USA > Iowa > Scott County > Davenport > History of Davenport and Scott County Iowa, Volume I > Part 82
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This is easily accounted for. Capital was limited and later, as money troubles multiplied in this community, receipts were scanty where they should have been
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plentiful. The newspaper of those days was always shorthanded. It needed more help than it was able to hire. The Democrat suffered this limitation, as did the other papers of this town and the territory. What was written must be written by probably one man, or at the most, by two. It was a physical impos- sibility for that one man to do all the other more necessary things that must be done first, and then have much time left for verbatim reports of toast programs and political harangues and runaways. Even if he had notes of the matter, he had to wait for time to expand them into copy. There were no stenographers and typewriters in those days.
A CHANGE OF SPEECH.
Again, we notice the wide divergence between the language of the press in those days and the speech it uses now. Then it was stilted, formal and stiff, in many cases, and at least it was always tinctured with something of that kind. It had the euphemism of Washington Irving, or Macaulay, or Addison, when the writer was in good humor, and it thundered with the artillery of Burke, and Webster, and Patrick Henry, with considerable grape and cannister of the Bil- lingsgate brand when he wanted to pierce the armor of an opponent and rankle there. Today no newspaper that is published uses such speech. We use the verbiage of the present time, which is as far from that as the aphoristic sentences of Alfred Henry Lewis are from the careful phrasings of Charles Lamb. How far this editorial bombardment overshot the heads and speech of the common herd who took the paper, either by subscribing, borrowing or stealing (paper thieves were rampant then), we have no way of learning; but if the people used the speech of the papers, those were indeed deliberate old days.
SCANTINESS OF TELEGRAPH.
Of course the striking feature of this scantiness of news in the earlier num- bers of the paper is its staleness. Telegraph news service was just being begun in Davenport then, or began soon after. It was limited to a few lines a day, and these were as often trivial as of value. Very often it failed entirely, owing to frail line construction, and for the first year or so of the Democrat's exist- ence it was a feature that would not have been missed.
General news came to the city by way of the Chicago & Rock Island road, which brought it the Chicago papers, from which the Democrat was able to make up a fair news page, such as it was in those days. Papers from up and down the river were highly esteemed, especially those from down the river, as they brought news of their respective sections. These all came by boat of course. It is the usual thing to find mention of the thanks of the editor for late papers, handed him by some river captain. There were no papers from the west.
There was no cable in those days, and so there was no fresh news of the doings of the world at large. Intercontinental news all traveled by boat. The best that Davenport could expect was about two weeks from Europe, and often was almost half a year old by the time we got it. The credit line of that day
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did not mention that a batch of news came through the special correspondent of the paper itself, or of the Associated Press, but named some trans-Atlantic steamer as having arrived and brought it. The budget supplied by each boat was a hodge-podge of European, African and eastern gossip, all hashed together in one column and under the single head announcing the arrival of that boat. We did not hear of the bombardment and capture of the barrier forts at Canton by our navy till the June following the February in which it happened. That was less than half a century ago. A host of things have grown old and been dis- carded since then.
THE LACK OF HEADLINES.
Another feature of the paper of fifty years ago that has a queer look in these days, was its total absence of display of news. The art of writing headlines was a knack of later growth. In 1855, and on down to 1865, and for years after that, the telegraph news of the paper was "run in," the news from Africa and Hong Kong and Cuba and Nicaragua and New Mexico and London and Chi- cago and Oregon and Washington, all solid type, with hardly more than a date line between these geographical subdivisions, and no sort of effort to bring out the tenor of the news so that he who ran might read. Two or three columns of this matter, in fine type, none too well printed, with less than an inch of headline to all of it, was quite usual up to the middle '60s.
THE UNSEEKING ADVERTISER.
