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CHAPTER
VI.
SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF ELEAZAR LORD—1839 TO 1841.
Marked by Folly, and Some Wisdom — Success of the Orange and Rockland Plan followed by its Extension to the Susqu
Divisions of the Work — Building a Railroad on Stilts— How 100 Miles of Piles came to be Driven at a Cost of $1,000,000, only to
Prove Useless — Another Effort to have the State Assume Charge of the Work Fails—More State Aid Solicited in 1840 and
Obtained — What the Work was Costing — Serious Charges Made against the Management Investigated by the Legislature; the
First Erie Investigation — The Management Exonerated — Political Influence Credited with the Result — Lord Retires the Second
Time as President — The Company's Prospects Apparently Promising.
The Southern Tier and Western counties had long
given up all hopes of the railroad ever reaching
them, and had lost confidence in the Company.
This was especially true of the Southern Tier. For
a year or more, and up to the time of the adoption
of the plan by which the railroad was being built
through Rockland County and into Orange County,
the Southern Tier had advocated and insisted on
the surrender of the Erie charter to the State, and
opposed all further efforts to obtain relief from the
Legislature. The reports of the success with which
the Rockland and Orange method was meeting
changed the drift of opinion in the Susquehanna and
Chemung valleys, and in February, 1840, confidence
in the work was so much restored that the same plan
was accepted by the Southern Tier counties, and
subscriptions sufficient having been made, 117 miles
of road, from Binghamton to Hornellsville, were put
under contract, and the work of construction was
immediately begun.
In the work on the Susquehanna and Chemung
sections of the railroad, Eleazar Lord, who had
proved himself so potent in his direction of the
affairs of the Company in many emergencies, committed
himself to an act of folly which went far to
strengthen the charge of his enemies that he was
not a practical man, but one of wild and visionary
ideas. This act was the substitution of rows of
wooden piles for a graded roadbed on which to lay
the rails. Upward of one hundred miles of this
piling were driven along the route, at a cost variously
estimated from $600,000 to $1,000,000. It was a
dead loss. No track was ever laid upon it. For
many years after the railroad was completed long
rows of these piles could be seen, and even to this
day, in the Canisteo Valley, near Hornellsville, many
of them are visible, mournful monuments to misdirected
effort in furthering a worthy cause.
interesting story is told elsewhere in this volume.
Their
February 26, 1S40, on the petition of the citizens
of the Southern Tier counties, and of sundry stockholders
of the Company, Senator Furman, of the
Railroad Committee of the Senate, presented from
that committee a strong report in favor of the State
assuming charge of the New York and Erie Railroad
and completing it as a public work.
The Company
itself was charged by opponents of such a course with
conspiring to arouse the people to efforts to induce
the State to take the work off the Company's hands.
At this session of the Legislature the President of
the Company, under date of January 24th, presented
a memorial asking for a further amendment of the
act of April 16, 1838.
The memorial was accompanied
by a letter from President Lord to the Chairman
of the Assembly Railroad Committee, the Hon.
Demas Hubbard, Jr., in which he answered the queries
which had been made by Mr. Hubbard in regard
to the Company, in view of action on the proposed
new legislation. In this letter Mr. Lord said :
" It is proposed to grade the roadway for a single track of
rails, with the necessary turnouts; to erect substantial bridges
with timber in place of stone; to construct the road with piles
wherever that method shall be found most economical, and
to lay strong and well secured superstructures and a flatiron
rail of more than ordinary thickness. About two hundred
miles of the track can.it is believed, be laid on piles, in a
manner far more satisfactory, and at far less cost, than by