The Government proposed to make all the arrangements for me, so that I could travel in luxury and leisure; but I could not then undertake so extended an enterprise, besides I have ever preferred to follow my own ideas rather than those of others. I desired to pursue original lines of investigation, to go over new routes of travel and of trade, to explore corners of the world that had not been worn into paths by the myriad feet of travelers. I have always felt hampered in trying to carry out the suggestions of others. I have found that there is but one course for me, if I am to succeed, and that is to follow my own counsel. I must be myself, untrammeled, unfettered, or I fail. If I had gone to Eastern Siberia for the Russian Government, I might have succeeded in the way the Government expected; but the chances, I consider, would have been against me. If I had gone there at my own motion, I might have created a sensation by exploiting that vast and magnificent region, which must soon play a tremendously important part in the history of the world.

CHAPTER XXI

Before undertaking the work of constructing street-railways in England, I was called upon to do a little financiering for my father-in-law, Colonel George T. M. Davis. Colonel Davis came to me in London and wished me to assist in organizing the Adirondack Railway in upper New York. He had been introduced to Hamilton and Waddell, who had a grant from the New York legislature of 600,000 acres in the Adirondacks; but nothing could be done at that time. Later, in '64, I organized the Adirondack road, and met General Rosecrans and Cheney, of Little Falls, at the Astor House, for the purpose of building the railway. I subscribed $20,000 for myself and $20,000 for my wife, and got a large sum from my friends. A large party of us went in carriages from the United States Hotel, Saratoga, through the country along the proposed route to Lucerne. George Augustus Sala, who was visiting this country at the time, was with us, also Dr. T. C. Durant, president of the Crédit Mobilier, and J. S. T. Stranahan, of Brooklyn. This was the beginning of the Adirondack road, of which Colonel Davis was the president when he died in '88. My plan was to build the road through the entire forest to Ogdensburg, but it was never carried out. This was four decades before the millionaire colonists began flocking in there, the Huntingtons, Astors, Webbs, Rockefellers, Woodruffs, Durants, et al.

My first efforts in introducing street-railways in England were made in Liverpool. I chose this city because I had been long associated with it and because, as it was the leading seaport of the world, I had a false idea that it was progressive. But I was soon set right as to this estimate of Liverpool. I recalled, in the hour of discouragement, the great difficulty I had had years before, in '50, in getting the municipal government to permit us to have lights and fire on the docks at night, in order to facilitate the handling of the very traffic that was the basis of the city's prosperity. Now, when I proposed the laying of a street-railway, I found the leading men of the city just as narrow and just as hopelessly behind the times as they had been in the matter of improving shipping facilities. They would not consider the proposition at all.

But this did not stop my efforts nor dampen my ardor. I felt that the plan would succeed somewhere in England, and I began to look about to see where the best chances of success might be found. All through the year '58 and into '59 I was at work upon my original plan. I had made every possible arrangement for the immediate construction of a railway, if I could only get some municipality to grant the necessary permission.

Finally, it occurred to me that the man I wanted was John Laird, the progressive and energetic ship-builder, the man who afterward built the Alabama and other Confederate craft, and who was at the time chairman of the Commissioners of Birkenhead, just across the Mersey opposite Liverpool. Surely, thought I, here is a man with enterprise enough to appreciate this thing, which means so much for the working people and all business men. So I went to Mr. Laird, and after a long conference with him, I made a formal request to the Commissioners for permission to construct a surface railway, or "tramway," as it is called in England. My proposition was to lay a track four miles long, running out to the Birkenhead Park. I offered to lay the road at my own expense, to pave a certain proportion of the streets through which the line passed, and to charge fares lower than those then charged by the omnibuses. If the line did not then satisfy the city authorities, I was to remove it at my own expense and to place all the streets affected in as good order as when the road was begun.

I found Mr. Laird as liberal-minded as I had expected, and with his influence, the Board of Commissioners consented to let me make the experiment. I went to work at once, and the road was pushed through with great despatch. I felt that it ought to get into operation before the 'buses and other transportation companies stirred up too much opposition. As soon as the working people found how comfortable and cheap the new mode of conveyance was, I felt sure they would stand up for it so strongly as to defeat the efforts of the omnibus men to tear up the line.

The "tramway" proved a success from the start, and became as popular as I had expected. It was crowded with passengers at all hours of the day. The road is there to-day; and I learned a curious thing in connection with the line only recently. Twelve years ago the cashier of the restaurant in the Mills Hotel No. 1, Mr. Bryan, was the manager of the street-railway I had built in Birkenhead forty-two years ago.

Another incident of this period I should record here. I invited to Birkenhead most of the leading journalists and writers of London, having in view, of course, an intended invasion of the great metropolis. While these men were together I suggested the organization of a literary club, and this suggestion was the germ from which grew the Savage Club of London. My speech at the opening of the first street-railway in the Old World will appear in my forthcoming book of speeches.

As soon as I had completed my work in Birkenhead, I went to London, and opened a campaign for "tramways" in that metropolis of 4,000,000 people. It was a complex business from the first, and I had to make a study of the government and the conditions, and, above all, of the prejudices of citizens. The first step was to apply to every parish, for the parish there is our ward, and something more, for it has a far greater measure of home rule. Each parish had to grant permission for any tramway that was to invade its ancient and sacred precincts.

