USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV > Part 18
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The last of the lines reaching an independent terminus in Boston was the narrow-gauge road known as the Boston, Revere Beach, & Lynn, organ- ized under the general railroad law of the State in May, 1874, and opened through to Lynn, July 29, 1875. It was designed for passenger business only; and its city terminus is at East Boston, from which it connects with its station on Atlantic Avenue, in the city proper, by means of a ferry.
The local railroad-system distinctly tributary to Boston as a considerable railroad centre, and opposed to the other large railroad centres of the coun- try, may be said in 1880 to have consisted approximately of 3,000 miles of road. These serve a region covering the whole of New England, north of the Connecticut and Rhode Island lines, and east of the Berkshire Hills and the Green Mountains of Vermont. Within those limits the traffic is at points, as along the Connecticut, divided not unequally between Boston and New York; beyond them, the tendency is distinctly to the latter city.
As compared with the other great railroad centres of the East, -with Montreal, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, - one striking peculiarity of the Boston situation is that the city has not, and never has had, any com- plete route connecting it with the interior, which has been controlled and operated in its local interest. An all-rail connection with the West by way of Albany was effected in 1841 ; and another by way of Troy, when the Hoosac Tunnel was completed, in 1875. Still another had been opened, when in September, 1851, the completion of the Vermont Central, which perfected the city's communication with Canada, was celebrated with rejoic- ings lasting through many days.2 But, though these and other outlets to the interior have been opened, none of the Boston terminal lines, unlike those of the other great sea-board cities in this respect, have developed within them- selves an expansive force sufficient to carry them beyond the local system into what may be termed the continental arena. The probable explanation of this fact has already been alluded to. It lay in the premature develop-
1 In the Massachusetts Legislative Docu- ments for 1877 (House, No. 325) is a curious "genealogical chart" of the New York & New England. Some twenty corporations, all of which had been insolvent, seem at different times to have been merged in it.
2 [See An Account of the Celebration Com- memorative of the Opening of Railroad Commu- nication between Boston and Canada, Sept. 17-19, 1851. Boston : 1852. The newspapers of that day have full reports of the procession and fes- tivities. - ED.]
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ment, through State aid, of the Western road as distinct from its eastern end, the Boston & Worcester, which held the terminus in Boston. At the very moment of the completion of the Western, consequently, the active business management of it as a corporation passed away from Boston and centred at Springfield. Nor was that all. Instead of being a period of concentration for development outside of the State, the succeeding twenty- five years in the history of both the Western and the Boston & Worcester corporations were wasted in a succession of controversies and bickerings, which ended only with their consolidation in 1866. At the same time the public mind and the resources of the State were diverted in another and false direction, as the scheme for tunnelling the Hoosac Mountain gradually assumed shape. So far as Boston was concerned, therefore, the western railroad horizon did not enlarge. In 1875 it was just where it was in 1825, - at the Hudson River. While New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore had pushed their systems forward to the Mississippi, and were reaching out in every direction, Massachusetts was spending millions to get a competing line through to a point near the mouth of the Mohawk, which had been reached years before, and which had long ceased to be of any large com- petitive consequence.
From legislative wisdom in dealing with such matters, all experience shows that good results can hardly be expected. As a rule it is either hopelessly wrong, or hopelessly behind the times; in this case it chanced to be both. A policy of systematic dissipation of resource was pursued at a time when its concentration was above all else necessary; and, while the great corporations which served other cities were absorbing into themselves the thoroughfares in the valley of the Mississippi, the Legislature of the State of Massachusetts kept its eyes steadily fixed on the Hoosac Moun- tain. From private enterprise and keener individual judgment better re- sults might have been anticipated. Nor did the opportunity pass unnoticed. Unfortunately when it presented itself, the president of the Western road, though a man of marked ability, was not a citizen of Boston. What is called a self-made man, Mr. Chester A. Chapin had all his life been a resident of Springfield. He was familiar only with the western portions of the State. He was not at home in Boston, and the capital and enterprise of the city neither naturally centred about him, nor did he know how to put himself in communication with them. It was under these circumstances that the one great opportunity for the development of the Boston railroad system pre- sented itself, and was lost.
