Mr. William Reed, a land agent, was called, in 1834, to give evidence in favour of the Great Western Railway. He was questioned as to the benefits conferred upon the localities passed through by the Manchester and Liverpool Railway. He was asked, “From your knowledge of the property in the neighbourhood, can you say that the houses have not decreased in value?” “Yes; I know an instance of a gentleman who had a house very near, and, though he quarrelled very much with the Company when they came there, and said, ‘Very well, if you will come let me have a high wall to keep you out of sight,’ and a year-and-a-half ago he petitioned the Company to take down the wall, and he has put up an iron railing, so that he may see them.”
A RIDE FROM BOSTON TO PROVIDENCE IN 1835.
The early railway enterprise in America was not regarded by all persons with feelings of unmixed satisfaction. Thus we read of the railway journey taken by a gentleman of the old school, whose experience and sensations—if not very satisfactory to himself—are worth recording:—“July 22, 1835.—This morning at nine o’clock I took passage in a railroad car (from Boston) for Providence. Five or six other cars were attached to the locomotive, and uglier boxes I do not wish to travel in. They were made to stow away some thirty human beings, who sit cheek by jowl as best they can. Two poor fellows who were not much in the habit of making their toilet squeezed me into a corner, while the hot sun drew from their garments a villanous compound
of smells made up of salt fish, tar, and molasses. By and bye, just twelve—only twelve—bouncing factory girls were introduced, who were going on a party of pleasure to Newport. ‘Make room for the ladies!’ bawled out the superintendent, ‘Come, gentlemen, jump up on the top; plenty of room there.’ ‘I’m afraid of the bridge knocking my brains out,’ said a passenger. Some made one excuse and some another. For my part, I flatly told him that since I had belonged to the corps of Silver Greys I had lost my gallantry, and did not intend to move. The whole twelve were, however, introduced, and soon made themselves at home, sucking lemons and eating green apples. . . The rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant, the polite and the vulgar, all herd together in this modern improvement of travelling. The consequence is a complete amalgamation. Master and servant sleep heads and points on the cabin floor of the steamer, feed at the same table, sit in each other’s laps, as it were, in the cars; and all this for the sake of doing very uncomfortably in two days what would be done delightfully in eight or ten. Shall we be much longer kept by this toilsome fashion of hurrying, hurrying, from starting (those who can afford it) on a journey with our own horses, and moving slowly, surely, and profitably through the country, with the power of enjoying its beauty, and be the means of creating good inns. Undoubtedly, a line of post-horses and post-chaises would long ago have been established along our great roads had not steam monopolized everything. . . . Talk of ladies on board a steamboat or in a railroad car. There are none! I never feel like a gentleman there, and I cannot perceive a semblance of gentility in any one who makes part of the travelling mob. When I see women whom, in their drawing rooms or elsewhere, I have been accustomed to respect and treat with every suitable deference—when I see them, I say, elbowing their way through a crowd of dirty emigrants or lowbred homespun fellows in petticoats or breeches in our country, in order to reach a table spread for a hundred or more, I lose sight of their pretensions to gentility and view them as belonging to the plebeian herd. To restore herself to her caste, let a lady move in select company at five miles an hour, and take her meals in comfort at a good inn, where
she may dine decently. . . . After all, the old-fashioned way of five or six miles, with liberty to dine in a decent inn and be master of one’s movements, with the delight of seeing the country and getting along rationally, is the mode to which I cling, and which will be adopted again by the generations of after times.”
—Recollections of Samuel Breck.
APPEALING TO THE CLERGY.
Mr. C. F. Adams remarks:—“During the periods of discouragement which, a few years later, marked certain stages of the construction of the Western road, connecting Worcester with Albany—when both money and courage seemed almost exhausted—Mr. De Grand never for a moment faltered. He might almost be said to have then had Western railroad on the brain. Among other things, he issued a circular which caused much amusement and not improbably some scandal among the more precise. The Rev. S. K. Lothrop, then a young man, had preached a sermon in Brattle Street Church which attracted a good deal of attention, on the subject of the moral and Christianizing influence of railroads. Mr. De Grand thought he saw his occasion, and he certainly availed himself of it. He at once had a circular printed, a copy of which he sent to every clergyman in Massachusetts, suggesting the propriety of a discourse on ‘The moral and Christianizing influence of railroads in general and of the Western railroad in particular.’”
AIR-WAYS INSTEAD OF RAILWAYS.
In the Mechanics’ Magazine for July 22nd, 1837, is to be found the following remarkable suggestion:—“In many parts of the new railroads, where there has been some objection to the locomotive engines, stationary ones are resorted to, as everyone knows to draw the vehicles along. Why might not these vehicles be balloons? Why, instead of being dragged on the surface of the ground, along costly viaducts or under disagreeable tunnels, might they not travel two or three hundred feet high? By balloons, I mean, of course, anything raised in the air by means of a gas lighter than the air. They might be of all shapes and