The greatest difficulty was the one I had most dreaded from the start—the opposition of the 'bus men. There are, or were at that time, 6,000 omnibuses in the streets of London, and in every one of the drivers, and in every one who was interested in the profits of the business, my tramway project had an unrelenting foe. I found that the influence of these men was tremendous, because they reached the masses of the people in a way that I could never hope to do. Their efforts were unremitting. They worked upon the different parish governments, upon the people at large, upon the municipal government, and upon Parliament itself. I believe they had sufficient influence to have carried the war even into the cabinet and to the throne.

However, as I shall soon relate, the opposition of the 'buses did not prove to be as terrible in the end as I had feared. The heaviest blows came from a higher source. The "people," in England, as elsewhere, seem very powerful at first, in the beginnings of all enterprises. To oppose them would seem to be inviting destruction. But in the end it is found that the real power is lodged elsewhere, and whenever this real power wants a thing done, the "people" do not exist. The fiction that they do exist disappears at once in the clear atmosphere of "exigency."

The first of these real powers that I had to attack was the Metropolitan Board of Aldermen. I appeared before the board with a carefully prepared model of the tramways I proposed. It was a sort of public hearing, and I was very closely questioned about the plans of operating the road, the effect its presence in the narrow streets would have in interfering with traffic, the danger of accidents, and so on. There was present a noble lord who, I saw, was fighting desperately against the project. He eyed me closely and made sharp interrogations. When he wished to be particularly effective, as is the manner of Englishmen of his class, he would drop his monocle, then readjust it carefully, with many writhings and twistings of his eyebrows, and, when the single glass was properly adjusted, half close the other eye and concentrate the full blaze of the monocle upon his victim. If the victim survives this, so much the worse for him, for he will then be subjected to a long drawl and to "hems" and "haws" that would shatter the composure of a Philadelphia lawyer.

We soon took up the problem of laying the tramway up Ludgate Hill, where the street is exceedingly narrow. His lordship fixed me with his glittering monocle. I saw from which direction the firing would come. After readjusting his monocle, so as to get the range better, he said:

"May I—ah—ask a question, Mr.—ah—Train?" When an Englishman wants to be sarcastic, and ironical, and cutting, he finds the means readiest to his mind in a pretended forgetting of your name.

"That is what I am here for, my lord," I replied, as graciously as possible.

"You know, of course, how very narrow is Ludgate Hill. Suppose that when I go down to the Mansion House in my carriage, one of my horses should slip on your d—d rail, and break his leg—would you pay for the horse?"

This produced a sensation, for the English love a lord even more than we plain Americans do. As soon as the stir had ceased, I replied, in a voice that carried to the ends of the hall:

"My lord, if you could convince me that your d—d old horse would not have fallen if the rail had not been there, I certainly should pay for it." This retort caught the audience so happily that the tide swept around my way, to the discomfiture of the noble lord. The hearing resulted in my obtaining permission to lay a tramway from the Marble Arch at Oxford Street and from Hyde Park to Bayswater, a distance of one or two miles.

I soon built other lines, also: one from Victoria Station to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, and another from Westminster Bridge to Kennington Gate on the way to Clapham. These were constructed on my patent of a half-inch flange.

The omnibuses, defeated in this part of the fighting, resorted to peculiar but effective tactics. As soon as I laid a portion of my tracks—which was done upon the same terms under which I had put down the line in Birkenhead—the 'bus drivers tried in every possible way to wreck their vehicles on the rails. They would drive across again and again and take the rails in the most reckless way, in order to catch and twist their wheels. They were very often successful, and there were many accidents of this sort. The excitement increased greatly with every foot of track laid down. But the people, as in Birkenhead, were tremendously in favor of the tramway. It was such a convenience to them that they sided with me in the fight. The 'bus drivers and companies and the aristocracy were against me—the one because my trams interfered with their business, the other because they owned their private conveyances, and did not like to drive across the rails. I dressed conductors and drivers in the uniform of volunteers, to which many soldiers objected. In the meanwhile the cars were crowded with passengers at all hours, there being throughout the day a rush such as is seen in New York only in what we call the "rush hours."

In all this excitement and press of travel, accidents were, of course, unavoidable. I dreaded one, as I felt it would be the crucial point. It might turn against me the popular feeling, now so strongly setting in my direction, for the "mob" (so called) of London is fully as excitable and as ungovernable as the "mob" of Paris, and its prejudices are more deeply intrenched. Finally, the dreaded accident came. A boy was killed, and I was arrested for manslaughter.

In order to appease public feeling, I paid the expenses of the boy's funeral, and did everything that could possibly be done to pay, in a material way, for his death. The accident was entirely unavoidable, and the tramway was not responsible for it, but there was a great deal of feeling, chiefly due to the agitation of the 'bus drivers. Sir John Villiers Shelley, member of Parliament, a relative of the poet, who was chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works and the representative of the omnibus people, led the fight against me. We had a terrific struggle. The bill to authorize the tramways had gone to Parliament, and this was now defeated by a few votes. I had six of the ablest lawyers of England to represent me (through Baxter, Rose & Norton, solicitors), but the influence of the 'bus men, aided by the sentiment in certain quarters against me on account of my speeches in favor of the American Union, was too strong for me, and I had to abandon the fight in London.

