provement came twin boats, with a central wheel turned, treadmill fashion, by horses. These horses were supplanted by steam, first by Fulton in a ferry to Jersey City, in 1812. Then came single boats with sidewheels, of which the first was the Hoboken, built in 1822 by Robert L. Stevens. In that year he introduced at his docks string piles which directed a boat as she entered her pier. One stormy night, Mr. Stevens' attention was called to a pilot as he stood at his wheel, wholly unprotected from beating rain. Mr. Stevens at once planned and built shelters for his pilots, the first to be provided for them.

A thorn in the side of the Stevens family was the monopoly granted by the State of New York to Robert Fulton and his partners, bestowing the exclusive right to steamboat service on the waters of New York. After much preliminary skirmishing, this monopoly was attacked in February, 1824, in the Supreme Court of the United States, by Daniel Webster, in a masterly argument. Mr. Oakley, and Mr. Emmett, who had been a personal friend of Fulton, appeared in defense. Chief Justice John Marshall rendered a decision adverse to the monopoly, holding that the power vested in Congress, to regulate commerce, included power to regulate navigation. Said he: "The power to regulate commerce does not look to the principle by which boats are moved. That power is left to individual discretion. The act demonstrates the opinion that steamboats may be enrolled and licensed in common with vessels having sails. They are, of course, entitled to the same privileges, and can no more be restrained from navigating waters and entering ports, which are free to such vessels, than if they were wafted on their voyage by the winds instead of being propelled by the agency of fire." Thus ended a monopoly which, during seventeen years, held back the progress of steam navigation in America, clearly proving the impolicy of rewarding enterprise by an exclusive privilege.

His success with the Phoenix and her sister craft showed Colonel Stevens how mighty a stride steam could effect on waterways. He had long been convinced that a like gain could be reaped by steam as a motive power for travel on land. In 1810 the Legislature of New York appointed commissioners to examine the routes proposed for the Erie Canal, and to report upon the feasibility of that project. When Colonel Stevens read their report, which discussed a continuous inclined plane from Lake Erie to the Hudson River, to be fed by the waters of the lake, he urgently pressed upon the commissioners, as preferable in economy, speed, and rapidity of construction, a system of steam railways. In 1812 he published his argument as a pamphlet, adding the objections of the commissioners, and his rejoinders. He said:

"So many and so important are the advantages which these States would derive from the general adoption of the proposed railways, that they ought, in my humble opinion, to become an object of primary attention to the national government. The insignificant sum of $2,000 to $3,000 would be adequate to give the project a fair trial. On the success of this experiment a plan should be digested, a general system of internal communication and conveyance be adopted, and the necessary surveys be made for the extension of these ways in all directions, so as to embrace and unite every section of this extensive empire. It might then, indeed, be said that these States would then constitute one family, intimately connected and held together in bonds of indissoluble union.

.. To the rapidity of the motion of a steam carriage on these railways, no definite limit can be set. The flying proas of the islands in the Pacific Ocean are said at times to sail more than twenty miles an hour; but as the resistance of water to the progress of a vessel increases as the square of its velocity, it is obvious that the power required to propel her must also be increased in the same ratio. Not so with a steam carriage; as it moves in a fluid eight hundred times rarer than water, the resistance is proportionately dimin

ished. Indeed, the principal resistance arises from friction, which does not even increase in a direct ratio with the velocity of the carriage. If, then, a proa can be driven by the wind (the propulsive power of which is constantly diminishing as the velocity of the proa increases), through so dense a fluid as water, at twenty miles an hour, I can see nothing to hinder a steam carriage from moving on these ways at one hundred miles an hour. . . . This astonishing velocity is considered here as merely possible. It is probable that it may not, in practice, be convenient to exceed twenty or thirty miles an hour. Actual experience, however, can alone determine this matter, and I should not be surprised at seeing steam carriages propelled at forty to fifty miles an hour."

