Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society

• FOUR: Structure
• Chapter
• Johns Hopkins University Press
• pp. 84-105
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CHAPTER FOUR
Structure

Railroad companies began operations as soon as they possessed enough track and rolling stock to do so. Building a railroad was a costly enterprise, and whatever revenue might be obtained from operating, even over a short distance, was welcome indeed. The SCRR did not complete its initial route to Hamburg until 1833, but trains began operating much earlier than that. On January 6, 1831, the railroad announced that trains would depart Charleston at four times a day, traveling along the available track. Once operation began, railroads had to develop managerial structures to get the most out of their substantial investments. On the whole, nineteenth-century railroad corporations were highly successful in developing the managerial techniques and structure necessary to do business efficiently. As historian Alfred Chandler has argued, the “swift victory of the railway over the waterway resulted from organizational as well as technological innovation.” Chandler saw railroad corporations as integral to the “managerial revolution” in American business. Railroads were critical because they were responsible for some important “firsts,” including “the first to have a central office operated by middle managers and commanded by top managers who reported to a board of directors” and the first “to build a large organizational structure with carefully defined lines of responsibility, authority, and communication between the central office, departmental headquarters, and field units.” Although Chandler drew most of his examples from the North, southern railroads were also involved in the managerial and organizational innovations that secured the railroad’s “victory.”¹

Examining the organization and control of southern railroads reveals several key insights. First, just as southern railroads were part of a national engineering community, southern railroads were also as interested in efficient operation as their northern counterparts. Second, many of the decisions and rules laid down by railroads centered around time. Time management was crucial to the work that railroads performed, and employees were inculcated with the attitude of time’s importance. Finally, railroads developed the appropriate equipment to meet their needs. As the business of the companies expanded, so too did the quantity and quality of their rolling stock.

Organization

Chandler posited that an 1841 railroad accident in Massachusetts helped spark organizational improvement in railroads. The Western Railroad’s schedule required trains to meet twelve times each day. This happened “on a single track, without the benefit of telegraphic signals, through mountainous terrain,” and on October 5, 1841, seventeen people were injured and one conductor killed after a head-on collision. “The resulting outcry,” Chandler argued, “helped bring into being the first modern, carefully defined, internal organizational structure used by an American business enterprise.” The solution was to break down the road into geographic divisions, “and then the creation of a headquarters at Springfield to monitor and coordinate the activities of the three sets of managers.”²

Well in advance of the changes made by the Western Railroad, the SCRR introduced a similar structure: the road was broken down geographically in 1834. Workers called overseers ensured that the road was in good condition. Each overseer supervised between one and four other men and maintained eight or nine miles of road. The overseers themselves were under the charge of the two division superintendents (the road was split into eastern and western divisions at the Edisto River). Superintendents also oversaw a single “master carpenter” who could be called upon to do more extensive work than what fell under the purview of the overseers and their gangs. The SCRR’s early system meets some of Chandler’s requirements. The superintendents on the SCRR were clearly managers who were expected to organize and delegate duties to those underneath them. The SCRR’s chief engineer instructed both superintendents that their “indispensable duty” was to see that the overseers under their charge “attend faithfully, and at all times, to their respective duties.” The chief engineer expected that the superintendents would have to turn a fair amount of personal attention to this task: “It will not be sufficient that confidence is placed in the Overseer, but it will be necessary, personally to know, that his station is well attended to.” This could be accomplished only “by your constant presence on the line, going daily from station to station.” The chief engineer thus spared himself the task of caring for the entire length of the line by creating an intermediate layer of management between himself and the overseers who repaired the road. Superintendents were expected to “personally” track the progress of construction and report back to the chief engineer. The two superintendents were required to submit reports on the last Monday of every month. The report was to include the superintendent’s assessment of the “state of the road,” as well as the dates that they visited each section, directions given to the overseer, and an accounting of money spent since the last report (including a full listing of men employed and the amount they were paid). Clearly, the SCRR was interested at an early date in establishing accountability and tracking the progress of the road. Breaking the road down into manageable units and requiring the superintendents to make regular reports seemed the best way to do so.³

Railroads were also interested in accurate information from other parts of the company. The SCRR designated one officer to serve as the “agent of transportation,” and that official was responsible for “the Depositories and Agencies along the whole line.” The officer was to “make the arrangements for the proper receipt, transportation & delivery of all freight, passengers & Baggage.” Like the superintendent, he was responsible for those beneath him and had to “see that every Agent and Keeper of a Depository be diligent and attentive and keep proper accounts.” Nearly twenty years later, the Spartanburg and Union Railroad laid out similar duties for its superintendent of transportation. To ensure an accurate accounting of information, the company ordered him to “procure the necessary books & have them properly kept, … receive returns from the conductors & agents as often as may be necessary.” He was also responsible for keeping the rolling stock of the company in good condition and for reporting “the quantity & condition of the machinery & rolling stock of the Company, the number of men & hands employed in his department & the salaries & wages paid them.” Finally, he was to design “such rules & regulations as may conduce to the cheap & easy arrangement of the Transportation & the accommodation of the public,” and he held authority over all conductors, agents, engineers, the roadmaster, and their subordinates.⁴