Mr. Chapin succeeded to the presidency of the Western Railroad Corpo- ration in 1854. At that time the New York Central, both as respects owner- ship and management, was not what it subsequently became. Its capital was but twenty-three millions, instead of the ninety millions it had been swollen to in 1880; and the value of its stock was so little appreciated, that between 1854 and 1860 it ranged from $50 to $95, with an average market price of, perhaps, $80 a share. Neither was its ownership concentrated in the
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THE CANAL AND RAILROAD ENTERPRISE OF BOSTON.
hands of a few men. On the contrary, it was widely scattered and largely dealt in on the Exchange. The road was in fact for sale, and continued to be so until it was bought up by Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1868. Shortly after assuming the presidency of the Western, Mr. Chapin became satis- fied that a controlling interest in the New York Central could not only be secured, but that it could be secured for a comparatively small sum of money. The amount required did not indeed exceed nine millions. That it was most desirable to secure this control on behalf both of the Western road and the city of Boston, was obvious. Seeing the matter in its future bearings very clearly himself, Mr. Chapin repeatedly brought it to the notice of those in Boston who were connected with his company. For the reasons which have been pointed out, however, he failed to in- terest them in his project, or to impress them with its importance. He offered himself to secure one million of the nine millions required; but the necessary contribution could not be made up. So much in earnest, however, was Mr. Chapin in the matter, that, having failed to accomplish anything himself towards bringing about the result he desired, he had re- course to others. He sent for James D. Colt, afterward one of the justices of the Supreme Court of the State, but then a leading lawyer in Berkshire, and requested him to go to Boston and present the matter in the proper quarters. Both the mission and the messenger singularly illustrated the separation which then existed between the main artery of Boston's com- merce and Boston's financial and business men. So far from being able to effect a combination to carry out a great scheme, the importance of which he alone seems to have fully realized, the Springfield president of the Wes- tern Railroad Corporation did not even know how to put himself in com- munication with the men who were necessary to make up the combination. Mr. Colt was a lawyer. The business in hand, however, was one to be transacted not with lawyers or judges, but with bankers, and men of busi- ness and of capital. To carry it through would have required a great com- mand of money, and that confidence which comes only from the habit of long acting together. Mr. Colt went to Boston and presented the matter as well as he could to a few persons. He failed, however, to interest them in it, either because of its magnitude, or because they did not appreciate its importance. Nothing came of his mission, and Mr. Chapin reluctantly abandoned his scheme as the time for carrying it out slipped away. It is needless to add that the opportunity did not again present itself.
In point of fact, however, even at this time, the individual enterprise and private capital of Boston had already found another, though not more profitable, field of operations. There was what might be called a larger Boston railroad development going on in the West. This dated from the year 1845, and subsequently filled so large a space in the financial opera- tions of Boston, and added so much to its accumulated wealth, that some- thing more than a mere reference to it is necessary. In 1845 there was no
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
all-rail line from the seaboard to the interior. The disconnected roads, which were subsequently consolidated into the New York Central, termi- nated at Buffalo, where they connected with a line of steamers which ran to Chicago, stopping at Detroit. From Detroit the State of Michigan had some years before, during the mania for railroad construction which made part of the financial crisis of 1837, built a line to Kalamazoo, in the direc- tion of Chicago. The State had then become insolvent, and the incompleted road, which was laid with strap rails only, gradually wore out. Its sale was accordingly agitated in the public prints, and the discussion attracted the attention of John W. Brooks, who was then superintendent of the road be- tween Auburn and Rochester. Mr. Brooks was a native of Massachusetts, born in the town of Stow, in 1819. He learned what engineering he knew in the office of Loammi Baldwin, and subsequently on the Boston & Maine, but had removed to the State of New York in 1844. Being young, ambi- tious, and very active-minded, he now concluded that it would be worth his while to go to Detroit and look into the situation there. He soon became satisfied that if the railroad to Kalamazoo was extended through to New Buffalo, on the south-eastern shore of Lake Michigan, it would, as a link in a mixed land-and-lake through-line to Chicago, become a valuable property. He accordingly returned to the East with a view to there effecting