I have suggested that some notice would be taken by me of the
changes which have taken place in seventy years in the marine
aspects of Boston. To a nautical eye these changes have been great.
Seventy years ago the wharves from India wharf to what is now the
Gas House wharf, were occupied by full rigged ships, square rigged
brigs, topsail schooners and sloops, engaged in traffic with the
northwest coast, Valparaiso, China, Calcutta, the Mediterranean,
England, the Western Islands, Nova Scotia, the Penobscot and Kennebec
rivers, Portland, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, the James
river, Wilmington, Savannah, Charleston, New Orleans, and every New
England port. There were the ships Akbah, Atlas, South America, St.
Petersburg, Asia, Daniel Webster, and the brigs, Emerald, Ruby,
Topaz and Amethyst in the European trade; the ships of Bryant and
Sturgis in the northwest coast trade; of Elisha Atkins in the South
American trade; John H. Pearson in the New Orleans trade; Daniel C.
Bacon in the Calcutta trade, and shippers without number engaged in
trade with many American ports. Besides these there were steamers
running to Bangor, Bath and Portland, and during the summer to
Plymouth, Barnstable, Hingham and Provincetown. The whole wharf front
of Boston was not more than a mile long, but ship’s royal masts and
yards exhibited a tangle of spars in strong contrast with the scene
today, South Boston at that time displayed an expanse of flats now
covered with docks of the greatest capacity. East Boston was without
wharves, and Charlestown outside of the Navy Yard, added little to
the commercial aspect of the harbor. When the Cunard steamers began
to arrive in 1840, there was not a towboat in the harbor, and when
the steamer Brittannia of the Cunard line was getting ready on her
return trip to Liverpool, set down for February 3, 1844, the harbor
was closed solid with ice, which it was feared would prevent her
departure. But the Boston merchants realizing the importance of
holding Boston as the sailing port of the Cunard company, made a
contract with Gage & Hittinger, a firm largely engaged in cutting
ice and shipping it to ports in warm latitudes, to cut a passage to
the sea one hundred feet wide, and seven miles long, through ice
nearly two feet thick. This was done, and the steamer sailed on
schedule time, much to the pleasure and profit of the Cunard Company,
and to the credit of the city. At about that time the tug boat R. B.
Forbes was built by the underwriters, and was for some years in their
service. One of her first opportunities to render aid was I think,
in 1848, when the steamer Cambria, inward bound from Liverpool, went
ashore back of Truro. One Sunday morning, on my way to church, I
met Mr. George Baty Blake driving into town, who told me that the
Cambria, in which he was a passenger, was ashore, and that he was
on his way to Boston to obtain aid in hauling her off. I went with
him to see the station master, Henry Carter, and Joseph Sampson,
conductor, and in an hour he was on a locomotive bound to Boston. So
expeditiously was Mr. Blake’s service rendered, that before daylight
the next morning the Cambria had been hauled off by the R. B. Forbes,
and was on her way to Boston. Mr. Blake had been a frequent Cunard
passenger, and told the captain that if he would put him ashore he
would send the R. B. Forbes down.
How things have changed. A ship is now rarely seen, brigs have
disappeared altogether, topsail schooners from Nova Scotia
occasionally visit Boston, and the old packet sloops have lost the
rosewood and bird’s eye maple of their cabins, and been degraded to
uses of which they seem to be ashamed. Now and then I read on the
stern of a weather beaten coal barge the name of a ship I knew in her
prime, which seems to me like a wing clipped eagle no longer able to
soar, or a disembodied spirit suffering for sins done in the body.
In view of the changes it is thoughtlessly said that the commerce of
Boston has declined, but there can be no greater mistake. It must
be remembered that the tonnage of vessels has largely increased.
