STEAM - 301 Pease and Company. This building, with others of its group, eventually extended from the eastern abutment of the present Superior high level bridge, northward to Canal Street. All were burned in 1854. Speaking of the decade immediately preceding the 1837 panic, Whittlesey says : "During this period we had many noted business men as forwarders and commission merchants of energy, education and thrift, all eager to fill and help on the tide of prosperity. Steamers, sail vessels and canal boats were built and pressed into service, and lines formed for transportation eastward and westward, to the north and the south. In fact the pressure and nature of employment was much like that of our railroad system." R. T. Lyon writes of the situation around 1847: "At this time there were engaged in business on the river as produce and shipping merchants, grocers and ship chandlers and supply stores, some twenty firms, among which I can mention the names of Gillespie, Joyce and Company, George C. Davis, Griffith, Pease and Company, Robert H. Backus, Bronson and Hewitt, George A. Foster, Hutchinson, Goodman and Company, John E. Lyon, W. G. Oatman, A. Penfield, Ransom, Baldwin and Company, J. L. Weatherby, R. Winslow and Company, Barstow and Company, Ross and Lemon, Smyth and Clary, Beebe, Allen and Company and A. S. Cramer and Company." About that time John G. Stockly built "Stockly's Pier," a famous and substantial dock eastward from the river mouth, extending out into the lake 924 feet from the foot of Bank Street, now West Sixth. Large steamers at last were able to land there, moored safely in all but the worst weather, to discharge and take on passengers and cargo. Cleveland at last had begun to use its waterfront advantageously for commerce and began to look like a modern lake port. The example was infectious. Railroads with growing pains were quick to take the suggestion. In 1853 six parallel piers jutted into the lake in that section, making an impressive sight and greatly facilitating trade through interchange of land and water traffic, but storing up trouble for the future. A long conflict between public utilities and public 302 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS rights was beginning. The railroads apparently assumed that the waterfront from the shore outward was no man's land, or every man's water, and acted accordingly, building their piers and laying tracks on them and regarding such terminals as entirely their own. When it came to establishing definite shore lines, building a harbor of refuge and enlarging it, the government found the corporate squatters hard to evict. The city had a still harder and longer struggle to confirm its own rights later on. While freight and passenger traffic in general thus utilized the lake front long before adequate shelter was provided, the sheltered inner harbor continued developing wonderfully, growing into a vast system of docks, warehouses, shipyards, factories and furnaces, as essential to the city's life and growth as the processes of digestion are to the human body. Which is a story by itself, with many episodes. We find many interesting features in the shipping industry and traffic of this epoch. Some slight details have been given to show what the lake steamers were like. They all had side-wheels, they were all of shallow draft, they all carried sails to fall back on if steam failed, or to supplement steam with a fair wind. Without such insurance, passengers and shippers might have lacked confidence in them. There are still yachtsmen on the lakes who feel the same way about power cruisers in an age when the gasoline engine seems near perfection. For some years steamers were virtually standardized in size at about 200 tons. Before 1829, says Francis A. Dewey, all steamers had steering wheels on their sterns, none had cabins on deck, and their usual fuel load was 20 to 30 cords of wood. "In the early 'thirties," Frank R. Rosseel has written in the Marine Review, "appeared steamers with two stacks placed abreast and two walking beams working separate paddles, a most unhandy arrangement for the engine room in heavy weather but mighty convenient in working about a harbor in close quarters." There were "cabins on the main decks, awnings spread over the upper deck aft, bluff bows with great cutwaters reaching up and down in a broad double curve and profusely ornamented with gilded scroll work. STEAM - 303 "Every steamer for at least the first ten years of steam navigation on the Lakes carried canvas of sufficient area to make it possible to navigate her under sail power alone. Full-rigged masts, round bluff bows, long overhanging curved stems, heavy bowsprits and square sterns, upon which the steering wheel was placed, all showed evolution from the sailing