To be sure, such systems of accounting were not flawless. John McRae of the SCRR expressed his exasperation on the difficulty of obtaining information in a series of letters in 1849. In one instance, McRae was trying to root out the source of a problem. He wrote to one of his subordinates that he was sending printed forms “to enter the information I requested you to collect for me.... The object of getting this information so much in detail is to show where the detention is and the precise amount of that detention.... Send them down as fast as you get them made out.”⁵ McRae’s correspondence also indicated that the process of obtaining information did not always work as clearly as was hoped. “Please send me a list of all the persons in the service of the Company under your charge, state their pay per day, month or year as the case may be, whether permanently or only temporarily employed, with their duties, responsibilities &c,” he wrote to N. D. Boxly, agent for the company in Camden. “Let the list be made out as on 1st August. State any changes that may have taken place since. Please also state what you consider to be your own duties and responsibilities & to what officer or officers you consider yourself immediately accountable.”⁶ Evidently, the chain of command was not functioning properly at that time, because McRae had to make a special request to the agent at Hamburg, William Magrath, for routine information: “I enclose a circular which I addressed some time ago to those whom I supposed to be the heads of departments. As neither Mr Hacker nor Mr Key claim any jurisdiction over you (except as regards your money transactions) I send you a copy. Please reply to such facts of it as relate to your division.” While such letters indicate that the goal of obtaining regular information was not always successful, it is clear that from the outset southern railroads valued the orderly collection of information and a division of labor. They needed neither accidents nor northern example to teach them such things.⁷

Time and the Railroad

Concern with order, division of labor, and accountability all characterized southern railroading. Time was another factor that permeated railroad operations. As historian Mark M. Smith has made clear, the “increasing concern with punctuality” in the antebellum South was “ushered in primarily by the railroads.” Smith correctly pointed out the value that southerners placed on punctuality and the ways in which railroads helped them reach these goals. Expanding on Smith’s analysis reveals that not all of the railroad’s time was governed by the clock, nor did the railroad control all of its own time.⁸

When antebellum southerners discussed time and the railroad, they recognized that different times were important. Clock time itself was described in many different ways. Corporations valued regularity: being able to offer services without a break, thereby building public trust that railroad service was dependable. Regularity was enshrined in schedules, and the SCRR issued a fine of five dollars to any train that departed too soon from one of six stations that had a clock in 1834, a move made “with the view of attaining the greatest possible regularity in the time of running of the Passenger Engines.”⁹ In addition to regularity (using the same times from day to day), the fining practice forced employees to be punctual—to leave and arrive at specified times. The company also demanded punctuality of passengers: in 1835 the company resolved that each car would have “a large Card” notifying passengers that during meal stops “20 minutes are allowed for Breakfast and 25 minutes for Dinner.” An early schedule published in the newspaper also reminded passengers, “Great punctuality will be observed in the time of starting.” Closely related to punctuality was coordination. In an era before trackside signals, train schedules had to be coordinated in order to ensure safety when multiple trains moved in opposing directions on a single track. The SCRR and other antebellum railroads were surprisingly successful in this regard, with few accidents stemming from coordination problems. Railroads also had to consider nonclock times. God’s time and the sanctity of Sundays mattered to Sabbatarians. Nature’s time influenced railroads as well. Agricultural production formed a large portion of the SCRR’s business, and the road had to be prepared for the onslaught of cotton during the harvesting season. Time concerns were interwoven throughout railroad work, associated with demands for efficiency, safety, speed, how workers worked, the business cycle, and how passengers interacted with the corporation.¹⁰

Time was critical in the railroad’s drive for efficiency. Railroads prided themselves on punctual and regular traveling, their much-proclaimed advantage over river transport. Timeliness was at once a necessity for safety and a wonderful piece of advertising. The dual purposes of time awareness for railroads—safety and efficiency—show up repeatedly in antebellum railroad materials. To facilitate these goals, the SCRR put up clocks at six points along the road (“at the Depositories at Charleston, Summerville, Branchville, Blackville, Aiken and Hamburg”) in April 1834, six months after the entire road was completed. In a report shortly after the clocks were installed, the company noted that the lack of a “uniform standard of time” at the different places along the road had made it necessary for the company to intervene. Given the early adoption of clocks, the company anticipated the problems of multiple trains. Although we do not know exactly how the clocks were synchronized, the railroad expressed satisfaction that the system was reliable. Just as the supervisors kept close record of the work done by their subordinates, so too did the company keep close tabs on the timed performance of its trains. Agents at the six stations with clocks were required to submit a return to the main office in Charleston as to when the trains arrived and departed. Individuals who operated trains had a responsibility for keeping them on time as well. Indeed, nowhere was time more enshrined than in the operating rules of the railroad, which governed the actions of engineers and conductors. In 1839 engineers on the SCRR were required to run their trains “as nearly according to the regulations as possible, and to arrive and depart at and from the stopping places upon the line of the Road, except in cases of unavoidable delay at the times set forth on the printed card.”¹¹