There was another feature of the papers of those days, and it was as charac- teristic of the Democrat as of any of the others, and that was the moderation of the business man in asking to have his advertisement surrounded with read- ing matter, and given other exclusive prominence of display. As the Democrat began its life its first and its fourth pages were solid advertisements. Neither of them carried a line of reading matter; all was display. The second page was about half devoted to editorial and general news and miscellaneous reading mat- ter, such as the very limited exchange list of that day afforded, and of the third page only about a column, or at most two columns, contained what pur- ported to be city news, and most of this was paid reading matter. But with all this great preponderance of display advertising matter there seemed to be only one difficulty, or at most two. The chief of these was to get money enough out of the business to make it pay. There was no trouble in satisfying the advertiser in the matter of "position" or display. He seemed to ask only to be admitted to the paper-somewhere. Next to this was the difficulty of getting all the ad- vertising into the paper. The requirements of this day in these matters are of later growth, mainly since the Civil war.
The shift of ground from that occupied at first to the place where the Demo- crat stands today was not made of a sudden, but came, as all evolutionary move- ments do come, gradually and by degrees, each step in advance the outgrowth of some other that had preceded. From a city department limited to less than half a column of actual city matter. and that lacking the essential qualities of
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news matter, the local current history was slowly expanded to a full column, then two, and then occasionally, as upon some momentous occurrence, such as the old settlers' first banquet, to a full page. Along in war days, under the impetus of some stirring political compaign, it even bloomed with illustrations; ancient woodcuts, the stock of the office for the illustration of advertisements, or the remnants of some other enterprise, being interwoven into a lampoon at the expense of the other party. The same woodcuts did duty in much the same way at least several times, decently separated by sufficient interval to be partially forgotten. At the same time the editorial began to be more fairly criti- cal and less bitterly partisan, and the clipped matter began to acquire some element of pertinence and timeliness; qualities which it had hitherto lacked; and the telegraph, or general news, began to expand. After the Atlantic cable was fairly set to working and the telegraph had begun to tie remote sections of our country closer together, the expansion of the department of telegraph news became much more evident. The Associated Press was then in but a crudely formative state, compared with its organization of today, and the news that came by wire was frequently contradicted a day or so after, and was an endless subject of revilement with the editor in his own columns, but it was the best there was in those days, and the people appeared to hold no grudges against the papers on these scores. The younger generation, acquainted only with news- papers that handle general news of such accuracy that error is an infrequent in- cident, have no conception of the jumble of fact, fancy, and fiction that was handed to the reader in the days of the war, and before, by the best editors in the land, simply because there was no way of doing any better. To relate the various steps through which this shift to higher ground has been made would be to tell a story of endless length. It is enough to say that the change came steadily along-better print, more news, better editing, better writing some- times and a better filling of the newspaper's mission in life in general, just as the same changes are going forward now, from day to day and year to year. The Democrat, as one of the papers that have survived the vicissitudes of the past half century, is a plain ensample of the evolutionary forces that have been working through that period to make the newspapers of today what they are. There is so little parallel between the Democrat of today and the Democrat as it began its existence that comparison is a matter of difficulty. It is worth while to mention this evolution here, because, in the files of the Democrat, which can be read at will by those who are interested, may be found epitomized the development of American journalism from the primitive and almost childish beginning of fifty years ago.
And still, with all the crudeness of those days in many things, there were giants then, and the daily press contained within itself those stirrings and work- ings of fermentive force that could come to nothing less than tremendous growth and power. The Greeleys, and the Prentices, and the Bennetts of that time led the way, but they were followed by a host of humbler knights of the quill, and the word all along the line was "forward."
STATION AND ELEVATED TRACKS. ROCK ISLAND SYSTEM
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE RAILROADS.
STRENUOUS EFFORTS TO BUILD RAILROADS IN SCOTT COUNTY'S EARLY YEARS-AGI- TATION TO THE EASTWARD AND WESTWARD- THE FIRST RAILROAD WEST OF THE GREAT RIVER-A. C. FULTON, A MAN AHEAD OF HIS TIMES-HIRAM PRICE AS PROMOTER-THE M. & M., C. & R. I., D. & ST. L., C. R. I. & P., C. B. & Q., C. M. & ST. P., ALSO THE I. & I .- FIFTY YEARS AN ENGINEER.