vessel." Oddly enough, the first steamboat named for Cleveland was built in Huron, in 1837. It carried passengers only, and seems to have been worthy of the metropolis whose name it bore. It was a capacious craft, 139 feet in length, 29 feet beam, registered as of 675 tons. It was well provided with sleeping accommodations, having a "gentleman's cabin" with 120 berths and a "ladies' cabin" with 12 berths, besides 10 staterooms each with three berths. Like nearly all the vessels of the period, it had low-pressure engines. It was distinguished by the first steam whistle on the Lakes, far more effective for signalling than the bells and guns commonly used. Its cost was $85,000. Seven years later, as related in Samuel P. Orth's History of Cleveland, side-wheel steamers took another jump in size, beginning with the launching of the Empire by a local firm. She was described by a contemporary as "the finest ship on the Lakes and the pride of our citizens." "She was too large for the Welland Canal, and intended only for Lakes Erie, Huron and Michigan. The Empire was of 1,136 tons burden, the first steamboat in the United States over 1,000 tons and 200 tons larger than any other steamship in the world. Her keel was 254 feet, her deck 265 feet long. The dining cabin on the upper deck was 230 feet long, with the staterooms arranged on either side and the ladies' cabin at one end. The engines were 500 horsepower and her huge side-wheels were 30 feet in diameter. The Empire was also the first boat on the lake to have fire engines on board. In 1846 new engines were installed, 1,400 horsepower, with the highest pressure cylinder then in use. Her model was new and chaste. Instead of a bluff bow and square stern of the earlier type, the bow and stern were 304 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS gracefully pointed. She was the fastest boat on the lake, sailing from Detroit to Buffalo in 20 hours and 25 minutes, and from Cleveland to Buffalo in 12 hours and 40 minutes. She was built by G. W. Jones and D. N. Barney and Company of Cleveland and was commanded by Captain 0. Howe. Subsequently she was transformed into a propeller." So the side-wheelers of the Great Lakes continued growing, still leading the world's ships in size. In another decade came the Plymouth Rock of Buffalo registering 1,991 tons, and three years later her sister ship, the City of Buffalo, passed 2,000 tons, to be matched in turn by the Western World in 1859. From then on, the side-wheelers waned. Railroads took their passengers and propellers displaced their huge paddle wheels, making more room for freight. To quote Orth again, "These side-wheel passenger steamers were graceful boats, with great speed, handsome cabins, provided splendid meals, often had a band of music aboard, and were usually crowded with passengers, 400 or 500 not being an uncommon number." They need not be lamented, however. Because they were well-fitted in many ways for lake traffic, they never entirely passed out. There are passenger steamers available today on the Cleveland waterfront of the same type, and naturally better built, with more reliable engines and more comfortable accommodations. A trip on such a boat nearly a century ago seems to have been a good deal like an excursion trip "up the lakes" today, though doubtless pleasanter in some ways, because of the greater clearness of air and water and the greater extent of unspoiled scenery. Here are some glimpses recorded by Thurlow Weed, the Albany editor, of his trip by water to Chicago in 1847 to attend a big river and harbor improvement convention : "I am afloat for the first time on Lake Erie in the magnificent steamer The Empire. In ascending to her beautiful saloon we found 300 ladies and gentlemen grouped around upon sofas, divans, etc., as luxuriously as on board of our own splendid Isaac Newton and Hendrik Hudson. "July 1. We had a delightful night, and at sunrise were STEAM - 307 a few miles above Conneaut, Ohio, gliding rapidly along some six miles from shore. At 8 o'clock nearly 300 passengers were seated in the Empire's spacious saloon to an ample and well served breakfast. During the forenoon the eye at a single glance took in a commercial fleet consisting of 15 sails, all from Cleveland and the neighboring ports, and all heading for the Welland Canal. We reached Cleveland by 1 o'clock, where we lay an hour, which hour we improved first by riding through its busy, bustling streets, and then along one or two of its broad avenues, adorned with tasteful mansions, surrounded by a profusion of fruit trees, shrubbery and flowers. Cleveland at the mouth of the Ohio Canal is fortunate in possessing a safe and snug harbor. The fact that since the opening of navigation 1,300,000 barrels of flour and 1,200,000 bushels