In order to ensure that such adherence took place, both conductors and engineers had a key role to play. The first two rules that the SCRR set for conductors in 1853 immediately established the importance of time management and the conductor’s role in it: “1. Each Conductor will keep a watch, which must be regulated by the time-piece at the depot in Charleston; no excuse will be received for any accident caused by his time being wrong. 2. The Conductor will always have the current schedule book in his possession, and it is his duty to see that his train runs in accordance with its rules.” The first rule made conductors individually responsible, because each had to carry a watch, and the second rule gave them ultimate authority over the train. The rules for enginemen also started with time: “1. Each engine man will keep a watch, which must be regulated by the time of his conductor at the commencement of each trip; and he will always have in his possession the current schedule book. 2. No train will leave a station before the schedule time, or without an order or signal from the conductor, and notice must be always given by the engine man before starting, by the sound of his bell or whistle.” Both employees, then, had a responsibility to keep the trains running on time.¹²

Of course, the demands of timely transport required the attention of more than just the operating crew. Stations along the road had to be prepared for the arrival of each train in order to provide wood and water. When this did not happen, time was lost. “As it is now it takes an engine 15 minutes at most of the stations to take wood and water when with proper conveniences five would be sufficient,” McRae complained to the agent at Branchville on the SCRR. “The saving of 10 minutes at six stations would be one hour.” When recommending that the Spartanburg and Union Railroad erect more water tanks, the chief engineer noted that this would have the effect of “avoid[ing] delays to the passengers.” The general superintendent of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad argued in 1855 that the lack of a water supply at Wytheville meant that the “running of the trains on several occasions has not been as prompt and regular as heretofore.”¹³

The combined efforts of running crews and workers at stations to keep trains running efficiently brought substantial advantages to the SCRR and other southern railroads because it meant that multiple trains could be operated on a single track. Railroads could spend their funds improving that track instead of the much higher cost of building a second track. The SCRR reported with satisfaction in 1837 that running multiple trains on a single track required only “a system of arrangement, which a little experience will suggest.” As the company grew in knowledge, so too it grew in confidence. In 1837 the company could declare, “Less interruption in passing has occurred the present season, when 5 or 6 trains are met on the road, than with half the number, in years past, when the subject was not so well understood, and the accommodations incomplete.” The system of clocks and a trained, accountable staff had proved sufficient for the company to run multiple trains nearly without incident.¹⁴

Indeed, the success of railroads at time management helps explain why railroads were so slow in adopting another technology—the telegraph. Railroads across the country were slow to adopt the telegraph, and southern railroads fit this pattern. In 1849 the SCRR paid $1,224 to the Washington and New Orleans Telegraph Company for “keeping the line in order.” Few details about the relationship are extant. Not until 1856 did the SCRR announce that it was opening a telegraph office in Branchville, the junction where tracks departed for Hamburg and Columbia. Other railroads also developed relationships with telegraph companies in the late antebellum era: the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad in 1857; the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad, NCRR, and East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad in 1858; and the RDRR in 1859. The telegraph was slowly adopted because at the time of its introduction it solved a problem that railroads did not have—or did not solve any problem significantly enough to be worth the cost. Time management was firmly under their control.¹⁵

Northern railroads also valued time and efficiency. When the Pennsylvania Railroad eliminated some of the inclined planes over the Allegheny Mountains, it calculated the savings in terms of time: it would take three hours to pass through the mountains instead of six or seven. When comparing the ability of the railroad to canals, the company emphasized that, “in this age of steam and electricity, time is too important an element in its effects upon the cost of transportation, to be overlooked.” The speed with which the railroad could carry passengers and freight, particularly perishable freight, meant that these sorts of items would be obtained by the railroad “without competition.”¹⁶

Like southern railroads, northern railroads prided themselves on establishing regular service at an early date. In June 1837 the Boston and Worcester Railroad reported that during the past year “passenger trains continue to run with regularity twice a day,” and in the winter “there were only three days, on which the cars did not run through the road.” Freight trains were also sent regularly—“as many trains daily as are necessary for taking promptly all the freight which is offered.” Northern employees also paid the consequences for not making the schedule. Mr. Gleason, an engineer with the Boston and Worcester Railroad, was suspended in 1850 for several reasons, but “his tardiness in starting” was listed first. Thus, in their pursuit of efficiency, southern railroads were fully in step with their northern counterparts. Southern and northern companies alike understood that operating in the manner that saved time would be important to their constituents, be they Pennsylvania merchants or South Carolina planters.¹⁷