In 1842 A. C. Fulton urged the building of a railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean and bridging of the Mississippi between Rock Island and Daven- port. He had made soundings and a measurement of the river at Davenport with this idea in view. In 1845 the building of the Rock Island & LaSalle rail- road was agitated and the Gazette in its issue of December 18, 1845, valiantly encouraged those promoting the scheme and argued its importance and the feasi- bility of connecting the Illinois and Iowa shores by a bridge over the Mississippi. Mr. Fulton and Editor Sanders were far ahead of their times but each lived to see their hopes in this regard fully realized. In 1902 Mr. Fulton published a pamphlet in which he, in his own inimitable way, relates his experiences as a railroad promoter. He says, quoting from a paper read before the Old Settlers association :
"In the '30s of the past century two lines of steam railroad were running out of New Orleans; one between the Mississippi river and Lake Pontchartrain, run- ning through the city on Esplanade street. The steam horse of that primitive road was the first to drink the waters of the great Mississippi river. The second line ran between New Orleans and Carrollton, in the parish of Jefferson. And having known those railroads from their incipiency and gained knowledge, I, after passing over the expansive prairies of the west, considered the west to be well adapted for railroads and that they would build up and extend commerce, upon which I resolved to enter into the undertaking of creating a line of railroad between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, and I felt confident that, if the un- dertaking was entered on with resolve, it could be accomplished.
"In the last days of 1842, and the first day of 1843, after publicly speaking of the feasibility of the work, and as a link, I procured instruments and took
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soundings for the first bridge erected on the Mississippi river, and published my report in a Philadelphia journal, which report I now have and which gives the nature of the banks and bottom; the width of the main channel and of the depth of the water, and the nature of the route through Illinois to Chicago, and west to the Cedar river ; both of which I examined. I wrote and talked river bridge and Pacific railroad; one meeting in 1845 I will name: It was in the frame school- house that stood where the north end of the city hall now stands. I there told the assembly, some of whom pronounced me visionary, that there were persons present that would live to see a railroad connecting the two oceans. 'I see here the veteran Jacob Eldridge, who was at that meeting, I will ask him if I correcly speak.' (Mr. Eldridge replied : 'I was present at that schoolhouse and you cor- rectly speak.')
"Without a doubt I am the first person to ever write or speak the word At- lantic and Pacific railroad. At that time, now fifty-nine years past, there was not one foot of railroad west of the Alleghany mountains, save those of New Orleans.
"As a link in the undertaking I, in 1847, called on Mr. William Vandever, of Rock Island, and proposed to draw up a railroad charter and petition the Illinois legislature for authority to build a railroad between Rock Island and La Salle, to connect the Illinois canal.
"The request was granted by an act passed on the 10th of April, 1847, which charter I now hold, but too lengthy to here rehearse; work to commence within three years. I consumed one of the years in talking and writing. Then I indi- vidually opened a subscription list for stock, entered a few shares for myself and, as a member of the board of county commissioners, prevailed on my two asso- ciates of the board to pass an order submitting to the people the question of tak- ing $25,000 in stock of the Illinois railroad.
"I immediately went to work and called meetings at every schoolhouse and every grove settlement in the county to get a few shares of stock here and there, and endeavored to secure votes for the $25,000 county appropriation. In many quarters I met with bitter opposition to voting money to go to Illinois. I found many Ciceros to combat, yet the appropriation was carried and that now small sum of $25,000 put the ball in motion and was a splendid investment for Scott county and the great west, even to the shore of the Pacific ocean.
"I found it but a small task to convince the majority of my farmer audience. I brought them over when I told them that with a railroad to Chicago, and ex- tending to the east, instead of getting 5 and 6 cents per dozen for their eggs they would get 12 to 15 cents; that instead of 12 to 18 cents for good chickens, they would get 20 and 25 cents; that instead of getting 10 to 15 cents for prairie chickens and ducks, they would get 15 up to 25 cents; that instead of 37 cents per dozen for quail, they would get 50 or 60 cents, and that instead of 40 to 50 cents for a fourteen-pound turkey, they would get 75 to 90 cents, and instead of getting 30 to 40 cents for good wheat, they would get 70 to 80 cents per bushel, and for all products in proportion.
