The outstanding dramatic event in the story of the modern Northern Pacific was the famous corner which occurred in the spring of 1901 as a result of a contest between the Hill and the Harriman interests for the control of the property. |
The panic of 1837, the contest of the United States Bank with President Jackson, its defeat, and its subsequent failure as a state bank, the consequent distress in local financial circles--all conspired to shift the monetary center of the country to New York. |
The Pennsylvania still continued to forge ahead... to about 1889, when the trunk lines were aggressively carrying on that policy of cutthroat competition between Chicago and the Atlantic seaboard which resulted in so severely weakening the credit and position of properties like the Baltimore and Ohio and the Erie. |
The Pennsylvania was the first American railroad to lay steel rails and the first to lay Bessemer rails; it was the first to put the steel fire-box under the locomotive boiler; it was the first to use the air brake and the block signal system; it was the first to use in its shops the overhead crane. |
The period of six years following the consolidation of 1853 was one of great prosperity for the New York Central system, and, notwithstanding the setbacks to business caused by the panic of 1857, large dividends were continuously paid on the capita stock. |
The public conviction that a railroad linking the West and the East was an absolute necessity became so pronounced after the gold discoveries of '49 that Congress passed an act in 1853 providing for a survey of several lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific. |
The railroad is sprung from the application of two fundamental ideas - one the use of a mechanical means of developing speed, the other the use of a smooth running surface to diminish friction. |
The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion as was the ship. |
The railroad, they said, was a natural monopoly; no private citizen could hope ever to own one; it was thus a kind of monster which, if encouraged, would override all popular rights. |
The remarkable character of this achievement is evident in view of the fact that in the period from 1893 to 1898 more than sixty-five per cent of all the railroad mileage in the United States went into the hands of receivers. |
The roads that now make up the New York Central were built piecemeal from 1831 to 1853; and the organization of this company in the latter year, to consolidate eleven independent roads extending from Albany to Buffalo, finally put an end to the long debate between canals and railroads. |
The Santa Fe Route, or the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, which has in modern times developed into one of the largest and most profitable railroad systems in this country, was projected long before the idea of a transcontinental line to the Pacific coast had taken full possession of men's minds. |
The subsequent history of the Vanderbilt lines is chiefly a story of business expansion and growth. From 1885 to 1893, the great panic year, the New York Central each year added to its mileage, either by merger of smaller lines or by construction. |
The ultimate plan, which proved too visionary, was to consolidate under one control a vast network of lines extending all over the continent. |
The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad. |