The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1875-09-05
lightning Trains.

All the progress in the world has been Sc
cured by the spirit of private enterprise, and
governments have always been the greatest
obstacle in the way of every advance in
knowledge and every achievement that
tended to ameliorate the condition of the
human race. Governments instinctively
take the position that man who proposes
to do anything that has not been done be-
fore-who suggests innovations in machin-
cry that seems to be just working easy after
a practice of a thousand years-is fit sub
ject to be sent to lunatic asylum; and in
the good old times, when governments did
what they pleased, they acted on this view
of the nature of innovators. On the other
hand, the instructive view of the individual
is always that, if there is any conceivable act
that has not yet been done, it is the one
above all others, to set about Immediately
Out of this impulse of individuals has come
all the inventions and all the progress of the
modern world; and out of the fact that gov
erment is always the great obstacle has come
all the revolutions.
Personal conceptions, individual views of
what is possible, the adventurous spirit to
make the trial where all is doubt, and where
calamity may follow failure all the notions,
in short, that are grouped in the name "pri-
vate enterprise" constitute the great initia-
tory force in the history of the human race.
This force opened to man all the seas of the
world by astronomical discoveries conducted
in the face of official persecution it besieged
throne after throne for permission to dis
cover America; it taught men the art of
printing in defiance of death at the stake by
fire it covered the world with the wire web
of the telegraph, and government unwill-
ingly grudged pittance for experiment, and
it has made the antipodes neighborly gossips
by that ever wonderful wire and by steam
ships and the railway train.
1t is, therefore, no new fact that is OBJ
served in the latest endeavor to extend the
operation of the great invention of steam
communication to all the uses of which
it is capable. Private enterprise leads the
way and government, stirred by this evidence
of popular demand, follows. 1t is fact very
pleasant to contemplate that our own gov
eminent in this case, more amenable to pop
ular influence and more attentive to fair
expression of public wants than the govern
ments of the older countries, does not resist
and discourage and defeat, but moves read
lily forward in sympathy with progress.
This is an improvement on the old style.
But the great public, which is to realize the
benefit of this prompt and liberal spirit of
the government, must not forget where the
reform was initiated. 1t must not forget,
moreover, the recognition due to the admin
istration of the Central Railroad, which
showed by series of the most successful
trains ever run in this country, and which,
perhaps, could not have been run on any
other American railroad the feasibility of a
mail delivery at a rate never dreamed of by
the authorities In upward of four thousand
miles, travelled at rate that would make
the head of the ordinary traveller swim at
the sight of the landscape, this admirably
organized and administered road not only
never had an accident, but never had a bolt
out of place. 1t is to the administration of
this road, therefore, to Mr.. W. H. Wander
bilt, the Vice President, and his capable and
efficient staff that the thanks of the public
are due for the exhibition Of the feasibility
of the rapid trains that promise to do so
much for interstate commerce.