Brief biographies from American history, for the fifth and sixth grades

by Edna Henry Lee Turpin

There was another important result. So much freight was carried down the canal that vessels began to come to New York City in preference to Philadelphia and other ports, as they were sure of cargoes of grain, lumber, etc. This had much to do with the growth of New York City and the prosperity of the state. This canal is still used. Every year there travel down it great fleets of grain barges drawn by steam tugs. People overlook other things in Clinton’s political record, and, on account of this canal, remember him as the benefactor of his state.

About the time that the Erie Canal was completed, the first steam railway was built in England. Its inventor was an Englishman who was born while the American colonies were fighting for independence. George Stephenson was the son of a poor workman, and as a boy he toiled in the coal-mine where his father was employed. He made up his mind, however, to get an education. When he was eighteen, he attended a night school and learned to read and write. About this time his father’s health failed and George had to support the family. Often he had to labor by night as well as by day, but he managed to keep on with his studies.

Uncovered lights were then used by miners; carried into mines where there was gas, these often occasioned explosions in which many miners were wounded and killed. Stephenson set to work to invent a safety-lamp. Meanwhile, Sir Humphrey Davy was working on a similar invention. The two English scientists, independently of each other, arrived at success about the same time.

Stephenson now turned his attention to the subject of steam locomotion. He made a locomotive, a “traveling engine” as he called it, which in 1814 was successfully used in hauling coal-cars at a speed of four miles an hour. Stephenson saw that this locomotive had many defects, and he set to work to obtain better results. He succeeded the next year in building an engine which had “few parts and simplicity of action.”

After many years of discussion, a plan for a railroad was approved by parliament and a line was opened in 1825. People marveled at seeing Stephenson’s engine travel at a speed of fifteen miles an hour; they doubted whether the railway would ever become a practicable mode of travel. Stephenson said, “I venture to tell you that I think you will live to see the day when railways will supersede almost all other methods of conveyance in this country—when mail coaches will go by railway, and railroads will become the great highways for the king and all his subjects. The time is coming when it will be cheaper for a working man to travel on a railway than to walk on foot.”

After the success of the first railway, it was decided to build a line to connect Liverpool and Manchester, as the canal between these two cities was inadequate for the handling of their passengers and freight. There was held a contest between different steam engines in which Stephenson’s Rocket came out victor. A paper commenting on the success of the Rocket, said: “The experiments at Liverpool have established principles which will give a greater impulse to civilization than it has ever received from any single cause since the press first opened the gates of knowledge to the human species at large.” This proved true. The problem of cheap and speedy land-travel was now solved. During the years which followed England was covered with a network of railroads.

America with its great distances to traverse, was not slow to adopt the railroad. Only three years after Stephenson’s passenger railway was opened, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was begun. The first cars were only stage-coaches made to run on rails and the locomotive was a crude affair,—but it was a vast improvement on former methods of travel. Hundreds and thousands of miles of railroads were built in different parts of the country. Now, great lines connect the north and south, the east and west. Huge engines, very unlike Stephenson’s little Rocket, travel a mile a minute: instead of taking weeks to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, people can make the journey in five days.

Before the steam railway was invented by an Englishman, an American inventor had applied the use of steam to water-travel and had invented a steamboat. James Watt, a Scotch inventor, had prepared the way by his invention of the steam engine. After this was devised, many people thought that it would be possible and useful to make it furnish motive power for water-travel. Several American inventors attempted to make boats moved by steam power and had more or less success; but they lacked either money to carry out their plans or perseverance to bring them to public notice.

While Watts was working on the steam engine, there was born in America a boy who was to apply it successfully to water-travel. This was Robert Fulton, who was born in Pennsylvania, in 1765. He was only a schoolboy during the stirring days of the American Revolution. He was a bright boy and early showed inventive talent. One holiday he went fishing with some schoolmates, in a boat propelled by means of poles. To avoid the labor of using these poles, Robert made some paddle-wheels which he attached to the boat; he also fixed on the stern a paddle by means of which the boat could be guided.