of wheat have been shipped at Cleveland speaks for itself. "July 2. At 8:30 o'clock this morning we came alongside a dock upon the Canadian shore, to wood. A hundred and six cords of wood (hickory, maple, beech and oak) were seized by the deck hands, steerage passengers, etc., and transferred from the dock to the boat, and at 12 o'clock we were under way. I learn that the Empire in a single trip consumes over 600 cords of wood. This requires for the trip the clearing up of over 10 acres of well wooded land. The wood which was taken on board cost one dollar per cord. (Here we may see one reason for the disappearance of our forests) . "July 3. We had another calm, beautiful night, and Lake Huron this morning is scarcely moved by a ripple. The evening was again passed in conversation and dancing. I have heard much about gambling on the lakes. But if this habit continues, the Empire's passengers form an exception to the rule. The time so far has been most rationally appropriated. Many volumes of 'cheap literature' have been devoured. Lakes, harbors and river improvements have been freely discussed. But cards seem to have gone out of fashion. "We reached Mackinaw at 12 M. Having added some 50 cords to our supply of wood, and replenished our larders 308 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS with an abundance of salmon, trout and whitefish, we are again under way." Speaking of the return trip on the St. Louis, Mr. Weed observes that "the boat goes where the passengers direct, and remains as long as they choose, for two dollars a day, including board." The effect of steam transportation on passenger rates is illuminating. The immediate effect was to raise rates in many cases. Sailboats had been charging $13 fare from Buffalo to Detroit, a thirteen-day trip. Walk-in-the-Water charged $18, and got it, because she saved about three-fourths of the time. Rates fell rapidly. The fare from Buffalo to Cleveland was $10 in 1820. By 1836 it was $5 for cabin passage, with $2.50 for steerage. By 1847 it was $3 for cabin and $1.50 for steerage. Sail rates fell along with steam rates. It was about the same with freight. In 1804 it cost three dollars to bring a barrel of merchandise from Buffalo to Cleveland. In 1819 it cost one dollar. In 1841 it cost 50 cents. The rate for heavy freight between these two points fell from 44 cents per 100 pounds in 1837 to 27 cents in 1841. The main steamer lines in those early years ran mostly between Buffalo, Detroit and Chicago, but most of them stopped at Cleveland, and this was the home port of a considerable fleet. In 1833 more than 50,000 passengers, nearly all settlers, were carried from Buffalo to Chicago, scattering from there through the West. Detroit from its beginning had profited by its wonderful location, as the meeting place of two great travel routes, one by water and one by land. Given people to travel, her prosperity was as inevitable as that of ancient Troy, where archeologists find the remains of five cities, one above another, the lowest going back to the dawn of history. Cleveland, not quite so well endowed by nature, still had similar advantages, and made such excellent use of them that she soon forged ahead of her rival and kept her lead for nearly a century. She held her own in shipping largely from her pre-eminence in shipbuilding and a STEAM - 309 nautical spirit that her early settlers had brought from Connecticut. In one week of 1833, 52 vessels arrived in the port, of which nearly half had come through the Welland Canal and 11 were from Canadian ports across the lake. The year 1837 shows a surprising balance between sailing vessels and steamboats; there were 911 arrivals of the former and 990 of the latter in Cleveland. This of course means far more sailing vessels than steamers in operation, because the latter, by virtue of their greater speed, made port oftener. Navigation was still in a primitive state, according to present standards. This observation applies especially to the construction and operation of steamships. The sailing craft, having an older tradition and longer evolution, offered less cause for criticism. The steamboats, especially of the side-wheel era, suffered especially from two evils, gales and fires. In many ways a sailing vessel in the hands of a competent crew is safer in a storm than a steamer. The Lakes have always bred a race of sturdy and skilful sailors. It used to be said, when there were still sailing fleets on these waters, that the best sailors on the seaboard came from fresh water. They had to be good on the Lakes, in order to survive. The steamboats doubtless had, for a time, more than their share of poorly trained sailors and incompetent masters and engineers. It looked too easy to run a steamboat, just as it does nowadays