Part 5

The theoretical capacity of the Western Railroad is a fruitful subject for speculations and array of figures, but facts and demonstrated truths are what practical men wish to deal with. A comparison of the Tunnel and Western lines is of no significance, when both are urgently needed. In 1847, when the Western Road was opened to Albany, it transported from Albany to Boston 88,438 tons of freight, and last year, only 87,254 tons, 1184 tons less. Yet in 1847 it had no double track, and in 1865 it had 116 miles of double track. The greatest tonnage was 116,288, in 1864: and that same year, 588,207 tons of through Eastward freight arrived at Albany and Troy, and the total amount to those two points was 3,866,025; nearly three fourths of which was transported on the Erie canal, an institution which is entirely left out of Mr. Bird's calculations. More than six million tons of freight were brought from the West last year to the Hudson river. Of this vast amount only a little more than one sixtieth found its way to Boston over the Western Road. In 1864, 471,919 tons of freight were transported from Albany and Troy to Boston by the circuitous routes we have mentioned.

Mr. Bird makes a calculation that the capacity of the Western Road can be so increased, by finishing the double track, increasing the rolling stock and adding special auxiliary force to draw its freight trains up the steep grades, that it can bring 1,797,120 tons of freight in a year. It may be presumed that he means both local and through freight. But his "calculation" is as baseless and flimsy as any of his numerous statistical bubbles which have already been pricked. The best answer to his whole argument is contained in a memorial of the Albany Board of Trade to our legislature, with some extracts from which, our review of this topic will be closed. But a few more of Mr. Bird's misrepresentations must first be exposed. On page 56 he represents Mr. Brooks as claiming that the whole through freight from the West to Boston_ eight years hence_, will amount to 448,101 tons. This estimate was made three years ago, and the words "eight years hence" were used at that time, and not now, as Mr. Bird represents.

On page 50, is a list of names purporting to have been taken from the original subscription list of stockholders in the Troy and Greenfield Railroad. Mr. Otis Clapp is represented as having subscribed $200 in "services;" and Daniel S. Richardson's name is appended, with ciphers and exclamation points. The first of these misrepresentations has been exposed by Mr. Clapp, who writes to the Boston Advertiser that he never charged the company for any service, nor was ever credited by them for services, but that he did subscribe and pay $1151.43 for stock of the road. Mr. Richardson also writes to the Advertiser, and mildly suggests that he was never in any way connected with the Troy and Greenfield Railroad. On page 51, E. H. Derby is represented as being president of the Fitchburg Railroad a pure fabrication; and Alvah Crocker as having "large investments" in the same road, when its books show that at that time he owned but six shares of stock. The truth is, Mr. Bird has no hesitation or scruple in using other people's names in the same manner as he uses figures and statistics in his calculations.

Mr. Bird says lie never had any communication or correspondence with, and never received a dollar from, any person connected with the Western Railroad. That may be; but it is well known that Mr. D. L. Harris, president of the Connecticut River Railroad, has been for years the "_fidus Achates_" of Mr. Bird in "fighting the Tunnel," his colleague in the "Third House," his companion at the Hoosac Mountain, and the guide of his inexperienced feet in the wilderness of facts and speculations of civil engineering. It is not so well known, but nevertheless true, that Mr. Harris is made director and president of the Connecticut River Railroad by the influence and vote of Chester W. Chapin, president of the Western road. His zeal in the service of his benefactor has been manifested by an active hostility to the Tunnel, as persistent and unscrupulous as that of Mr. Bird; and, were it possible for that gentleman ever to act from other than disinterested motives, or a sense of public duty, his intimate relations with Mr. Harris might justify a suspicion that the "sinews of war" might be supplied through that channel. At all events, we may be permitted to say that, if these two men have organized and led the opposition to the Tunnel every winter for the last ten years, printed thousands and thousands of pamphlets, and spent a considerable part of each year in the lobby, and all this at their own cost, from a sense of public duty, then they have better deserved statues in front of the State House than Webster or Mann; and the Western Railroad management is even meaner than it has been generally considered. A corporation must indeed be without a soul, which can look upon such sublime virtue, and suffer it to pay its own expenses. But enough of Mr. Bird and his motives.