Admonitions about obeying time rules were successful in preventing deadly accidents. Time mismanagement caused few major, deadly accidents in the antebellum era. In his analysis of major accidents nationwide, historian Ian Bartky counted only three (out of forty-two accidents from 1840 to 1859) that could be attributed to time mismanagement.¹⁸ Part of this success stemmed from the fact that railroad companies managed the speed at which railroads operated. Although railroads promised speedier travel than other forms of transit, they did not simply pursue high speed for its own sake. As civil engineer Horatio Allen noted in 1831, the rate of fuel consumption (and its concomitant expense) would rise with the speed of a train. That same year, the SCRR notified the public that trains would travel at fifteen miles per hour when carrying one freight car and passengers, twelve miles per hour when carrying two freight cars and passengers, and ten miles per hour when carrying three freight cars and passengers.¹⁹

While these speeds may not seem spectacular to modern-day readers, contemporary passengers were impressed. “A Country Stockholder” wrote about his experiences on the SCRR in 1831:

We got into the Cars, and really Mr. Editor, we were “rattled” along at such a rate I did not think to time her in going up; but in coming down, I timed to a second. We had three cars, and upwards of fifty passengers, and were 20 minutes 37 seconds, exclusive of stoppages, in performing the 5 miles. This is an average of nearly 15 miles per hour—on some of the strait parts of the road, the speed must have been at the rate of 20 miles. As I got off the Car at the Lines, I said to myself, our Horses that are “worn out,” don’t work in this way.²⁰

Interestingly, the “Country Stockholder” brought a watch to time the journey; he came well prepared to judge for himself the effectiveness of this new form of transportation. Time management was important to southerners, and the “Country Stockholder” knew that measuring the time of travel would be a way to measure the railroad’s success.²¹

Speeds were increased by 1839, when the SCRR updated its rules, but safety was still paramount; the passenger train was not allowed to run “over 25 miles per hour.” The freight engine was limited to sixteen miles per hour. Engineers were also instructed “not to run past turnouts and gates at a speed exceeding four miles per hour”; to reinforce this stricture, engineers were reminded they were “liable for all property injured or destroyed by their Engines.”²² But engineers sometimes broke the rules on speed in order to make up time. When the SCRR’s trestlework over the Wateree Swamp collapsed in 1850, McRae claimed that engineers had gone too fast over the trestlework, which damaged the joints and led to collapse. “The freight engines on the SoCa Road were constructed to run an average speed of six miles an hour & I know that they have been running for six or seven months past at more than double this speed,” fumed McRae. He charged that engineers took advantage of the fact that the trestlework “was a nice smooth level piece of road” in order to make up their time. In this case, they did so at their peril.²³

Speeds were adjusted for other reasons, such as regulations of cities in which the railroads operated. The RFPRR encountered this problem in Richmond. The company was not required to switch to horses while operating within the city, but the city limited the train speed to four miles per hour. Railroad companies could also alter speeds for trains running at night. Finally, railroad engineers also had to take care when they went around areas of the road that were being repaired. Not everyone did so, as noted in John McRae’s 1850 complaint that a “passenger train was running at great speed over the place where the contractor was laying new rails when one of the cars was thrown off the track & broken probably on account of the speed.”²⁴

Although railroads grew in technological sophistication as the antebellum era progressed, that did not mean that speeds necessarily increased. This lack of speed was not a reflection of the South’s slower-paced society; rather, companies continued to limit the speeds of their trains to prevent damaging equipment and to lessen the risks to passengers. The East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad reported to its stockholders in 1859 that it felt that its schedule was too tight: it allotted seven and a half hours to travel 130 miles, which, allowing for stops for the mail, wood and water, and a meal for passengers, meant that trains had to average more than twenty-one miles per hour. But this rate could not be maintained on the “heavy grades and short curves” of the road, and so engineers made up the time by going faster when they could, as high as thirty-five miles an hour, and also by running at night. The company sensed the danger of risking too fast a speed.²⁵

Limiting speed for the sake of safety was also a concern for northern companies. The Pennsylvania Railroad noted that “regularity and certainty of connections are of more importance than high speed in the transportation of passengers.” Moreover, running trains at unnecessarily high speeds would lead to damage to the machinery and increase the danger to passengers. Northern railroads also cautioned their drivers against going too fast. Superintendent George Stark of the Nashua and Lowell Railroad informed one of his agents that he had heard that trains leaving his station were “often obliged to move at a dangerous speed. ‘The run between Tewsbury and Wilmington was made this morning in 9½ minutes.’” Stark reproached the agent: “I trust that you will give the necessary directions for correcting these inequalities.” Engineers on the Boston and Lowell Railroad were instructed to “Remember in all cases of doubt or uncertainty, to take the safe course, and run no risks.” Safety trumped pure speed.²⁶

