WAUPACA COUNTY REPUBLICAN

November 12, 1880

 

It may not be generally known that the car-wheels for the Pullman palace cars are made of paper, but such is the fact, those made of iron mot being strong enough for these heavy cars.  The company was recently sued for damages, on account of an accident which occurred by the breaking of one of these wheels under the forward truck of the palace car “Woodbine.”  During the course of the trial it was proven, to the satisfaction of the Court, (the U.S. Circuit Court of Pennsylvania), that paper wheels were far superior to iron, not being liable to break by contraction or expansion, and were practically indestructible.  The plaintiffs were non-suited, and the wheels were practically sanctioned by this high judicial authority.

 

 

WAUPACA COUNTY REPUBLICAN

December 31, 1880

 

Another new thing is being agitated.  That is a plan to get rid of the a.m. and p.m. nuisance in railway and other time cards.  The day begins at midnight and it is proposed to number the hours from that time consecutively up to 24.  What is now 12:30 a.m. it is proposed to write 0.30, and number the ours and minutes as they now are, up to 12.59, omitting the letters, however, and number 1.00 p.m. as 13.  At 2.30 it would be 14.30.  8.15 would be 20.15.  It would require some little time for people to get used to it, but if all the railroads would adopt it, the new style would soon be familiar as the old.  We move the adoption of the new rule.

 

 

THE WAUPACA COUNTY REPUBLICAN

February 24, 1882

 

The Three Epochs of Railroads

 

            The life of man has seven stages, says Shakespeare.  Railroads have three epochs.  These epochs are well defined; they are complete, each in itself; their chronological order is never varied.

            The fist is the formative period, or it may be so called.  The people of a section of country want a railroad.  Everybody wants it.  There is no division of sentiment.  Public meetings are held and the enthusiasm is only surpassed by the unanimity of sentiment.  Every variety of local aid is voted; town bonds, farm mortgages, stock subscriptions are issued, and the right of way is freely given across the most valuable farms and though cities. No sacrifice is too great for the purpose of securing the road. Eternal friendship is pledged to it interests; the company, the corporation, the “monopoly”, is regarded as an unseen but benigent power, like that blessed providence which sends refreshing rains and sunshine, which brings seed-time and harvest, and which beautifies and refreshens the earth with the dew of the morning!

            The second epoch is like the first.  It is the construction epoch.  The road is being built.  Gangs of hands are digging and grading over long lines of roadway.  Town sites are being selected.  The country villages begin to bristle with activity and life, as the road points towards them, with a prospect that they will be reached in a few months, or in a year or two.  The whole country, from where the line starts to its terminus, shows signs of prosperity.  Money is paid out in every direction for labor, for teams, for provisions and other supplies, for ties and for everything which enters into the construction of the road.  Especially, the price of land advances.  Farms increase 40 or 50 percent in value, or their value is doubled. Farmers prepare to put in big crops as they will find a market for produce at their doors, or at the depot a few miles away, instead of hauling grain and wool one or two days’ distance at a cost nearly or quite equal to the sum for which the load will be sold.  The road is at length completed.  The rejoicing is general.  Public meetings of congratulation is held.  The first train through is welcomed as an army of deliverance is welcomed by a people in bondage. Everybody feels good.  It is true, also, that everybody’s expectation as to the benefit of the road are realized.  A good and steady market is provided for produce, at which farmers get the same prices for grain which they were previously paid at a lake, canal or river point fifty or eighty miles away.  They buy necessary goods as cheap as they could do in the great cities, instead of paying half as much again owing to the cost of transportation.  The people can go and come on the cars more cheaply than they could previously ride with their own teams, considering the value of time and other incidents.  All the advantages of the railroads are appreciated and its value admitted.

            The third epoch then slowly emerges; its early progress is slow; it then approaches with accelerated speed.  The public first suggests to itself, then half begins to think, then is persuaded that it has paid out too dear for its whistle.  The pubic learns that the road is not fun for its exclusive benefit, but that the company also expects to make money out of it. The discovery is made that the railroad is not a purely philanthropic enterprise.  Pay-day for the bonds and mortgages approaches.  The boundless benefits, including increased values, steady markets, means of rapid communication, the prosperity of the country, have become seasoned and thread-bare facts; they have lost their novelty; they are old; they seem as if they had always been, like the beauties of nature. Then a hostile feeling arises.  People who had formerly ridden by stage-coach at the rate of sixty miles a day, and paid from six to ten cents a mile, complain that the railroads, which run 600 miles in twenty-four hours, do not make fast enough time, and that four cents a mile is extortion. Those who used to draw wheat forty miles to market and sell it for fifty cents a bushel, complain of the cost of transportation, though they sell their wheat for a dollar a bushel, at a distance of forty rods from their granaries.  Complaint is made that the railroad officers gave passes and free rides, and everybody who cannot get one becomes an enemy of the railroad for that reason.  In the end hostile orders are formed. The grangers arise in their wrathful might. Destructive legislation, like the Potter law, is enacted.