The statements we have made in regard to the necessity of a new route are, in every particular fully confirmed by a memorial which has been recently addressed to our Legislature from the Albany Board of Trade, through a committee of seven of their number. The gentlemen comprising this board are not theorists, but practical, clear-headed and reliable business men, who have been compelled by the urgent demands of yearly increasing business, to appeal to the people of Massachusetts for aid and relief.

From a table in their memorial, it appears, that, while the increase, during the last fifteen years, of miles of railroad in eleven other States through which Western products press to the seaboard, averaged 169 per cent, that of Massachusetts was only 26 per cent. But we proceed to quote from the memorial:--

"Twelve years of experience have convinced us that the Western Railroad is wholly inadequate to the prompt, rapid and cheap transportation of the commodities so extensively consumed by the people of the New England States. To illustrate the diversion of trade from the natural route to Boston via Albany, occasioned by the incapacity of the Western road to meet the wants of commerce, we call your attention to the article of flour. We collate our facts from reports of the Boston Board of Trade and the official reports of the Western Railroad. In 1865, the Western road, according to its own report, transported from Albany and Troy to Boston, one hundred and fifty thousand barrels less than it did in 1847, nearly twenty years ago. During the thirteen years, including 1848 and 1860, the average of its transportation of this article, per annum, between the Hudson and Boston was 287,698 barrels. For the same period, there were received in Boston, via other and more circuitous routes, an average per annum of 670,233 barrels. The next four years, including 1861 and 1864, the average per annum by the Western road was 572,637 barrels. Boston received from other routes an average, per annum for the same period, of 824,937 barrels.

Now, we hold that, by the natural laws of trade, most of this vast quantity of flour, which reaches Boston in these roundabout ways, would have left the Hudson river at Albany and Troy, had the requisite facilities for a cheap and rapid transportation been afforded. About one-fourth of the average quantity received in Boston from other routes, for the four years named above, reached that place via the Grand Trunk Railway and Portland, aggregating 956,945 barrels. Taking Detroit as the starting point, the distance from there to Boston via Portland, is 228 miles greater than the route to Boston via Albany. Yet, owing to the inadequate railroad facilities between Albany and Boston, the consignors of this flour prefer to send it via Portland, and pay the charges on 228 miles of additional distance. What is true of the article of flour is equally true of all the staple commodities produced at the West and consumed by the New England States. Large quantities were last year turned aside at Rochester and other points in our own State, to say nothing of points west of Buffalo, and sent to Boston and contiguous localities via the New York and Erie Railroad. Boston is even now receiving flour from Albany, Troy and Schenectady, by way of Rutland, a distance of some fifty miles further than by the Western road.

We have no words but of commendation for the noble work which your State is pushing with such energy to open a still shorter route to the Hudson. We have no feelings of jealousy toward the new route, because it terminates in another city than Albany; a healthy rivalry will do more than moral suasion, to wake up the old route from that lethargy which seems so near akin to death. Had the Hoosac Tunnel been completed twelve years ago, we have reason to believe it probable that the people of Massachusetts alone would have saved an amount in the way of cheap transportation, nearly if not quite sufficient to equal its cost.

We have spoken more freely in this paper than might be considered becoming in us, but for the fact that in the day of its need, Albany, along with Massachusetts, came to the aid of the Western Railroad. And now that we are suffering so much from its insufficiency to meet the public want, we trust the presentation of these views and facts will not be regarded as obtrusive, but rather as properly coming from those, who, with you, aided to produce a common benefit, and are now suffering with you from a common cause."