The seven masted schooner Thomas W. Lawson alone, with a carrying
capacity of six thousand tons of coal, making ten trips a year,
represents the arrival of one hundred ships of the carrying capacity
of the largest tonnage seventy years ago, while leaving out of the
calculation tramp steamers, the regular liners with cargoes of two
thousand tons each, represent three hundred more. Coming down to
actual statistics, the customs receipts at Boston have increased
from 1901 to 1905, inclusive, two millions of dollars, and the
entering tonnage during the same time, has increased 456,392. The
complaint of a sluggish condition of our commerce is based on the
fact that our foreign trade is largely in the hands of aliens. Some
seek a remedy in subsidy to American ships, but the question may be
asked whether it will not be well, before taking a subsidy out of the
treasury, a large portion of which will find its way into the pockets
of the steel barons of Pennsylvania, to try the simpler remedy of
taking the duty from coal and iron, and compelling manufacturers to
sell at home structural steel used in building ships at prices as low
as they sell to foreign ship builders.
Turning now to railroads, whose entire history is covered by the
period of my life, I suppose I may say without the possibility of
a denial, that no invention or discovery has within seventy years
been more effective in developing the resources of our country,
maintaining its integrity, and promoting its interests than the
railroad system. The use of coal has been too great to be accurately
measured, but without railroads that product of the mines would
be still sleeping in its beds. The telegraph and telephone afford
business facilities, which are thought indispensable, but they are
only the inevitable followers of the railroad, and even depend on
its lines for the stretching of their wires. Without gas or kerosene
oil, and with wood for fuel, we could have still enjoyed life,
though it be without present conveniences, comforts and luxury.
Without railroads it is not too much to say that it would have been
impossible to dispose of, and assimilate that vast immigration which
during the last seventy years has sought a resting place in our land.
It may also be said that the railroad system, which broke through
the wall that separated the old Union from California, prevented the
establishment of a new and distinct empire on the Pacific coast.
Without attempting even a sketch of the history of the railroad
system, it is sufficient to say that at its introduction the road
bed, motive power and cars were rude and primitive. The locomotives
weighed not far from eight tons; the cars running on a single truck
were built after the fashion of stage coaches with doors on the
sides, and the rails weighed fifty pounds per yard. When Gridley
Bryant of Boston invented the double truck, I was told by his son,
the late Gridley J. F. Bryant, that he was laughed out of the room of
a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature when he suggested that
long cars with two double trucks could safely run on a curved track.
The committee had not learned the lesson, which the distinguished
scientist, Professor Dionysius Lardner, learned at a later period,
that it is never safe to deny the possibility of anything. In 1838 he
declared that ocean steam navigation was impossible on account of the
inability of any vessel to carry sufficient coal for a trans-Atlantic
voyage, and yet before the year passed, in which the declaration was
made, the steamship Sirius of seven hundred tons and two hundred and
fifty horse power arrived in New York April 23d in nineteen days from
Cork; and on the same day the steamship Great Western of thirteen
hundred and forty tons and four hundred and fifty horse power,
arrived in fifteen days from Bristol. I feel pretty sure when I deny
that two and two make six, but if anyone should offer to bet with me
that within five years it will be demonstrated that the earth stands
still, I should be afraid to accept the offer. In June, 1827, when
the construction of a road from Boston to Albany was first agitated,
Jos. Tinker Buckingham, the learned editor of the Boston _Courier_,
wrote an editorial for his columns, which contained the following
paragraph:
“Alcibiades, or some other great man of antiquity, it is said, cut
off his dog’s tail, that _quid nuncs_ might not become extinct for
want of excitement. Some such motive, we doubt not, moved one or two
of our natural and experimental philosophers to get up the project of
a railroad from Boston to Albany; a project which every one knows,
who knows the simplest rules in arithmetic to be impracticable but
at an expense a little less than the market value of the whole
territory of Massachusetts, and which if practicable, every person of
common sense knows would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to
the moon. Indeed a road of some kind from here to the heart of that
beautiful satellite of our dusky planet would be of some practical
utility, especially if a few of our national, public spirited men,
our railway fanatics, could be persuaded to pay a visit to their
proper country.”
As is well known, the first railroad built in New England was a
short road extending from the Quincy granite quarries to Neponset
River, which was opened Oct. 7, 1826, to be used with horsepower
for the transportation of granite to tide water. In June, 1830, the
Boston and Lowell railroad was incorporated, and in 1831 the Boston
and Providence, and the Boston and Worcester. I have heard it said
that the curves on the easterly end of the Boston and Worcester were
due to the expectation that horse power would be used, and to the
consequent desirability of as level a track as possible. Though when
the construction of some of the Massachusetts roads was begun it was
planned to run them by horse power, the plan was changed before the
roads were completed. On the Baltimore and Ohio road, which was begun
in 1828, horses were used for some time, and the station between
Baltimore and Washington, called the Relay House, took its name from
the fact that relays of horses were taken there. In 1830 there were
only forty-eight miles of railroad in the United States.