I then went to the Potteries in Staffordshire, and there, after renewing the same kind of fighting that I had had in London, in every new town I undertook to lay railways in, I succeeded in building seven miles of track through the crockery-making country. Those tracks are there to-day.

My failure in London, which was to have been expected, must be set off by these successes in Birkenhead and in Staffordshire. I am entitled to the credit of laying the first street-railways in England, having to overcome the most formidable of all the enemies of progress—British prejudice. I afterward went to Darlington, where Stephenson had built his first railway, from Stockton to Darlington, in '29, the year of my birth, and I constructed a tramway there to connect the two steam railways through that town.

My life, therefore, spans the entire railway building of the world. The first railway was built the year I was born, and since that time, in a space of seventy-three years, more than 200,000 miles of railway have been constructed in the United States alone. In much of this great work I have had some share. I suggested the railway that connects Melbourne with its port, and mapped out the present railway system in Australia thirty-nine years ago; I organized the line that connects the Eastern States with the great Middle West—the Atlantic and Great Western Railway; and I organized and built the first railway that pierced the great American desert, and brought the Atlantic and Pacific coasts into close touch and led to the development of the far West.

I may mention here, also, that I built a street-railway in Geneva, Switzerland, which is still in use; and one in Copenhagen, which proved that there was at least something sound in "the state of Denmark." Other railways, as in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, suggested by me, have been changed from horse to trolley lines. I also suggested the road in Bombay, India, which was the first railway in all Asia, now extended.

It may be of interest to record that when I began building street-railways, I sent to the United States and got the plans of the Philadelphia roads and of the New York Third Avenue line. It was therefore upon the models of American roads that these foreign railways were constructed.

It is sometimes said that it is remarkable that little is known of my connection with these great enterprises—for they were great, and epoch-making. But my achievements in England, in the pioneer work of building street-railways, is a matter of recorded history. An account of my work there will be found in a book by Dr. Albert Shaw, editor of the Review of Reviews, Municipal Government in Great Britain, as well as in other books that deal with the industrial life of the period.

CHAPTER XXII

I have referred already to the antagonism felt toward me in certain English quarters because of my speeches in favor of the Federal American Union in the hour of its danger. Love of country was always stronger in me than love of money, and I let slip no opportunity to defend the cause of the Union and to prove to the English of the upper classes that they were mistaken in supposing that the Confederacy could succeed. Those who were not in England at this period, when the South was in the first flush of its success, and when it seemed likely that England and France would go to the assistance of the South, merely to strengthen themselves by weakening the power of the United States, can not appreciate the extent or the power of British sympathy for the Confederacy. The element in England that took sides with the South was tremendously influential. I had already felt its power in a personal way through the defeat of my street-railway projects.

As soon as I observed the trend of British opinion, I went into public halls and spoke in favor of the Union, and tried to show that right and might were both on the side of the North, and that, no matter how many successes the South might win in the beginning of the war, it would inevitably be crushed beneath the weight of the rest of the country. I did not confine myself to speeches of this sort. I attacked the men who were trading on the war by sending blockade runners into Southern ports in violation of the rules of war. And so I was in some relation with Lord John Russell on the one hand and Emperor Louis Napoleon on the other, in the critical days of the Mason-Slidell affair and the discussion of "belligerent rights" of the South.

Before taking part in this desperate effort to stem the tide of British opinion, and to defeat the efforts of British traders to make money by selling merchandise to the South contraband of war, I placed my wife and children on board a steamer for New York, in order to remove them from troubled scenes. This fight was to cost me the opportunity of making a fortune of perhaps $5,000,000, by upsetting my street-railway projects.

I may mention here that in '58, during the Italian war, I bought the London Morning Chronicle for the French Emperor, paying $10,000 for it, and putting Thornton Hunt, son of Leigh Hunt, in editorial charge, at a salary of $2,000 a year. It was a daily paper; and as the Emperor wanted a weekly also, I arranged for him the purchase of the London Spectator at the same price, and put in Townsend (I think that was the name) as editor, at a salary of $2,000 a year. When the war was over, these papers of course passed out of our hands, and the Chronicle made a most savage attack on me in the tramway discussion, taking the part of the omnibus drivers. It again attacked me for my exposure of blockade running from British ports. I had given the names of the men interested, the marks of the cargoes, and the destination of the shipments, in a letter that I wrote to the New York Herald. These men thought they had assassinated the United States Republic.

The feeling against me was so intense at one time that I anticipated an attempt to kill me. Strong influences were brought to bear upon me to stop a paper that I had established in London, with my private secretary, George Pickering Bemis, as manager, for the purpose of disseminating correct news and views about the civil war. Secretary Seward, by the way, sent $100, through his private secretary, Mr. J. C. Derby (who was afterward connected with the house of D. Appleton and Company, and wrote his recollections under the title, Fifty Years Among Authors, Books, and Publishers), to assist in keeping up this journal. The intense strain wore upon me to such an extent that I had an attack of insomnia, and almost lost my senses at times. I would not go armed, but relied for defense upon a small cane that I carried under my arm, so grasped by the end in front as to enable me to whirl it about instantly in case I should be attacked from the rear.

