state.
So there was formed, in May, 1890, the Camden, Watertown & Northern
Railroad to fill at least the fifty mile gap between Camden, which was
nothing as a railroad terminus, and Watertown, which even then had a heavy
originating traffic. Watertown even in 1890, was employing 2500 workers
in its factories which alone burned more than 33,000 tons of coal
annually. It was receiving 68,000 tons of freight a year and sending out
about 178,000. It was a fair fling under any conditions for a competing
railroad; under the peculiar conditions that then prevailed seemingly a
double opportunity.
Corbin, himself, became President of the Camden, Watertown & Northern. As
its Secretary and Treasurer, James L. Newton was chosen. Around these men
a most representative directorate was grouped; S. F. Bagg, B. B. Taggart,
H. F. Inglehart, George W. Knowlton, George A. Bagley and A. D. Remington.
Whatever might have been Corbin's motive in the entire undertaking, there
was no mistaking the motives of the Watertown men, who had gathered about
him. They were determined to give their town a competing line; to undo, if
possible, the fiasco of a few years before when the Carthage, Watertown &
Sackett's Harbor had passed from their hands to hands unfriendly and
alien.
* * * * *
All these preparations Parsons watched with a great equanimity. He
realized the potential weaknesses of the connecting link of the proposed
new line; the terrific curves and the heavy grades of the E. C. & N.
Perhaps, he realized these fundamental weaknesses all the more because of
the steadily growing alliance between his road and the Ontario & Western.
The R. W. & O. sought to dig more deeply than ever into the sides of the
Vanderbilts by taking more and more traffic away from them; in the five
years from 1885 to 1890, the business delivered by the Rome road to the
New York Central at Utica, at Rome and at Syracuse had dwindled from two
million dollars a year to a little less than a million, and that of the
Ontario & Western had practically doubled.
The Vanderbilts have never taken punishment easily. But they are good
waiters. And apparently they did not propose in this instance to be
hurried into reprisals. William H. Vanderbilt hated to do business with
Charles Parsons. He detested going down to the Rome road's offices in Wall
Street, and there facing his new rival, a tall, cadaverous man, whose hair
in his Rome road years had changed from part-white to snow-white, and who
persisted in an inordinate habit of sitting at his desk in his stocking
feet; sometimes Parsons flaunted his feet upon the radiator. If the pedal
extremities of the fastidious Vanderbilt ever hurt him, he succeeded at
least in keeping his shoes on. Decency compels many things.
Across from Parsons sat his son, another Charles, who held the post of
Vice-President of the road of which his father was President. Together
they smoked cigarettes, incessantly. It was not usual for elderly men in
those days to smoke cigarettes and because the elder Parsons did it in his
office, Mr. Vanderbilt distrusted him all the more.
And yet, there were about Parsons certain distinct qualities of charm and
interest. A State of Maine man--he came from Kennebunkport--he was a born
horse-trader, as his operations in the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh
steadily showed. He was not a man to pay for that which he might possibly
get for nothing. On one memorable occasion he came to the office of
William Buchanan, the veteran Motive Power Superintendent of the New York
Central, who designed and built the famous No. 999, in order to get some
free advice on locomotive equipment. The Rome road then had a rather fair
supply of antiquated motive-power--it still was using some of the
converted wood-burners of its earliest days--and Parsons wanted to buy,
second-hand, some of the older engines of the N. Y. C. & H. R. He argued
that his bridges would not permit the purchase of heavy modern
locomotives.
But the Central folk argued back that they had scrapped all their light
engines, save those that they still needed for certain local and
branch-line services. In the long run they drew up plans for locomotives
suited to the special necessities of the Rome road and presented Parsons
with them. From that time on he came frequently to consult the technical
authorities in the Grand Central Depot.
"I have a first-class staff working for me and I don't have to pay it a
blessed cent," he would chuckle as he went out of its doors.
The funny part of it all being that the Vanderbilts apparently were
perfectly willing that he should make such use of their staff.