The Boston and Worcester began to run trains as far as Newton, May
16, 1834, on a running time of eighteen miles an hour, and I remember
well seeing one of the earliest trains start from the station which
was then in Indiana Place, and I was as much astonished as I should
be while writing these words to see an air car stop at my roof to
receive passengers for Boston.
Some of the early railroads outside of New England were built with
longitudinal sills of timber laid on ties, to which flat bars of iron
from a half to three quarters of an inch thick were spiked, called
strap rails. In the summer of 1843 I went to Buffalo, passing over
roads owned and controlled by I think, seven distinct corporations;
the Boston and Worcester, the Western, as the road from Worcester to
Albany was called, the Albany and Schenectady, the Schenectady and
Utica, the Utica and Syracuse, the Syracuse and Rochester, and the
Rochester and Buffalo. At that time the cars, instead of being drawn
by the locomotive around Capitol Hill as now, at Albany, were drawn
to the summit of the hill by cables worked by stationary engines, and
there attached to the locomotive. The rail used at that time on all
the above mentioned roads which were in New York, were strap rails.
It was soon found, however, that these rails became loosened at their
butts, and being underrun by the wheels peeled up, often running
through the car floors and in some cases fatally injuring passengers.
These loose ends were called snake heads, and were as much to be
feared as the snags on the Mississippi River sixty years ago.
On my return from Buffalo I took a passenger boat on the Erie Canal
from Rochester to Syracuse, and had my first and only experience on
the “raging canawl.” The cabin of the boat was handsomely fitted up,
and had sleeping berths so arranged as to be unfolded at night. The
dinner furnished was good, and on the whole the novelty of the trip
made it interesting. We were somewhat uncomfortable sitting on deck
in the blazing sun, and when the cry of “low bridge” was called,
obliging us to duck our heads as we passed under the various highways
crossing the canal, I felt like one of the brakemen on the top of a
freight car, liable to be swept off unless I was constantly on the
alert. The rate of speed, not more than three or four miles an hour,
was not especially exhilarating, but the operation of raising and
lowering the locks relieved somewhat the monotony of the journey, and
the opportunity afforded for an occasional run on the tow path, or a
visit to the store of some shady hamlet for the purpose of purchasing
such luxuries as the larder of the boat was unable to furnish,
altogether made the trip one to be remembered.
It may surprise some of my readers to learn that, in the decade
from 1835 to 1845, the United States was far in advance of both
England and France in the construction of railroads. I speak from
my own knowledge and experience when I say that after all the main
railroad lines in the northern states had been completed some years,
there was no railroad in England north of York on the east, or
north of Manchester on the west. In the summer of 1846, in making
the circuit from York through Newcastle, Edinburgh, Perth, Dunkeld,
the Trossachs, Glasgow, Carlisle and Lancaster to Manchester, I
was obliged to go either by coach or post carriage all the way.
So in France in the same summer, I found only one section of rail
laid between Boulogne and Paris, and in December of that year not
a finished mile between Paris and Marseilles. Gangs of men, who
were called Navvies, were housed along the line between Lancaster
and Carlisle grading a road bed, and in France I found on the route
from Boulogne to Paris that a device had been adopted by which
the railroad was utilized as fast and as far as its sections were
finished. On the 5th of July, 1846, I left Boulogne in a diligence
for Paris. The railroad from the latter city had been completed as
far as Amiens about sixty miles. On reaching Amiens the diligence was
driven under a crane with a chain sling attached, and after its body
was loosened from the wheels it was swung round onto a platform car,
to which it was securely attached, and the remainder of the journey
was travelled by rail.
In 1843 a project was started to build a railroad from Boston to
Plymouth, and on the 18th of March, 1844, the Old Colony railroad
was incorporated. A committee appointed by those interested in the
enterprise, consisting of Col. John Sever of Kingston, Hon. Isaac L.