In August, '62, I observed that a vessel called the Mavrockadatis was acting suspiciously, and came to the conclusion that she was a blockade runner. I believed that she was loaded with supplies for the Confederates, and that as soon as she was clear at sea she would make for a Southern port or for some rendezvous with a Confederate ship. I determined to frustrate this design, and took passage on her for St. John's, Newfoundland, which I supposed was only her ostensible destination. Of course, I registered under an assumed name, taking the name "Oliver" for the occasion.

As it turned out, I was wrong. The vessel kept on her course as represented, and we arrived at St. John's, Newfoundland, instead of at a Southern port. This broke up my program, as I had intended, immediately upon reaching a Southern port, to go direct to Richmond and see if anything could be done to end the war. As I may not have occasion again to refer to this plan, which I had had in mind for some time, I shall speak of it here. I had arranged with the President and with Mr. Seward to go to Richmond to see what could be done.

My idea was that the Southern leaders were in complete ignorance of the power and resources of the North; they had fancied, because of the great military reputation of Southern soldiers, that it would be comparatively easy to beat Northern troops in the field; and that, in the last event, England and France would come to their assistance. I felt confident of convincing Jefferson Davis and other Southern leaders that all these views were erroneous. I thought it would be a simple thing to prove that they could not count on the assistance of either England or France, as these two nations would not unite, and neither would undertake the task alone. I also thought I could give them such evidence of the great resources of the North, both in men and means, that they would recognize the uselessness of the struggle. Another view I had in mind was that I could impress the Southerners with the suggestion that, in the event of their abandoning the contest at that stage, they could obtain far better terms than the victorious North would be content to offer after a long and harrowing war. But this was not to be. Stanton heard of our plans, and sent Montgomery Blair to negotiate with the Southern leaders, with what result is too well known.

I landed in Newfoundland, instead of in the South, as I have said, with all my immediate plans thwarted. But I took up the course of my life exactly at the point where I stood. I was in Newfoundland just one day, and I wrote a history of that Crown Colony from the information I gleaned in this brief visit. I shall republish it some day. I observed in St. John's, as I have observed elsewhere, that people are fashioned by their occupations. These people were physically the creation of fisheries. I noted the tomcod married to the hake, and the shark wedded to the swordfish. The fish of the sea, which they ate and upon which they lived and had their being, were all represented in their features, from the sardine to the sperm whale.

From St. John's, Newfoundland, I went to Boston, by way of St. Johns, New Brunswick, stopping at Portland, Maine, for a brief visit. At Portland I was met by B. F. Guild on behalf of Curtis Guild, owner of the Boston Commercial Bulletin, which had just been established. Guild published my Union speeches, and must have spent $1,000 a week—the Bulletin was a weekly paper—in advertising them and my other writings. I published my History of Newfoundland in his paper, receiving for it $10 a column, the only pay I have ever received from a newspaper or other periodical for my work. I saw recently a notice of the death of B. F. Guild, at the age of eighty-nine. I had no idea he was so old.

I found that I had returned to my country the most popular American in public life. I was greeted everywhere by vast concourses of people, who cheered me and demanded speeches about the situation in England and my experiences there. At Boston I was met by a tremendous gathering, and it looked like a procession as we went up State Street to the Revere House. I was placed in the rooms that had been occupied by the Prince of Wales, now King Edward, on his visit to Boston two years before.

I was not long in Boston before I got into trouble by trying to enlighten the people with regard to the war. There was a great assemblage in Faneuil Hall, where Sumner was to speak, and I went there to see what was going on. Sumner was not a very effective speaker before mixed audiences, and could not have stood up for twenty minutes in the halls of London, where the greatest freedom of debate is indulged in, and where every speaker must be prepared to answer quickly and to the point any question that may be hurled at him, or to reply with sharpness and point to any retort that may come from the crowd that faces him.

I was very much astonished, therefore, to hear Sumner challenge any one in the audience to confute his arguments. I knew, of course, that the gantlet thus lightly thrown down was a mere oratorical figure, but in England it would have been taken up at once, and Sumner would have been routed. The temptation was too much for me. I rose, to the apparent astonishment and embarrassment of the orator and of the committee on the platform, and said: "Mr. Sumner, when you have finished, I should like to speak a word." The cheering that greeted my acceptance of the gaily-flung challenge was cordial.

As soon as Sumner had finished I climbed to the platform. There I had the greatest difficulty with the committee, which seemed determined to suppress any attempt to reply to the hero and god of the upper classes in Boston. The moment I began to talk the committee signaled to the band, and the music drowned my voice. When the band stopped I started again, but the committee endeavored to stop me. I acted as my own policeman and cleared the platform, when another rush was made upon me, and all went tumbling from the stage. I was then arrested and taken to the City Hall. The crowd seemed decidedly with me, although the utmost it knew as to my sentiments was that I was opposed to making instant abolition of slavery a condition precedent to putting an end to the war (that is, on Lincoln's platform, Union, with or without slavery).

In a few minutes there was a crowd of some thousands of people about the City Hall demanding loudly that I be set at liberty. I quieted the people by sending word to them that I was preparing a proclamation to the American people. This proclamation, entitled "God Save the People," was published by Guild in the Bulletin—and I should like to get a copy of it, as I have lost my own. This arrest did not interfere with me very much.

