For a time it looked as though the new vehicle was destined to a permanency and to accomplish a revolution in the methods of travel on the high-roads. But several things arose to determine otherwise. There sprang up an unreasoning senseless hostility to any substitute for the horse as the agent of vehicular traffic. The stage-coach drivers were afraid that they would be thrown out of work. Breeders of horses foresaw the destruction of their business, when horses should no longer be in demand. Farmers were sure that with horses superseded by steam, they would never be able to sell any more oats. This public animosity manifested itself wherever the steam carriages went. The coaches were hooted at and stoned amid cries of “down with machinery.” Stones and other obstacles were placed in the roads, trenches were dug to trap the unsuspicious driver and stretches of roadway were dug up and made into quagmires to stall the machines. Parliament was called upon and enacted excessive highway tolls, especially directed at steam carriages. Another law that stood on the statute books of Great Britain until within comparatively recent times compelled every self-propelled vehicle moving on the highway to be preceded by a man walking and carrying a red flag.
The Beginning of Railroads
All this was undoubtedly due, in a large measure, if not wholly, to what was then known as the Turn Pike Trusts, which, in conjunction with the stage-line companies, in many cases, were owners of a thousand and more horses. The latter, quite naturally, objected to the introduction of the mechanical vehicle, while the former had such relations to them that both their interests were identical.
But above all things, the great art of railroading had already grown from infant existence to a condition of great possibilities, which were now to be finally determined by a success, not alone mechanical and in the eyes of the inventor, but measured by the balance sheets of the companies of individuals who had made possible the construction of the various experimental locomotives or experimental lines then being operated in England and elsewhere. Just at this time, in the thirties of the nineteenth century, seems to have been the crucial point. The arguments of the engineers on the question of sufficient traction of the iron-shod wheels on iron or other hard railways, while given due consideration, were not wholly convincing, at least to the people investing their money in the enterprises; the profits were to tell in the final conclusion, and it would seem that the great era of railroading might be considered to have had its actual birth at this time, because:
The first dividend was paid on one of the great railroad enterprises.
Influence of the First Dividend
For the time being that seemed to sound the death knell of the common road steam-propelled vehicle. The engineers so strongly advocating the railroad had proven their various propositions in the eyes of those who had the financial powers to engage in the extensive introduction and development of the new means of transportation. Further demonstration, extensively exploited, was also made to the satisfaction of those investors, that vehicles could be pulled with less power on a hard roadbed such as a railway, than on an uneven and sometimes soft path such as common roads. It seems clear that these and various other arguments, heartily urged at that time, and, in some cases, unquestionable from a technical standpoint, were really decided by that first dividend. And the common road vehicle with the support and enthusiasm of its backers largely withdrawn from it dropped to a position greatly subordinate to the other branch of transportation.
The Steam Road Vehicle Again
On the other hand, the development which came in the next few decades in the railroad department brought also a renewed demand for common road vehicles for certain classes of work or for certain localities. The steam vehicle for stationary purposes, and also for the locomotive, were being rapidly developed and refined. The railroad settled down to the idea of a power unit drawing numerous wagons. That has been consistently adhered to to the present day, and only in the past decade have we gone back to the old and first principles of embodying the mechanical propelling means in the same vehicle that transports the passengers or goods. So, while Hancock and his worthy contemporaries passed into history, other common road steam advocates continued their isolated attempts up to and past the middle of the nineteenth century, although without any such general enthusiasm as prevailed in the twenties and early thirties.