The machine had to be poled or pushed to start it, but it proved the principle. The following day a public exhibition was given. Forty men and one woman responded to the request for volunteers to ride. They rode on the engine and in a big coach attached behind. They covered the top of the coach and clung to the sides. A dozen men got hold and gave a good push and they were off.
The road was just thirteen miles long. The distance was made in one hour and twelve minutes. The fire was then drawn and the boiler refilled. Also, all the passengers refilled, for whisky flowed free.
Peter Cooper was ready to start back. He ordered every man to hold on to his hat. A push and a pull, all together, and they were off. They ran the thirteen miles back in just fifty-eight minutes. The engine was a success beyond the fondest hopes of Peter. There were difficulties in the way, however. One was that the pulling only on one side caused a cramping of the flange on the other side against the rail. This was remedied by putting a wheel on both sides and running a chain on the two projecting hubs.
The pulling by hand to start was also criticized. Next, the fact that the engine had to be shut down every hour for water was noted. Peter Cooper stopped the mouths of the carpers by calling attention to the fact that even a horse had to be watered. And as for giving a push on starting, it was a passenger's duty to collaborate with the engineer. Besides that, passengers get thirsty and hungry as well as horses, and want a little change. Peter Cooper assured the critics that the boiler could be refilled while a man was getting a drink and stretching his legs.
The people who owned the stagecoach-line that ran parallel with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad made a lot of fun of Peter Cooper's teakettle. On one occasion they loosened a rail, so the thing ran into the ditch. For a time this sort of discouraged traffic, but there were others who prophesied that in a few years horses could not be given away.
Finally, the owner of the stagecoach-line challenged the railroad folks to race from Riley's Tavern to Baltimore, a distance of nine miles. The race was between a noted gray horse, famed for speed and endurance, and the teakettle. The road ran right alongside of the wagon route. In truth, it took up a part of the roadway, which was one cause of opposition. The race occurred on September Eighteenth, Eighteen Hundred Thirty. Thousands of dollars were bet, and a throng of people lined the route from start to finish. The engine pulled but one coach, and had one passenger. The gray horse was hitched to a buggy that carried one man besides the driver.
The engine led for five miles, when the boiler sprang a leak and stopped, the engineer in his anxiety getting on too much pressure. The horse won, and this proved to many people a fact which they had suspected and foretold; namely, that the steam-engine for land-carriages was only a plaything. Farmers in that vicinity took heart and began again to turn their attention to raising horses.
In the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-one, when Peter Cooper was forty years old, he was worth fifty thousand dollars; when he was forty-five, he was worth a hundred thousand dollars; when he was fifty, he was worth more than two hundred thousand dollars. He was one of the richest men of New York, and he was a man of influence. Had he centered on money-making, he might have become the richest man in America.
He held political office that he might serve the people, not that he might serve a party or himself. In all deliberative bodies, the actual work is done by a few. A dozen men or less run Congress.