Previous to the construction of the Erie canal, the cost of transporting a ton of merchandise or produce from the City of New York to the City of Buffalo was $100. The time required was 20 days. The cost and the time involved in this case was a striking illustration of the condition of the whole country; of the necessity of improved highways, and of the influence they have exerted in the creation of wealth, as well as their social and political importance. From the opening of the canal, the cost of transportation from Buffalo to New York was reduced from $100 to $5 per ton, and the time from 20 to 6 days. Previous to its construction, wheat grown in Central and Western New York was floated, in arks, down the Delaware and the Susquehanna Rivers to market-to Philadelphia and Baltimore. The city of New York --which now draws from districts 2,000 miles distant, by the routes used, its vast supplies of grain for distribution throughout all the eastern states, and for its foreign trade-was, a little over forty years ago, almost completely cut off from the trade of its own. state. The cost of transporting wheat for 300 miles over ordinary highways will equal its average value at the point of consumption. Indian corn will bear transportation over earth roads only about 100 miles. With the improvements that have been made in the construction of highways, the great bulk of supplies of wheat and corn for the eastern markets are now grown in central Illinois and in the vast region lying to the west and northwest of Lake Michigan. As fast as our people have moved westward in their triumphal march across the continent, the railway which they have taken with them has given a high commercial value to whatever they produce, no matter how far distant from the points of consumption. Their progress, wealth, and we may say, civilization, have been the creation, within fifty years, of the inventive genius of the race.

The success of the Erie canal had an electric effect upon the whole country, and similar works were everywhere projected. The states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois at once embarked upon elaborate systems designed to give to every portion of their states the advantage of such works. Virginia, also, undertook the construction of a canal from the Chesapeake up the valley of the James River to the Ohio. We have not the space to give even a sketch of the progress and results of these

undertakings. While very great advantages in many cases were secured, all the canals constructed in the United States, except the Erie, the Delaware and Raritan, and the Chesapeake and Delaware, may be regarded as commercial failures. They became so from the discovery of a better mode of transportation-the Railway. The State of Pennsylvania, alone, completed about 1,000 miles of canal within its territory, the whole of which have, within a few years, been disposed of at nominal prices to private companies. Their value had been almost entirely superseded by railways, which private enterprise soon constructed upon all their routes. Already the use of portions of these canals has been abandoned, while the earnings of others that are still kept up hardly meet the cost of their maintenance.

The people of this country were fully engrossed in the construction of canals at the very moment of the successful application, in England, of steam power to locomotion. With steam as a motive power, the advantages of railroads over canals, in being almost everywhere practicable, and capable of being operated at all seasons of the year, were readily appreciated, and numerous projects for their construction speedily followed. As in England, tram rails had previously been in use at Quincy, Massachusetts, for the purpose of transporting granite from the quarries to Neponset River; and at Mauch Chunk for the transportation of coal from the mines to the Lehigh Canal. The first RAILROAD undertaken was the Baltimore and Ohio. This road was chartered in 1827, and the work of construction commenced July 4, 1828. It was opened to the city limits in 1830; to Frederick, 62 miles, in 1831; and to Point of Rock's, 69 miles from Baltimore, in 1832. At this period its progress was, for a long time, arrested by a controversy with the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, in reference to the right of way.

Another of the pioneer roads was the Mohawk and Hudson, afterwards the Albany and Schenectady. This work was commenced in 1830, and opened in 1831. Both this and the Baltimore and Ohio were at first worked by horse power, except two inclined planes upon the former worked by stationary engines. Upon the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad a locomotive engine, probably the first constructed in this country, was first used in 1831. The first locomotive used on the Mohawk and Hudson, in 1831, was of Eng

lish manufacture, weighing six tons. This was found, however, to be too heavy for the superstructure of the road, and a lighter one manufactured at the Cold Springs Works, in the State of New York, weighing three tons, took its place.

Another railroad, constructed at an early day, was the South Carolina, from Charleston to Hamburg, opposite Augusta, Georgia, a distance of 135 miles. It was opened in September, 1833, and at that time was the longest continuous line of railroad in the world.

Only a very moderate degree of success, either financial or commercial, attended the railroads first constructed in this country. They were rude and unsubstantial structures, involving a heavy outlay for repairs, and were very inadequate to the service even then required of them. Many of them were upon routes having little traffic, and were consequently almost entirely unremunerative. Time was required for the improvements which have given us the perfect works, and the perfect machine, of the present day, and for the development of a commerce and wealth now so vast and remunerative. Still, the construction of railways was steadily persisted in, and by the close of the year 1835 about 1,000 miles had been completed.