to run a powerful motorboat, and therefore it was perilous. Many were wrecked needlessly by taking undue chances with changeable weather and being hit by the sudden squalls to which Lake Erie is so liable—though to do her justice, there are sailor-yachtsmen who maintain that there is no such thing as a "sudden squall," because to the weather-wise navigator every squall gives several hours' notice. Far more succumbed to the special peril of wooden steamers—fire. Between 1840 and 1850 there are said to have been more than 1,000 lives lost from this cause. Wooden hulls were often flimsy; boilers were light in construction, lacking safeguards and easily overheated ; cordwood piled around made 310 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS a continual peril of sparks and itself fed the flames when they once appeared. As usual, it required a great tragedy to bring reform. After many disasters, growing in seriousness, came the .destruction of the Griffith in 1850 near Fairport. She was only two miles from shore when the fire broke out. In an effort to beach her, she was run onto a sand-bar half a mile out, and of the 301 passengers and crew of 25 there were 286 burned to death or drowned. Cleveland determined to do something to prevent such holocausts. Citizens called a public meeting in Empire Hall and demanded better regulations and inspection. As a result, legislation was obtained from Congress, shipping sentiment was aroused, voluntary reforms were adopted, and little by little the evil diminished. About the same time action was taken to improve the quality of seamen, checking rowdyism and getting rid of the irresponsible or criminal riff-raff that had drifted in from salt water. Requirements for masters and mates were raised. Discipline was insisted on. Better lights and channel marks were demanded and obtained. Signals were devised to stop needless collisions. The convention in Chicago, already referred to, had started a big movement for river and harbor improvement, the deepening of shallow channels and removal of rocks and bars. Soon a genuine movement was under way to make the Great Lakes safe for traffic. The "wooden propeller," signifying a wooden ship with iron propeller, conqueror of the "side-wheeler," appeared in 1841 in the Vandalia, a 138-ton steamer launched at Oswego, N. Y. And thereby hangs a tale. It concerns John Ericsson, a worthy rival of Robert Fulton in marine engineering and one of the greatest of adopted Americans. It has an intimate relation to the development of Great Lakes transportation. Ericsson was born in Sweden when Fulton was demonstrating the first steamboat to Napoleon in France. Some mystical influence might be traced from that. Like Fulton, he became interested in canals. Again like Fulton, after a period of service in the army he went to England, native home of the steam engine, to pursue his mechanical interests. STEAM - 313 With a partner he built, for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway competition, a locomotive engine which competed with Stephenson's "Rocket," the first really successful steam engine on wheels. He was a man of prolific ideas and many inventions. Not satisfied with the adaptation of millwheels to move vessels in water, he sought something more scientific and effective, and in 1836 obtained an English patent for a screw propeller. Instead of pushing itself forward with, paddles, a vessel was to screw itself forward. The "propeller of Archimedes," said to have been invented by the famous Greek scientist in the third century, B. C., was "a continuous spiral vane on a hollow core running lengthwise of the vessel," roughly resembling an auger in form. Apparently it was never anything more .than a toy, illustrating a mechanical principle. Ericsson's propeller might be regarded as a thin cross-section of such a water-screw. Applying an old and well-known principle, he made it practical by using less metal, thus causing less friction than Archimedes' model and saving space by placing his screw outside the vessel. His first opportunity for a practical test came from a captain in the United States Navy, in the form of an order for a small iron vessel—itself a novelty—to be built by Laird of Birkenhead and fitted by Ericsson with engines and screw. This original craft successfully crossed the Atlantic to New York in 1839, and Ericsson, scenting greater opportunity in America, soon followed it, working as an engineer and builder of iron ships. He is best known in American history for his construction of the freakish Monitor, first successful ironclad warship, whose defeat of the Confederate Merrimac is sometimes said to have decided the Civil war. That achievement fulfilled an old idea of Ericsson's, which had been turned down by Emperor Louis