Steel Rails - part 2

(Cont. from last week)

Railroads are not made daily. People are not always laying “steel rails”, but the people who live along rail lines and who naturally profit most by their being, continually show an inclination to dictate to their management and foster legislature against their well being. But, what is the railroad? How come?

Commerce is the life blood of the nation. The immense trade marts of the East are the nation’s heart. Radiating from these, the “steel rails” and the highways are the arteries and the veins which respond to the ebb and flow of the nation’s vitality. Sever an artery and some member of the human system suffers; wreck the “steel rails” and thousands may face starvation. It was, then, a vitally important adjunct which the pioneers of industry and commerce brought up through Portneuf Canyon and out over the lava plains to “Old” Red Rock, Montana, in the summer of 1880.

Had it been the privilege of modern-day Montanans to travel by stage in the sixties and early seventies, that bandit and savage-infested route from Corinne, Utah, to Virginia City, Montana, we might better by able to picture those daring engineers and construction workers, backed by an equally daring capital, as they pushed the “steel rails” northward for the succor of a vast commonwealth then in travail.

It is less than 75 years since this vast empire, extending from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean and from the International boundary line to the Gulf of Mexico, was known only to the native Indian tribes and that small, intrepid band known as the brotherhood of free trappers and traders.

Today, as we scan this almost limitless area with its millions of population, its agricultural, commercial and industrial development, we gain but a meager conception of the significance of the completion, a few decades ago, of the transcontinental railway lines that now span the continent.

Had a World-Wide Influence

True it may have been that those men who engineered these projects, those indomitable, spirits who hazarded their names, their wealth, and in many instances their lives to develop the enterprises, may have had in mind little else than the accumulation of wealth. Yet, the crowning of their efforts with success deeply influenced the economic and the political history of this nation and the whole world.

Among the existing conditions due, either directly or indirectly to the completion of the American transcontinental railways are: the opening up to settlement of a vast, productive area rich beyond measure in agricultural, mineral and other natural resources; a new importance to the Pacific Coast region, the Pacific ocean and bordering countries in the affairs of the world; the political expansion of the United States; the increase to this country of immigration from all other lands; a more rapid industrial and economic development of the nation; the evolution of the United States as a world power; and the combined effect of all these transformations upon the affairs of mankind in general.

History of the Railroad

The story of the coming of the “steel rails” has often been told in a general way. Like all other narratives which have to do with the onward sweep of civilization, it is wholly a story of the efforts of man - men who sought, either for wealth or fame, to “do the impossible.”
The first railroad was built by the Romans. The track was of cut stone.
The steam engine was invented by Watt, in 1773.
Probably the first locomotive was invented by Richard Trevethick. It was tried and failed in London in 1804. George Stephenson opened the Killingworth, a collier railroad in 1814.

The Stockton and Darlington, in England, 12 miles in length, was the first railroad to carry passengers. It was opened for freight on September 27, 1825, and for passenger traffic in October of the same year.

Peter Cooper experimented with a little engine of his own on the Baltimore and Ohio in 1829, and claimed that on the trial trip he ran away from a gay horse attached to another car.

The modern railroad was created by the Stephenson, father and son, when they built the “Rocket”, the first locomotive with a “blower”, in 1830.
The first locomotive to run over an American railroad was driven by Allen in 1831.

The Birth of a Great Idea

Although the first transcontinental railroad was not completed until 1869, this wonderful idea began to take form in the minds of far-sighted men and dreamers as early as 1819. In that year, Robert Mills proposed in his book on the internal improvements of Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina, to connect the two oceans by a steam road, from the head navigable water of the noble rivers disemboguing into each ocean.

What was the first report to be presented to congress on the construction of a railroad to the Pacific ocean was made in 1846 by Sidney Breese, chairman of the committee on public lands. This report was the first result of the efforts of one, Asa Whitney, a merchant of New York, who had become an enthusiast on the subject of a Pacific railroad.

Whitney’s original idea was to construct a steam road from the head of Lake Michigan to the mouth of the Columbia river on the Pacific coast. His plan embraced the provision for a grant of land 60 miles in width - 30 miles on either side of the line - for the whole length of the road.

The Land Grant Subsidies

This land grant subsidy, as proposed by Asa Whitney, was the plan, which when adopted by the government in later years, proved a means to an end for several railroad ventures of national importance. It was through the assistance of the United States government which gave it great tracts of land lying along its right-of-way, that the Northern Pacific railway was able to build the first transcontinental railway system across Montana forty-three years ago.

The first railways to be granted land subsidies were the Illinois Central for building from Dubuque, Iowa, to Chicago and to the Ohio river, and the Mobile & Ohio for building from the Ohio river to Mobile. These two land grants were passed through congress as a result of the activity of Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois.

The total amount of land acquired by the Northern Pacific through this land subsidy plan amounted to 31,658,331 acres. By far the greatest portion of this land has now passed into private ownership and, in Montana, much of it is owned by successful farmers and stockmen. It consists of every other section lying along the right-of-way in a strip 50 miles wide.

Thirty-four other railroads besides the Northern Pacific received great subsidies to assist in the construction of a portion of their lines, the government having given in that manner in the years between 1859 and 1872, 107,722,564 acres of public domain. All of the great western railroads received some assistance of this nature. The Northern Pacific with its 31,628,331 acres stands well in the lead. Second on the list is the Union Pacific with 18,306,036 acres, and third is the Southern Pacific with 16,012,228 acres. Of the other lines which now operate in Montana, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy has received from the federal government in the past, 3,954,934 acres; the Great Northern 2,924,263 acres, and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, 1,465,554 acres.

These land grants and the railroads themselves have played an inconceivably important part in the political, commercial and industrial development of Montana. As this state has grown in wealth and splendor, the railroads have progressed and the land with which they were endowed has increased in value until in many instances it is worth one hundred fold more than when the government made the gift.

In the days when the land grant subsidies were voted to aid in the construction of transcontinental railway systems, there was much criticism, while in the years that followed, as the land increased in value and the country prospered, the question was frequently asked whether the government received any direct benefit from its donation. This question was definitely answered during the late World war, and at other times when troops and other government property were to be hauled in an emergency.

Someone “slipped one over” on Uncle Sam in wording the bill providing for the land grants. In 1824 congress made a land grant for the construction of a canal connecting the Wabash river with Lake Erie and the grant provision contained a proposition “that said canal, when completed shall be and remain forever a public highway for the use of the government of the United States, free from any toll or any charges whatsoever for any property of the United States or persons in the service on public business passing through the same.” This clause was taken as the basis for making the land grants to the railroads, when Stephen A. Douglas persuaded congress to subsidize the above-mentioned lines, but someone changed the language of the provisional clause from “persons in the service” to “troops of the United States”. Future grants with one or two exceptions, read this way. Thus it was, that during the World war and other national emergencies, troops and government equipment were transported over many of the nation’s great trunk railway lines at either free of charge or half the regular tariff, thus saving to the federal government many millions of dollars at a time when the federal treasury was under greatest strain. (Cont. next week) Print this post