some com- bination to buy up the worn-out and incompleted road, and to renew and finish it. He went first to Boston, where he met with no encouragement. Nor was this surprising. Mr. Brooks at the time was but twenty-six years old. He had almost no acquaintance among men of wealth. Hardly more than a boy, he appeared asking, for the purchase of an unknown railroad in the bankrupt West, a sum of money larger than that which but a few years before Boston had in reality failed to raise to build its long-talked of line to Albany, - failed to raise, too, after Faneuil Hall meetings and resolutions, and speeches from Governor Everett, and much canvassing by committees. Fortunately Mr. Brooks was a man who not only understood his business, but who understood himself likewise; accordingly he was not easily turned aside from his purpose. Though he could get no assurance of aid from Boston, he did get letters to John C. Green and others in New York; and, going there, found that the Farmers' Loan & Trust Company held a large amount of defaulted securities of the State of Michigan. This fact made that company very desirous to have the State sell its public works in order to restore its credit ; and to effect the sale it was necessary to provide a pur- chaser. Here, therefore, Mr. Brooks found something on which to base securely the combination he proposed to effect.
Returning to Michigan, he caused the necessary legislation to be pre- pared. His counsel was Mr. James F. Joy, then a lawyer in active practice at Detroit. The measure now prepared was submitted to the Michigan Legislature at its next session, and an act authorizing the sale of the State road, and incorporating the Michigan Central Railroad Company, was finally passed in March, 1846. The price of the existing one hundred and fifty
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miles of road was to be two million dollars; it was to be completed through to Lake Michigan within three years, and equipped throughout with sixty- pound rails. Six months' time was allowed for the formation of the com- pany and the acceptance of the charter.
Having secured his legislation, Mr. Brooks again went East. He now met with much better success in Boston. The fact that he had powerful
J. W. BROOKS.
backing in New York aided him greatly, and John M. Forbes had become interested in the project. The thing moved, however, very slowly. It was the first considerable venture of the kind which eastern men had made at the West, and, feeling a natural doubt as to its outcome, they went into it slowly and with great hesitation. It took nearly the entire six months to effect the necessary combination. The principal Boston parties finally concerned in it were John E. Thayer and John M. Forbes; with whom, also, was Captain David A. Neal, of Salem.
VOL. IV. - 19.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
The road was purchased within the time allowed by the act, and the new company organized. Its principal office was in Boston. Mr. Forbes was chosen president, and Mr. Brooks superintendent; John E. Thayer was the financial representative. The combination was a powerful one. Mr. Forbes was then in the prime of life, and he brought an inexhaustible resource, energy, and knowledge of men to bear on the new enterprise. The success which followed was, however, mainly due to Mr. Brooks. Naturally gifted with quick insight and unfailing courage, he combined with great organ- izing capacity a remarkable executive ability. He thus carried the under- taking through with insufficient means and against obstacles of the most formidable character. More probably than any other man he opened the way to the investment of eastern capital in the railroad development of the West. It was not, however, until 1849 that he succeeded in completing the Michigan Central to New Buffalo. That point continued to be its ter- minus until 1852, all freight and travel crossing Lake Michigan by steamer. In 1852 all-rail connection was at last made with Chicago.
The Michigan Central now became what the Western Railroad should have been, - the nucleus around which Boston capital centred, and the base from which it expanded. Founded on individual enterprise and private capital, - unhampered by the necessity of perpetually looking to a Legis- lature · for assistance from the public purse to accomplish a given result and no more,- this enterprise was instinct with the spirit of development. That spirit, too, was continually asserting itself. The completion of the road through to Chicago was looked upon as an end, - as much an end to that enterprise as the completion to Albany was to the Western. Scarcely, however, had the Michigan Central reached Chicago, when Mr. Brooks and Mr. Joy, in looking the situation over, concluded that it would be for its interest to have a connection with the Illinois Central, running north and south, at Mendota, fifty miles further west. They accordingly purchased a little road called the Aurora Branch, thirteen miles in length, and got its charter so amended as to authorize an extension to Mendota. Their plan then included nothing more. It looked merely to securing the business of the north-western portion of the Illinois Central for the Michigan Central. In it, however, lay the germ of a great railroad enterprise.