Napoleon in 1854, as the first Napoleon had turned down Fulton's submarine torpedo boat half a century earlier. The inventor spent his later years in the study of torpedoes and sun motors, the first of which have now arrived at a high degree of perfection, and the latter of 314 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS which will interest our thermo-dynamic engineers increasingly as petroleum and coal disappear. So much by way of introduction. The tale that links this great engineer with our inland waters is as follows. Arrived in America, Ericsson had great difficulty in persuading vessel builders and owners to try his beloved screw propeller. A lake captain from Oswego, N. Y., named James Van Cleve, visiting New York City in 1840, met a friend named Josiah T. Marshall, formerly of Oswego. Marshall told him of a friend of his named Sanderson in Brockville, Ontario, on the upper St. Lawrence where some of the earliest steamboats had operated, who had heard of Ericsson's propeller and asked him to examine it and report what he thought of it. So Van Cleve and Marshall together went to the works of Hugg and Delemater, where a sample propeller was hanging from a shaft for inspection, with the inventor present to explain it. It was a curious object, and a fascinating one to the captain. "I looked at it carefully," he wrote many years later, "and told Mr. Marshall that in my opinion its application would revolutionize steam marine on the Lakes, as well as the canals." The visitors told Ericsson of the big and growing traffic on the Lakes. The latter listened with growing interest and excitement. The coast vessel men had paid no attention to him. He was willing to make almost any concession to get such an opening. Pacing rapidly up and down the room, he made this proposition : "Van Cleve, if you will put a vessel in operation with my propeller, and do it within the year, I will assign to you the half interest in my patent for all the North American lakes." The offer was accepted. Van Cleve got Sylvester Doolittle to build a vessel at Oswego, fitted with the new screw and modified in such ways as the innovation seemed to demand. This was the Vandalia, sloop-rigged, 138 tons, fitted for carrying freight, with deck cabins for passengers. In such a casual way the Lakes stole a march on the seacoast. The Vandalia was longer and narrower than the side-wheelers, with flat bottom and bluff sides. The STEAM - 315 engine was stowed aft instead of amidships. Obviously there was more room for cargo in such a hull than in the usual craft of her rating. Passing up through the Welland Canal into Lake Erie in 1842, this novel ship aroused great interest and admiration. She quickly proved her value in canals, harbors and open water. She handled well, made good speed and was dependable in storm. In a decade there were several dozen of her type plying the lakes, all built of oak plank and carrying sail, many of them fitted with big centerboards to reduce leeway under wind power. The next year after the advent of the Vandalia Cleveland had her first "wooden propeller" as the type was called. This was the Emigrant, wrecked two years later at Avon Point, where the big power plant of the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. now stands. Two other propellers built here in the next three years likewise met with disaster, though evidently from no fault of Ericsson's. The Phoenix, owned by Pease and Allen, took fire upward-bound near Cheboygan, Mich., with 250 passengers aboard, mostly. Dutch immigrants, nearly all of whom perished. The Oregon, owned by G. W. Jones, after nine years' service was destroyed by a boiler explosion, with the loss of ten lives. In the same year that Cleveland started building these wooden steamers, the United States government built the first "iron propeller" on the Lakes, the Michigan, of 538 tons, all iron except her upper deck. This seems to have been a revenue cutter, one of the two diminutive warships to which both the United States and Canada are entitled by treaty. It seems strange, in view of later developments, that the government did not carry this type of construction further until after the victory of the Monitor, and that private enterprise was still slower to trust in iron bottoms. The age of steel had not yet arrived. The operation of lake craft, like their construction, was becoming too big and complex for individuals. The traffic needed organization. Boats came to operate as fleets, either by loose association or under corporate ownership and control. 