The Erie Canal was built, notwithstanding the arguments of influential opponents led by Colonel Stevens. Year by year he closely followed the developments in railroad locomotion in England, resolved that he should have a leading part in promoting like projects at home. For this a door stood open before him. Philadelphia and New York, in an airline but ninety miles apart, even at that early day transacted a huge business with one another. Added to this was the trade of intervening towns and villages, steadily growing in population and wealth. The Stevens family, as men of enterprise and capital, had developed the traffic on this highway until almost the whole rested in their hands. As far back as 1795 Colonel Stevens had designed a steam locomotive, which he had hoped to patent during the administration of President Washington. His great difficulty was to provide a track strong enough to support the heavy low-pressure engine of that day. In 1817 he obtained a charter from the State of New Jersey "to build a railroad from the river Delaware, near Trenton, to the river Raritan, near New Brunswick." No action followed the granting of his charter, as its project was deemed visionary. But Colonel Stevens never for a moment relaxed his labors on behalf of steam railroads. In 1823, with Stephen Girard

and Horace Binney as his associates, he projected a railroad from Philadelphia to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, which resulted in the incorporation of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, twenty-three years before the present corporation was chartered. In 1826 Colonel Stevens built at his own cost the first steam locomotive that ran on rails in America. This engine was furnished with a sectional boiler of high efficiency, and coursed upon a circular track laid within a few hundred yards of the present Stevens Institute. This was three years before Horatio Allen ran the Stourbridge Lion" at Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and nearly four years before Stephenson won his prize with the Rocket" at Rainhill in England.

About 1829, Colonel Stevens conceived a bold project, which, duly modified, forty years afterward was developed as the elevated railroad system of New York. He sketched a scheme for a railway starting from the Battery, and proceeding along Greenwich or Washington Street, to a suitable spot opposite Castle Point, Hoboken, and from an elevated structure there to cross the Hudson River upon a high bridge made chiefly of Manila hemp, supported by several piers. The track was to be "supported on pillars of stone, iron, or wood, placed near the curb stones, and elevated about ten or twelve feet above the pavement." After crossing the river, the railway was to proceed over Bergen Hill to the Little Falls of the Passaic River. The real objective point was Philadelphia, and thence to Washington. Stoves were to be erected on the bridge, and a supply of pure water was to cross with it-brought from Little Falls.

It was not in this bold project, but in ordinary railroading, that Colonel Stevens was to engage. Less ambitious than the proposed line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh was a scheme requiring comparatively small outlay, to provide a short railroad which should complete a steam route be

tween New York and Philadelphia. These cities were at that time joined by the Union Line in three links:

Steamboat route from Philadelphia to Trenton.. 36 miles Turnpike for stage and wagons, Trenton to New

Brunswick

25

Steamboat route, New Brunswick to New York. 40

IOI miles

To build a railroad between Trenton and New Brunswick, twenty-five miles, and capture the traffic carried by horse-drawn vehicles, was a most inviting enterprise for Colonel Stevens, his family, and his wealthy associates. In 1830, accordingly, at their instance, the Camden & Amboy Railroad Company was incorporated. Robert L. Stevens was appointed its president; his brother, Edwin Augustus, was chosen its treasurer and general manager. As a first step toward building the line, Robert L. Stevens posted to England, where, since 1825, the railway between Stockton and Darlington had been successfully operated with locomotives designed by the Stephensons. Before leaving home he resolved to adopt an iron rail as better than a wooden rail, or than the stone stringer thinly plated with iron, which his Company had laid by way of experiment. There was then no mill in America to roll T-rails, and as both iron and labor were scarce and dear in the United States, Mr. Stevens wished to lay a rail which would need no chair to hold it in place. During his voyage across the Atlantic he whittled bits of wood into varied rail contours, at last carving a form in which a broad and firm base was added to a T-rail, so as to give it a continuous foot, or flange, dispensing with chairs. In this he carried forward by an important step the advantages presented in the rail suggested by Thomas Tredgold in 1825, which had a base comparatively narrow.