While Mr. Joy was at Springfield, securing his amendments to the char- ter of the Aurora Branch, he met there other parties on a similar errand. They were trying to get the Legislature to alter the charter of a road known as the Central Military Tract Company, so that under it a connection could be built east from Galesburg. A road was already building from Burlington in Iowa to Peoria, which would pass near Galesburg. Mr. Joy had a bound- less faith in the future of the West. Instinctively taking in the possibilities of the situation, he secured the legislation he wanted, made a verbal ar- rangement with the Galesburg interest, and then started at once from Springfield for Boston. He there laid his project for the new enterprise before those interested in the Michigan Central, but received no encourage-
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THE CANAL AND RAILROAD ENTERPRISE OF BOSTON.
ment. In New York he was somewhat more successful, getting subscrip- tions to the amount of $150,000 from Mr. Green and George Griswold. Returning to Boston he now induced the Thayers, Mr. Forbes, and others to subscribe, though for a less aggregate amount; and in the West he and Mr. Brooks raised further sums. In all about $500,000 was gotten together. The Central Military Tract charter was then secured; and with $500,000 of stock subscriptions only to rely upon, Messrs. Joy and Brooks under- took the construction of the first one hundred and thirty miles of what afterward became the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad.
The subsequent extension of this system in the hands of the able men who originated it is a narrative by itself. It is beside the present purpose to enter upon it here. It only remains to add that in 1875 the ownership of the Michigan Central having passed into New York hands, the offices were removed from Boston. The company then owned and operated eight hun- dred and three miles of track, representing in all forty millions of securities. Unlike the Michigan Central, the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy continued to be chiefly owned and managed in Boston. At the close of 1880, and as the result of less than thirty years of expansive development, it had be- come a system by itself, serving a vast extent of country. It owned, leased, and operated over three thousand miles of road, or eleven hundred more miles than there were at the same date within the limits of Massachusetts. Having crossed the Mississippi at Burlington, it crossed the Missouri at Plattsmouth, and extended several hundred miles toward the Rocky Moun- tains on the west; while towards the south it reached Kansas City. At. this point it connected with the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fé, and at Omaha with the Union Pacific.
Both of these last named lines also had been mainly constructed by Bos- ton enterprise, and were largely owned and controlled in that city. The history of the Union Pacific does not need to be recounted. It was built, when it was, wholly through the almost reckless energy of Oakes Ames ; and Oliver Ames was its first president. Its general offices were removed from New York to Boston in 1869. In 1872 the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fé . was an incompleted enterprise, with a road two hundred and eighteen miles in length, extending from Atchison to Hutchinson in the western part of Kansas. At about that time it attracted the attention of certain leading business men of Boston, among whom were the banking firm of Kidder, Peabody, & Co., and Thomas and Joseph Nickerson. Obtaining control of the company, these gentlemen carried the road through to Pueblo in Colo- rado in 1876; and after the business revival, which took place two years later, the enterprise in their hands became one of the most brilliantly suc- cessful in the business history of the country. Joseph Nickerson had died in 1880, and the same year Thomas Nickerson retired from the presidency of the company, being succeeded by T. J. Coolidge. Kidder, Peabody, & Co. had disposed of their interest in 1878. The company's securities were, however, still held in greatest part in Boston hands, and the whole manage-
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
ment of the property was there. In March, 1881, a connection of this road with the Southern Pacific was effected, and it thus became a portion of the second trans-continental line. At that time it owned, leased, or operated two thousand two hundred miles of track, representing over fifty millions of securities. The three combinations, - the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy, the Union Pacific, and the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fé, -all of which in whole or greatest part originated in the private enterprise of Boston, and, having been constructed by the city's capital, were controlled from thence, - represented in 1880 no less than ten thousand miles of railroad and three hundred and forty millions of securities. At the same time the nine corpo- rations owning railroads having independent termini in Boston itself con- trolled a little over seventeen hundred miles of track, represented by one hundred and twenty millions of securities. Much the larger Boston railroad development had thus been west of Chicago. The local Boston system - that making the city its point for radiation - never overstepped the narrow boundaries of New England.