But the railroad was a victim of its own success; by the end of the antebellum era, passengers had higher expectations of speed. Engineers recognized that people expected to move quickly but had to balance these desires with the need for safety. The balance was summed up perfectly by the surveyor of the Savannah and Albany Railroad in 1853:

It is proverbial that we live in a fast age, (until that term has degenerated, to convey the idea of recklessness, it is true,) a speed with which we were astonished a few years since, now falling far short of the public momentum. This growing feeling in favor of higher speeds in Rail-Road travelling, should, as far as possible, however, be checked. But a rival line, whose success will, by the public, be made to depend upon taking the passenger to his destination twenty minutes earlier than a competing line, will ever foster this feeling and this tendency.... Nevertheless, I would not be understood as advancing the opinion that our Roads have reached the maximum speed compatible with safety. Machinery is becoming more perfect, as well as roads, and these improvements may and will advance together, until a speed, the highest yet attained, will doubtless be found compatible with safety.²⁷

The engineer had a paramount concern for safety but also conceded that the “maximum speed compatible with safety” had not yet been reached, and that technology would provide a way for higher—and safe—speed.

Scheduling was central to the railroad’s efforts to provide punctuality and regularity, and it made possible the coordination necessary for railroad work. Scheduling also helps us understand power relationships between the railroad and its customers. Schedules gave a stark answer to the question: “Am I important enough that the train will stop for me?” Railroads set up schedules quickly after they opened to the public. The SCRR announced such a schedule for trains leaving Charleston in January 1831: “The times of leaving the stations in Line-street, will be 8 o’clock and 10 A. M. at 1 and at half past 3 o’clock P. M. Parties may be accommodated at the intermediate hours by agreeing with the Engineer. Great punctuality will be observed in the time of starting.”²⁸ This early schedule showed some flexibility: while there were definite times of departure, passengers were also “accommodated” if they talked to the engineer. Other railroads set stricter schedules at an early date. The Tuscumbia, Courtland and Decatur Railroad declared in 1833 that “the cars shall leave Tuscumbia for the river with cotton at precisely the following hours 6–8–10–12–2&4 O’Clock, and return at 7–9–11–1–3&5 O’Clock.” Other early railroads had multiple trips in one day. The Richmond and Petersburg Railroad ran “three trips … in each direction” every day. The Ponchartrain Railroad also ran its cars quite often: “Traffic on this railroad is significant,” reported Franz Anton Ritter von Gerstner. “In the summer, trains depart every hour from each end, beginning at 4:30 A.M. and continuing until 9:30 P.M. In the winter the same frequency of service is maintained between 6:30 A.M. and 7:30 P.M. On Sundays, extra trips are also made.” Southern railroads created ambitious schedules for themselves and took enough care when scheduling to maintain safety.²⁹

In addition to the scheduled stops at established stations, unscheduled stops were possible but did not always work out. Blair Bolling complained in 1836 that, “in spite of a promise to stop for me and my loudest effort to make them hear me,” the train passed by “at a rate of about 20 miles per hour,” forcing him to secure the loan of a horse. Bolling faced similar problems a few days later and described himself as “disappointed and somewhat vexed as we had been promised by one of the managers that he would certainly stop for us.”³⁰

In order to secure freight from planters along the road, trains of the SCRR stopped at planters’ residences “as a matter of accommodation.” People or businesses could also get the train to meet them on their time by building a siding for the railroad’s use. The Memphis and Charleston Railroad laid out some general principles for the building of such turnouts in 1854. Individuals or companies who wanted these sidings were required to build and maintain them at their own expense. Cars had to be moved onto the private turnout “within ten minutes after they are dropped.” Holders of the private turnout could be fined twenty-five dollars for any violation of the rules, and repeated violation would lead to discontinuing the siding. In this way, the railroad could increase its business, but the individual would bear the costs of building the turnout.³¹

Time regulations on railroads did not just apply to those who were operating the trains. Indeed, the effects rippled outward to other portions of the company. The SCRR’s board of directors even applied the standards of punctuality to its own actions, establishing rules for its members whereby “The Directors shall meet at the Rail Road Office every Thursday Evening at the first Bell Ring.” Moreover, the treasurer and president of the company were required to be in the office between 9:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. in order to oversee the business of the company. The secretary was required to be present from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from 4:00 p.m. to sunset. The Georgia Railroad also demanded in 1841 that members of the board set their watches to that of the president. After a ten-minute grace period, they were fined two cents per minute for tardiness, up to one dollar. For corporations that demanded workers place a high value on time, management practiced what it preached.³²

Workers in the shops also found their time tightly regulated. The SCRR promulgated the following rules in 1839: “The working hours in the shops and yard shall commence at 7 A.M. from March 1st to Oct 1st and shall be reckoned at 10 hours, and from October 1st to March 1st at half past 7 A.M. and end at sunset, one hour to be allowed for dinner, and to be fixed by the Master of the Workshops. There shall be 8 minutes recess at 10 A.M. and 8 minutes recess at 3 P.M. The calling on and off to and from work, shall be indicated by the ringing of the bell.” Stipulations were also in place for tardiness. “Persons not at work five minutes after bell ring in the morning and after dinner will be considered as absent until notice be given the clerk of the workshops. No time allowed after recesses.”³³

