All the expense and experiments were not thrown away; true, investments and results failed for many years to inspire that confidence which opens the money vaults of the capitalists, but, not in the least discouraged, artisans, scientists, and genius, under any and every name, worked on and on, and when asked gave the coalminer’s answer to the House of Commons: “I can’t tell you how I’ll do it, but I can tell you I will do it.” The engineers, machinists, and model-makers kept at work, and so many improvements had been suggested to Peter Cooper’s locomotive that the first thing of the kind that had ever been made in the United States became transformed from a little competitor of the horse into a mammoth institution breathing impatiently for a track on which might be tested its speed and wondrous power.
The locomotive came—the heavy iron rails were in sight—but no one had yet suggested a satisfactory road-bed and rests for the rails. It had baffled the attempts of engineers. At this critical juncture a voice was heard from the wilderness—an axman, an Ohio “Squirrel Hunter”—one who had constructed many miles of substantial wagon roads through new sections of marshy country by means of “corduroys”—placing pieces of split timber, or sections of a younger growth, sixteen feet long, in close contact at right angles to the line of intended road-bed, then pinning long pieces of split saplings on the upper surface near the ends of the cross-ties on either side, and filling the interstices with earth, gravel, rotten wood, or other material, making a substantial and elastic track.
At a meeting of the president and directors of a section of unsatisfactory strap-iron road, this man appeared before the board with a model showing the relations of road-bed, cross-ties, and rails as now in use, claiming the plans proposed would insure the desirable essentials to safety, speed, cheapness, and durability, by giving elasticity and securing an absolute gauge at high rates of speed.
Seeing the model, and hearing the common-sense arguments and practicable philosophy of the “Squirrel Hunter,” all present clapped their hands and cried—“Eureka!”
Before the close of the session, a resolution was adopted in favor of “cross-ties and heavy iron rails.” With the correct idea for construction, it required but little time to satisfy the most credulous that velocity and power could be obtained with safety, and time saved; for time was fast becoming an important factor in the prosperity of the state. Charters were granted for roads in every direction, and each important village had aspirations for “a railroad center;” and capital, by millions, flowed into the state, and in a short period Ohio found herself with eight thousand five hundred miles of railroad, representing a capital of more than five hundred and fifty million dollars.
The officers of the first railroads felt or seemed to feel and act like ordinary people. This, however, was long before the procuration of a prohibitory tax on foreign steel rails. On one occasion, in 1849, the passengers on the line of coaches from the South, bound for Cleveland, Ohio, found on arrival at Columbus that “a new and expeditious route” had just been opened to Sandusky City, and thence to Cleveland, Buffalo, and other points east and west.
This “new and expeditious line” consisted of stage-coaches from Columbus to Mansfield, from Mansfield to Sandusky by the new railroad, and thence by boat to all other points. The railroad was part of the incomplete first through line from the lakes to the Ohio river, and was completed from Sandusky to Mansfield, fifty miles. The writer was one of the second installment of passengers sent over the new route. Four coaches left Columbus at an early hour, loaded with passengers and baggage, to make the connection at Mansfield, nearly seventy miles, over rough mud roads.
All went well until the Delaware county corduroys were reached. Here the leading coach got off the track and was down, with one wheel in the mud up to the hub. Getting out of this difficulty caused the time-table to be broken, and on reaching Mansfield in the evening we found the train to Sandusky had just left—so recently that the smoke of the motor was still visible in the direction of the lake.
The arrival of this caravan created no little excitement in the small town of Mansfield (Secretary Sherman’s home). Thirty angry passengers to be detained until the next day at a fifth-class hotel, destitute of accommodations, was not considered in the storm of invectives that were hurled in every direction, after taking in the situation. Accusations were publicly made that the landlord and the directors of the railroad were in partnership to rob the public by assertions enticing them into this trap.