            The public faith, guaranteed to the railroad in its inception, is broken; a blow is aimed at the general prosperity; credit is impaired; capital is scared and withdraws its supplies from the channels of commerce and industry; disaster and collapse ensue, the road goes into the hands of a receiver, or into bankruptcy, and the paralysis of hard times settle down upon every enterprise of trade, of labor and investment.

            This is not a fancy sketch.  It is drawn on the hard lines of facts and experience.  It has its lessons, also, which may well be heeded and be a guide for the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE WAUPACA COUNTY REPUBLICAN

March 3, 1882

 

The Women and Railroads

 

            Women appreciate the benefits of railroads with a keener relish than men.  Railroads have brought to women and to the family blessings of a peculiar and valuable character.  Isolation is the dreary lot and portion of the rural women of America.  The lives of farmers’ wives are dull and insipid; they are without recreation and amusement; they are distant from works and displays of art and science; their lot and that of their children is one of loneliness.  For this reason farmers’ wives suffer from mental and moral weariness; life loses its zest and freshness for the, and their children flock to the cities to seek new ways of industry, enterprise and enjoyment.  Women feel the need of society more than men, while they have less opportunity for social intercourse, and they appreciate it because they have less of it, and have a sharp sense of their need in this respect.  They are more aesthetic; they covet personal and household adornment, and they have an insatiable longing for the means by which their tastes may be gratified.  All this would be more and more as it is, this condition of thing would increase and tensify, but for the civilizing and refining influences created by railroads, and but for the means and facilities for culture and social improvement which they have created.

            The railroads make the city and country near neighbors.  They break up the rustic and old-fashioned habits and ways of life which have prevailed on the farms and in the remote villages; they are the direct agencies in educating, refining, polishing and elevating the classes of people who have been in the past without the possibilities of culture and refinement.  The railroads carry books, magazines fresh newspapers, models of taste and labor, patterns and a knowledge of art, the results of experiment and science, to the most distant communities and to the scattered homes and fire-sides throughout the vast areas of our common country.  They have removed from the ways of rural life the curse of isolation, and the shackles which bound men, women and children to a sameness of scene, toil and effort during their lifetime, and from generation to generation.

            The railroads have made the country cosmopolitan, and they have brought everybody within the radius and influence of the highest sources of enjoyment.  The greatest singer in the world comes to the metropolis, and the railroads make it practicable for thousands from near and far to listen to the miracles of her minstrelsy. The great orators, through the facilities created by railroads, visit all the people of the country at their local centers and places of resort, or the people are enabled to go long distances to listen to their arguments and eloquence.  Famous men and women in all professions are no longer strangers to the masses of the people.  Travel has been cheapened and made comfortable and convenient by the railroads, and it has greatly enlarged the field of everyone’s vision.

            The women to day are vastly privileged beyond their mothers.  The first settlers in the West came in ox-teams, and were six and eight weeks, or longer, on the road “over the hills and far away,” and they left in the unapproachable distance behind them all that was dear and delightful by association and memory.  The railroad has opened a means of transit from the past to the present, from the farthest East to the ultimate West, and a few hours or a day or two by rail will carry the men and women on the boarders of civilization to the scenes of their childhood to “the old folks at home,” to the old homestead and fire-side.  Railroads enable friends and relatives to be set down at the far distant bed-side of the sick and dying, and to minister to the cheerless and forlorn wherever their lot may be cast.

            Men value railroads because they facilitate business, enhance the price of land, promote speculation, and aid in money getting.  The dollar mark is the mark of man’s appreciation of railroads. Railroads are of inestimable value to women, because they add to much to the possibilities and delights of social intercourse, because they make rural life pleasant and diversify it by means of travel and recreation, and create a community of interests and association between city and country, adding to the polish and urbanity of one the natural truth and freshness of the other, and because they introduce the modes and fashions of polite city society to the homes in the fields and villages remote from the noisy and busy centers of population.  For the women railroads have been an unmixed blessing and benefit in all their relations to the daily life of the people.