As important as schedules were, railroads operated with multiple times, and not all of them were governed solely by the clock. Hardworking train crews learned that their jobs were governed by the length of the task at hand, not simply by the clock. As noted, some workers in the SCRR shops ended their work “at sunset.” Other workers labored long hours regardless of the time. McRae informed one stationmaster that engineers were already overworked and could not be held responsible for shuttling trains around the station: “A moments reflection will convince you that after being on duty for 15 to 30 hours on a stretch it is not reasonable to expect more from them.” His sympathy also went out to another engineer, who he commended to the SCRR’s president for delivering timber and working “early and late in good and bad weather and two nights out of the three that he was here I know he did not get home until 9 P.M. after discharging the last load of the day.” The presence of schedules did not absolve these railroad employees from some task-oriented labor.³⁴

Overwork could also affect the clerks of the railroad. One detailed complaint of overwork came from S. D. Watkins, the secretary and treasurer of the Southside Railroad, who resigned from his position in 1855. Watkins was frustrated that when he asked for an assistant “the Board postponed action on the subject. I toiled all day and many nights until 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning, but found it utterly impossible for me or any other person to keep the Books up with the hindrances I had.” In October Watkins was bedridden for two weeks and made up the annual account while lying in bed. He took little time off for personal business, and when he did so, he “travelled day and night (including Sunday) in order that I might not do injustice to the Company.” Although Watkins had evidently been offered a lesser position, he wrote that he could not in any case handle “the night labor necessary to keep the business up, although I should be willing to work diligently during the day.” But the straw that broke the camel’s back was that Watkins now found himself accused of being “too slow.”³⁵

Other clerks worked long hours; bookkeeper John Glass noted that he had time to write to his family only at night, because there was so much business to deal with during the day. But some clerks were rewarded for their long hours. John Gros, the clerk in the SCRR’s workshops, received a $200 increase in salary after pointing out to the board of directors his extensive time in the office: “from 5 oclock a.m. to 6 p.m. and some times to 9 p.m. also frequently on Sundays.”³⁶

If clerks toiled through the night, operating crews also found themselves running trains after the sun went down. Obviously, the chief challenge to night operations was getting a reliable light source. Horatio Allen recalled that the ability to operate trains at night was desired by early railroad companies: “That the locomotive was to be used in the night, and during the whole night, was plainly to be anticipated.” Therefore, he undertook a trial, probably around 1829 or 1830, to place a primitive headlight in front of the engine:

For such trial two platform cars were placed in front of the locomotive. On the forward platform was placed an inclosure of sand, and on the sand a structure of iron rods somewhat of urn shape. In this structure was to be kept up a fire of pine-wood knots. Suitable signals as to the rate of speed, etc., were provided. The day preceding the evening of the trial closed in with as heavy a fog as I have ever seen, and I have seen a first-class London fog. But the fog did not prevent the trial when the appointed time came. The country to be run through was a dead level, and on the surface rested this heavy fog; but just before we were ready to start, the fog began to lift and continued to rise slowly and as uniformly as ever curtain left surface of stage, until about eighteen feet high; there it remained stationary, with an under surface as uniform as the surface it had risen from. This under surface was lit up with radiating lines in all directions with prismatic colors, presenting a scene of remarkable brilliancy and beauty. Under this canopy, lit on its under surface, the locomotive moved onward with a clearly illuminated road before it; the run was continued for some five miles, with no untoward occurrence, and I had reason to exclaim, “The very atmosphere of Carolina says, ‘Welcome to the locomotive.’”³⁷

While we know little about the technology that followed Allen’s early experiment, it is clear that railroads were running trains at night in the earliest years of railroad development. Sometimes it was not by choice: going after a car with a broken axle in 1837, some laborers on the RFPRR left at 10:30 one evening and returned at 5:15 the next morning. Workers could not avoid night work when emergencies struck.³⁸

Some railroads scheduled night service in the first decade of southern railroading, the RFPRR doing so in 1839. Traveling observer von Gerstner reported that “the company began to schedule a train departure from Fredericksburg between 1 and 2 o’clock in the morning, so that passengers and mail sacks arriving from the north would be expedited farther without delay.” He also noted that the Georgia Railroad instituted night trains by 1839 in order to accommodate the Post Office Department. The CRRG ran night trains at least by 1842, when the company noted that it had “been remarkably successful in our night running; no accident of any importance to the trains has occurred; and their regularity has been fully equal to that of the day trains.” Stockholders approved of night running as a way to increase the return on their investment. A resolution offered at a LCCRR stockholders meeting in 1842 declared that “the large amount of capital invested in our Roads ought not to be idle if employment offers, and that freight trains ought to be run by night as well as day, if adequate freight can be had.”³⁹