316 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS There was a traffic association formed in 1833, which soon included 18 boats, but was abandoned after three years, only to be followed by another along similar lines in 1839. This latter organization, with headquarters in Buffalo, dictated rates and fares between the Big Four cities of the Lakes—Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago—for half a hundred boats. Like its predecessor, it went to pieces in a few years, largely because of opposition. But under a sort of trade compulsion another body took its place, using still more dictatorial methods. The Lakes had been "over-built." It was felt necessary to apportion and regulate the traffic for the good of the whole group. The vessel owners in this combination resolved themselves into a sort of transportation soviet. Without incorporation and purchase, the association appraised the value of all the boats belonging to its members, gave owners "scrip" as evidence of their value, sent all the boats where and when it pleased, pooled the earnings and paid them out as dividends in proportion to the amount of "scrip" held. There was no Sherman law then, no Interstate Commerce Commission, no Federal Trade Association. There were still, however, plenty of independents operating, unwilling to submit to such a policy or doubtful of its ethics. Some of the newspapers were very critical. The Cleveland Herald saw no more reason why vessel owners should run their business in this high-handed way than drygoods merchants should do likewise with their goods. Then came legally chartered corporations, owning and operating fleets under at least nominal state supervision, like similar bodies in any other line of business. One of the first important ones was the Northern Transportation Company, formed in 1851, operating propellers all the way from Ogdensburg to Chicago. The Cleveland-owned Lake Superior Line, running to the Sault and organized in 1853, not only illustrated this business tendency but indicated the local interest already developing in a new route destined to become of immense importance. The Western Transportation Company, incorporated in 1855 and known later as the Western Transit Company, united two branches of transportation STEAM - 317 hitherto kept separate. Along with a considerable fleet of vessels covering the Lakes, it had 200 canalboats on the Erie Canal, and thus with a rather simple transfer of freight at Buffalo had a through water route from Chicago to New York. Another notable development of this epoch was the entrance of the railroads into the lake carrying business. The merging of locomotives and steamboats seems to have been started by the Michigan Central Railway with its Mayflower, a 1,300 ton propeller plying between Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo, in 1849, with accommodations for 800 passengers along with her freight. Soon the Michigan Central was operating the best boats on Lake Erie. Its profitable passenger traffic was cut off in 1858 by the Great Western Railway when the latter provided rail transport between Buffalo and Detroit on the Canadian side. Passengers generally preferred trains to ships, when the former were available. The New York and Erie Railroad got into the game, in 1851, with a fleet of side-wheelers plying between Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland and Dunkirk, N. Y. After the war this line, with several others, was absorbed by the Erie Railway. In 1865 came the Anchor Line, incorporated as the Erie and Western Transportation Company, owned by the Pennsylvania Railway. Other important railroads followed the same policy. This inter-relation of navigation and railroading has been one of the great factors in the economic development of the Great Lakes region. It has linked the water routes with a far-reaching and wide-spreading network of land routes, virtually making half the continent tributary to lake traffic and lake ports, cheapening and standardizing freight and passenger rates, facilitating transfer at ports and frequently affording a choice of routes—all under the wholesome authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission. CHAPTER II STEAM ON WHEELS The first important use of steam had been to pump water. The second was locomotion on water. The third, somewhat more difficult because it required wheels and tracks, was locomotion on land. This adaptation, however, had been in prospect from the earliest days of steam power. James Watt, the great thermo-dynamic engineer who made the stationary steam engine practical by his improvements in the latter half of the eighteenth century, included among his inventions a plan for a steam locomotive for use on ordinary highways, but never carried it to completion. His engine was probably a crude prototype of those which were operating on English highways as late as twenty-five years ago, suggesting our old threshing machine engines, each of them hauling two or three small "goods cars" after