THE OVERGROUND RAILROAD
A Mighty Way to Progress—The Underground Railroad a Thing of the Past
The old folks revel in stories about the “Underground Railroad.” They traveled over it, and we may admit that it took them to liberty. We may even go farther than that, and say that it lifted from the shoulders of a great race, a weight that was crushing them down, and brought them into the land of “Opportunity.”
But all that is ancient history. What happened even yesterday is old, and we are too busy today working to take advantage of the things offered us today, and that will happen tomorrow, to dream about the past.
We are all working to make things turn out to our advantage, and the less we dwell about the past the closer we get to the golden fruit.
We are living in a practical age, and the man who does things prospers, while the dreamer starves or gropes about at the bottom of the ladder.
All men need things; want something done for them. It is good business policy to supply the wants and to do the things everybody wants done.
We mentioned the “Underground Railroad” as something that benefited the race; but we have its successor in the way of transportation that is reaping profit from that benefit.
That successor is the “Overground Railroad.” It is a system of transportation such as the world has never seen or used.
You ask: “What is an ‘Overground Railroad?’” Everybody can answer, or thinks he can, so he says: “Why, it is a railroad that runs over the land and transports passengers and freight.” But the answer does not hit the mark, for this particular Overground exercises a mightier power; possesses a wider influence than the mere haulage of passengers and freight.
It carries opportunity, activity, benefit, incentive, intelligence, knowledge, and progress to every corner of this great land and into every town, village, city, hamlet, even the cross-roads are reached.
It reaches every one of ten millions of a great race that less than two decades ago were forbidden opportunity, and compelled to travel over the “Underground Railroad.” Now, everything belonging to the great mass of mankind, or to which they are entitled or may aspire, is parceled out with lavish hand to all who wish to take. The effort is yours, the prize awarded you.
In round numbers there are about two hundred thousand miles of railroads in the United States, spreading out in every direction from ocean to ocean, and from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. Many of them reach over into Mexico and Canada.
On the trains operated by these railroads, there are thousands of Pullman cars, drawing-room and chair-cars. All of these cars are in the charge of Colored Americans, the sum total of their number running up into tens of thousands. These men are the posterity, the descendants of the passengers of the old “Underground Railroad.”
It is true philosophy that makes for education and wisdom, gives polish, affords incentives to ambition and a leaning toward high ideals, as well as offering opportunities—always bear in mind “Opportunity” for that is what counts. Now imagine the bright men and women that travel on these two hundred thousand miles of railroad. Imagine also, our ten thousand men circulating among them; mixing with them; in daily and hourly contact with them! Something must come of this association, and something does come, which something is of incalculable benefit.
The passengers on the Overground Railroad are men and women from every part of the world. They are the successful people; the experienced people, and the leaders of thought. They have taken opportunity by the forelock and ridden it to the finish. Otherwise they would not be able to travel.
They are soldiers, statesmen, politicians, lawyers, clergymen, physicians, scientists, and everything that is the highest and noblest in the world.
Their number according to statistics, runs up into the hundreds of millions of passengers annually. Our ten thousand in the performance of their duties, listen to their interchange of opinions; note everything that is worth knowing; glean opportunities, and absorb information and wisdom.
If you have noticed any of these ten thousand off duty and on his way home, you can not have failed to see gentlemen.
These men are really the operators of our “Overground Railroad” in the highest sense of management. They are not mechanical, they are observing and possess the power of mental acquisitiveness, due to their surroundings and their contact with the passengers. They are the opposites of the patrons and passengers, and managers of the old “Underground Railroad,” which is switched off into the sidetrack of forgetfulness.
The Pullman man from New York City meets his brother Pullman employee from San Francisco, let us say, at St. Louis. Their regular stunt is about two thousand miles each, with the care of numbers of the passengers coming from tens of thousands of miles apart, from all over the globe, in fact.
What is the result of this meeting? To an outsider it is something like this:
“How are you, Sam?”
“How are you, Bill?”
“Have a New York stogie.”
“Have a San Francisco cheroot.”
That is all the outsider sees or learns. But when these men get away and apart, they exchange notes of everything that they have learned on the trip or has transpired on their routes. They are message bearers of everything they have learned new from their passengers.
Multiply this one instance with thousands of similar instances. We have every city in the world linked with every other city; every nationality brought in contact with every other nationality; every class and character of individual tied up with every other class of individuals, and these men are the great deposit reservoirs of everything.
They become laden with unlimited cosmopolitan and universal knowledge and information, charged with it as a bee is charged with honey in its flights from bush to bush and from flower to flower.
This is not an exaggeration, on the contrary, it is of such common knowledge that we think nothing about it. It is every-day fact that any one can see for himself by going to any railroad depot in the country.
We said these men are the great deposit reservoirs of everything, but unlike the most of our deposit reservoirs, they are also the sources of distribution through innumerable channels. Their business is like the training at a State Normal School with actual experience added in unlimited quantities. They go out from these training schools, or rather from this educational system belonging to every Overground Railroad and scatter knowledge, information, and opportunity. A word, even a hint, of what “a man told me on the run from New Orleans to Chicago,” and one or perhaps many, find themselves boosted into opportunities they never would have found without the operators on the Overground Railroad.
These Pullman employees are evangelists, news gatherers, and experienced men acquainted with the ways and doings of the world. They have homes, abiding places, wives, sweethearts, brothers, sisters, friends. They have their clubs and meeting places, and they unload their information and knowledge, mixed with opportunity, to ears greedy for advancement, and opportunities for betterment.
They scatter broadcast high aspirations and incentives to progress among the ten millions of the posterity of the patrons of the old Underground Railroad.
Through this means the most astounding results have been accomplished—results that have never happened any other race since the world began.
The Israelites dwelt in Egypt for four hundred and thirty years, and waited for a Moses to come and lead them out of their unpleasant environments. There were about six hundred thousand of them, and most of their posterity are still dreaming of the past.
The four millions that started the Underground Railroad, have increased to ten millions in a generation and a half, and they led themselves out to the promised land.
Imagine ten millions of any other race in the United States with perfect freedom of action! We might well shudder at what would happen us—happen the country. We do not feel that way about the posterity of the operators and passengers of the old Underground Railroad. They are peaceable, earnest students of the ways of civilization, and they are working upward—they are ambitious to learn and constantly devise methods of improving their condition in the same way all true American citizens are following. They have their homes, their children, and their attachments in our midst, in fact, they belong to our soil, and have no desire to depart elsewhere to spend their money. They are always ready to shed their blood for the Stars and Stripes, and are always willing to leap to the nation’s rescue, or to aid in promoting its welfare.
Where does the Colored race learn all these things? Not in the schools for they are limited, and live too much in the musty past, but the cap-sheaf of the education of the race, its maintenance as a factor in the civilization of the earth, is in their contact with the world, their absorption of the wisdom and experience of the world’s people, due in a great measure to the operators of the Overground Railroad.
Through this source the great race is learning that there is no vocation to which it may not aspire in time to come and the opportunities for intellectual development and its benefits are multiplying rapidly.
Already there is a great sprinkling of dark skins in every avenue of life, commerce, trade, science, and in everything that the white skin aspires to. Look down for a moment, and compare your state with that of the scavenger, the sewer digger, the section hand, and the grades of labor so attractive to foreign elements that come here to scrape up enough to return to their wallow in their various native lands. You are far above these and you belong here and you are rising with the best.