Chapter II: Driving the first spike: the long and winding road
“The day is not far distant when the Pacific will be bound to the Atlantic by iron bands that shall consolidate and strengthen the ties of nationality and advance with giant strides the prosperity of our country.” (Speech by Governor Stanford, January 8 1863, Sacramento)
I: Fire-breathing demons from Hell
As in so much of history, it happens that before we can go forward we must look back, back to a time when America, a pretty fledgling nation at this point, was about to grapple with the idea of railroads. As pointed out in the introduction, most of America - at least, the West, the new frontier - was, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, devoid even of roads. Rude paths had been hammered out, mostly by humans or horses trampling down the grass in certain areas, and ultimately failed experiments had been made to introduce toll roads, or turnpikes as the Americans called them. A combination of ingenuity by those who wished to avoid paying the toll and dishonesty on the part of those entrusted to collect it ensured that turnpikes would never work, and the invention of the steam engine in England would herald a slower but no less impressive industrial revolution in the States which would, within a few short decades, see steam-powered paddle liners chugging up the Mississippi and a system of canals being dug to accommodate other routes.
It cannot, of course, be forgotten that not only the steam engine, but the steam locomotive, indeed the very first railway in the world owes its existence to British genius like Matthew Boulton, James Watt and James Stephenson, and that in this, as in so much else during the time of the Industrial Revolution, Britain led the way. America, by contrast, was slow to pick up on the advantages of steam for railway locomotives; truth to tell, English people had been hard enough to convince at the beginning, with dire warnings of sheep in the fields being turned black, the atmosphere itself being choked by the noxious fumes spewing forth from the thundering beasts as they hammered along at a breakneck
twenty miles an hour down the iron rails, and the inevitable horror stories of engines exploding, some of which were, sadly true, but this is almost always the case when dealing with any new technology. Many brave men died before powered flight was achieved, and there were plenty of automobile accidents in the early days of the birth of the motor car.
So why, you may ask, if people feared it so much, did they readily consent to board steam ships with barely an eyelid batted? I think that has to do with the sort of idea that goes “out of sight, out of mind”. Steam ships, paddle ships, were all rather large and luxurious, the internal workings of the engines that drove the vessel hidden in its bowels, where no passenger went, or needed to go, or see. The only real evidence that the ship was steam-powered were the plumes of black smoke furling out of the stacks, and there was little to no noise. In addition, these steamers, though faster than sailing ships certainly, moved at a rather sedate pace, ambling on down the river as if in no particular hurry to reach their destination. And they sort of weren’t: steamers did not tend to build their reputation so much on speed as on luxury. You drifted, but you drifted in style.
Now contrast that with the first steam locomotives. All shining steel, the engine (the locomotive itself being called the engine, or steam engine, something of a misnomer but it stuck) clearly visible in front of you, the comparatively harsh lines of the thing making it seem wild, untamed, dangerous. The steam from the stack would blow backwards over the carriages, most of which had no windows that closed, so the interiors would quickly fill up with thick black smoke, which, while it would disperse out the other open windows, was quickly replaced by more as the infernal engine manufactured a constant supply of the choking vapour, and the faster it went the more smoke it made, and consequently the more you breathed of the stuff.
Add to this the fact that America - sorry to keep saying it but - a fledgling country, had little in the way of heavy industry at this time. Unlike Britain, whose skies were thick with the excreta of the factories, particularly in the north, and also where heavy fog was commonplace, so smoke would not be seen as too much of an inconvenience by most (not to mention the fact that it rained so often, which would disperse and thin out the smoke), America was at that time unused to industrial pollution. So this was something new, and, like almost all new things, carried a certain amount of fear and trepidation with it. Some visitors, looking at the fearsome steam locomotive static on display, were in terror of it: :
“The steam, the smoke, the sparks emitted from the belly of the monster were quite sufficient to invoke anxiety, if not downright terror, in timid souls who drew nigh the early demonstration trains.”
Some feared them, yes, to others they were a nuisance. Witness the story of the maiden voyage of the first American-built steam locomotive, the
Best Friend, which ran on the southern Charleston & Hamburg Railroad, when a fireman (I’m not sure if he was part of the crew or travelling as a passenger, though I suspect the former, to be in the position he was), annoyed by the whistling sound the safety valve on the steam engine made every few minutes, sat on it. Blocking the release of pressure, he caused it quickly to explode, losing his life and getting the engineer scalded into the bargain. Due to this - possibly apocryphal - story and others, and general fears engendered by scaremongering, perhaps put about by stagecoach companies and others who stood to lose business, even livelihoods if the railroads took over, most of the embryonic railroads that sprung up from about 1820 to 1830 tended to go the safer route, and have horses pull the wagons rather than steam locomotives.
