Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Railways

RAILWAYS. No invention, aside from that of the steam engine itself, has had so revolutionary an influence on modern social and industrial conditions. Without railway transportation modern trade and commerce would be an impossibility.

Rails, as a means to facilitating the drawing of heavy loads, preceded the invention of the locomotive by more than a century. In 1649 wooden rails were laid by the collieries in the north of England for cars drawn by horses, for the transportation of coal from the pits to the near-by towns, and even to the waterfronts, where it could be loaded on barges and vessels. Along these flanged beams cars were drawn by horses with such comparative ease that instead of a load of 1,700 lbs. by a common road, a load of two tons could now be drawn by a single horse.

In about 1740 cast iron rails, fastened on wooden sleepers, were instituted. Ten years later iron rails were in general use among the coal mines in the north of England and Scotland, and then it became a practice to link the cars together into trains. The next improvement was putting the flanges on the wheels instead of on the rails.

The invention of the steam engine drew the attention of inventors to the possibility of devising an engine which should serve as a motive power for the cars instead of the horses. The first man to complete a practicable locomotive was Richard Trevethick. In 1802 he took out a patent for a wheeled engine which should run on rails by its own power, and exhibited a model of it in London. Two years later, in 1804, he produced a steam carriage which hauled ten tons of coal along the rails at a speed of five miles an hour. It was the first locomotive, and although a success as far as it went, a considerable period passed before further experiments were made. This was due to the fixed belief among engineers that a smooth wheel could not draw a heavy load along a smooth track up an incline. It was not till 1812 that a small locomotive was put to practical use in drawing carloads of coal from the neighboring collieries to the city of Leeds, in the north of England. Trevethick, meanwhile, had lost interest in his invention.

In 1814 George Stephenson, an engineer, built a locomotive and put it in operation near Killingsworth, and demonstrated that it could draw heavy loads up an incline; his engine pulled 35 tons up an incline at a speed of four miles an hour. Yet it was not till 1825 that the first demonstration of a railway train in motion was given, on the Stockton-Darlington railway. On this occasion the locomotive, the product of Stephenson's genius, drew 22 cars filled with passengers, and 12 cars filled with coal, altogether 90 tons, at a speed of from five to twelve miles an hour.

In the following year a railway was begun between Manchester and Liverpool, a distance of thirty miles, and Oct. 1, 1829, was fixed as the day on which a grand competition was to be held between inventors of locomotives. Four engines appeared, two of which had been built by Stephenson and John Ericsson, the later subsequently becoming famous in this country as the inventor of the “Monitor.” For fourteen days the trials continued, Stephenson's engine being finally accepted as the superior one.

The Manchester-Liverpool railway was opened for passenger and freight traffic in 1830, and immediately proved a big success. The great railway system was thereby inaugurated.

Railway promotion now assumed the proportions of a boom and spread to other countries, in spite of the opposition of the sceptical and the owners of canals. It is said that the King of France at this time sent one of his most capable ministers to investigate the new institution. On his return this functionary reported:

“Sire,” he said, “railways may prove beneficial in England, but they are not adapted to conditions in France.” Thus have many beneficial inventions been handicapped by the bigoted.

In the United States horse tramways, the predecessors of railways, were in use as early as 1807, when one was put in operation along Beacon Street, in Boston, for passenger service. The first railway on which a steam locomotive was utilized was laid in Pennsylvania, from Carbondale to Honesdale, a distance of sixteen miles, built by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Co., in 1829, when a locomotive for use on the road was imported from England. The first railway built in the United States especially for the purpose of steam traffic was the one begun in South Carolina, in 1830. Another road was built by the Baltimore and Ohio Railway Co., from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills, Md., a distance of fifteen miles, being finished in 1830.

As in England, so in the United States there now began an era of railway construction which spread all over the country, with even more revolutionary effects in this country than in England. Lines were pushed out into howling wildernesses, not to accommodate an existing population and industry, as was the case in England, but for the definite purpose of developing population and industry in the future. Isolated settlements of pioneers suddenly found themselves facing the possibility of marketing their farm produce in the big communities near the seacoast and along the waterways, and extended their agricultural enterprises accordingly. Land hitherto valueless on account of its distance from civilization suddenly acquired a growing potential value, for railway transportation would bring its products within easy reach of the centers of population. The imagination of the more ambitious elements of the people were inflamed with these prospects, and a general migratory movement of the people began westward, followed by the railroads, sometimes actually preceded by them. The coal mines, too, suddenly found the whole populated part of the country thrown open to them as a market, and the coal industry began to experience a tremendous stimulus. With the possibility of receiving coal, small manufactories began springing up all over the Eastern States, along the lines of the newly built railways. It was the beginning of the period of big and intensive enterprise.

Ever farther and farther westward pushed the railways. In 1852 Chicago was reached, and two years later the Mississippi river was in railway communication with the East. The produce of the big Mississippi Valley, which hitherto must be shipped down the river to New Orleans, now found a quicker channel to the markets of the world directly eastward. It was as though river steamboats, hitherto the only means of freight transportation on a large scale, had suddenly found it possible to sail over land as well as water, regardless of the devious paths of the waterways.

During the ten years ending with 1840 nearly 3,000 miles of tracks were laid. During the ten years following, ending with 1850, over 6,000 miles were laid, and at the end of the ten years following there were over 30,000 miles of track laid in the country.

