It is sincerely to be hoped that the people of the United States can be convinced of the advisability of extending government aid to this enterprise. It must be admitted that the experience of our government with the Pacific railroads has created a strong prejudice among the masses against such subsidies as were granted to those corporations, but it is probable, with the people on the alert, that Congress would not again permit great impositions to be practiced against the government. When the great advantages to be derived by the people of the United States from the use of this canal and the small outlay required are considered, it would seem to be a wise policy for our government at once to take such steps as are necessary to secure the early completion and the future control of this great international highway.
CHAPTER II.
THE HISTORY OF RAILROADS.
In making inquiry into those inventions and improvements which were the precursors of the modern railroad, we meet early the desire to render the movement of wagons easier by a smooth roadway. Traces of this may be found even in ancient times. The Romans constructed tracks consisting of two lines of cut stones, and in the older Italian cities stone tracks may still be seen in the streets, corresponding to wagon tracks, and evidently designed for the purpose of rendering the movement of the wheels easier.
The first rail tracks of which we have any knowledge were constructed at the end of the sixteenth century. These rails, which were made of wood, appear to have been an invention of miners in the Hartz Mountains. They were the result of pressing necessity, for, as mines were usually so situated that roads could only with great difficulty and expense have been built to them, some cheaper sort of communication with the high road had to be contrived.
After various experiments the wooden railway was adopted, and the product of the mine was carried upon them to the place of shipment by means of small cars. Queen Elizabeth had miners brought into England, to develop the English mines, and through them the rail track was introduced into Great Britain. Later the wooden rail was covered with an iron strap to prevent the rapid wear of the wood, and about the year 1768 cast-iron rails commenced to be used. At the end of the last century wheels were constructed with flanges, to prevent derailing. More attention was also paid to the substructure, wood, iron and stone being used for this purpose. Wrought-iron rails were patented in 1820.
The first authentic account of heat or steam engines is found in the "Pneumatica" of Hero of Alexandria, who lived in the second century before Christ. Hero describes a number of contrivances by which steam was utilized as a source of power. Although these contrivances were at the time of very little practical value, they are interesting as the prototypes of the modern steam engine. The attempts to move wheels by steam date back to the seventeenth century, when a number of experiments were made, but their exact nature is not known, because they were all soon abandoned, either on account of unsuccessful results or lack of means. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Denis Papin constructed a small steamboat, upon which he sailed in 1707 on the Fulda River from Cassel to Munden, a distance of about fifteen miles.
The construction of locomotives engaged the attention of ingenious minds a century and a half ago. It is claimed that Newton experimented with a steam motor in 1680. Dr. Robinson described in 1759, in his "Mechanical Philosophy," a steam vehicle. The Glasgow engineer James Watt devoted himself from 1769 to 1785, with great energy, to the development of the steam engine, and succeeded in inventing the system which became the parent of the modern engine. An American, Oliver Evans, constructed at the beginning of the present century a carriage propelled by steam, and exhibited it, in 1804, in the streets of Philadelphia, before twenty thousand spectators. While Evans' invention was never put to any practical use, he prophesied that the time would come when steam cars would be considered the most perfect means of transportation. On Christmas eve, 1801, Richard Trevithick exhibited at Camborne, England, a steam coach, and soon afterwards he and his cousin, A. Vivian, obtained an English patent on a "steam engine for propelling carriages." Seven years later a Mr. Blinkensop, of Middleton Colliery, near Leeds, constructed another locomotive engine, upon which he obtained a patent in 1811. These and a number of other inventors of steam engines vainly expended great ingenuity in attempting to overcome a purely imaginary difficulty. They believed that the adhesion between the face of the wheel and the surface of the road was so slight that a considerable portion of the propelling power would be lost by the slipping of the wheels. It was not until about the year 1813 that the important fact was ascertained that the friction of the wheels with the rails was sufficient to propel the locomotive and even drag after it a load of considerable weight. On the other hand these inventors failed to provide in their engines adequate heating-power for the production of steam. In 1814 George Stephenson commenced to apply himself to the construction of an improved locomotive. When, owing to his invention of the tubular boiler, he saw, after fifteen years of arduous toil, his labors crowned with success, the civilized world entered upon a new era of social, industrial and commercial life. The first line upon which Stephenson's invention was used was the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. In the year 1821, a number of Liverpool merchants formulated a plan for the construction of a tramway between their city and Manchester. The question of motive power was left open as between horses and the steam engine, with which Mr. Stephenson was then experimenting. After much opposition on the part of Parliament and the public a charter was obtained in 1826. When the construction of the road was nearly completed, the directors of the company, after having determined upon the use of steam engines, offered a prize of £500 for the best locomotive engine to run at a public trial on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. This proposal was announced in the spring of 1829, and the trial took place at Rainhill on the 6th of October of that year. The competing engines were the Rocket, constructed by Mr. Stephenson; the Sanspareil, by Hackworth; the Perseverance, by Burstall, and the Novelty, by Messrs. Braithwaite and Ericsson. Both Braithwaite and Ericsson became subsequently residents of the United States, and the latter achieved immortal fame as the inventor of the screw propeller and the builder of the Monitor. The Rocket was the only engine that performed the complete journey proposed, and obtained the prize. It is claimed by the biographers of John Ericsson that he had really built a much faster locomotive than Stephenson, and that, although it had to be constructed very hastily and therefore broke down during the trial, the superiority of the principle involved in it was universally recognized by the engineers of that time. The Stephenson engines became the motive power of the Liverpool and Manchester road, which was opened for public traffic on the 16th of September, 1830. This line was, however, neither the first public railway nor even the first steam railway. The first railway or tramway act was passed in England in 1758, and in 1824 no less than thirty-three private railway or tramway companies had been chartered. In 1824 a charter was granted by Parliament authorizing the construction of the Darlington and Stockton Railway, to be worked with "men and horses, or otherwise." By a subsequent act the company was empowered to work its railway with locomotive engines. The road was opened in September, 1825, and was practically the first public carrier of goods and passengers. The Monklands Railway in Scotland, opened in 1826, and several other small lines soon followed the example of the Darlington and Stockton line and adopted steam traction, but the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the first to convince the world that a revolution in traveling had taken place.