I made a contract with Guild to lecture in the North and West, and my first lecture was given in the Academy of Music, New York. The general subject was the abolition question, as it related to the war between the States. At this meeting Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, was made chairman, but the audience did not like that, and a big cabbage was thrown to the stage from the gallery. I then took charge of the meeting myself, and walking to the edge of the stage, said: "I see that you do not like Mr. Clay; but he should have a fair chance. If Mr. Guild will arrange for a meeting at Cooper Institute to-morrow night, I will debate with Mr. Clay, and you can then fire at me cabbages or gold dollars, as you like. I propose the following subject for the discussion: American Slavery as a Stepping-stone from African Barbarism to Christian Civilization; hence, it is a Divine Institution." Mr. Clay accepted.

The next evening, at Cooper Institute, there was a large audience that packed the hall from door to stage; $1,300 were taken at the box-office. The papers on the following morning gave from two to four columns of the discussion, and the London Times considered it sufficiently important, even to Englishmen, to give a long account and editorial comments. It said that the honors of the debate had been with me, and gave a specimen of my repartee, which, it said, had swept Mr. Clay off his feet.

Mr. Clay had referred in his speech to an interview he had had with President Lincoln, who was then hesitating as to issuing the Proclamation of Emancipation. Mr. Clay said, "I told the President that I would not flesh my sword in the defense of Washington unless he issued a proclamation freeing the slaves." My reply was: "It is fair to assume that, in order to make Major-General Cassius M. Clay flesh his sword, the President will issue the proclamation." There was loud laughter at this. The President did issue his proclamation three months after this.

I received a postal card the other day from Clay, who is now a nonagenarian, in his armed castle in Kentucky.

I was in Washington after this debate, which occurred in September, '62, and was warmly received by the President and members of his cabinet. I had heard very much, of course, about the freedom of speech of Mr. Lincoln, and was not, therefore, astonished to hear him relate several characteristic anecdotes. In fact, three of the most prominent men in the United States at that time were striving to outdo one another in jests—the President, Senator Nesmyth of Oregon, and Senator Nye.

Mr. Seward invited me to a dinner at his residence, the historic house where later the assassin tried to kill him, where General Sickles killed Philip Barton Key, and which in more recent years was occupied by James G. Blaine. Most of the members of the cabinet were present. I was asked to describe some of the scenes of my recent travels, and told about Chinese dinners, to their great amusement. Afterward I told them a story then current about Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist. Phillips was once in Charleston, South Carolina, and returned late to dinner at his hotel. As he approached the door, it was held open by a negro slave. Phillips said haughtily that he had never permitted a slave to wait on him, and that he would not do so now. "How long have you been a slave?" asked Mr. Phillips. The negro replied: "I ain't got no time to talk erbout dat now, wid only five minits fur dinner." Mr. Phillips told the slave to leave the room, that he would not let him serve him at the table; he would wait on himself. "I cain't do dat, suh; I is 'sponsible for de silber on de table, suh!"

Loud laughter greeted this story. In the very midst of the uproar the door was burst open, and Secretary Stanton appeared, his face white with emotion. In a choking voice, that was scarcely audible and would not have been heard had not every nerve in our bodies been strained to catch the momentous words we expected, he said: "A battle is raging at Antietam! Ten thousand men have been killed, and the rebels are now probably marching on Washington!"

There was a hush, and we told no more stories that night. It is remarkable that almost all the great battles hung long in the scales of victory. Neither side knew whether it had won until some time after the fighting had ceased. It was so at Antietam, and had been so in the case of Bull Run or Manassas. The true tidings came in slowly.

I took no part in the war on the battlefield, because as soon as I looked into the causes of the war and its continuance, I saw that it was a contract war. I came back to this country fully expecting to serve. I had been assured of a high commission; but could not conscientiously take part in a struggle in which thousands of lives were being sacrificed to greed. Such was my honest belief, and such was my course.

CHAPTER XXIII

My friends in Boston took the stock, but I failed to get the cash to go ahead with the road in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York. At this point, when matters looked a little dark, an idea occurred to me that cleared the sky. It made the construction of the great line a certainty. In Paris, a few years before, I had been much interested in new methods of finance as devised by the brothers Émile and Isaac Perrère. These shrewd and ingenious men, finding that old methods could not be used to meet many demands of modern times, invented entirely new ones which they organized into two systems known as the Crédit Mobilier and the Crédit Foncier—or systems of credit based on personal property and land. The French Government had supported these systems of the Perrères, and Baron Haussmann had resorted to them in his great undertaking in rebuilding and remodeling the French capital, making it the most beautiful city of the world. I determined upon introducing this new style of finance into this country.

I found that a bill had been passed in Pennsylvania in '59, for Duff Green, granting authority for the organization of the "Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency," which, on examination, I saw could be used for my purpose. I bought this charter for $25,000. The bill had been "engineered" through the Pennsylvania legislature by a man named Hall, and others of the Philadelphia Custom-House. In order to make it suitable for our uses, I wanted its title changed, and asked to have the legislature change the title to "Crédit Mobilier of America." The matter went through without trouble, and I paid $500 for having this done. When I happened to mention to William H. Harding, of the Philadelphia Inquirer, that it had cost me $500 to have the title of the charter altered, he told me he could have had it done for $50. I did not know as much of the ways of legislation in Pennsylvania then as I did later. The sum I paid for the charter was made up from $5,000 cash and $20,000 of the bonds of the Crédit Mobilier. I was to have $50,000 for organizing the company. I think it worth while to call attention here to the fact that this was the first so-called "Trust" organized in this country.

