The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-03-24
THE EXPRESS BUSINESS.

 How. 64 Years Ago. William F. Harn-
 den Originated the Enterprise That
 Now Cobwebs the World.
 From the first swing of the people toward the open and empty West. one e the chief needs was safe, speedy. and orderly transfer of personal prop erty. Contemporaneous with the early push toward the Pacific. a man arose whose project (soon to girdie the world). was destined to fill this need. This man, whose dream and deed help cd nightly to people the vacant West. was William Frederick Harnden, the founder of the express system of Amer ica and Of the world.
 The express business seems so indis- pensable and inevitable a part of our lie. so fixed and unalterable a part of our business. that We can scarcely real ize the time when there existed no peripatetic bank, no ubiquitous deliv- cry system. no ever-ready, ever-capa- ble medium for rendering thousand unnamable services in fetching and carrying, and in representing us at home and abroad. To get his thought transmitted. to get himself and his goods transferred with celerity and safety.-these are large problems of civ ilization that man has been struggling with since he began to think and to la bor.
 One hundred and six stage lines ran out Of Boston alone. in 1884, and it be- hooyed the promoters of the struggling railroads to conciliate these deposed oublicans and jehus in order to make and keep friends with the clamoring people. So stage drivers were general ly made ticket agents and conductors, and pressed into every other possible service.
 Naturally, those who went from the stages to the trains carried on their friendly service, in fetching and carry ing along the line. But it was all a matter of accommodation and haphaz- ard, with no record or method The same sort of errand-mongering was operating on the steamers of both the eastern and the western shores.
 The steamer John W. Richmond was. at this time. plying between Bos- ton and New York. James w. Hale, an employe of Hudscn's news room, in the old Tontine building. at the corner of Wall and Water streets, New York city, happened to be also the agent of this steamer. He was in the habit of run ming down to the boat at the hour of it's tri-weekly sailing to send off a copy os the news-room's bulletin sheet to the Boston newspapers. Certain Wall street brokers, noting his Dunctual er- rand. fell into the way of asking MT. Hale to take to the boat packets of banli-notes or coin, with a request to pass them on to some Boston, bound traveller, to be delivered according to directions. Rather a slack arrange ment broker of to-day would consider this unreceipted-for consignment com mit-ed thus to providence and an un- knon vest pocket. But no one is said to have refused to perform such an errand or to have betrayed such a trust. Yet we are told that hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly passed to and fro in this arcadian manner; an evidence, is l 1t not. Of the nobleness that lies in men, sleeping, but never dead?
 FernaDs. however, the oDiiglng MT. Hale began. by and by, to feel his un- profitable stewardship something of a
 bore; for, insthe winter of 1899 and 1e4O, when MT Harnden came to, New York, suffering from what we would to day call nervous sprostration. momeiltous conversation took place.
 "I am worn out Hale. said Mir. Harnden, by my Is hours a day in the Boston and Worcester ticket office. l must find q less monotonous. position.
 What would you think Of my doing er- rands between New York and Boston?' T believe answered his friend,