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THE REASON FOR IT.
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Why the history of a railroad ? Particularly, why evolved it and called public attention to it, before
a history of the Erie? Many times during his work the sound of a locomotive whistle or the whirr of
in the production of this Story of Erie the author a locomotive's wheels had been heard on the Ameriwas
asked those questions. They were apt, and it can continent; and from that idea came the Erie, the
was but natural that they should have been asked, first projected link of all the links of railroad that
for, at firstthought, it is difficult for the average per- have been welded into one great chain of connection
son to understand what there might be of interest or between the Atlantic and the Pacific, making not
general importance in the details of the conception only possible, but creating, the marvellous developor
building of a railroad. To-day there could be ment of theretofore unknown regions, and peopling
but little more than local interest or importance in them with industrious millions.
such an undertaking, for the land is thick with rail- When the movement toward the construction of
roads, and the purpose of none now constructing or the Erie began, Missouri was the only State west
to be constructed can be broader than that of local of the Mississippi ; Chicago was a small village clusbenefit.
But when the idea for a railroad through tered about Fort Dearborn, and yet unnamed ; Bufthe
region and over the route now occupied by the falo was a Western village, and Detroit a frontier post.
Erie firstfound expression, seventy years ago, rail- Summer and winter saw the poor emigrant, with his
roads were so strange in this country, so almost un- whole household in a hooded wagon, which often
heard-of, in fact, that in but three States of the served for vehicle, stable, and tavern, moving toil-
Union had there been any movement made toward somely to the distant West, or what was then called
a practical application of them as a means of trans- the distant West, and it was rarely more distant than
portation—in Massachusetts, in Pennsylvania, and in Illinois. Beyond the Mississippi was virtually a land
Maryland ; less than sixty miles of railroad, or of what unknown to emigration.
then passed for railroad, in all the broad land. The Redfield's idea for such a railroad as he advocated
Massachusetts railroad was built to haul stone on, involved even more than the project of those who at
from a quarry, by horse-power. The Pennsylvania last acted upon it. He planned for the construction
railroads were used and to be used for hauling coal of a railroad from the Hudson River to the Missisfrom
the mines, the cars running by their own grav- sippi, but that was a project beyond the power of
ity, or being hauled by stationary engines up in- his contemporaries to grasp the magnitude of. They
clined planes. The Maryland railroad alone had said : " Let us reach Lake Erie with our railroad.
been designed for the carrying of passengers as well Then other railroads will come from the West to
L^-7 as freight, with the hope that some clayit might ex- meet us." And railroads did come from the West to
tend as far as the Allegheny Mountains of Virginia— meet them, brought into existence by the advance of
and the cars were drawn by horses. The idea of the the Erie westward. Then, as the Erie project took
railroad as the one great factor in the development, on form and substance, its purpose aroused the East
the expansion, the civilization of the country had to action, and Massachusetts began the pushing of a
\ I not inspired any of the undertakings named, and railroad westward, to share in,if not rule, the pros-
^ had found no expression until William C. Redfield pects brought to view by the Erie idea. If the build-