Having failed to raise the money elsewhere, I went to Boston, and there succeeded in launching the enterprise. My own subscription of $150,000 was the pint of water that started the great wheel of the machinery. I give here—for it is a matter of historic interest, since the building of this road marked the opening of a new era in the United States—the list of the subscribers who were my copartners in the undertaking:

Home of George Francis Train from 1863 to 1869,
No. 156 Madison Avenue, New York.

I had offered an interest in the road to old and well-established merchants of New York and other cities—the Grays, the Goodhues, the Aspinwalls, the Howlands, the Grinnells, the Marshalls, and Davis, Brooks & Company; and even to some of the new men, like Henry Clews—agreeing to put them in "on the ground floor," if I may use an expression from the lesser world of finance. But they were afraid. It was too big. Only two of them, William H. Macy and William H. Guion, would take any stock.

There was a meeting of the stockholders in Gibson's office in Wall Street, for the purpose of electing a board of directors. By this time the importance of the road had become recognized, and there was an active desire on the part of the chiefs of the trunk lines leading to the West to obtain control of the charter. They had their representatives there, and I saw from the first that an attempt would be made to capture the Union Pacific Railway as a trophy of one of these powerful Eastern lines. Fortunately, as I perfectly well knew, they were not quite powerful enough, in the circumstance, even with a united front, to accomplish their purposes.

William B. Ogden was in the chair, and a hasty calculation convinced me that probably $200,000,000 were represented by the men gathered in the little office. Of the great trunk lines represented I can recall now the Baltimore and Ohio, the Pennsylvania, and the New York Central. It was from the forces of the last that the lightning came.

As soon as the meeting had been called to order, and the purpose of it stated by the chair, a gentleman arose and began speaking in a wheezy, squeaky voice. But he had a way of saying what he wanted, and of saying it shrewdly, adroitly, and very effectively. I could see that he was accustomed to win in the Shakespearian way—"by indirections find directions out." He said that as everything was ready for the election of a board, he would suggest that the chair should appoint a committee of five which should then name a board of thirty members. I saw that this was an adroit move to put one of these big roads in control of the committee and, of course, in control of the Union Pacific. The chair immediately named five men, three of whom were representatives of the New York Central.

I turned to a gentleman sitting next me and asked who was the wheezy-voiced man who had just taken his seat. "That is Samuel J. Tilden," said he.

Matters now went as I had foreseen. Of course, the three New York Central men on the committee named a New York Central board of directors. They thought they had quietly and effectively bagged the game. But I held in my pocket the power that could overturn all their schemes. In fact I had offered the presidency of the road to Moses Taylor, founder of the City National Bank, now controlled by Mr. Stillman, and to A. A. Low, father of the present Mayor of New York. But both had laughed at me, thinking it absurd that I should presume to have so much power. I then made up my own list of officers, and named John A. Dix as president, and John J. Cisco as treasurer. Afterward I made a short speech, in which I said that I held the control of the road in my hands.

The vote was called for by the chair, and out of the $2,000,000 of stock represented, the New York Central influence cast $300,000 and I the vote of $1,700,000. This completely surprised those present, and they left the office as rats fly from a sinking ship. I was indignant, and shouted: "You stand on the corners of Wall Street again and call me a 'damned Copperhead'; but don't forget that I kicked $200,000,000 worth of you into the street!" And that is the reason why they called me "crazy"!

I went out West in the autumn of '63 to break ground for the first mile of railway track west of the Missouri river. None of the directors was with me; I was entirely alone. I made a speech at Omaha in which I predicted that the road would be completed by '70, and in which I forecast the great development of Omaha and the Northwest. This speech was printed all over the world, and I was denounced as a madman and a visionary. I had, every one said, prophesied the impossible. And yet every word of that speech was true, both as to its facts and as to its prophecies. I give here a few extracts from it, as it was published in the Omaha Republican, December 3, '63, and as it has been republished in that paper and others many times since:

America is the stage, the world is the audience of to-day. While one act of the drama represents the booming of the cannon on the Rapidan, the Cumberland, and the Rio Grande, sounding the death-knell of rebellious war, the next scene records the booming of cannon on both sides of the Missouri to celebrate the grandest work of peace that ever attracted the energies of man. The great Pacific Railway is commenced, and if you knew the man who has hold of the affair as well as I do, no doubt would ever arise as to its speedy completion. The President shows his good judgment in locating the road where the Almighty placed the signal station, at the entrance of a garden seven hundred miles in length and twenty broad.

---

Before the first century of the nation's birth, we may see in the New York depot some strange Pacific railway notice.

"European passengers for Japan will please take the night train.

"Passengers for China this way.

"African and Asiatic freight must be distinctly marked: For Peking via San Francisco."

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Immigration will soon pour into these valleys. Ten millions of emigrants will settle in this golden land in twenty years.

