Steve and the Steam Engine, Sara Ware Bassett [8 ebook reader txt] 📗
- Author: Sara Ware Bassett
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As he concluded his remarks Mr. Tolman took out his watch.
"Well, well!" said he. "I had no idea it was so late. I must hurry or I shall not finish my story."
"As I told you the men from the east and those from the west worked toward each other from opposite ends of the country. As soon as short lengths of track were finished they were joined together. Near the great Salt Lake of Utah a tie of polished laurel wood banded with silver marked the successful crossing of Utah's territory. Five years later Nevada contributed some large silver spikes to join her length of track to the rest. California sent spikes of solid gold, symbolic both of her cooperation and her mineral wealth; Arizona one of gold, one of silver, and one of iron. Many other States offered significant tributes of similar nature. And when at last the great day came when all the short lines were connected in one whole, what a celebration there was from sea to sea! Wires had been laid so that the hammer that drove the last spike sent the news to cities all over the land. Bells rang, whistles blew, fire alarms sounded. The cost of the Union Pacific was about thirty-nine million dollars and that of the Central Pacific about one hundred and forty million dollars. The construction of the Southern Pacific presented a different set of problems from those of the Northern, but many of the difficulties encountered were the same. Bands of robbers and Indians beset the workmen and either cut the ties and spread the rails, or tore the track up altogether for long distances. Forest fires often overtook the men before they could escape, although trains sometimes contrived to get through the burning areas by drenching their roofs and were able to bring succor to those in peril. Then there were washouts and snowstorms quite as severe as any experienced in the northern country."
"I'm afraid I should have given the whole thing up!" interrupted Steve.
"Many another was of your mind," returned Mr. Tolman. "The frightful heat encountered when crossing the deserts was, as I have said, the greatest handicap. Frequently the work was at a standstill for months because all the metal—rails and tools—became too hot to handle. The difficulty of getting water to the men in order to keep them alive in this arid waste was in itself colossal. Tank cars were sent forward constantly on all the railroads, northern as well as southern, and the suffering experienced when such cars were for various reasons stalled was tremendous. The sand storms along the Southern Pacific route were yet another menace. So you see an eagerness for adventure had to be balanced by a corresponding measure of bravery. Those early days of railroad building were not all romance and picturesqueness."
Stephen nodded as his father rose and took up his hat and coat.
"I'd like to hear Mr. Ackerman tell of the early steamboating," remarked the lad. "I'll bet the story couldn't match the one you have just told."
"Perhaps not," his father replied. "Nevertheless the steamships had their full share of exciting history and you must not be positive in your opinion until you have heard both tales. Now come along, son, if you are going with me, for I must be off."
Obediently Stephen slipped into his ulster and tagged at his father's heels along the corridor.
What a magic country he lived in! And how had it happened that it had been his luck to be born now rather than in the pioneer days when there were not only no railroads but no great hotels like this one, and no elevators?
"I suppose," observed Mr. Tolman, as they went along, "we can hardly estimate what the coming of these railroads meant to the country. All the isolated sections were now blended into one vast territory which brought the dwellers of each into a common brotherhood. It was no small matter to make a unit of a great republic like ours. The seafarer and the woodsman; easterner, westerner, northerner, and southerner exchanged visits and became more intelligently sympathetic. Rural districts were opened up and made possible for habitation. The products of the seacoast and the interior were interchanged. Crops could now be transported; material for clothing distributed; and coal, steel, and iron—on which our industries were dependent—carried wherever they were needed. Commerce took a leap forward and with it national prosperity. From now on we were no longer hampered in our inventions or industries and forced to send to England for machinery. We could make our own engines, manufacture our own rails, coal our own boilers. Distance was diminished until it was no longer a barrier. Letters that it previously took days and even weeks to get came in hours, and the cost and time for freight transportation was revolutionized. In 1804, for example, it took four days to get a letter from New York to Boston; and even as late as 1817 it cost a hundred dollars to move a ton of freight from Buffalo to New York and took twenty days to do it. In every direction the railroads made for national advancement and a more solid United States. No soldiers, no statesmen of our land deserve greater honor as useful citizens than do these men who braved every danger to build across the country our trans-continental railways."
"I have been thinking, Dad," said Steve that evening, while they sat at dinner, "of the railroad story you told me this morning. It was some yarn." His father laughed over the top of his coffee cup.
"It was, wasn't it?" replied he. "And the half was not told then. I was in too much of a hurry to give you an idea of all the trials the poor railroad builders encountered. Did it occur to you, for example, that after the roads to the Pacific coast were laid their managers were confronted by another great difficulty,—the difference in time between the east and the west?"
