S. T.
Chicago, June 1, 1910.
[PRE-RAILWAY ERA IN AMERICA]
From Chapters I and II of "Railroad Promotion and Capitalization in the United States," by F. A. Cleveland and E. W. Powell. Longmans, Green & Co., 1909.
(By permission of the authors.)
Inland transportation, as we know it, is the product of the last century. It had its beginning in the industrial revolution. In England at the close of the eighteenth century the manor as a productive agency had been supplanted by a system of domestic production, and this in turn was giving place to the factory. The combined influences of increasing capital and invention had operated to centralize the industrial population in the towns. Ocean commerce was comparatively well developed, and manufacture was fast being established upon a modern basis; but inland transportation was still encumbered by such primitive methods as to make difficult the utilization of the resources of the interior. A century and a half before, Lord Bacon had called attention to the three great elements necessary to make a nation great and prosperous—"a fertile soil, busy workshops, and easy conveyance of men and things from one place to another,"—but the significance of this reflection was not appreciated until after the middle of the eighteenth century. The controlling force of custom—social inertia—had stood in the way of progress.
IN ENGLAND.
Until about the opening of the nineteenth century the principal manufacturing towns of Great Britain were situated on or near the coast; for in the inland country goods were still carried on the backs of men, or hauled in carts over heavy roads. Said Lardner: "The internal transport of goods in England was performed by wagon, and was not only intolerably slow, but so expensive as to exclude every object except manufactured articles, and such as, being of light weight and small bulk in proportion to their value, would allow of a high rate of transport. Thus the charge for carriage by wagon from London to Leeds was at the rate of £13 ($63.31) a ton, being 13½d. (27 cents) per ton per mile. Between Liverpool and Manchester it was 40s. ($9.60) a ton, or 15d. (30 cents) per ton per mile. Heavy articles, such as coal and other materials, could only be available for commerce where their position favored transport by sea, and, consequently, many of the richest districts of the kingdom remained unproductive, awaiting the tardy advancement of the art of transport."