The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1900-05-01
The DYING CENTURY
PASSED In REVIEW
GROWTH OF TRANSFORMATION
AND ITS ARTS.
Telegraph, Gable, Telephone and Pos
tai Service Have Accompanied the
Great Enterprises Which Have An
INITIATED the Worlds Distances.



considered the wonder of the century.
Aside from all that the term implies
IN making the circumnavigation ~
the globe matter of weeks instead
Of years. IL has drawn to itself the
telegraph. the cable, the telephone and
the postoffice service of the postal
union. each a sublime wonder in it
self without the telegraph or the
telephone, modern rairoading in It's
colossal proportions would have been
impossible without the railroad the
other two would lose a vast measure
of their utility. One has waited upon
the other, coming when time was ripe
and demonstrating the resourcefulncss
of the human race in anticipating its
needs.
Even 40 late as the EOS Liverpool
TO New York was an undertaking,
and New York TO San Francisco ap-
pealed only to one whose recklessness
was in proportion of his love Of ad-
venture. Today the passage of the
Atlantic Is a pleasure trip in swift
floating palaces. and New York and
san Francisco are four days apart in
luxurious ease and comfort,
FROM FULTON AND STEPHENSON
Fu,ton's steamboat. in it's first trip
from New York to Albany in 1907, and
Stephencon's locomotive. in its run
from Liverpool to Manchester in 1929,
were prophetic of all this the realiza-
tion of It Is worlds wonder. The
paddle wheel of the steamer has he"
come the twin screw of the ocean grey
hound anu the old wood burning loco
motive. with a speed of fifteen miles
ar hour. has become the l30-ton ma
chine which heads the transcontinen.
tai mail in it's mile minute flight
from New York to San Francisco.
1t has been utilitarian-all of it. The
winged ships of the seas are decadent
and the poetry Of the argosies is for
gotten. The tramp steamers-huge,
rusty AID ungainly--have taken the
worlds commerce and the going down
to the sea in ships has lost its ro-
nance. On land the brave old coach
ing days. with four and six in hand,
are ended. The turnpike of the East
is gatelcss and the PONY express Of
the western wilderness has Joined
With the wraiths of the mirage. Steam
ilsistent and persistent, has been the
iconoclast of the century. and it's
track ia over all with an iron heel.
Since the introduction of steam in
ocean traffic reverses have come to
American merchantmen in ocean
trade They no longer carry the palm
for shipping, but the census of near
ly ten years ago showed 3,4e4 steam
ers to be in the United States carry
irg trade with 1907 sos tons capacity
and valued at ss9,OsO,995. In strong
relief against these are the figures for
lalSpC showing a total Of
1.l53 steam vessels, with 523,7o2 tons
capacity and valued at s4s,434,350.
LINKING THE OCEANS
Perhaps no year in all this period Is
so significant as was 1869. On the 10th
Of May the last spike in the Union
Pacific railway was driven. and on
November l6 following the great Suez
canal was opened to the worlds mari
time trade. The one cut months from
the long overland trip from the Mis-
souri, river to the Pacific, the other
shortened the trip from western Eu-
rope to India by nearly 1000 miles and
Topped thirty-siX days from the aver
age sailing time. The Red sea. in which
the hosts of Pharoah were engulfed, Is
cut by the keel of the modern mer-
chairman, while Palestine of the an
clients is crossed by the steel rails of
the Occident and American locomo-
tives rumble into Jerusalem and Da-
mascus.
The Baltimore and Ohio railroad.
fourteen miles long, was the pioneer
venture in America in 1880. From this
the network grew, each rail pointing
west with the certainty of the COM
pass needle. Gold in California and
the rapid settlement of the Pacific
coast became later impulse to rail-
way building. The Pacific railway was
agitated as early as 1853, but ten years
elapsed before work was begun from
Omaha westward to Ogden, a stretch
of 1,032 miles. From Ogden to San
Francisco, nearly 900 miles, the Cen
tral Pacific division was projected over
an almost trackless waste of cacti and
sagebrush which sprang from the al
kali Of the mi-deserts.
AS 1T STRUCK A NOVELIST.
OF the building of this road Robert
Louis Stevenson has written:
when l think how the railroad has
been pushed through this unwatered
wilderness and haunt of savage tribes.
how at each stage of the construction
roaring, impromptu cities. fun of gold
and lust and death. sprang up and
then died away again and are now but
Yaysde stations In the desert: how in
these uncouth places pig-taied pirates
worked side by side with border ruff
fans and broken men from Europe.
talking together in a mixed dialect
mostly oaths gambling, drinking, quar-
reling and numbering like wolves; how
the plumed hereditary lord of all
America heard in this last fastness the
scream of the bad medicine wagon
charioting his foe, and then whe.. I go
on to remember that all this eDicai
turmoil was conducted by gentlemen in
frock coats and with a view to moth
ing more extraordinary than a for
tune and subsequent visit to Paris.
II seems to me, | own, as if this rail.
way were the one typical achievement
of the age in which we live as if il
brought together in one plot all the
ends Of the world and all the degrees
of social rank, and offered the busiest,
the most extended and the most vary
ing subject for an enduring literary
work. IL II he romance, il IL be con-
trast, II II be heroism that we require,
what was Troy town TO this?"
Scandals waited upon the building OF
this road--scandals that are not vet
dead--but the work stands as one of
the greatest initial undertakings of the
century, Reaction had come from tho
horrors of the Civil war, and in 1871
the world saw 1870 miles of railroads
laid and put into operation in the track
a -.