You knew where you were with horses. You could talk to them (after a fashion), understand when they were scared or rebellious, quiet them down, force them onwards. There was a symbiosis, an understanding between man and beast that had existed for most of humanity’s history. Steam locomotives did not respond to cajoling, punishment, threats or pleas. If they stopped, they stopped, and on general principles, horses tended to explode a lot less than steam engines were said to. No matter the technology, the new will always be treated with suspicion and fear. Many households refused to install the new-fangled electricity, preferring the “safety” and comfort of gas. Of course, much of this had to do with the war of words that had gone on between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, each claiming his product was safe while that of his rival was not, and even in the twentieth century, many balked or laughed at buying a personal computer in the early 1980s, believing them pointless and an expensive luxury. Even the “fad” of television was scoffed at in its infancy.
But of course, progress can only be made if the new technology is taken advantage of; horses could only pull wagons at a certain speed, and they tired, and had to be replaced, and could not cover long distances. True, they did not emit thick black smoke from their heads, but on balance the advantages of steam powered locomotives over horses were obvious, though it would take some time before the people, including those who ran the first railroads, could be convinced of this. There’s even a story that, after the untimely demise of the
Best Friend (due to no fault of its construction, operation or mechanics, but down entirely to human stupidity and stubbornness) passengers had to be reassured they were protected from future explosions by the addition of a “barrier car” to the train, packed with cotton. As if that would matter, but it seemed to set their minds at rest.
Understanding finally came when a small engine built by inventor Peter Cooper, the
Tom Thumb, almost successfully outran a thoroughbred horse in a race to see which was faster, the locomotive only failing due to a mechanical failure which caused it to stop. Prior to the mishap though it had well outdistanced the horse and its rider, and railroad bosses were convinced that the future lay in steam, not (excuse me) horse power.
While we are talking essentially about the wild West here, the term denotes pretty accurately the procedures anyone who wanted to start a railroad had to go through. There was little cohesion, the government was not initially involved and left it to individual states to sort their own railroads out, each state demanding a charter be applied for and issued before any work could begin or any land be allocated. This worked on the principle of “eminent domain”, which essentially meant that, once a charter had been granted, if a railroad company wanted your land because it was about to build through it, they got it. You’d get compensated, but would not be able to refuse to sell. The right of eminent domain didn’t just get handed out though: railroad companies had to lobby for it and fight for it in court, opposed by vested interests such as turnpike operators, steamship lines and stagecoach companies, as well as hostile farmers who weren’t too happy about losing part of their lands, no matter what compensation might be offered. And then there were canal operators and tavern owners, both of whom stood to lose business if the railroad companies got their way.
But the opposing factions were destined to lose. Representing a fading way of life, an out-of-date and outmoded form of transport, they were about to be kicked savagely in the nuts by the bright new technological marvel of the century. As one court ruling in New York put it,
“Railroads are not only of great public use in the ordinary business transactions of the citizen, but they may be more advantageously used than turnpike roads for national purposes; . . . they tend to annihilate distance, bringing in effect places that are distant near to each other: tending in their magic influence to the extension of personal acquaintance, the enlargement of business relations, and cementing more firmly the bond of fellowship and union between the inhabitants of the States. Next to the moral lever power of the press should be ranked the beneficial influence of railroads in their effects upon the vast and increasing business relations of the nation, and promoting, sustaining and perpetuating the happiness, prosperity and liberty of the people.”
Start talking in glowing terms, in a newly-independent country, of the happiness, prosperity and most importantly liberty of the people, and you had the public on-side, anyone grumbling about the railroads now looking like a sore loser (which they were, mostly) trying to stand in the way of progress. And we all know what happens when you try to stand in the way of progress, don’t we? Progress just rolls right over you and keeps going. There is no stopping it. And there would be no stopping it. Trains and railroads were the future, steam was the future, speed and power and convenience and comfort all beckoned from that shining twin silver track winding away into the distance of the American imagination, and the idea was decided forever.
Of course, the railroad companies still had to pay. Charters were expensive and hard to attain, but now that eminent domain had been enshrined in the history of the railroad, once they had the charter they had the right to take whatever land they needed, as long as they compensated the owner. It surely goes without saying that with state involvement (and, perhaps tacitly, or even covertly, federal too) the scope for corruption was widespread, from monopolies granted to certain railroads by their states to tax exemptions and lotteries to attract private investors. As the railroad later grew, and the transcontinental began to be more than just a pipe dream, this corruption would grow too, earning the railroad bosses the dubious reputations that had dogged cattle barons and later oil barons. Some of the larger states even supported or financed railroads in other states, but with strings attached. Boston sponsored the Western Railroad to the tune of nearly four and a half million dollars, while the Erie Railroad in Pennsylvania received three million from New York, but had to agree to route the railroad through a sparsely populated area on the border between the two states, which was hoped would stimulate growth. New York financed many other railroads, in fact being one of the biggest investors in the system, outlaying a total of nine million dollars to ten different railroad companies.