But beyond Cumberland the road gradually left the comfortable valley of the Potomac, and these early railroad builders found themselves confronted with new difficulties. To build a railroad across the range of the Appalachians, with the primitive methods and machinery of those days was no simple task. For nine years the construction work dragged. In 1851 the line had only been finished to Piedmont, twenty-nine miles west of Cumberland, and its builders were well-nigh discouraged. Let us quote from the ancient history of the B. & O., from which we derive these facts, in an exact paragraph:
“In the Fall of 1851, the Board found themselves, almost without warning, in the midst of a financial crisis, with a family of more than 5,000 laborers and 1,200 horses to be provided for, while their treasury was rapidly growing weaker. The commercial existence of the city of Baltimore depended on the prompt and successful prosecution of the unfinished road.”
In October, 1852, it was found that there had been expended for construction west of Cumberland, $7,217,732.51. But the road was going ahead once more. Its Board had dug deep into their pockets and the commercial crisis that hovered over Baltimore was passed. Two years later the road entered Wheeling, and its corporate title was no longer a misnomer.
A little later, a more direct line was built to Parkersburg, West Virginia, and direct connection entered with the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad, which reached St. Louis. The railroad was beginning to feel its way out across the land.
War between North and South had been declared before the long delayed extension to Pittsburgh was finished. In that time a real master-hand had come to the Baltimore & Ohio. In its early days the names of Philip E. Thomas, Peter Cooper, Ross Winans, and B. H. Latrobe were indissolubly linked with this pioneer railroad; in its second era John W. Garrett gave brilliancy to its administration. Even before, as well as throughout the four trying years of the war, when the road’s tracks were being repeatedly torn up and its bridges burned, Mr. Garrett was laying down his masterly policy of expansion. It was a discouraging beginning that confronted him. The two expensive extensions to the Ohio River had been a severe drain on the company’s treasury, traffic was at low ebb, the great financial panic of 1857 had been hard to surmount.
But Mr. Garrett was one of the first of American railroaders to see that a trunk-line should start at the seaboard and end at Chicago or the Mississippi. He pushed his line to Pittsburgh, to Cleveland, to Sandusky, to Chicago. It began to reach new and growing traffic centres. The Baltimore & Ohio entered upon an era of magnificent prosperity.
The first cloud upon that era came in the early seventies, when its powerful rival, the Pennsylvania, secured control of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore, the B. & O.’s connecting link on its immensely profitable through route from New York to Washington. Pennsylvania interests tunnelled for long miles through the rocky foundations of Baltimore, purchased an independent line to Washington—the Baltimore & Potomac—and the B. & O. found itself deprived of its best congested traffic district. For eleven years it was unable to retaliate, though not a soul believed the Baltimore & Ohio to be other than a splendid, conservative property. It owned its own sleeping-car company, its own express company, its own telegraph company. The name of Garrett was behind it. Logan G. McPherson says:
“When it was desired to obtain additional funds, bonds were always issued instead of the capital stock being increased. Interest on bonds has always to be met, whereas dividends on stocks can be passed. It was announced, however, that the retention of the stock capitalization at less than fifteen millions of dollars was an evidence of conservatism, as the continuance of semi-annual dividends of five per cent was thereby permitted.”
John W. Garrett died in 1884, and was succeeded in the presidency by his son Robert Garrett, who announced himself ready to continue a policy of expansion. The younger Garrett sought to regain an entrance for his traffic to New York. To that end he built a line into Philadelphia and prepared to strike across the State of New Jersey. He failed in that end by the failure of one of his confidential aides; the line that he had counted on for entrance into the American metropolis was snapped up by his greatest rival just as his own fingers were almost upon it. Later the B. & O. was permitted a trackage entrance into Jersey City, but the terms of that entrance were so stringent as to mean a practical surrender upon its part.
If Baltimore & Ohio had won that battle, a different story might have been chronicled. As it was, it stood a loser in a fearfully expensive fight; the English investors in the property became investigators—of a sudden the bottom dropped out of things. The stock went slipping down as only a mob-chased stock in Wall Street can drop; the road that had been the pride of Baltimore became, for the moment, her shame. It was shown, upon investigation, that the road had long gone upon a slender standing: millions of dollars that should actually have been charged to loss had been charged against its capital and included in the surplus. Ten years after Mr. Garrett’s death the road found itself in even more bitter straits. It was a laughing stock and a reproach among railroad men. Its profitable side-properties—the sleeping-car company, the express company, the telegraph company,—the first two of which should never be permitted to go outside of the control of any really great railroad company—had been sold, one after another, in attempts to save the day of reckoning. Just before the Chicago Fair the road reached low-water mark. Its passenger cars were weather-beaten and ravaged almost beyond hope of paint-shops; it was sometimes necessary to hold outgoing trains in the famous old Camden station at Baltimore, until the lamps and drinking glasses could be secured from some incoming train. In that day of low-water mark it was actually and seriously proposed to abandon the passenger service of the road!