"I told the farmers that but yesterday this territory was untrodden wilder- ness; that we had faced every hardship and privation to open and to plant the stars and stripes on its fertile plains to stay ; that where not long since stood the
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Indian wigwam, now cities rise; that where the buffalo, the elk and deer grazed, now vast fields of golden wheat appear to gladden the farmer's heart and repay him for his toil; that we have here on these lately dreary prairies created a scene of life and beauty. The prairie grass has given place to the garden and the vine- yard; the hazel thicket to the blooming rose; and the Indian trail to the prome- nade of the fair.
"I told the farmers that westward the star of empire took its course; that progress, civilization and commerce had their birth in India; that they slowly rolled into Assyria, Egypt, Greece and Rome; then more slowly found their way into France and England; then they floated westward on the ocean's waves to Plymouth Rock. They did not long linger amongst the scrub oaks and the bar- ren soil of New England, but rolled their way with increased momentum west- ward to Chicago, and now they have to leap the rapidly moving floods of the Mis- sissippi river and onward through Iowa to the Rocky mountains, not to tarry, but to leap over their snow-capped summits to continue to roll upon the far west- ward plains ; to plant commerce and civilization on the coast of the Pacific ocean, and I call on you who possess the power to keep the wave of progress in its course onward. And the united county and Davenport city subscription of $100,000 was carried by a large majority to perfect the first link in the great Pacific rail- road, in time to astonish the world.
"Taking the wealth and population of that day, that $100,000 was a larger sum than $500,000 would be this year, 1901.
"When Iowa had made good headway, and I alone called many meetings at Moline and Camden, now Milan, and worked up an interest in the enterprise, then many counties in Illinois and many individuals in Scott county came into the work. At this day great injustice has been done to the real creators of bridge, railroads, arsenal, canals and edifices. In some instances big men, who opposed them and other works of utility, have been extensively written as their creators. No difficulty in arriving at the correct history, as many journals have the facts indelibly stamped within their columns and which point out the world builders.
"The thoughtless do not know that he who plows the ground and sows the seed is as much the producer as the man that reaps and eats it. I have ancient history on file at my office including the railroad creators.
"In a Rock Island journal, dated October 24, 1849, a railroad meeting is re- ported as being held in Rock Island and Rock Island, Davenport, Moline and Camden were represented. A committee of five on resolutions were appointed as follows : H. A. Porter and C. B. Waite of Rock Island ; James Thorington and A. C. Fulton of Davenport ; and W. A. Nourse of Moline.
"Action toward vigorous work on the Rock Island & Chicago railroad and on bridging the Mississippi river at Rock Island, and extending the railroad to the Pacific ocean was taken up and discussed.
"To push those gigantic works to completion required untiring energy. To . accomplish the undertaking, a committee of five, consisting of William Baily and Fernando Jones, of Rock Island; A. C. Fulton, of Davenport; I. M. Gilmore, of Camden and W. A. Nourse, of Moline, was appointed to carry the three great works to completion, and who appointed Sailor I as chairman. Two of my as-
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sociates soon resigned and moved from that section, and later two of them left the lower world. But I, well knowing that resolution was omnipotent, continued to add to my stock lists and worked up town and county aid. I journeyed to Chicago by stage; put up at the ancient Briggs House to see a good team of horses stall in the muddy street with a cord of wood a few rods distant from my quarters. I talked western railroad to many merchants and business men; all looked me over with great astonishment and said: 'Best go and see long John Wentworth.' I saw long John, who deliberately fathomed me, then exclaimed : 'Tut, tut, young man, you must be insane! A railroad west would not pay for the grease for the wheels,' and I departed from the then muddy town, without even a symptom of encouragement.
"The journals of 1850, now in my possession, report that on the 21st of March, 1850, the delegates of various counties of Illinois and Scott county, Iowa, assembled in Rock Island; I, as chairman of the Pacific railroad committee, pre- sented to the assembly the amounts of the several subscriptions of shares of stock taken in the Rock Island & Chicago railroad, as follows: Rock Island, 400; Cam- den, 172; Moline, sixty-three; F. R. Brunot, twenty; I. Sullivan, five; Bureau county, 300; Henry county, 103; Scott county, Iowa, 700; LaSalle county, (pledged) 250; Peru delegates (pledged) 250. These 2,263 shares of stock, at $100 each, may appear as a miserable exhibit, when millions were required, but we, the resolute and untiring, considered it a grand entrance.