Hedge and Jacob H. Loud of Plymouth, made a canvas of the towns on
the route for the purpose of estimating the probable annual receipts
of the road. In their report they stated that the Plymouth receipts,
including both to and from Boston, would probably be eighteen
thousand dollars for passengers, but no estimate was made of the
probable freight receipts. They estimated the annual running expenses
to be $46,250, and expressed the opinion that receipts of $100,000
would pay expenses, and a dividend of six per cent. on the cost of
the road. Their estimate of the cost of the road was as follows:
Gradients, masonry and bridges, $176,595
Superstructure and turnouts, 290,650
Stations, buildings, furniture, etc., 25,000
Fences, 23,500
Damages, 132,000
Engines and cars, 65,000
Contingent, 40,000
————————
Total for 37 miles, a little over $20,000 per mile, $752,745
When completed, the cost was found to have been $700,000. The weight
of the first locomotives used was fourteen and a half tons, and
the weight of the rails fifty pounds per yard, while the weight of
those now in use is sixty tons for locomotives and ninety pounds per
yard for rails. On the Burlington route locomotives are now used
weighing one hundred and eighty-seven tons, with tenders carrying
twenty-six thousand pounds of coal, and six thousand gallons of
water. The first board of Directors chosen at a meeting held at
the Exchange Coffee House in Boston, June 25, 1844, consisted of
John Sever of Kingston, Addison Gilmore of Boston, Isaac L. Hedge
of Plymouth, Nathan Carruth of Boston, Jacob H. Loud of Plymouth,
William Thomas of Boston, and Uriel Crocker of Boston. Mr. Sever was
chosen president; Mr. Gilmore, treasurer; and Mr. Loud, clerk. In
December, 1844, the same officers were chosen, and December 31, 1845,
the same officers were re-elected, except that Mr. Sever resigned
as president, though remaining on the board, Mr. Carruth succeeding
him as president, and Josiah Quincy, Jr., succeeding Mr. Gilmore,
who resigned as director, but continued as treasurer. On the 8th
of November, 1845, the road was opened and the Directors brought a
party from Boston to dedicate it, among whom were Daniel Webster,
John Quincy Adams, Judge John Davis, Josiah Quincy, Nathan Hale, E.
Hasket Derby and P. P. F. Degrand. A collation had been prepared by
the citizens in the lower Pilgrim Hall, at which Nathaniel Morton
Davis presided, and speeches were made by the above gentlemen. The
next day regular trains began to run twice a day at 7 a. m., and 3.30
p. m. from Plymouth, and 7.45 a. m. and 4.30 p. m. from Boston, with
a running time of an hour and three quarters, while there are today
eleven trains each way on week days, with various running times from
1.04 to 1.21, and five trains each way on Sundays. Until 1847 the
road occupied the Boston and Worcester station in Lincoln street, and
then removed to Kneeland street. The Directors believing that a hotel
would be a profitable feeder to the business of the road, built the
Samoset, which was dedicated and opened March 4, 1846. Joseph Stetson
was employed to keep it, as the agent of the road, but in compliance
with the recommendation of a committee chosen to investigate the
affairs of the company, it was sold about 1850 to an association, as
has been stated in a former chapter.
Some years after the incorporation of the Old Colony railroad, a
branch from South Braintree to Fall River was incorporated as the
Fall River railroad, which was consolidated with the Old Colony
railroad, September 7, 1854, under the name of the Old Colony and
Fall River railroad. After the extension of the road from Fall River
to Newport, the name was changed to the Old Colony and Newport
railroad. In 1872 the Cape Cod railroad, extending from Middleboro
to the Cape, was annexed, and the old name of Old Colony was resumed.
The South Shore railroad from Braintree to Cohasset was added October
1, 1876, the Duxbury and Cohasset from Cohasset to Kingston, October
1, 1878, and the Fall River, Warren and Providence, December 1,
1875. The Bridgewater Branch was built at an early period, and the
Middleboro and Taunton Branch was opened in 1856, the branch by way
of Easton to Fall River in 1871, and the Raynham and Taunton Branch
in 1882. As this sketch brings the Old Colony railroad down to the
memory of the present generation, it is unnecessary to pursue it
further.
