Western Pacific Railroad

“ Far to the north, the Grand Trunk Pacific is finding its way across the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies, creating a great city—Prince Rupert—at its western terminal. It should be ready for its through traffic within the next three years.
This then, in brief, is the history of American railroading—an eighty-year struggle from East to West. The railroad has passed through many vicissitudes; days of wild-cat financing, and days when men refused to invest their money under any inducements whatsoever. ”

“ Union Pacific, Northern Pacific and their short-line connections provide exclusive rail service between many points in the Pacific Northwest and Portland, Oregon. From Portland, the two competitive routes in question descend, at times parallel, at times intertwined, to Southern California. The route closest to the seacoast consists largely of Southern Pacific. To the east of this route lies the so-called Bieber route whose completion in 1931 was authorized by the Commission to provide competition with Southern Pacific. ”

“ Congress renounced all rate concessions in 1945.
Monument commerating the last spike on the joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads into the first transcontinental railway in this country.
Railroads Dominate U.S. Transportation
The northern States had such tremendous productive capacity that they were able to fight the Civil War and at the same time push a railroad across the western plains and mountains. This railroad, liberally aided by grants of public land and Government loans, was completed in 1869. ”

“ In 1871 these met the party, representing the Northern Pacific Railroad, which had come to the Pacific coast to locate the western terminus of the line and to arrange for the commencement of construction in Washington or Oregon. The directors of the Navigation Company, being alarmed by the prospect of railroad competition with their boats on the Columbia, tried to induce the Northern Pacific delegation to buy them out, and the latter took a proposition with them to the East for the sale of the whole of the Navigation stock for $2,000,000 or forty per cent. ”

“ A glance at the accompanying map will show that the Central Pacific Railroad, from Ogden to Sacramento, and the Western Pacific, from Sacramento to Oakland, were in practical effect but the western end of a route of which the Union Pacific formed the eastern part. So far as competition was concerned, all parts of the route were on a parity. If the Union Pacific competed with the Southern Pacific when it hauled eastern freight from Omaha to Ogden, the Central Pacific did likewise when it hauled the same freight from Ogden to Sacramento. ”

“ The Bieber route carriers presently enjoy joint through rates among themselves. Moreover, the other two participants in that route have expressed willingness to join with Western Pacific in the joint rates it seeks with Union Pacific and Northern Pacific. Union Pacific and Northern Pacific, for over 50 years, have maintained through routes and a full line of joint rates with Southern Pacific via Portland. They have refused, however, except for a few commodities, to offer through routes and joint rates on traffic moving on the Bieber route through Portland. ”

“ Born during the thirties, the idea of a Pacific railway was of uncertain origin and parentage. Just so soon as there was a railroad anywhere, it was inevitable that some enterprising visionary should project one in imagination to the extremity of the continent. The railway speculation, with which the East was seething during the administrations of Andrew Jackson, was boiling over in the young West, so that the group of men advocating a railway to connect the oceans were but the product of their time. ”

“ It was on the part of our government a sublime recognition of the power of steam, that, while it was struggling for existence, it gave its sanction to the Pacific Railroad enterprise. Curiously enough, it is through Kansas and Nebraska—the Epidaurus of our Peloponnesian war—that the two great rival Pacific Railroad routes are to run.
In the summer of 1861, the project of a trans-continental railway connecting our Pacific communities with the older population of the East first assumed a practical aspect. ”

“ Commencing with the session of 1835, when a memorial on the subject of railroad communication between Lake Michigan and the Pacific Coast, was presented by Hartwell Carver, up to the present, the Pacific Railways have been ever present in Congress. The Catalogue of Government Publications gives one hundred and eighty-five having the Union Pacific, or Pacific Railroads as their subject.
It is not necessary to recount the many schemes for the construction of these roads that were proposed to Congress. We have already outlined the principal ones previous to 1861. ”

“ In the meanwhile the Northern Pacific has forged ahead in its earnings and profits, and the stock of the road has come to be known as one of the highest class of investment issues. Although new competition appeared, in both the local and the through business of the company—notably by the extension of the St. Paul system largely through Northern Pacific territory to the Puget Sound region—the superior modern business management of James J. Hill, backed by the strong resources of the Morgan banking interests, made the Northern Pacific one of the standard railroad systems of America. ”

“ There are no protracted and painful struggles to build a Pacific railroad for your next great step. The right of way is assured, the grading is done, the rails are laid. You have but to buy your rolling-stock at the Union Iron Works, draw up your time-table, and begin business. ”

“ For the Pacific Railroad is not simply a gigantic public work, it is the world's great highway. The world has had several grand routes, along the line of which, for certain periods of time, the life-blood and intelligence of humanity have coursed. Such was the route which history discloses as the most ancient from India overland to the Mediterranean, whence it was continued by that old Phœnician Coast Navigation Company to the shores of Britain. ”

