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Chapter 11: Competition and Response: The Ohio Railroads, 1826-1861
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CHAPTER I I Competition and Response: The Ohio Railroads~ 1826'-186'1 ~I~HE debate over railroad pOlicy in Ohio began in early 1826, only a few months after initiation of the first canal program.' The first public call for railroad construction was sounded by James Kilbourne, a prominent politician and engineer who formerly had been the leading champion of a state-built canal between Portsmouth and Sandusky, a route that passed through his extensive landholdings in north-central Ohio. Now Kilbourne proposed a railroad on the same route. Such a railway, bisecting the state On a north-south axis, could readily be expanded, Kilbourne argued, by construction of lateral branches to all the state's major towns. He denounced the recently adopted canal policy, and urged the state to put its funds instead into his proposed railroad, asserting that recent experiments in England had proved the superiority of railways over canals for transportation of both freight and passengers.' However foresighted Kilbourne's proposal, it smacked of selfinterest . Above all, however, it was premature. Few civil engineers were prepared to shift so abruptly as Kilbourne, from advocating canals to boosting railroads. They did not regard the British experiments as conclusive, and most believed that heavy freight could not be carried as economically by rail as by waler. There was. too, an abiding popular prejUdice against railroads as naturally "monopolistic," since the individual capitalist probably could not put his own vehicles on the track as he might PUI boals OHIO CANAL ERA on a canal. Moreover, because Ohio had just embarked on its canal program after three years of ardent and absorbing public debate, it was only natural that men should look ,!-eptically on a plan to abandon canal construction at that juncture, especially for so novel an alternative.:; Nevertheless, the consensus in favor of cnnai con""-truclion could not forestall all plans for railroad enterprises. Interest in railroad schemes ran highest, as might be expected, in those regions of the state that had been by-passed by the I 825 canal plan.' Residents of these "neglected" districts argued in egalitarian terms for government -built railroads in the late I 820'8 and early I 830's. urging that railway lines ancillary to the canal system might "restore an equilibrium of the unequal benefits derived irom [the] canals.'" But in the canal-port towns~ too~ there was some agitation for railroads in the early thirties. Although most of the schemes involved only "little local works," there was some pressure for an integrated state railroad syslem.'; Some of the largest railroad plans were formulated as responses to projects for rail lines from the eastern seaboard to the Ohio River, as Ohio promoters grasped the importance of gaining direct connections with such railroads as Charleston's line to the interior and the Baltimore & Ohio project.' Motivated by these widely varied aims, local projectors of railroads besieged the Ohio legislature with requests for charters and state aid, while local jealousies resulted in still further proliferation of railway schemes by exciting fears and rivalries. The legislature responded by opening the field wide to private railroad enterprise. Nineteen railroad corporations were chartered during 1830-33, and a total of 77 received charters up to 1840. Nearly all the railroads built in Ohio prior to the Civil War were organized and operated under these pre-1840 charters. Therefore, despite the enactment of a general railroad law in 1848, the immunities, privileges, and obligations written into the early charters had precedent standing: as a practical matter, they collectively comprised public pOlicy toward railroad development in the antebellum period. This policy was on the whole extremely permissive, for the various powers allocated by special charter to railroad companies [35.175.174.36] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:29 GMT) Competition and Response ( 277 were far mOre solicitous of private investors' interests than of commonwealth goals, But the legislature did not surrender altogether its role as planner of basic transport facilities, By means of specil1c charter provisions, the state reserved to itself certain regulatory powers designed to aSSure protection of the public interest; ill fact, however, charter terms found onerous by the private companies were often soon revoked or amended. In a broader sense, the legislature'S willingness to design and grant charters one by one, and to permit railroad policy to unfold piecemeal , as it were, reflected a changing conception of how "commonwealth interests" should be defined and nurtured, The most important special privilege granted to private railroad companies...