The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1902-09-14
FROM STAGE
IO RAILROAD
Tale OF the Lightning Change
in the Great West.
STORY OF CONTRACTORS
Who 0vercame Difficulties in
Order to Finish.

The piles Of old tin cans that marked
the construction camps OF the Western
railroads are being scattered now. and
the drifting desert sand is celebrating
q once plain record. Years ago the bright
labels fell off the cans and the rust
began to gnaw at them. but it is only
within the last few years. under the
vigorous Housekeeping methods of the
younger generation Of railroad men, IN
hampered by tradition. that these old
tins have been carted away from the
1rack-side to return to the elements from
s dump-heap at the head of some great
canon. The old men. going back and
forth from Omaha to Kansas City to
San Francisco, miss those piles Of rusty
cans and are provoked to tell their old
meaning to the younger travellers. But
the young traveller says ne is glad they
.'carted al the rubbish out Of sight, for
you know. a fellow does not travel to
look at that sort Of thing
There is the gud-the old man sees il
between generation and generation. The
old man sits back silent and goes over
in his own mind once more the Won
derful story he lived through, from 1864
to 1893 The young man wonders how
it is that every man he meets past
sixty insists on stufng him with such
awful lies A man lives and works in his
own generation - rightly enough he
thinks his own age the most significant
IN the worlds history. And yet, to the
Old Westerner 1T seems a pity that his
work should be disregarded. 1t was SO
full Of big purpose, 50 vital, 50 swift,
90 uanfuiIy done that ne wishes l.
might come little closer to the young
men than the vague paragraphs in a
school history or the dusty memoir en-
secondhand bookstore shelf
Ia 1860 the old man had staged from
Atch.son, kan. to the mountains across
the mountains TO the deserts of Nevada,
across the Sierra Nevadas. down TO the
nch plains OF California and to the
hurly-burly cosmopolitan San Francisco.
He RENE MIXERS his starting place as a
lund of big stocl--yards and camp-meet-
Ing combined. from which constantly
trooyed forth long wagon-traius. drawn
by mules ard oxen. laden with saw-mil
and mining machinery, ploughs, grain.
food, clothes whiskey and the inevi-
table eases of canned goods. He saw
these trains return empty. srimiy with
the prairie dust. the cattle gaunt and
the men scared by the prairie sun. lie
raw ire wild carousaIs. the brawls, the
frequent deeds OF heroism. the Mormon
prosecutions, the good and bad. the ug-
~ and beautiful. The days work. and the
dreamless sleep after II all went for
ward with such compelling force that
the next step-the raiiroad-excited no
Contemporary wonder
Business overwhelmed the staging com
panies and the freighters. so the rail-
roads had 70 he built Ben Holiday, and
his six hundred horses and mules. and
his three hundred coaches. could not
handle tho passengers that went back
ard forth over that three thousand
miles Of plain and mountain. So the rail-
road was ouiit and the difficulties were
surmou8ted 3a n matter of course. 1t
took the railroad builders n dozen years
10 realize that they had done q roma1k-
able thlns When thy pushed the steel
rails from the Missouri river to san
Francisco i'm four years from 1864 to 1868.
During those years The world was full
OF talk cf che immense fortunes rained.
from the Government boanties and rich
land grants. by Gov Stanford. c. 2.
Huntngton Cracser and oliver Ames-
TIE SPLENDID achievement 81 these men Of