* * * * *
Here was Charles Parsons steadily proposing the most disagreeable things
to the Vanderbilts. The Lehigh Valley which, like the Lackawanna of a
decade before, had begun to tire of the Erie as a sole entrance into the
Buffalo gateway, and was building its own line into that important city,
was making eyes at the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh. Parsons, still
smoking his cigarettes, made eyes back at the Lehigh Valley and its
owners, the enormously wealthy Packer family of South Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania. Together they slipped into an alliance. For ten years
Charles Parsons had coveted an entrance of his own into Buffalo. The
Packers wanted to get from Buffalo into the traffic hub of Suspension
Bridge. On a competitive basis, neither the existing lines of the New
York Central nor of the Erie between those two places were open to them.
The interests of the R. W. & O. and the Lehigh Valley in this situation
were identical. It was quite logical therefore that they should get
together and form the Buffalo, Thousand Islands & Portland; quite a grand
sounding appellation for twenty-four miles of railroad, which was to run
from Buffalo to Niagara Falls and Suspension Bridge. Once formed, there in
the eventful midsummer of 1890, no time was lost in acquiring the
right-of-way for this important railroad link. As a separate corporation
it expended something over a million dollars for land and for preliminary
grading.
To complete its line it was necessary that it should cross the lines of
the then New York Central & Hudson River--not once, but several times. Up
to that time the New York Central had generally pursued a pretty
broad-gauge policy in permitting other railroads to cross its lines. Even
in this instance it granted the necessary permissions, but this time Mr.
Parsons went north to the Grand Central Depot and not Mr. Vanderbilt south
to Wall Street. Mr. Vanderbilt was quite willing that Mr. Parsons should
cross his tracks, when and where it was absolutely necessary, but, of
course, Mr. Parsons would reciprocate, if ever the occasion should arise
and permit the New York Central to cross the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh
tracks, if ever it should become necessary? What is sauce for the goose is
sauce for the gander.
What could Mr. Parsons do? Mr. Parsons acceded. Of course. Reciprocal
contracts covering all future grade-crossing matters were signed; and
duplicate copies of the peace treaty, signed, sealed and delivered. After
which work on the Buffalo, Thousand Islands & Portland went ahead quite
merrily once more.
* * * * *
It was in December of that same year, 1890, hardly more than six months
after Mr. Austin Corbin had made the first of his Queen-of-Sheba visits to
Watertown that that brisk community found that it was to have a very
special gift in its Christmas stocking. Watertown was not only going to
have one new railroad. It was going to have two. Intimations reached
it--in that strange but sure way that big business always has of sending
out its intimations--that Watertown within the twelvemonth was to be upon
the lines of the New York Central. That seemed to be too good to be true.
But it was true. Telegraphic confirmation followed upon the heels of mere
rumor. The Vanderbilts, tired of shilly-shallying with Parsons and his
railroad and of playing second fiddle to Ontario & Western, were going to
build their own feeder line into Northern New York. Already, it was
organized and named--the Mohawk & St. Lawrence--preliminary surveying
parties were already struggling through the deep December drifts.
All the oldtime rage and rivalry between Utica and Rome as to which should
be the recognized gateway broke out anew. The jealousies of thirty and
forty years before were renewed. Even Herkimer joined the squabble,
pushing forward the narrow-gauge line that had been built from her limits
north to the little village of Newport and Poland some years before.
Finally talk led to promises. Subscription papers were passed. Rome
trotted out the terminal grounds and the right-of-way for the Black River
& Utica Railroad that had passed her by there before the beginnings of the
sixties. Utica met her offers. Yet it seemed as if Rome was to be chosen.
The congestion of the New York Central yards in Utica--it was, of course,
well before the days of the Barge Canal and the straightening of the
Mohawk--made Rome the most practical terminal.
Railroad meetings were again the order of the day throughout the North
Country. Carthage vied with Gouverneur and even Cape Vincent, stung to
the quick by the neglect of her port by the Parsons' management, joined in
the clamor. And Watertown? Watertown was beside herself with enthusiasm.
She saw herself as the future railroad capital of the state. Corbin and
his local backers were not slow to take advantage of the situation.