Railroad employees expressed some concern about running night trains. John McRae fretted in 1850 that night travel not only required double pay for the workers but kept the engines under constant use, wearing them out. His arguments were to no avail. In August 1851 the SCRR introduced a night express freight and passenger train. The train was introduced “to expedite freight … and the result has more than realised expectations.” The superintendent of transportation and motive power noted that shipments out of Charleston were regularly handled at night and in the morning: “The up Freights have been uniformly and regularly sent off night and morning for the whole season just as fast as the goods have been received.” The demand for making full use of the tracks was clearly met by solutions allowing trains to operate at night.⁴⁰

In later years, the SCRR reported that its night service had been curtailed but not eliminated: in 1856 freight was removed from the night train in order to allow it to reach its destination faster. The annual report also noted that passengers on the night train, which arrived in Charleston at 2:00 a.m., had no services available to them at the depot there, although the company was attempting to rectify this situation. The following year, the company announced that “both day and night trains have preserved their respective schedule with perfect safety to the traveling public, and with almost undeviating punctuality in their terminal connections,” meaning that the night service continued through that year.⁴¹

Governing Railroad Work

Southern corporations governed a wide range of employee behavior. Rulebooks proscribed certain activities and demanded others. Although all railroads clearly had some sort of rules for employees to follow, not many complete books have survived to the present day. Enough evidence is present, however, to help us understand how the companies expected their employees to act and the different jobs that made up railroad work.

One common rule was a prohibition against alcohol. The East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad attributed its success to the “strict temperance” demanded of all employees. “Touch not, taste not, handle not, ardent spirits, is our motto, whilst in the employ of the company,” the ETVRR declared. The Spartanburg and Union informed potential employees that only men of “sober steady habits” would work as engineers. Likewise, the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad claimed that the “simple rule” prohibiting railroad employees from using liquor “proves to be more salutary in protecting life and property than whole volumes of Company by laws or legislative enactments.” Such admonitions were not always effective. Henry Bird, a civil engineer working in Petersburg, found on one occasion that after taking a ride on the train the engineer was “in the 5th Heaven, that is to say drunk as the very devil.” Other passengers turned to Bird for assistance. Bird obliged and “threw the drunken villain from the engine bestowing a kick or two on him by way of finishing his frolic; and after administering every one to take care of his neck I took charge myself. I blistered and blackened my hands but gained immortal honour among the innocents who fancy an engine as little less than the devil.”⁴²

Northern and southern railroads alike tried to prevent their employees from using alcohol. The Boston and Worcester Railroad required in 1834 that “no person be employed to take charge of the Engines, or of the cars or to act in any other situation in the service of this corporation, who shall not wholly abstain from the use of ardent spirits.” In 1839 the Western Railroad decreed that “no intoxicating liquor shall be kept for sale or consumption, at any of the depots or stopping-places for passengers.” The rulebook of the Nashua and Lowell Railroad stated: “No one will be employed or continued in employment, who is known to be in the habit of drinking ardent spirits. The sale of liquors of any sort at the Refreshment Rooms at the Station Houses, is strictly prohibited.” Thus, in making the demand for sobriety, southern railroads took the Whiggish position that employers had the right to enforce temperance on their employees. Northern temperance advocates applied pressure to bosses to “assert moral authority over men,” and they received a positive response from “those merchants and masters who considered themselves respectable.” Southern railroad companies also felt that they could establish such moral authority over their employees.⁴³

The position of conductor carried with it a special prestige and responsibility. Conductors were responsible for order on the train. They served as the public face of the railroad corporation and had daily contact with hundreds of passengers and shippers. Thus, a conductor on the Spartanburg and Union Railroad was to “be affable & kind to his passengers, paying strict attention to their comfort & accommodation & be held responsible for the safe keeping & proper delivery of their baggage, use all proper efforts to instruct passengers not to stand upon the platforms between the cars while in motion & observe the utmost care & attention for their safety & the presentation of the property of the Company.” Some conductors acquitted themselves quite well in this regard. Traveler Solon Robinson commented that conductors on the SCRR in 1850 were “among the most gentlemanly, well-bred, kind and accommodating officers of my acquaintance.” In addition to their public duties, conductors also performed other tasks. The SURR instructions provided that the conductor held authority over brakemen and was to examine the train at each station to “see that it is properly oiled & in good condition.” Finally, he was to make a daily report “keeping the time of all hands employed on the train & of the business done & of any matter that may be of interest to the company.” Conductors were to report any “mail failures,” reasons that the train was detained, or dead stock.⁴⁴