"In this work, as is well known to all pioneers, I had no aid save at two meet- ings ; one at the republic of LeClaire (as then called), where with Judge Grant I called my second meeting ; and one at Blue Grass, where Hon. Hiram Price went with me on condition that I paid for the team. Hon. Price made a good talk and we got thirteen shares of stock subscribed, and a pledge for every vote in the schoolhouse.
"To show that railroad talkers sometimes encountered a rough sea, I must state that on our way home to Davenport, under the light of a half moon, I ran the larboard wheels of our buggy into a deep washout and also dumped Mr. Price into it, but fortune, as ever, was with our congressman; he was soon out and on his feet, and while brushing off the damp clay he, with energy, exclaimed : 'Such an awkward driver I never did see. I would not go with you another night for all Iowa. Here it is near midnight and I should be at home and blacking my boots and shaving for Sunday.' And whilst our congressman was in a clay mud ditch, the stay-at-home-do-nothings were snoozing in their beds. We drove some miles home to Davenport in a lop-sided buggy in silence, and I paid James Thomp- son, the coming banker, for the team and for a new set of springs for the buggy.
"I neglected to say that at LeClaire we did not secure even one share of stock, and but one vote for the county subscription. That republic protested against building railroads in Illinois. They had their Monroe Doctrine, and objected to foreign invasion, even to talk railroad.
"I frequently reported my lone night meetings as chairman to the press. I name one here that you may have a knowledge of railroad building in the middle of the past century-a three mile walk to the then hamlet of Moline and back, during a dark stormy night-a river to cross. As respects success, my report wit- nesses: (From the Gazette)
BRIDGE IN CENTRAL PARK
THE CRESCENT BRIDGE
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ROCK ISLAND AND CHICAGO RAILROAD.
'MOLINE IS WIDE AWAKE TO HER INTERESTS AND TAKING THE LEAD.
'Mr. Sanders: I attended a railroad meeting last night at Moline. All present seemed resolved to carry out the grand object for which they had assembled. The greatest enthusiasm prevailed; many of the old stockholders came forward and doubled their subscriptions and new subscriptions were obtained. Thirty-one shares were subscribed in a brief time, and it was unanimously resolved that the town council take a subscription of $2,500. Amongst the subscribers were two youths of not over twelve years of age, who took one share each, and not only subscribed, but paid up their installments. What a noble example; I would walk ten miles any night to see such praiseworthy actions.'
"The exertion here made and the funds raised became known to eastern rail- road men and Messrs. Farnam, Walcott and Durant visited us. The $300,000 required by charter having been subscribed, a contract for the construction and equipment of a railroad between Chicago and Rock Island was perfected with the above railroad constructors on the 15th day of October, 1851. The first pay- ment on work performed was made on April 20, 1852; then on February 22, 1854, amidst the waving of banners and the thunder of artillery, the iron horse of the Atlantic drank the water of the great Mississippi river. The first link of 181 miles of the Pacific railroad had been completed."
THE RAILROADS CHARTERED.
In a former chapter the early history of the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad has been gone into quite extensively, and in Mr. Barrow's history herein pub- lished in its entirety, mention is made of the building of this first line of railroad from Chicago to Rock Island. It might be well, however, to recapitulate some of the salient points relating to the beginnings of this great transcontinental rail- road. The Chicago & Rock Island Railroad Company, by special charter granted by the legislature of Illinois in 1851, was incorporated and a few months there- after work of construction was begun and in August, 1854, the road was completed and the event was made the occasion of a grand celebration. The people of the Mississippi valley hailed the new road as a link uniting them with the outside world. On every side settlements at once began to spring up along the line and the tide of civilization moved steadily westward. Today, with its numerous connections cobwebbing the state of Iowa and other great common- wealths, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad is a part and parcel of one of the greatest transportation systems in the world, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific coast.
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