The Portland daily press., 1900-08-17
A RETROSPECT.
The TRANSFORMATION wrought to the
Pacin Railroads.
New York Post. }

Inc QeaOn OF OOllIS f. huuUAuB OOn az
the age of seventy-nine brings up vista
of material growth and progress which is
perhaps without parallel in the worlds
history. There are men and women still
living who crossed the plains to Cali
fornia with OK or mule teams, taking six
months for the journey. There are others
who made the same passage by Ben Hal
laday's stages or by the Chorpenning
line. There are some who remember the
old Santa Fe trail from personal expert
ence of it's serpentine windings across q
treeless country and its long trains of
wagons drawn by oxen and freighted
with coarss wool going eastward and |
coarse manufactures moving westward.
Still others remained who footed it,
all the way from independence, or St. !
Joseph, or Kansas City to Pixies Peak, |
while some came back faster than they
went out or left their bones to bleach
with those of the buffaloes.
In those days the preliminary journeys,
before launching ones self upon the
wide waste of prairie grass, sunfowers
and sage brush, was up the Missouri
River from st. Louis in a wheezy steam
motive power of which was gathered
from woodyards along the river banks. A
week was usually consumed in this way
before reaching Kansas City, or whatever
QUILTING station the daring VOyager had
chosen for his adieu to civilized life.
Kansas City itself was a collection of
ware houses and drinking saloons OF the
most forbidding type huddled along the
river bank, the chief Industries OF tn
place being the transfer of goods from
river steamers to prairie schooners'
and the transfer of cash from one gam bier
to another, with an occasional shooting
atfray to break the mOnOtony. Both Kan
sas and Nebraska were still an Indian
territory. scantily peopled by Pawness.
| KaWs, Osages, Sacs and Foxes, and OF
other remnants of the tribes that had
been ION the move for a hundred years
from more eastern regions. Beyond the
I Rockies lay the sage brush and alkali
plains, the terror of the forty-niners' and
of all who came after them till the dis
lance was spanned by a railroad of which
! Coils p. Huntinng was one OF the chief
| promoters, and almost but not quite the
last survivor, Gen. Granville nj. Dodge
being still among us.
1t is needless to say what "a change
has come over this great expans3 OF
United States territory. 1t cannot be
realized except by those who have seen
Ii both in its primitive nakedness and
while it was undergoing transition.
When the two ends of the Union and the
Central Pacific Railways were united at
PrOmontory Summit on the Gerat Salt
Lake in June, 1869, the forces OF civiliza-
tion were let loose upon what was known
as the Great American Desert. This
term embrace. lot only the sage brush
and alkali plains, but the whole region
which has this year produced the best
part OF the wheat crop Of the United
! States, and which commonly produces
the part of its corn crop, 1t includes
the most productive deposits of gold and
silver that have ever been worked, except
possibly those Of the Yransyaal in South
Africa.
Working with Mr.. Huntington on the
western end of the line were Leland
Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark
Hopkins all of whom passed away before
him. On the eastern end were DR.. Du-
rant, Cakes Ames, Gen. Dodge, John
j. McCOmb, and q mum Der of others
recOllections. There task, q mighty one
in its day, was completed in 1869; that
is, it became possible then to make the
journey across the plains in six days in
stead of six months, Here, it was com
mo My supposed the work Of transconti-
mental railway building would end for p
long time, for although a charter and a
land grant had been given to the North
ern Pacific, it was looked upon as a
chimericaI undertaking, or a species of
Whitney who had once travelled over
that country. Any other Pacific railways
than these two were held to be the merest
mOOnshine and widest extravaganza of
perverted imagination. Yet the first
through line proved to be an incentive to
others which not even the financial break
down Of the Union Pacific could deter or
discourage. New ones came merrily
along, and even MIR. Huntington planned
an executed one of them, or rather see
"A an
1t would be executed, he and his part.
ners managed to get hold of it and build
it themselves. The Southern Pacific is
the outcome of a project once controlled
by John C.FremOnt, and later by Thomas
IL. Scott ContempOraneously with this
enterprise or later we have seen the At
lanttc and Pacific, the Atchison, Topeka
and Santa Fe, the Denver and Rio
Grande, the Oregon Short Line, the Grear
Northern, and the Chicago Rurlfn0on
and Quincy putting out their arms to or
toward the Paiflc Coast, not to mention
the Canadian Pacific, which cannot be
neglected in any retrospect of our trans
continental system.
1t needed only the means of transDorta-
t1on to transform the great plains from n
silent and forbiddng waste to a flower gar
den and hive of industry. This was
contributed in part by Mr.. Huntington.
ana his contributions, begun on small
scale IN 1896, were continued tilI tbe
day OF his death, which found him the
master of the largest railway system I'M
der one control in the world, compris-
ing, 1904 miles, and yielding GROSS
earnings of more than 500, 600, OO0 per an
mum. These are figures which the imaui-
nation grasps with difficulty. There are
other rich men in the country even rich
er than Mr.. huntington, but there is mo
oUhef Whose work has SO imposing q
look on the mop. There has been no other
In this country who has had so great a.
power to give direction to labor and to
decide how the reproducing forces of the
nation should be employed in the work
OF reproduction. OF course, there are
nlgher considerations than this to move
the intellectual and moral nature of man
and In those higher ones Mr., Hunting
Ton was not deficient), but when one Is