Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-08-13

| ton City to Richmond, they got no
| farther than Quantico, and are suspend.
ed there in m;d-air, utterly unable to
capture the Richmond, fredericksburg
and Baltimore road So have their de-
signs to run up the Monongahela and
take the State of West Virginia, which
is one of Mr.. Garrett s pocket boroughs,
from his grasp failed. They have tap
ped the Baltimore and Ohio system at
Baltimore, Cumberland and Martins
burg, but have failed at Wheeling and
more vital points. They have struck
the New York Central at Buffalo and
its alias, the Lake Shore, at Erie, Ash
tabula and Cleveland. But these many
partial advantages have weakened the
central superstition of this road In
mems faith. The Scott design has
been too wide, wild and spidery for
prudent men to understand its merits.
1t goes by double routes to Cincinnati,
st. Louis and Chicago, thus rivalling
itself-a self-eompetitor-running out
rival at the added expense to itself.
Yanderbilt's and CARROTS roads, plain,
powerful and lucid, yet command the
conservative Judgment of men.
THE ERIE ROAD.
And now we have all these people APP
paTently coinciding in the settlement of
the Erie railway under Hugh T.Jewett.
The Erie has been pulled and hauled
between those delectable people, Gold
schmidt and Bischoffsheim, Gould and
Fisk, until it has got to be stock
mandatory and the terror both Of "the
street" and of its rivals. Wide and
wild in range, yet the straightest Of all
our highways to the great West, and
essentially a New York corporation by
geograp ply and aim, it seems hard to
see it pass into the Presidency of an
Ohio man. Jewett has Just passed out
Of Congress from Columbus, Ohio.
The battle he gave the District govern
ment at Washington will subject him
to equally cool and searching inyestiga-
ton In his management Of this great
railroad. He is by the slow growth of
time a man of prudent Judgment and
strong accumulativeness. Cold, aus
tere, with a strong visage and capacity
to listen as well as be emphatic, he
looks as if be would be the best Presi.
dent the Erie has ever bad.
THE ORIGIN OF THE CONFERENCE.
This conference, which viii probably
lead to a long truce, both personal and
commercial, between the great belt
lines, grew out Of a small local fight be-
tween the Philadelphia and Baltimore
roads over the matter Of the passage of
their trains between Philadelphia and
Baltimore. The Scott interest owned
rather devious line by Columbia and
York to Washington. They could
not make time over this road, and
finally agreed, after bitter years of con-
tention, to divide opportunity and run
two full express trains per day over the
short intervening road which neither
owned. About this time Mr.. Garrett,
literally worn out with railroad work,
was ordered to Europe for long stay.
He was a man of powerful intensity of
character and long hater. After he
departed, his representatives. John
King and Mr.. Keyser, found no
difficulty in the disability of j. Ed
gar Thomson, who had somewhat
of the obstinacy of Mr.. Garrett,
in coming Practically together and ar
ranging many things more virulent than
vital. Mr.. Scott has an easy, sugges-
tive nature, rapidity and dispatch, and
he clearly saw that the Baltimore and
Ohio road was and would continue to
be sovereign over its own belt of coun-
try. Rather than carry on the bust
ness of a pursuer of the legitimate
railway over It's own ground, he de-
sired to finish competition at the spot
it had come to and proceed no further
in ruinously anomalous war. Here
tofore, as is well known, the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad has been compelled
to seek its confederate in the Grand
Trunk of Canada, a road ostracised
from the American nationality and
playing dull dummy to the st. Law
renee system. 1t has been the belief
of the three great American systems
that if they could neutrahze the Cana
| dams and compete, like countrymen,
they would at last come to a spot
where fares and freights would be
abiding and the current political fer
ment against all railroads would cease
to annoy them in common. Bygetting
Jewett, John King and Tom Scott to
act In concert
The LONG FEUD HAS BEEN SETTLED.
The great Commodore was himself
anxious to reduce the speculative Erie
to terms, and so the internecine annual
feud was settled by the moral despair
of the railroad men. The Baltimore
road, through its water freight lines,
carried goods far cheaper westward
than the rivers. No road in America
| occupies so commanding an influence.
| 1t is above the needs of money or in
dorsement, and borrows in Europe at
four per cent. year. 1t is the only
railroad at present doing any building
Ct consequence. 1t is building straight
to Chicago from Shelby, and from
Wheeling to the Connellsville branch,
and down the valley of Virginia to
Covington and Salem, and has Just fin
ished its branch from Lynchburg to
Danville. 1t is all potential IN Mary
land and West Virginia. Its bridges
at Parkersburg and Belair are among
the long drawn monuments of our
time Yet before the war this railroad
was thin and lean and ragged, paying
little or no dividends, provincial and
discouraging. Its directory have never
watered stock, and therefore have had
few exactions to meet, their vast sur
plus calling for no dividend. United
States Senator Henry Davis, was for
merly brakeman on this road. as Tom
Scott was station agent on the Penn
sylvania.
The United States Hotel, the vastest
establishment in this world for the en-
! tertainment of man on equal princi-
pies, will, at the end of the present sea-
son, be supplied with all its gas from
its private gasometer. Having 5000
burners, it proposes to save seventy
five per cent. upon the gross gas bills
of the place.