Joseph Husband

“ But in the early fifties these very inconveniences fired the imagination of a young traveler who had bought a ticket on a night train between Buffalo and Westfield, and in his alert mind was inspired, as he tossed sleepless in his bunk, the first vision of a car that would revolutionize the railroad travel of the world and of a system that would present to the traveling public a mighty organization whose first purpose would be to contribute safety, convenience, luxury and a uniform and universal service from coast to coast. ”

“ On his arrival in New York he rented a small studio in an old building, and was soon intensively occupied in a life in which modeling, teaching, and studying filled the long hours, and carried on often far into the night. Dark and depressing seemed the New York winter after the warmth and color of Italy; and to bring back more vividly the memory of the tinkling, splashing fountains that played in the Roman sunshine, he would turn on the water in the little wash-basin in his studio and let the gentle sound carry his thoughts back to the gardens of Rome. ”

“ Then came the time when the inadequacy of such complete but disconnected service struck the imagination of a man who saw the endless miles of track of countless railroads bound together by a supplemental system to which all railroads contributed and from which they profited, and by which, most of all, the public would enjoy a service of a scope which could otherwise only be attained by an actual combination of these railroads into a single company. But the vision of the founder of the Pullman Company did not stop at the idea of a unified system. ”

“ By the thrift, daring, and vision of a poor French sailor lad a great city of a mighty nation has received incalculable benefit throughout a century past, and will receive increasing benefit for centuries to come. Grasping eagerly the unlimited opportunities of the Republic where all men stand sure-footed in the equal race for the highest rewards that civilization can bestow, he seized for himself the honors of high citizenship, the satisfaction of sincere philanthropy, and the pleasures that the possession of vast wealth profitably employed can bring. ”

“ The songs of the band-saw and the planer were stilled and in their stead rose the metallic clamor of steam hammer and turret lathe, and the endless staccato reverberation of an army of riveters. Ponderous machines to bend, twist, or cut a bar or sheet of steel filled the vast workrooms. An army of steel workers, Titans of the past reborn to fulfill a modern destiny, fanned the flames in their furnaces and released the leash of sand blast, air hose, and gas flame. ”

“ The scientific world will ever remember Louis Agassiz for his discoveries in zoölogy, for his vast researches in the study of fishes, and for his glacial theories and subsequent revelations in geology; but the world at large will hold him perhaps more dear as the master who brought to the United States the old sciences of an older civilization and, infusing them with his own vitality, became to the people of America the first and the great teacher of the history of the mighty book of nature, which before his time had remained closed to them. ”

“ With the entrance of new territory [Pg 67] into the Union, the question flamed forth with greater violence: would the new states be free states or slave states? Would the slave-holders or the anti-slavery men rule the land? Would slavery or freedom dominate?
Schurz flung himself into politics and the anti-slavery party of the North. With clear vision he realized that slavery must be destroyed, but that the United States must be preserved; a separation of the slave states from the Union could not be tolerated; all must be united in freedom. ”

“ It is natural to think of the Pullman Company as housed in some miraculous manner in the cars which it operates, as a company which expends its restless existence in untiring travel from state to state. ”

“ But although Carnegie was one of the world’s most generous givers he had no desire to abolish poverty. “We should,” he said, “be quite willing to abolish luxury, but to abolish honest, industrious, self-denying poverty would be to destroy the soil upon which mankind produces the virtues which enable our race to reach a still higher civilization than it now possesses.” Not to help men were his millions given, but to help men to help themselves. In his long list of philanthropies, education is the goal. ”

“ Then followed the natural development of land communication, and at once arose the necessity not only for vehicles of transportation but for suitable roads over which they might pass with comfort, speed, and safety. Over the Roman roads the commerce of a great empire flowed in a tumultuous stream. Wheeled vehicles rumbled along the highways—heavy springless carts to carry the merchandise, lightly rolling carriages for the comfort of wealthy travelers. ”