“ Prior to 1878, bulky, low-grade articles moving between the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts usually went by sea. Rates were lower and saving in time not important. High-grade goods and freight requiring quick transportation went by rail. It was the idea of the railroad that if compelled to choose, Pacific Coast business men would prefer to import all their freight by rail rather than to bring it all in by water, and that this would substantially increase railroad revenues even though incidental concessions in rates had to be made. ”

“ Thirty millions of dollars have already been invested on the Pacific railroad, and if the time of completion is hastened one year by this tracklayer, as it will be if Central and Union Companies have money enough to grade each five miles a day, there will be a saving of three million dollars on interest alone on that one road. ”

“ A shipdock twelve hundred feet long will be constructed, with over five thousand feet of side-tracks and other facilities for receiving and discharging grain, the whole to cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
A belt-line railroad around Lake Washington is reported projected, to be built by the Lake Shore and Eastern and Northern Pacific. The Northern Pacific, it will be observed, is at the bottom of most of the greatest enterprises in the Evergreen State. ”

“ These three great railroad systems, the Northern Pacific, the Great Northern, and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, constituting nearly twenty thousand miles of railroad, have been known ever since as Hill lines.
Since the dramatic days of the Harriman-Hill contest the history of the Northern Pacific system has been simply a striking reflection of the growth in population and wealth of the great Northwest. The States through which it operates have grown with astounding rapidity during the past two decades; small cities have spread into great centers of manufacture and trade ”

“ In 1879 the Union Pacific, Central Pacific, and Pacific Mail companies agreed that the last-named should set aside space for 600 tons of railroad freight in each of its steamers moving monthly between New York and San Francisco. The railroads were to exercise full authority over the through rates of the steamship company, and for their part were to guarantee that the earnings on the railroad freight shipped were not to be less than $48,000 monthly westbound, and $35,000 monthly eastbound. ”

“ One has to confess that, even twenty years after Howe’s prophecy, the thing did look impossible; but not only has the apparently impossible project of a railroad from ocean to ocean been accomplished, but that trans-continental has become part of a world-encircling transportation system which is a marvel of efficiency. The Canadian Pacific Railway not only welded together the scattered areas under the flag on the North American Continent, but it has taken its place as an organization of Imperial significance and value in peace and war, as many events have proven. ”

“ This same policy would have had the important advantage, from the railroad’s point of view, of developing industry at points which were not affected by every change in the rates of its competitors. The Central Pacific was not the first railroad in the country confronted with the problem of how to treat the non-competitive points upon its lines. ”

“ The building of this railroad was a gigantic undertaking and its construction cost the Russian Government four hundred million dollars. With all our boasted American hustle it took twenty years to build the Canadian Pacific railway from coast to coast. The Trans-Siberian is more than [Pg 44] twice as long and was completed in half that length of time. Before the war there was hardly ever an accident on this railway. Every verst (about two-thirds of a mile) there is a little guardhouse and there was always a man or woman, generally a woman, standing with a flag as the train passed. ”

“ Thus they were to receive eight hundred dollars per mile of track laid if two miles or less was laid in a day. If they laid over two miles in one day they were to receive twelve hundred dollars per mile, and for time they were idle waiting for the grade they were to receive three thousand dollars per day.
Many other names should be mentioned here and would did space permit, but will have to be omitted.
The men who built the Union Pacific Railroad are entitled to great credit and praise. They made money, much money out of the project, but they were entitled to it. ”

“ Sir Thomas Shaughnessy maintained the progressive policy and the honourable record of straightforward management which has distinguished the Canadian Pacific—a railway singularly free from the questionable manipulations which have brought so many great American systems to bankruptcy. Other men left their impress on the road: men like Sir William Whyte, for over twenty years in charge of the western lines, David M'Nicoll, and George M. Bosworth and many others, gave most effective service. ”

“ The large purchases of stock in other roads have assured it favorable connections in the Illinois Central and in the Baltimore & Ohio, and have modified the severity of competition with the Atchison.539 Including the Southern Pacific, its system reaches from Chicago to Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the Gulf, and has an influential voice in two of the principal roads connecting Chicago with the Atlantic seaboard. At the same time, the extensive investment of Union Pacific funds to secure gains unconnected with increase of traffic over its lines has provoked merited criticism. ”

“ The preparations made for the summer’s [Pg 64] work were far more thorough and comprehensive than any that had ever been made before. Realizing the importance of adequate transportation, President Randolph and his engineers immediately began the construction of a branch railroad from the main line of the Southern Pacific to the scene of operations at the crevasse, with ample sidings and terminal facilities at both ends. ”