It was thought when the first railroad from Sandusky to Mansfield was completed that the road would save the farmer five or six cents a bushel on his wheat in its transit to the lake, and yield a handsome profit to the stockholders of the railroad. That was the great benefit anticipated. No one then thought of the movement by railroad, over vast distances, of grain, stock, and merchandise, but regarded the innovation as a substitute for the old wagon trains to the lake.
The construction of this railroad was considered at that time a great undertaking. It was accomplished mainly by the leading business men of Mansfield, but the road turned out to be a very bad investment, bankrupting some and crippling others. I was employed by the company to collect the stock and to secure by condemnation the right-of-way from Plymouth to Mansfield. Much of the right-of-way was freely granted without cost by the owners of the land. As the chief benefit was to inure to the farmers, it was thought to be very mean and stingy for one of them to demand money for the right-of-way through his farm. I went over the road from Mansfield to Plymouth with a company of five appraisers, all farmers, who carefully examined the line of the railroad, and much to my mortification, assessed in the aggregate for twenty miles of railway track, damages to the amount of $2,000. I honestly thought this an exorbitant award, but the same distance could not be traversed now at a cost for right-of-way of ten times that sum.
The present admirable roads in Ohio have been built mainly by the proceeds of bonds based upon a right-of-way.
In the meantime other railroads of much greater importance were being built, and the direction of the roads, instead of being north and south was from east to west, to reach a business rapidly developing west of Ohio of far greater importance than the local traffic of that state.
Among the most valuable of these railroads was the Pittsburg, Ft. Wayne & Chicago, now a part of the system of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, by which it is leased. This road was built in sections by three different corporations, subsequently combined by authority of the legislatures of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The first section was the Pittsburg & Ohio railroad from Pittsburg to Crestline, twelve miles west of Mansfield.
There is perhaps no more remarkable material development in the history of mankind than that of railroads in the United States since 1845. The number of miles of such roads is now 171,804.72, the actual cost of which with equipment amounting to $9,293,052,143. The value of these railroads and their dependent warehouses and stations is probably greater to-day than the value of the entire property of the United States in 1840.
Contemporaneous with railroads came the telegraph, the cable, and the telephone. The first telegraph wire was strung between Baltimore and Washington in 1844. The first telegraph line through the State of Ohio was from Cleveland via Mansfield to Columbus and Cincinnati, and was established in 1848. At the close of the session of the Supreme Court at Mansfield in that year, Judge Hitchcock, who presided, asked me the road to Mt. Gilead, in Morrow county, a county then recently created. I pointed to the telegraph wire stretched on poles, and told him to follow that. The old Judge, who had been on the supreme bench for over twenty years was quite amused at the directions given. He laughed and said he had been mislead by guideboards all his life, and now he was glad to be guided by a wire.
The development and changes, soon after my admission to the bar, turned somewhat the tide of my hopes and expectations. Our firm soon lost the business of collecting debts for eastern merchants by the establishment of numerous and safe banks under the state act of 1846. Several of the old banks, especially those at Wooster, Norwalk, and Massillon had utterly failed, and, I believe, paid no part of their outstanding notes. The new banks, founded upon a better system, one of which was at Mansfield, rapidly absorbed the collections of eastern merchants from the part of Ohio in which we lived. This loss was, however, more than made good by our employment as attorneys for the several railroads through Richland county. My brother gradually withdrew from his business in Mansfield, and became the general attorney for the Pittsburg, Ft. Wayne & Chicago Railroad.
In the meantime I had taken a junior part in the trial of several cases in which I was greatly favored by Mr. Stewart, the most eminent member of his profession at Mansfield. He gave me several opportunities for testing my qualities before a jury, so that I gradually gained confidence in myself as a speaker.
My Uncle Parker was then judge of the Court of Common Pleas. So far from favoring me on account of my relation to him, he seemed to wish to demonstrate his impartiality by overruling my pleadings or instructing the jury against me. I am quite sure now that this was fanciful on my part, for he was universally regarded as being an excellent example of a just judge without favor or partiality.