“ With such traditions and in such environment, it is small wonder that young Jacob grew to be a healthy, normal boy charged with ambition and energy. There was fighting blood in his veins, but it was the blood that rises and fights against oppression and for the right, and never for conquest or the subjection of the weak.
It was the ambition of the father that Jacob should study for a professional career, but to the young boy, with his strong body and alert mind, the study of a trade appealed more keenly, and he was apprenticed for a year to a carpenter in the town. ”

“ This great power press is engaged in shaping the steel panelling for the inside finish of the car
But fascinating as unquestionably was the work of the patient artisans who inlaid the beflowered Eastlake Pullman or the Moorish cars of another day, there is equal romance in the product of the modern worker who builds these rolling hostelries of steel. Under the high glass roof the tumult of ponderous machines fills the air with pandemonium. At one side of one of the main aisles a half dozen great steel girders, like keels for giant ships, lie on the floor. ”

“ Thus in the space of a few years George M. Pullman not only evolved a type of railroad car luxurious and beautiful in design and embracing in its construction patents of great originality and ingenuity, but, in addition, evolved the rudimentary conception of a system by which passengers might be carried to any destination in cars of uniform construction, equipped for day or night travel, and served and protected by trained employees whose sole function is to provide for the passengers' safety, comfort, and convenience. ”

“ To the scantily clad, starving, and penniless young man, the great city seemed to turn a cold and forbidding shoulder. But opportunity does not come to those who wait expectant of it: it is a prize to be won by struggle, and often by privation. Opportunity is everywhere, but it is only the stalwart, indomitable spirits who seek and seize it.
Hard days followed. From New York Riis went to Jamestown, a small village in the northern part of the state, and there he spent the winter doing such trivial jobs as fell to him, glad to receive the small and irregular pay which enabled him to struggle on. ”

“ With his only means of earning a living destroyed, necessity compelled the elder Carnegie to seek occupation somewhere beyond the limits of the quiet Scotch town. Across the Atlantic a great new republic was just reaching its young manhood. Its fast-sailing clippers had made the Stars and Stripes of its flag known on every sea, and tales of the daring Yankee skippers had brought to complacent England a rude awakening from her peaceful sense of maritime supremacy. Within its boundaries even greater developments were taking form under the firm hands of the Americans. ”

“ To follow further the rapid development of the railroad in America would require many volumes. As the canal building fever had seized the fancy of the American public in preceding years, so a similar enthusiasm was instantly kindled in the new railroad, and railroad travel became immediately the most popular diversion. In a relatively few years a web of track carried the smoking locomotive and its rumbling train of cars throughout the country. Crude, and lacking almost every convenience of the passenger coach of the present day, the early railway carriage served fully its new-born function. ”

“ Also, they found it necessary to develop the government of their new nation, and form from the wilderness, where once only the Indians dwelt, new states to increase the union of the great Republic.
But through all these years of labor there remained in the minds of men an appreciation of those other more beautiful factors of civilization; memories of an inheritance that were like dreams from which these pioneers waited to be awakened by someone who, at the right time, would come to them and, understandingly, would point out the way. The love of music was in their hearts. ”

“ The fundamental principle of the electric light is that for a given exertion of power you obtain a given proportion of light, neither more nor less. For every hour it is burning there will be required a certain exactly-ascertained proportion of revolutions of the steam engine, and therefore, if the whole town is lighted it can be done only at a strictly proportionate expense to the lighting of a single house. As to what that expense will be, as compared with gas, the Brighton train would, if we had an idea of the actual figures, afford a precise means of information. ”

“ To-day we travel thousands of miles by railroad; a hundred years ago our great-great-grandfathers traveled by horse-drawn coaches. Where we may now speed a mile a minute behind a giant steam locomotive, they were content with what seemed to them the tremendous speed of eleven miles an hour. But all things change. There are always leaders in the world’s progress. Of these leaders was John Ericsson. Travel had been a luxury of the rich; the invention of the steam locomotive made fast and economical travel possible to the poor as well. ”

“ The whole car—a Pullman—is luxuriously fitted up, and one end is partitioned into a storeroom and kitchen; there is a smoking-room for lovers of the weed, and a separate toilet room for ladies. As the porter of the car blackens the boots, and there is a telegraph office at each stopping place, the waggish question of "Where is the barber shop?" is often made. ”