An extraordinary and most unhealthy stimulus was given to the construction of railroads and canals by the wild and extravagant spirit of speculation which swept over the country, commencing in 1834, and coming to a sudden end in 1837. A vast number of chimerical schemes were entered upon, and large sums expended or pledged for their construction. In addition to private undertakings, a large number of the states entered upon the construction of elaborate systems of internal improvements, nearly all of which, with the private enterprises, were suddenly overwhelmed in a common ruin. Not a tithe of what was undertaken was accomplished. For the want of means of communication the greater portion of the products of the interior still possessed very little commercial value. At that time only a very few of the mechanical contrivances existed which have since abridged labor to such an extent that the productive capacity of society, in proportion to its numbers, has been quadrupled in the last thirty years. The means for a speedy recuperation had not yet been created. Years, consequently, were required to repair the waste and loss that had been suffered. After

resuming from the suspension of 1837, the great majority of the banks of the country again suspended payment in 1842. The period from 1837 to 1844 may be set down as one of the most gloomy and disastrous in the history of the country.

But even in this period considerable progress was made. The Camden and Amboy Railroad, connecting Philadelphia with New York harbor, was completed in 1837. In 1841, the line from Boston to Albany was opened. In December, 1842, the line from Albany to Lake Erie, at Buffalo, was fully opened, an event second in importance only to the opening of the Erie canal. Although restricted in the transportation of freight, for the benefit of the Erie canal, it at once became, in connection with the lake, the great route of travel between the eastern states and the interior. In 1842, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad was opened to the coal fields of Pennsylvania, by means of which, and of lines subsequently constructed, adequate supplies of the great source of power, upon which are based the industries and commerce of the country, were for the first time secured.

The great movement in the construction of railways, however, and which has since suffered no considerable check, dates from the discovery of gold in California. The effect upon the industries and commerce of the country of the sudden addition of more than $50,000,000 annually to its circulating medium was prodigious. It had no precedent in history. The acquisition of California was equivalent to the acquisition of half a continent. A new field was opened, which absorbed no inconsiderable portion of the labor of the country at most remunerative rates. All sections were equally benefited. The wealth drawn so copiously from the western portion of the continent stimulated to an extraordinary degree the commerce, manufactures and trade of the eastern. For the increased wealth and newly-created enterprise of the nation, the railway offered the most attractive and appropriate field. Foreigners shared fully with ourselves in the enthusiasm which prevailed and proffered almost unlimited sums for the prosecution of our public works. From 1849 to 1857, 15,483 miles of railway were constructed. Then came a great commercial revulsion, which, commencing in the United States, swept round the world. But the nation had grown too strong to suffer anything more than a temporary check. The lines of railroad which had been constructed

penetrated every important portion of the country, and gave a high commercial value to all its products.

On the first day of January, 1849, a continuous line of railway was first formed between Boston and New York by the completion of the New York and New Haven Railroad. In the spring of 1851, the Erie Railroad was completed from the harbor of New York to Lake Erie-an event of first-rate importance in the commerce of the country. In the same year a continuous line of railway was opened between Boston and the St. Lawrence, by the completion of the Vermont Central and Vermont and Canada Railroad-the line from Ogdensburg to Lake Champlain having been opened in 1850. In the fall of 1851, the Hudson River Railroad was completed, giving to the city of New York a second line of railway to the great lakes; but some ten years after the city of Boston had secured such a connection.

In 1852, another important extension of the railway system of the country was made by the completion of the Michigan Central and Michigan Southern Railroads, from Lake Erie to Chicago. The lake served as a connecting link till 1853, when, by the opening of the Cleveland and Toledo Railroad, a continuous line of 1,000 miles of railway was formed between New York and Boston, and Chicago.

In the preceding sketch, we have traced the progress westward of the great trunk lines based upon Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Some progress, however, had been made as in the Valley of the Ohio, before either of these lines had reached that river or Lake Erie. The Mad River Railroad, now known as the Cincinnati, Dayton & Eastern, was commenced in 1835, and a portion of it completed in 1838. In 1848, in connection with the Little Miami, it formed the first continuous line of railway from Lake Erie to the Ohio River. The Little Miami was commenced in 1837, and completed to Springfield in 1846. The next important line constructed in Ohio was the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, which was commenced in 1848, and opened in 1851. The completion of this road formed the second line between the lake and the Ohio. The Cleveland and Pittsburg, the third line making the same connection, was opened in 1852. Of the lines running east and west in this state, the Central Ohio