Adroitly they urged that while the Mohawk & St. Lawrence would approach
the city from the southeast and the upper Black River valley, the Camden,
Watertown & Northern would reach it from the southwest. They even hinted
at the possibilities of a union station. Perhaps, the union station would
be big enough to take in a recreant but reformed R. W. & O. And some one
hinted that the Canadian Pacific by a series of wondrous bridges was to
build into the town from Kingston and the northwest. In the union station
of Watertown of a decade hence one was to be able to go in through limited
trains-de-luxe to almost any quarter of the land. And this in a town which
up to that day, at least, had never seen a dining-car come into its
ancient station.
All that winter Watertown ate railroads, slept railroads, dreamed
railroads. Surveyors went across back lots and put funny little yellow
wooden stakes in the snow drifts, where there had been potato rows the
previous summer and the next might see the beginnings of a great railroad
yard. Soft-voiced and persuasive young men went before the Common Council
and had all manner of permissive ordinances passed without a single word
of protest. Plans and routes by the dozen were filed with the County
Clerk. A local poetess burst into song in the _Times_ in commemoration of
the spirit of the hour.
* * * * *
As I look back upon the printed records of these proceedings, after thirty
years, quite dispassionately, it seems to me that there was, after all, an
extraordinary vagueness in the plans of these railroad promoters of that
strenuous time. The railroad lines ran here and there and everywhere upon
the map. But very little real money was expended, either in land or in
construction. The promoters, of both of the proposed new railroads, who
suddenly had become wondrously accessible to the dear public and its
advance agents, the newspaper reporters, were taking very few real steps
toward the real construction of a railroad.
Mr. Parsons, stung to the quick apparently by the newfound energy of his
friend, Mr. Vanderbilt, retaliated at once by threats of building a line
from his southeastern terminal at Utica through the Mohawk valley--even
through the narrow _impasse_ of Little Falls--to Rotterdam Junction and
the Fitchburg some seventy miles distant. To link Utica with Rome and (by
a more direct line, than by the way of Richland), with Oswego and his
straight through route to Suspension Bridge would be the next and a
comparatively easy step. That done he would at least have a powerful,
competitive route, as against the New York Central's, east to Troy and
Boston--and for ten months of the year by water down the Hudson to New
York. Yet I cannot find any record of Mr. Parsons buying any real estate
in the Mohawk valley.
Finally the Camden, Watertown & Northern did buy two plats of land
somewhere in the outskirts of Watertown, a fact which was promptly
recorded and spread to the four winds. It did more. It began laying track.
It laid nearly a hundred feet of unballasted track in the yards of Taggart
Brothers' Paper Mill and all Watertown went down in the chilly days at the
beginning of March and venerated that little piece of track. It was a
precious symbol.
To offset land-buying and track-laying the Vanderbilts sent the flower of
their railroad flocks up to see Watertown, to see and be seen, to ask
questions and to be interviewed. More maps were filed. One only had to
squint one's eyes half closed and see the New York Central feeder
following the north side of the river through the town, and the Camden,
Watertown & Northern squeezing its way, somehow, along the south side of
it. The enthusiasm quickened. A despatch from Utica said that the
contractors, their men and their horses were setting up their quarters
upon the old Oneida County Fair Grounds. Actual construction of the Mohawk
& St. Lawrence was to begin within the fortnight. Watertown braced up and
finished the subscription for the purchase of the right-of-way and depot
site for the new road through its heart.
* * * * *
And then?
Then--
On the fourteenth day of March, 1891, at one o'clock in the afternoon, a
quiet little telegraphic message--unemotional and uninspired, flashed its
monotonous way over the railroad wires into the gray old Watertown
passenger station back of the Woodruff House. It read, as follows:
OSWEGO, March 14, 1891.
_To all Division Superintendents_:
The entire road and property of this company has been leased to the
New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, and by direction of the
President, I have delivered possession to H. Walter Webb, Third
Vice-President of that company. Each Superintendent please acknowledge
and advise all agents on your division by wire.
(Signed) E. S. BOWEN,
_General Manager_.
And Watertown?
Poor Watertown!
It was as if a man had touched the tip of a lighted cigar to a tiny, but
much distended gas-balloon.