"I never thought of that," was Steve's answer. "Of course the time must have differed a lot."
"Indeed it did! Every little branch road followed the time peculiar to its own section of the country, and the task of unifying this so that a basis for a common time-table could be adopted was tremendous. A convention of scientists from every section of the country was called to see what could be done about the fifty-three different times in use by the various railroads."
"Fifty-three!" ejaculated Stephen, with a grin. "Why, that was almost as many as Heinz pickles."
"In this case the results of the fifty-three varieties were far more menacing, I am afraid, than those of the fifty-seven," said his father, with a smile, "for travel under such a régime was positively unsafe."
"I can see that it would be. What did they do?"
"Well, after every sort of suggestion had been presented it was decided to divide the country up into four immense parts, separated from one another by imaginary lines running north and south."
"Degrees of longitude?"
"Precisely!" returned Mr. Tolman, gratified that the boy had caught the point so intelligently. "The time of each of these sections jumped fifteen degrees, or one hour, and the railroads lying in each district were obliged to conform to the standard time of their locality. Until this movement went into effect there had been, for example, six so-called standard times to reckon with in going from Boston to Washington."
"I don't see why everybody didn't get smashed up!"
"I don't either; and I fancy the passengers and the railroad people didn't," declared Mr. Tolman. "But with the new state of things the snarl was successfully untangled and the roads began to be operated on a more scientific basis. Then followed gradual improvements in cars which as time went on were made more comfortable and convenient. The invention of the steam engine and the development of our steel products were the two great factors that made our American railroads possible. With the trans-continental roads to carry materials and the opening up of our coal, iron and copper mines we were at last in a position to make our railroads successful. Then science began to evolve wonderful labor-saving machinery which did away with the slow, primitive methods our pioneer engineers had been obliged to employ. The steam shovel was invented, the traveling crane, the gigantic derrick, the pile driver. The early railroad builders had few if any of these devices and were forced to do by hand the work that machinery could have performed in much less time. When one thinks back it is pathetic to consider the number of lives that were sacrificed which under present-day conditions might have been saved. Yet every great movement goes forward over the dead bodies of unnamed heroes. To an extent this is unavoidable and one of the enigmas of life. If every generation were as wise at the beginning as it is at the end there would be no progress. Nevertheless, when you reflect that ten thousand Chinese and Chilean laborers died while building one of the South American railroads it does make us wonder why we should be the ones to reap the benefits of so much that others sowed, doesn't it?" mused the boy's father.
"Do you mean to say that ten thousand persons were killed while that railroad was being built?" questioned Stephen, aghast.
"They were not all killed," was the reply. "Many of them died of exposure to cold, and many from the effects of the climate. Epidemics swept away hundreds of lives. This particular railroad was one of the mightiest engineering feats the world had seen for in its path lay the Andes Mountains, and there was no escape from either crossing or tunneling them. The great tunnel that pierces them at a height of 15,645 feet above sea level is one of the marvels of science. In various parts of the world there are other such monuments to man's conquest of the opposing forces of nature. Honeycombing the Alps are spiral tunnels that curve round and round like corkscrews inside the mountains, rising slowly to the peaks and making it possible to reach the heights that must be traversed. Among these marvels is the Simplon Tunnel, famous the world over. The road that crosses the Semmering Pass from Trieste to Vienna is another example of what man can do if he must. By means of a series of covered galleries it makes its way through the mountains that stretch like a wall between Italy and Austria. In the early days this territory with its many ravines and almost impassable heights would have been considered too difficult to cross. The railroad over the Brenner Pass between Innsbruck and Botzen penetrates the mountains of the Tyrol by means of twenty-three tunnels."
"I learned about the St. Gothard tunnel in school," Steve interrupted eagerly.
"Yes, that is yet another of the celebrated ones," his father rejoined. "In fact, there are now so many of these miracles of skilful railroading that we have almost ceased to wonder at them. Railroads thread their way up Mt. Washington, Mt. Rigi, and many another dizzy altitude; to say nothing of the cable-cars and funicular roads that take our breath away when they whirl us to the top of some mountain, either in Europe or in our own land. Man has left scarce a corner of our planet inaccessible, until now, not content with scaling the highest peaks by train, he has progressed still another stage and is flying over them. Thus do the marvels of one age become the commonplace happenings of the next. Our ancestors doubtless thought, when they had accomplished the miracles of their generation, that nothing could surpass them. In the same spirit we regard our aeroplanes and submarines with triumphant pride. But probably the time will come when those who follow us will look back on what we have done and laugh at our attempts just as you laughed when I told you of the first railroad."
Stephen was thoughtful for a moment.
"It's a great game—living—isn't
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