the manner of today's motor truck trains. About the year 1800 practical engines to "propel carriages on roads" were developed by Richard Trevithick in England and Oliver Evans in America. Both of these inventors used what came to be known as the "Cornish boiler," a cylindrical vessel with a cylindrical flue inside. Trevithick soon took the next obvious step, and in 1804 used his steam carriage on a railway. It should be understood that "railway" then meant what the British called a "horse tramway." The first line of that type in Cleveland had been the Cleveland and Newburgh Railroad, running out Euclid Avenue, across Doan Brook and up to the stone quarry on the Heights. Its rails were wooden and motive power was equine—two horses driven tandem—though the charter was drawn to permit the transportation of passengers and freight "by the power and force - 318 - STEAM - 319 of steam, animals or other mechanical force, or by a combination of them." Trevithick, running his steam engine on such a tramway in Wales, and gaining forced draught by turning his exhaust steam into the smoke funnel, prepared the way for George Stephenson's "Rocket" twenty-five years later. The latter engine, which must have justified its name to the slow-moving folk of 1829, beat all its competitors by using a stronger steam blast to accelerate coal combustion, and by providing a larger heating surface in the boiler through the use of many small tubes to carry the hot gases through the boiling water. He also changed the steam cylinders from a vertical to a horizontal position, providing a reversing device and improved the throttle control. The locomotive, though subject to many future refinements, had now substantially evolved into permanent form. And the "Rocket" is said to have decided once for all the question whether horses or steam should prevail on railways. That was the first great defeat of the horse since the beginning of civilization. One year later America had 23 miles of railway. The canal craze was already merging into a railway craze. A real estate enthusiast in Cleveland was talking of the day when, with the inevitable spread of allotments along the Lake Erie shore, under the double stimulus of steamship and rail service, there would be "a continuous city from Niagara to the Cuyahoga." Thus in 1836, riding the crest of the great land inflation, came the first steam transportation project in the state, the Ohio Railroad. Tragedy though it proved to be, it is funny in retrospect. This was the celebrated "railroad on stilts." Some genius had originated the brilliant idea of building a railroad without expensive grading and filling, by the simple procedure of laying the track on piles driven into the ground. In a timber country, it was figured, such a line would cost only $16,000 a mile. The road was to extend from Richmond on the Grand River, between Fairport and Painesville, to Manhattan on the Maumee, just north of Toledo. It was 320 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS organized in Painesville and a state charter was obtained by Representative Nehemiah Allen of Willoughby. That was the golden age of incorporation. Legislatures, delirious with expansion fever, were ready to grant almost anything. The Ohio Railroad Company was authorized not only to build its crazy railroad, but to engage in banking activities, including the actual issuance of money. Needless to say, it used the privilege. When the bubble burst, the company had outstanding nearly $400,000 of worthless bills. The Ohio legislature early in 1837, in a final excess of generosity just before the panic broke, enacted its ill-famed "plunder law," extending state aid to railroads and other corporations. When a company could show two-thirds of its capital stock sold, the state would become a partner by taking the other third, paying for its shares with funds obtained by bond issues. The Ohio Railroad Company naturally took advantage of this law. Suitable figures were submitted and few questions were asked. Ohio had to have a railroad. And there was probably a feeling, after the panic, that the railroad would restore prosperity. Construction started in Fremont in June, 1839, working westward. Later there were sections built between Fremont and Cleveland, reaching nearly to the Cuyahoga. First the right of way was cleared 100 feet wide. Then piles were driven in pairs, seven feet apart and 15 feet from pair to pair, the piles being from seven to 28 feet in length according to the grade, and 12 to 16 inches in diameter. Each pair of piles was joined by a cross-tie 9 feet long and 8 by 8 inches square. These ties were notched over the heads of the piles and fastened down by two-inch cedar pins. Over them, longitudinally, were fastened the rails or stringers, 8 