For twenty years the Old Colony railroad, like all other railroads
in New England, used wood as fuel in their locomotives, and the lot
of land on which the brick block stands, extending to the shore was
constantly filled with piles of wood, which were kept supplied by
Geo. Adams of Kingston, the purchasing agent. The Providence road,
more remote from wood lots, bought the standing wood on a large
tract of land on the James River, and Franklin B. Cobb was sent
one or more years to superintend its cutting and shipment. Had not
coal soon taken the place of wood it is probable that by this time
the forests of the country would have been exhausted. As it is, the
enormous consumption of railroad ties presents a problem concerning
a continual supply of these indispensable features of railroad
construction which railroad men all over the country are beginning to
seriously consider. There are two hundred thousand miles of railroads
in the United States, which, with twenty-five hundred ties to the
mile, require for their construction 500,000,000 ties, or calling the
life of a tie eight years, an annual supply of 62,000,000. Counting
sixteen feet to a tie the annual repair of two hundred thousand miles
of road will require annually a supply of 992 million square feet.
With all the other uses to which lumber is put in houses, bridges,
vessels, piling, box boards, barrels and wood pulp, to say nothing
of the lumber destroyed by fires, it is easy to see that the end of
our forests is not far off, unless some new material is discovered
to meet the exigency. The Pennsylvania railroad is experimenting
with steel ties, weighing thirteen to a ton, and costing $2 each,
but their inflexibility seriously increases the wear and tear of
rails and cars, and it is feared that the experiment will prove a
failure. When the Boston and Lowell railroad was built I feel quite
sure that stone ties were used, and finally abandoned for the reason
above suggested. Some railroad managers in the southwest are trying
catalpa wood, which if its texture shall be found satisfactory, they
think may be planted in large areas and furnish in twenty-five years
a crop of trees, which set four feet apart will grow twenty-five
hundred trees to the acre, or at the rate of two ties to a tree,
five thousand ties. At this rate twelve thousand acres would supply
a sufficient number of ties for a single year. But what shall be
done while these trees are growing, and still another year’s product
of twelve thousand acres will be required, and after that another
and another. All the while the cost of lumber is increasing. Within
seventy years black walnut, before unknown as a furniture wood, has
been so nearly exhausted as to bring in the Boston market one hundred
dollars a thousand. Our legislators in Washington in their fear of
the lumber barons of Michigan and Maine, who have even sent their
invading axes into the mountains of New Hampshire and the forests of
the Adirondacks, refuse to bring about even the slight amelioration
of present conditions, which by the abolition of a duty on lumber,
might be afforded by giving us access to the forests of the Dominion.
Unlike France, where no man can cut down the forests on his own
land without a government permit, we of the present generation in
the United States are absolutely skinning the earth, as if future
generations have no rights which we are bound to respect. If seventy
years ago a law had been enacted requiring an acre of black walnut to
be planted with so many trees to the acre, for every acre cut down,
that wood would have continued in reasonably abundant supply. Unless
some restraining laws be soon enacted to control the robbers of our
forests, a lumber famine must sooner or later ensue.
The only effectual remedy for the existing evil, which I as a layman
can see, is the discovery of a material to be made from some plant,
weed or shrub raised in annual crops. For want of a better name let
us call the material paper. What the plant or shrub will be, no man
as yet knows. It may be now in our fields and yards growing under
our very eyes, and waiting to be called upon to do its share in
the great work of civilization. It may be possible that with such
an annual crop the farmers of New England will see their hillsides
and valleys once more sources of wealth. It may be possible to mould
the pulp made from this shrub into material of any form or shape
from house lumber and box boards to brush woods, and from railroad
ties to spools, as flexible as wood, as indestructible as stone,
and as incombustible as iron. Fortune and fame await the discoverer
of this material. Young man, look for it, and you will find it.
Who knows that it may not be the daisy—not the common New England
plant, but the daisy which has been produced by Luther Burbank of
Santa Rosa, California, a combination of the New England, English
and Japan daisies, with stalks two feet long, which would probably
yield four tons to the acre. Such a crop raised annually without
constant planting, and requiring little fertilization, would convert
our hillsides and valleys into mines of wealth, and what is now a
nuisance into an everlasting benefaction.