The Civil War, naturally, checked the further development of railway enterprise for five years, but with the close of hostilities it was continued more energetically than ever. Railway lines were now pushed out into the great broad, fertile prairies, and where only a few years before buffaloes and Indians had roamed undisturbed, vast grain fields began to appear. Man power being insufficient, machinery was invented to work these broad stretches of rich agricultural lands, and the reaper and harvester appeared.

On May 10, 1869, the last spike was driven which fastened down to the sleepers the last rail necessary to complete the railway connection between the Pacific Coast and the Atlantic Seaboard. Now the rich fruit country W. of the Rockies was thrown open to the East and to Europe. The political significance of this achievement was no less important than its economic aspect, for without railway connection and the tremendous commerce which was to develop between East and West, it is highly improbable that the United States would have remained united under one Federal Union. A broad wilderness would have separated the two coast regions and divided their political interests, and each would have naturally followed its own course. Without railway communication so broad an area under the jurisdiction of one government would be inconceivable on a democratic basis.

Until 1890 the building of railways in the United States developed at a rate much faster than the rate of increase of the population. The building was being done on the prospects for the future. Then, gradually, there came a slowing down. The following table shows the rate of railway construction in the United States by decades:

	Miles.
1830⁠	23
1840	2,218
1850	9,021
1860	30,626
1870	52,922
1880	93,262
1890	166,654
1900	194,321
1910	240,439

In 1918 the total mileage of railways had reached the total of 253,529, but since then there has been a decrease, rather than an increase, construction having come practically to a standstill since the beginning of the war with Germany.

The importance of the railways as an industry employing labor is shown in the following table:

Year	Employees	Per Thousand   of Population
1880	418,957	84
1890	749,301	119
1900	1,017,653	134
1910	1,699,420	184

The employees enumerated in the above table include only those directly employed in the operation of railways, and not the many thousands of additional men engaged in the building of railway cars and equipment.

The financial aspect of the railway industry is told in the following figures:

Year	Invested	Per Cent.  of National  Wealth
1890	$8,040,707,804	12
1900	9,035,732,000	10
1910	16,148,532,502	8½

During the past forty years the passenger traffic, or the use made of the railways by the people for purposes of travel has increased three times faster than the population. And while the population doubled, freight traffic increased twelvefold. During the past 18 years, while population has increased a little over a third, freight traffic has increased by 180 per cent.

In 1916 and 1917 there came a crisis in the railway industry which has usually been associated with the war as a cause, a fact which is only indirectly true.

Early in the seventies the constant friction between the farmers of the Middle West and the railways over freight rates has led, largely because of the agitation of the Patrons of Husbandry and similar farmers' organizations, to the institution of Federal regulation of interstate commerce (see Interstate Commerce Commission). Thus the power of the Federal Government became the chief factor in the fixing of freight rates. Until several years ago this system worked with fair satisfaction to all parties concerned. But then came the gradual rise in the prices of all products of industry, and, so far as the railways were concerned, the prices of steel rails and other metals and those raw materials needed for the manufacture of railway equipment also rose. Finally the demands of the powerfully organized railway employees caused a rise in the cost of labor. Unable to meet these rising costs with a proportionate increase in rates, to which the regulating bodies would not consent for fear of popular disapproval, the railway managements gradually found themselves facing a deficit in the financial administration of their lines.

The crisis came in 1917, with the outbreak of the war with Germany, when many of the railways of the country were on the verge of bankruptcy. To avert the threatened financial crisis in the railway industry, President Wilson, on Dec. 26, 1917, issued a proclamation instituting government administration of the railways of the country and suspending private management. The administration of all railways was immediately placed under a Director-General of Railways, who had not only the power to control, but actually to manage them and to appoint or dismiss such heads as he might choose.

Other contributing reasons there were, too, for this act; the need of pooling all the transportation resources and equipment of the nation for war purposes, which were for the time being paramount.

By an Act of Congress, which became law on March 21, 1918, the proclamation of the President was approved and Federal administration of railways was fixed for the duration of the war and for twenty-one months after, though the President retained the power to return the roads to private management any time after the close of hostilities, should he see fit. By this Act the private owners were to be allowed remuneration equal to the average earnings of the different roads during the three years preceding the taking over of the administration by the Government. A special Court of Claims was granted jurisdiction over any claims that might be made by railway owners under this guarantee, but in most cases special contracts were made with the individual railway companies, whereby these claims were adjusted.

Under Government administration railway rates, both passenger and freight, were substantially increased, yet on Aug. 1, 1919, Director-General Hines reported a deficit in the revenues of the railways under his control amounting to $296,000,000 for the first six months of the year.

The war having come to an end, there immediately arose a strong agitation, emanating from the Railway Brotherhoods (q. v.) against the return of the roads to their private ownership, the alternative offered being a proposal known as the Plumb Plan, whereby it was proposed that the administration of the railways should remain in the hands of a commission on which the Government and the employees should be equally represented. This proposal, however, found little support outside the ranks of the organized railway employees and radical circles, and on Dec. 24, 1919, President Wilson signed a decree returning the railways to private administration, to take effect on March 1, 1920. Since then numerous hearings have been held regarding the financial condition of the railways of the country, with the result that a demand has been formulated by the various owners for heavy financial aid to be granted by the Government for the purpose of restoring the roads and their equipment to their former degree of efficiency, much deteriorated since the early days of the war.