Of the influence which its railroad system, at home and abroad, exercised on the subsequent growth and municipal character of Boston but little needs to be said. In these respects the city's experience has been in no respect peculiar. And yet the subject cannot be dismissed without particular refer- ence; for here, as elsewhere, the year 1835 marked an historical dividing line. The world we now live in came into existence then; and, humanly speaking, it is in almost every essential respect a different world from that lived in by the preceding six generations. Down to 1835 Boston was still the provincial New-England capital. So far as intercourse with Europe or with the interior was concerned, the motive power in use was the same that had been in use when in 1632 Winthrop first visited Plymouth. He then sailed across the bay to Weymouth, and on the return journey Governor Bradford loaned him his horse. So in 1835, except on interior waters, the sail and the horse were still the only agencies of commerce and travel. As respects population, Boston it is true had since the Revolution very consid- erably increased ; and the ancient form of town government had been laid . aside. In all essential respects, however, the place was still only a large town. Territorially it was confined to the old natural limits, within which dwelt not the residents of the city alone, but those also who were regularly · engaged in business in it. The range even of country abode and summer resort was limited to neighboring towns, such as Roxbury, Brookline, Dor- chester, Cambridge, and Watertown, - now suburban, though then rural enough, -within the distance of an easy noon-day drive. Of modern sea- shore residence it may be said that there was almost actually none. The home had to be near the place of business. The office or the counting- room, it is true, was no longer in the dwelling-house, but it was in some street conveniently near to it. Every one, too, had some calling by which he was at least supposed to earn a living; and to have none was looked
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upon as scarcely respectable. No generation had yet grown up accustomed to wealth from its birth; there was no class of men of leisure. The railroad changed all this. It brought to Boston the full current of modern city life, - turning the large New-England town into a metropolis, if a provincial one. Of the rapid increase both in wealth and population which then ensued, the figures of the census tell the story. It would be foreign to the purpose to dwell upon it here. There is, however, another story which the census does not tell. In a quarter of a century after the three initial railroads were opened, both the ancient city limits and the modes of life traditionally pur- sued within them had disappeared. Boston had become the counting-house, as it were,-the daily business exchange, - of a vast concourse of active men having their homes in every neighboring town within a limit of thirty miles. The ancient municipalities immediately adjoining the city had been absorbed into it: Salem, Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence, and Worcester became its suburbs. Meanwhile business vocations not only diversified themselves, but they increased in volume, so as to lose all proportion with what they had been. New branches of industry came into existence, and their rapid growth soon caused them to overshadow the traditional callings which were insepa- rably associated in the New-England mind with the idea of accumulation. Down to the time when the three earliest Boston railroad lines were opened together in 1835, all the large fortunes, as they were then thought, had their origin in the fisheries, in the carrying trade, and in foreign commerce. Thenceforth these were to become of minor importance.
Men of a former generation thus found themselves puzzled. They saw change going on, and they mistook it for decay. Under the altered condi- tions, new points of distribution and new channels for reaching out from them came into being; and the old channels, and the branches of trade which had immemorially flowed in them, dwindled by degrees and then disappeared. Foreign commerce languished; sailing ships from Canton, from Calcutta, from Russia, from the Levant, and the west coasts of Africa and America no longer unloaded at the wharves. Grass seemed likely to grow in front of those warehouses, from the counting-room windows of which the old-fashioned merchants had been wont to look down on the decks of their vessels. Hence it came about that the period of Boston's most rapid growth was also the period in which the loudest and most dismal forebodings of the city's commercial decline were incessantly heard.
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