I had predicted that the railway would be completed in '70. On May 10, '69, the "golden spike" was driven at Ogden, Utah. Among the papers throughout the world that had ridiculed me as being mad or visionary because of my speech at Omaha in '63, was the Hongkong Press, which said that it was generally thought in China during my visit there in '55-'56 that I was a little "off," and that this speech, which predicted a railway across the Rocky Mountains, clearly proved that I was both visionary and mad. On my journey around the world in '70, after the completion of the Union Pacific Railway, I stepped into the office of the Hongkong paper and asked for the editor. When he came out, I asked him to show me the file of his paper containing my Omaha speech. He brought it out, and we turned to the column. "Do you know Train?" he asked me. "Why, I am Train," I said, "and it seems that you did not know me in Hongkong in '55-'56. I have just come through the Rocky Mountains over that road."

The tremendous importance of the Union Pacific Railway is now too well known to need any further comment here from me. It is enough to say that it was through my suggestion and through my plans and energy that this mighty highway across the continent, breaking up the old trade routes of the world, and turning the tide of commerce from its ancient eastern tracks across the wide expanse of the American continent, was created.

Note.—Albert D. Richardson in his once famous book Beyond the Mississippi, writing of the development of Omaha and the Northwest, due to the building of the Union Pacific Railway, says: "Here was George Francis Train, at the head of a great company called the Crédit Foncier, organized for dealing in lands and stocks for building cities along the railway from the Missouri to Salt Lake. This corporation had been clothed by the Nebraska legislature with nearly every power imaginable, save that of reconstructing the late rebel States. It was erecting neat cottages in Omaha and at other points west.

"Mr. Train owned personally about five hundred acres in Omaha, which cost him only one hundred and seventy-five dollars per acre—a most promising investment. He is a noticeable, original American, who has crowded wonderful and varied experiences into his short life. An orphan boy, employed to sweep the counting-room, he rose to the head of a great Boston shipping house; then established a branch in Liverpool; next organized and conducted a heavy commission business in Australia, and astonished his neighbors in that era of fabulous prices, with Brussels carpets, and marble counters, and a free champagne luncheon daily in his business office. Afterward he made the circuit of the world, wrote books of travel, fought British prejudices against street-railways, occupying his leisure time by fiery and audacious American war speeches to our island cousins, until he spent a fortune, and enjoyed the delights of a month in a British prison.

"Thence he returned to America; lectured everywhere; and now he is trying to build a belt of cities across the continent. At least a magnificent project. Curiously combining keen sagacity with wild enthusiasm, a man who might have built the pyramids, or been confined in a strait-jacket for eccentricities, according to the age he lived in, he observes dryly that since he began to make money, people no longer pronounce him crazy! He drinks no spirits, uses no tobacco, talks on the stump like an embodied Niagara, composes songs to order by the hour as fast as he can sing them, like an Italian improvisatore, remembers every droll story from Joe Miller to Artemus Ward, is a born actor, is intensely in earnest, and has the most absolute and outspoken faith in himself and his future."

[At the time Richardson saw me at Omaha, in '64, another noted journalist, William Hepworth Dixon, editor of the London Athenæum, called on me, traveling with Sir Charles Dilke, who was writing Greater Britain. I introduced him to Richardson.—G. F. T.]

CHAPTER XXIV

But this enterprise was merely a beginning. I looked upon it only as the launching of a hundred other projects, which, if I had been able to carry them to completion, would have transformed the West in a few years, and anticipated its present state of wealth and power by more than a full generation. One of my plans was the creation of a chain of great towns across the continent, connecting Boston with San Francisco by a magnificent highway of cities. That this was not an idle dream is shown by the rapid growth of Chicago, which owes its greatness to its situation upon this natural highway of trade; and to the development of Omaha, which owes its prosperity directly to the Union Pacific Railway and to the other enterprises that I organized in the West. Most of these plans were defeated by a financial panic, by the lack of cooperation on the part of the very people who were most interested in their success, and by events which I shall describe in the following chapters of this book. Some of them succeeded, however, and I was able to accomplish a great deal of work that has gone into the winning and making of the West.

When I went out to Omaha to break ground for the Union Pacific Railway, on December 3, '63, there was only one hotel in that town. This was the Herndon House, a respectable affair, now U. P. headquarters. I was astonished that men of energy, enterprise, and means had not seized the opportunity to erect a large hotel at this point, which had already given every promise of rapid and immediate growth. But what directly suggested to me the building of such a hotel on my own account was a little incident that occurred at a breakfast that I happened to be giving in the Herndon House.

I had invited a number of prominent men—Representatives in Congress, and others—to take breakfast with me in this house, as I desired to present to them some of my plans. The breakfast was a characteristic Western meal, with prairie chickens and Nebraska trout. While we were seated, one of those sudden and always unexpected cyclones on the plains came up, and the hotel shook like a leaf in the terrible storm. Our table was very near a window in which were large panes of glass, which I feared could not withstand the tremendous force of the wind. They were quivering under the stress of weather, and I called to a strapping negro waiter at our table to stand with his broad back against the window. This proved a security against the storm without; but it precipitated a storm within.

Allen, the manager of the Herndon, and a man with a political turn of mind, saw in the incident an assault on the rights of the negroes. He hurried over to the table and protested against this act as an outrage. I could not afford to enter into a quarrel with him at the time, so I merely said: "I am about the size of the negro; I will take his place." I then ordered the fellow away from the window, took his post, and stayed there until the fury of the storm abated. Then I was ready for Allen.