The cost of the whole work was estimated by the commissioners in their first report, at $5,719,330, the estimate being based upon ordinary labor at one dollar a day, and of materials at a corresponding rate. Nothing has yet occurred to invalidate this estimate, excepting the advance of the cost of material and labor, an incidental misfortune common to every public, as well as private enterprise, requiring labor and material, which has been prosecuted during the last three years. It is certain that these high rates will greatly decline, perhaps nearly to their former level within a year; but admitting that the Commissioners' estimate should be swelled through these incidental causes to the sum of eight millions, would such an increase of expense justify the abandonment of this great enterprise, upon which so much has already been expended, and at the very period in its progress when the most formidable obstacles in its way have been surmounted, and its success become a certainty? Had the Western Railroad been utterly destroyed last year by a rebel raid, as were some Southern roads by the march of Sherman, or by any conceivable cause, would the consideration of twenty-five, or thirty, or even forty millions, prevent its being rebuilt at once? Why then should two millions stand in the way of the Tunnel line, which is now a greater necessity than the Western road was at the time of its construction?

The time required to complete the work, without the aid of machinery, was estimated by the Commissioners at eleven years and four months; and with the aid of such machine drills and power as had already been applied with success at Mt. Cenis, at seven years and a half. The work at Mt. Cenis was commenced in 1857, and up to July, 1861, 2142 feet had been excavated by hand labor; the machine drills were then applied, and the Italian government has recently announced that the work will be finished by the close of the year 1870. It will be seven and a half miles long. The Hoosac Tunnel will be about four and a half miles long, and at the present time it has been excavated 4675 feet, and shafts have been sunk to the depth of 575 feet. The machine drills will be applied in a few days; but they are drills which will do twice, and possibly three times the work of those at Mt. Cenis.

To the sound judgment, energy, and untiring perseverance of Mr. Brooks, and the inventive genius and skill of Mr. Stephen F. Gates, of Boston, and Mr. Charles Burleigh, of Fitchburg, belongs the credit of perfecting a pneumatic drill, by means of which our great tunnel will be completed much within the time named by the Commissioners, and with a reduction of their estimate of its cost by hand labor of several hundred thousand dollars. We have seen this drill operated by compressed air, at the rate of two hundred blows a minute, each blow given with a force of more than five hundred pounds, cut an inch and a quarter hole in a block of Hoosac rock, thirty-eight inches in thirteen minutes, without changing its points. Its superiority over the Mt. Cenis drill consists in its lightness, automatic feed, and smaller size. The Mt. Cenis drill is eight feet long, and weighs six hundred pounds, and the whole machine moves forward in feeding. The Hoosac drill is four feet long, weighs two hundred and eight pounds, and can be handled by two men. In feeding, the drill alone advances, and in such manner as to accommodate itself to any kind of rock it may encounter, whether hard or soft. Its points are sharpened in a die by half a dozen blows of the hammer. It will do the work of twenty men; and, finally, sixteen of them can be applied to a surface upon which only nine of the Mt. Cenis drills can be used.

The operation of this drill has already been witnessed by hundreds of persons, among them machinists, engineers, and stone masons, and not one of them entertains a doubt that it will do all which is claimed for it by the inventors. But the carriages are nearly ready, and these little machines will shortly be put to their work. The friends of the Tunnel have no fears of the result.

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Massachusetts has always led her sister States. At the call to arms, her sons have been first in the field, and first to die for the common good. Her schools and colleges, her institutions of charity, and her statutes have furnished models for the new states of the great West, and for foreign republics. In her manufactures and mechanic arts, in the products of her inventive genius, in maritime enterprise, in the building of canals and railroads, and in every undertaking to develop the resources and promote the prosperity of the country, she has been first and foremost. With so proud a record, and with almost exhaustless means at her command, we do not believe our noble state is yet ready to abandon the lead; nor that the consideration of a few millions of dollars will prevent her from breaking down the barrier which divides us from the West, and by which the great stream of Western traffic has been so long checked and diverted. Rather let us trust that, by wise legislation, a liberal policy, and a cordial support of the gentlemen to whom the conduct of this enterprise is entrusted, the great work of De Witt Clinton will be perfected, and the noble design of Loammi Baldwin executed, by the completion of the Hoosac Tunnel, before it shall be announced from Sardinia that the Alps are pierced and France and Italy have joined hands under the Grand Vallon.