Into a large centre of population like New York, London, or Berlin, many millions of pounds of perishable food-stuffs must be brought daily for consumption. Now these food-stuffs must be delivered with promptness, and no delay can be tolerated. A shipper having half a million pounds of meat or a hundred thousand pounds of flour or a car-load of fruit to deliver can take no risks; he sends it by rail, not only because it is the quickest way, but because experience has shown it to be the most prompt way; as a rule, it is delivered on the exact minute of schedule time.
Cargoes of silks and teas from China and Japan might be sent all the way to London by water, but experience has shown a more profitable way. The consignments are sent by swift steamships to Seattle; thence by fast express trains to New York; there they are transferred to swift liners that take them across the Atlantic to European ports. And although this method of shipment is enormously expensive as compared with the all-water route, the saving of time and certainty of prompt delivery more than offset the extra cost of delivery.
In the last half of the nineteenth century the cost of haulage in the United States by rail decreased so materially that in a few instances only—notably the Great Lakes and the Hudson River—do inland waters compete with the railways.[12] This is due in part to better organization of the railways, but mainly to the substitution of Bessemer steel for iron rails and the great improvements in locomotives and rolling stock.
The use of a steam-driven locomotive became possible for the first time when Stephenson used the tubular boiler and the forced draught,[13] thereby making steam rapidly enough for a short, quick stroke. In 1865 a good freight locomotive weighing thirty tons could haul about forty box-cars, each loaded with ten tons. This was the maximum load for a level track; the average load for a single locomotive was about twenty-five or thirty cars. Heavier locomotives could not well be used because the iron rails went to pieces under them.
The invention of Bessemer steel produced a rail that was safe under the pounding of a locomotive three or four times as heavy as those formerly employed; it produced boilers that would carry steam at 250 instead of 60 pounds pressure per square inch. As a result, with only a moderate increase in the fuel burned, a single locomotive on a level track will haul eighty or ninety box-cars, each carrying nearly seventy thousand pounds.[14]
The application of the double and the triple expansion principle has been quite as successful with locomotive as with marine engines in saving fuel and gaining power—that is, it has decreased the cost per ton-mile of hauling freight and likewise the cost of transporting passengers. Enlarged "fire-boxes," or furnaces,[15] enable steam to be made more rapidly and to give higher speed.[16] Only a few years ago forty-eight hours was the scheduled time between New York and Chicago; now there are about forty trains a day between these two cities, several of which make the trip in twenty-four hours or less.
Railway Development.—The railway as a common carrier, having its right by virtue of a government charter, dates from 1801, when a tramway was built between Croydon and Wandsworth, two suburbs of London. The rails were iron straps, nailed to wooden stringers. The charter was carefully drawn in order to prevent the road from competing with omnibus lines and public cabs.
When the steam locomotive succeeded horse-power, however, there followed an era of railway development that in a few years revolutionized the carrying trade in the thickly settled parts of the United States and Europe. Short, independent lines were constructed without any reference whatever to the natural movement of traffic. There seemed but one idea, namely, to connect two cities or towns. Indeed, the absence of a definite plan was much similar to that of the interurban electric roads a century later; local traffic was the only consideration.
At first an opinion prevailed that the road-bed of the railway ought to be a public highway upon which any individual or company might run its own conveyances, on the payment of a fixed toll; indeed, in both Europe and the United States, public opinion could see no difference between the railway and the canal. The employment of a steam-driven locomotive engine, however, made such a plan impossible, and demonstrated that the roads must be thoroughly organized.