Year: 1871

With such a place of deposit we could adopt
low rates. Our local tonnage would become
very great, and sure Of the profits on that the
evils of competition would not be at all in pro-
portion to our traditional nervousness about
them. Our way business now is not far from
half of all.


Fully impressed with these views (though
circumstances did not formerly permit their ex-
pression), feeling that the salvation of the COM
panies required good freight terminus, long
ago selected Harsimus Cove as the best, and
latterly, the only remaining available site for It,
AS soon as that essential step in the grand move
ment-the consolidation-was effected, means
were taken to secure it. 1t was secured Just In
time to prevent it from falling into other hands.


1t is to reach this seventy-1ve acres now
flowed by the tide, that the Pennsylvania Rail-
road Company offer to lease our works and pay
us ten per cent. But it is great mistake to
suppose that its purchase and improvement
were intended mainly for the business of that
road, which gives us only quarter of our ton
nage 1t is just as absolutely vitality necessary
for our own local business.


This Improvement was of such magnitude,
and there were so many other urgent demands
for expenditures that it has been postponed to
the present time. 1t was, perhaps, to be ex-
pected that those not practically acquainted
with railroad transportation on a large scale,
and with the rapid growth of traffic when it has
chance to grow, would hesitate about going
into an expenditure of three millions, required
for the development of this property.


The purchase of Harsimus was not a land
speculation; not lucky accident; not merely
an engineers project to bring rail transporta-
ton, shipping, lighterage, ferriage carriage, aud
storage all into contact, and to save one, two,
kl.x4A lNlla 49,
cial metropolis of this hemisphere to the west
bank of the Hudson; not an instrument to secure
particular alliance; but an essential means of
creating great freight traffic, and carrying out
the policy which has always been kept in view.
If we had made the improvement at once we
should probably now get twelve per cent. rent
instead of ten; or make twelve per cent our
selves. And we should have been able to carry
out much more fully than we bave done (and
we have done something in that direction) our
liberal pelicy.


Should the lease fail from any cause, we can
not stand still. We should lose no time in max
ing this improvement; making it ourselves
not in connection with anybody else, but re-
tanning all the power it confers.


Then, with our unequalled location, our
ramifcations among the sources of business,
manufactures stimulated by low freights and
favorable locations sprlnglng up along our
route, the business of the South reviving, and
that of the whole country growing, with legal
trammels now removed and valuable rights OBJ
tanned; we, opening our doors to all connect
ing lines and all other parties on fair and equal
terms, and giving them assurance for the future
by permanent contracts; lifting ourselves out of
any old grooves that no longer run in the right
direction; adopting a single simple organiza-
tion in place of the present provisional govern
ment; stunning the tainted air of legislative
ante chambers; then-we doing this-i the
lease falls through, we shall have little son
to regret the failure