I walked out in front of the house and, pointing to a large vacant square facing it, asked who owned it. I was told the owner's name and immediately sent a messenger for him post-haste. He arrived in a short time, and I asked his price. It was $5,000. I wrote out and handed him a check for the amount, and took from him, on the spot, a deed for the property.

Then I asked for a contractor who could build a hotel. A man named Richmond was brought to me. "Can you build a three-story hotel in sixty days on this plot?" asked I. After some hesitation he said it would be merely a question of money. "How much?" I asked. "One thousand dollars a day." "Show me that you are responsible for $60,000." He did so, and I took out an envelope and sketched on the back of it a rough plan of the hotel. "I am going to the mountains," I said, "and I shall want this hotel, with 120 rooms, complete, when I return in sixty days."

When I got back, the hotel was finished. I immediately rented it to Cozzens, of West Point, New York, for $10,000 a year. This is the famous Cozzens's Hotel of Omaha, which has been more written about, I suppose, than almost any other hostelry ever built in the United States. It is the show-place of Omaha to this day.

The completion of the Union Pacific Railway in '69 was the occasion of my visit to California and Oregon. In San Francisco I gave a banquet to men prominent in finance and politics, and took occasion to refer to the efforts that had been made there, as it seemed to me, to aid the seceding States. I was making a response to the toast of "The Union," and had said that if I had been the Federal general in command in California at the time, I should have hanged certain men, some of whom were present. This was pretty hot shot, and I did not wonder at the resentment of the men to whom I referred. I was astonished, however, by the terrific scoring I received from the city press the following morning. I read the reports of, and the comments on, my speech as I was making preparations to have my special car taken back East that afternoon. I was very indignant, but did not know exactly what to do.

Just at this moment a man approached me and said that he would like to have me deliver a lecture that evening in the theater. He was the manager, Mr. Poole. I saw my opportunity, and accepted, refusing, however, his proffer of $500 in gold, and agreeing to take one-half the gross receipts for a series of lectures. I delivered twenty-eight lectures to crowded houses, and took in, for my share, $10,000 in gold. I did not spare my critics, but flayed them alive.

My lectures made me the most conspicuous man on the Pacific coast, and I received despatches of congratulations, or invitations to deliver lectures and speeches, almost every hour of the day. I accepted a five-hundred-dollar check to go to Portland, Oregon, to make the Fourth-of-July oration, and the Gussie Tellefair was sent to meet me and take me up the Columbia in state. The oration was delivered to a big audience of Oregonians, trappers and mountaineers, some of them wearing the quaintest garb I had ever seen.

I mention this visit to Portland because it afforded me opportunity for doing several things of importance. I visited the famous Dalles of the Columbia river, and while there saw the Indians spearing salmon. I asked what they were doing, and was told that they were laying in their supply for the winter. I went to the place where the braves were spearing the fish and asked one of them to let me try my hand at the fish-spear. Having accustomed myself a little to throwing the harpoon, I found that I could manage the Indian's weapon quite skilfully, and succeeded in landing 200 salmon in two hours. Of course the fish were running in swarms, but this two hours' work would have brought me $1,000 if I could have taken the catch to New York.

I was the first white man, I believe, that had taken salmon out of the Columbia, and it then occurred to me, if the Indians could lay up a supply of fish for the winter, why could not white men do the same thing? I thereupon suggested the canning of salmon, which has since been developed into so large an industry and has made the Quinnat salmon the king-fish of the world, putting Columbia salmon into almost every household of civilization.

Another fact may be recorded here. My Fourth-of-July oration had been such a success that I was asked to make another speech at Seattle, on Puget Sound, which was then a struggling village. I was accompanying a delegation or committee from the East that was looking for a good place for the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railway, which had been projected after the great success of the Union Pacific. When we passed the point where Tacoma now stands, I was attracted by its appearance and said: "There is your terminus." The committee selected the spot, and Tacoma was founded there.

An amusing incident closed this part of my journey. I went from Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia, and was astonished to find the town in the wildest commotion. Troops were at the docks, and the moment I landed I observed that the greatest interest was taken in me. At last, as they saw me walking about alone, one of the officials came up and said: "Why, are you alone?" "Of course," I replied. "Did you expect me to bring an army with me?" I said this in jest, not knowing how closely it touched his question. He then took me aside and said, "Read this despatch." I opened the despatch and read: "Train is on the Hunt."

I saw what it meant, and how the good people had been deceived. The Hunt was the vessel I came on, and the telegraph operator at Seattle, knowing that I had been with the Fenians and had been stirring up a good deal of trouble in California, thought he would have some fun with the Canadians. The people of Victoria were on the lookout for me to arrive with a gang of Fenians!

I did not smile, but determined to carry the joke a little further. Walking into the telegraph office, I filed the following cablegram for Dublin, Ireland. "Down England, up Ireland." The jest cost me $40 in tolls, but I enjoyed it that much.

CHAPTER XXV

When the shouting ceased, I told the people that I was in Marseilles on a trip around the world, but as they had called upon me to take part in their movement, I should be glad to repay, in my own behalf, a small portion of the enormous debt of gratitude that my country owed to France for Lafayette, Rochambeau, and de Grasse. I repeated a part of the "Marseillaise," which always stirs Frenchmen to the depths, and a few verses from Holmes's poem on France—