I had predicted that the railway would be completed in '70. On May 10, '69, the "golden spike" was driven at Ogden, Utah. Among the papers throughout the world that had ridiculed me as being mad or visionary because of my speech at Omaha in '63, was the Hongkong Press, which said that it was generally thought in China during my visit there in '55-'56 that I was a little "off," and that this speech, which predicted a railway across the Rocky Mountains, clearly proved that I was both visionary and mad. On my journey around the world in '70, after the completion of the Union Pacific Railway, I stepped into the office of the Hongkong paper and asked for the editor. When he came out, I asked him to show me the file of his paper containing my Omaha speech. He brought it out, and we turned to the column. "Do you know Train?" he asked me. "Why, I am Train," I said, "and it seems that you did not know me in Hongkong in '55-'56. I have just come through the Rocky Mountains over that road."
The tremendous importance of the Union Pacific Railway is now too well known to need any further comment here from me. It is enough to say that it was through my suggestion and through my plans and energy that this mighty highway across the continent, breaking up the old trade routes of the world, and turning the tide of commerce from its ancient eastern tracks across the wide expanse of the American continent, was created.
Note.—Albert D. Richardson in his once famous book Beyond the Mississippi, writing of the development of Omaha and the Northwest, due to the building of the Union Pacific Railway, says: "Here was George Francis Train, at the head of a great company called the Crédit Foncier, organized for dealing in lands and stocks for building cities along the railway from the Missouri to Salt Lake. This corporation had been clothed by the Nebraska legislature with nearly every power imaginable, save that of reconstructing the late rebel States. It was erecting neat cottages in Omaha and at other points west.
"Mr. Train owned personally about five hundred acres in Omaha, which cost him only one hundred and seventy-five dollars per acre—a most promising investment. He is a noticeable, original American, who has crowded wonderful and varied experiences into his short life. An orphan boy, employed to sweep the counting-room, he rose to the head of a great Boston shipping house; then established a branch in Liverpool; next organized and conducted a heavy commission business in Australia, and astonished his neighbors in that era of fabulous prices, with Brussels carpets, and marble counters, and a free champagne luncheon daily in his business office. Afterward he made the circuit of the world, wrote books of travel, fought British prejudices against street-railways, occupying his leisure time by fiery and audacious American war speeches to our island cousins, until he spent a fortune, and enjoyed the delights of a month in a British prison.
"Thence he returned to America; lectured everywhere; and now he is trying to build a belt of cities across the continent. At least a magnificent project. Curiously combining keen sagacity with wild enthusiasm, a man who might have built the pyramids, or been confined in a strait-jacket for eccentricities, according to the age he lived in, he observes dryly that since he began to make money, people no longer pronounce him crazy! He drinks no spirits, uses no tobacco, talks on the stump like an embodied Niagara, composes songs to order by the hour as fast as he can sing them, like an Italian improvisatore, remembers every droll story from Joe Miller to Artemus Ward, is a born actor, is intensely in earnest, and has the most absolute and outspoken faith in himself and his future."
[At the time Richardson saw me at Omaha, in '64, another noted journalist, William Hepworth Dixon, editor of the London Athenæum, called on me, traveling with Sir Charles Dilke, who was writing Greater Britain. I introduced him to Richardson.—G. F. T.]
CHAPTER XXIV
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAR WEST
1863-1870
Very much of my work that has aided most in the development of this country was done in the great region of the Northwest, then a wild country, trackless and uninhabited except by savages. Of course, the chief achievement in the West was the building of the Union Pacific Railway, which led up to the inception and construction of other railways and to the present prosperity of the entire section.
But this enterprise was merely a beginning. I looked upon it only as the launching of a hundred other projects, which, if I had been able to carry them to completion, would have transformed the West in a few years, and anticipated its present state of wealth and power by more than a full generation. One of my plans was the creation of a chain of great towns across the continent, connecting Boston with San Francisco by a magnificent highway of cities. That this was not an idle dream is shown by the rapid growth of Chicago, which owes its greatness to its situation upon this natural highway of trade; and to the development of Omaha, which owes its prosperity directly to the Union Pacific Railway and to the other enterprises that I organized in the West. Most of these plans were defeated by a financial panic, by the lack of cooperation on the part of the very people who were most interested in their success, and by events which I shall describe in the following chapters of this book. Some of them succeeded, however, and I was able to accomplish a great deal of work that has gone into the winning and making of the West.
When I went out to Omaha to break ground for the Union Pacific Railway, on December 3, '63, there was only one hotel in that town. This was the Herndon House, a respectable affair, now U. P. headquarters. I was astonished that men of energy, enterprise, and means had not seized the opportunity to erect a large hotel at this point, which had already given every promise of rapid and immediate growth. But what directly suggested to me the building of such a hotel on my own account was a little incident that occurred at a breakfast that I happened to be giving in the Herndon House.
I had invited a number of prominent men—Representatives in Congress, and others—to take breakfast with me in this house, as I desired to present to them some of my plans. The breakfast was a characteristic Western meal, with prairie chickens and Nebraska trout. While we were seated, one of those sudden and always unexpected cyclones on the plains came up, and the hotel shook like a leaf in the terrible storm. Our table was very near a window in which were large panes of glass, which I feared could not withstand the tremendous force of the wind. They were quivering under the stress of weather, and I called to a strapping negro waiter at our table to stand with his broad back against the window. This proved a security against the storm without; but it precipitated a storm within.