by 8 inches and 15 feet long, surmounted by iron strapping which weighed 25 tons to the mile. For this work there was provided an ingenious machine worthy of a better cause. It was a combination pile driver and circular saw, mounted on long sills and moving forward with the progress of the track. In front were half-ton triphammers, one for each side, supported on heavy timbers 30 STEAM - 321 feet high and operated by a portable steam engine. When the piles were driven, the saw, mounted horizontally, cut them off at the track level. One such machine was worked by a crew of eight men and could build about 20 rods a day. Behind it came a locomotive sawmill operated by three men, preparing the rails. And behind the sawmill, on the completed track, moved a boarding house on wheels for the workmen. Probably never before or since has the world seen such a construction train. It was all in vain. State and nation were in the gloom of business collapse. Funds ran short. The "Plunder Law" was repealed. There were quarrels about which end of the line should be completed first. When the work stopped and the investigation began, in 1843, the state auditor reported these distressing facts : For the $249,000 donated by the state, it had on its hands "some 63 miles of wooden superstructure laid on piles, a considerable portion of which was already rotten, and the remainder going rapidly to decay." Of the original stock subscriptions amounting to nearly $2,000,000, only $13,980 had been paid in cash. About $10,000 had been paid in labor and material and $533,776 in lands and town lots. The balance was unpaid in any form. The real estate taken in payment was nearly all turned in "at the most extravagant rates," which is to say, it was accepted at boom prices after the panic had arrived. Land-poor subscribers had been glad to unload, and railroad investment was romantic. For this adventure, like many another of the same speculative era, the taxpayers paid. There had been ambitious dreams of railroads before this fiasco. In the very year of Stephenson's "Rocket," 1829, an American dreamer bearing the same name as the famous New York governor and canal-builder, De Witt Clinton, had projected a Great Western Railway running from New York City to Lake Erie by way of the headwaters of the Genesee and Allegheny rivers, thence along the southern shore through Cleveland and Sandusky, across the Maumee and Wabash rivers to the junction of Rock River with the Mississippi. But that effort was so premature that it never got started. 322 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS Of historic importance in connection with early railroading was the establishment of the Cuyahoga Steam Furnace Company in 1834, with a capitalization of $100,000, incorporated by Charles Hoyt, Luke Risley, Richard Lord and Josiah Barber, a West Side enterprise. It is credited with having made the first locomotive west of the Alleghanies, for a Michigan railway operating between Detroit and Pontiac. So excellent was that first pioneer engine that after twelve years of use it was sold for almost as much as its first cost. The same company made the machinery for the Emigrant, first "screw propeller" on the Lakes. It likewise built the locomotives which opened traffic on the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati and the Cleveland, Painesville and Ashtabula railroads. It was long the largest iron manufacturing concern in the city. Among its various activities it made cannon for the government. It was the first plant in this part of the country to use steam power instead of horse power to "blow" its furnaces. Ohio railroading really began in the fifth decade of the nineteenth century, though some of the main lines were planned in the fourth. Financing was impractical until the revival of business in the early 'forties. Cleveland played a leading role. The first train ran in Cleveland in 1849. What were those early railroads like, in equipment and operation, during the years before the Civil war? They would amuse a generation accustomed to gigantic size, power and speed. Yet they were far more wonderful in their day than our ponderous enginery and mile-long trains are to ours. The track consisted at first of iron strap rail spiked to wooden ties. The "straps" were three inches wide and about three-fourths of an inch thick. The "T" rail, originated in England, and at first imported from that country, appeared here in 1851. Such rails were 12 to 18 feet long and weighed 56 pounds per yard. The engine weighed about 30 tons and ran 20 miles an hour. They were usually given individual names like steamships. Those made in Cleveland had 15-inch cylinders and six-foot driving wheels. The fuel was wood, and a "wood train" was kept busy stocking the sheds along