Such rules compared to those used in the North. In 1857 the Boston and Lowell Railroad declared that conductors had the duty to “be in possession of correct time, carefully regulated by the Standard Clock at Boston, and it will be the duty of the conductor of the first way passenger train out of Boston, each morning, to give the correct time to each station that he stops at upon the line.” Conductors were also responsible for telling “the Engineman where to stop and when to start, and will see that the train is run as near the Table-time as possible. Each Conductor must report daily, according to the form furnished, the number of passengers carried on his train, each way, the number entering at each station, the amount of fare collected, and the number and names of persons passed free.... He must also report the name of the Engine, Engineman, fireman, Baggage and Brakemen, together with the time of starting and arrival, and in case of accident or delay, must state the cause thereof and the injury to cars or persons, if any.” In the North and the South, conductors held authority over their trains and were expected to supply their corporations with data on train operations.⁴⁵

Just as they were scrutinized by the railroads and the public, conductors themselves had to have careful eyes: they routinely had to deal with counterfeit money. The SCRR decided in 1835 that “whenever counterfeit Bills are received, hereafter, that they be laid before the Board for their decision.” Two years later, the board agreed to reimburse conductor William Bartlett for a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. Other conductors were not as fortunate. Thomas E. Sims, a conductor on the Richmond and Danville Railroad, asked the board of directors to allow him twenty dollars to make up for a counterfeit note that he had accepted. The board did so but also passed a resolution declaring that “this action is not to be considered a precedent for the future action of the Board.” Conductors were evidently supposed to learn that they were on their own when it came to counterfeit money.⁴⁶

Because of their close contact with travelers, conductors left an impression— positive and negative—with the traveling public. Sometimes conductors were quite helpful. Mary Boyce found out from a train conductor that “our cousin Phil had gone on his way to Alabama.” But conductors could also seem capricious in their authority. Anna Calhoun Clemson reported that a conductor had refused to let passengers out at a platform near a plantation and forced them to get off at a depot. The passengers then attempted to hire a ride, but when that took them only partway, they were forced to walk and arrived at their destination “muddied up to their knees.” The conductor’s authority, when abused, could produce poor results for travelers.⁴⁷

Equipping the Company

Railroads required a variety of equipment to meet the needs of their business. Companies needed multiple engines in order to make multiple concurrent trips on the same line and to keep operations going in the event of engines breaking down. When the SCRR opened, it owned nine engines with the expectation of receiving more. Three engines were passenger engines that operated between Charleston and the inclined plane at Aiken. The engines rested in Charleston every third day after making the 230-mile round trip. Each pulled four passenger carriages and some combination of baggage and freight cars. A fourth engine shuttled passengers from Aiken to Hamburg. Five engines were employed to carry freight. Four engines carried freight between Aiken and Charleston; the last took freight from Aiken to Hamburg. Whereas the Hamburg could pull twenty-five cars and made the round trip in four days, the other engines pulled between eight and fifteen cars and could make the round trip in three days. Engines appear to have been under the care of specific engineers—the company report listed the name of the engineer after each engine.⁴⁸ At the end of 1834, the SCRR owned twelve locomotives: four from New York; two built in the company’s own shops; two from Liverpool; and one apiece from Newcastle, Leeds, Philadelphia, and Charleston. The company continued to acquire motive power throughout the antebellum era. In 1851 the company reported that it owned thirty-seven locomotives, ranging in length of service from fifteen years to one month. Three of these engines had been built in the shops of the company.⁴⁹

Railroads had special cars to carry freight. Although the design of American freight cars remained largely unchanged throughout the antebellum period, there were two important innovations during that time: uncovered cars were replaced by covered cars, and double-truck eight-wheeled cars supplanted single-truck four-wheeled cars. The eight-wheeled design allowed the load to be spread over a wider area, and the two trucks meant that the longer cars could still manage curves. Boxcars generally “had an 8- to 10-ton capacity, an arch roof, wood-beam trucks, no truss rods, and a body length of 24 to 28 feet.” In 1849 John McRae reported that freight cars used by the SCRR were “30 ft long 9 ft wide & 6 ft high to outside of frame.” Freight cars were locked to prevent stealing, but McRae’s letters indicate that such efforts were not always effective. “Our cars are so much pilfered,” he complained to a colleague. “Who makes your lock? Have you a spare one you could send me as a sample?”⁵⁰

While boxcars changed relatively little, more detail is available on passenger cars. According to historian John White, a “typical car of 1840 had a rectangular body rarely over 30 feet long by 8½ feet wide. Before 1845 the glass windows were generally stationary, with sliding panels for ventilation. The ceiling was low, providing headroom of just over 6 feet. The seats were closely spaced and had narrow cushions and low backs.” Contemporaries confirm many parts of this description and also provide some additional detail. S. R. Burford recalled early passenger cars in Alabama, around 1836: they “had no platform at the end. There was only one step about one foot above the ground for getting in and out. The wheels were low and I suppose there were no springs, as the car bed was low down.” Traveler Mary Moragne peeked inside some railroad cars in 1838 and declared that “there was nothing which struck me as remarkable— the ladies apartment has curtains for every two or three seats,— & the gentlemen’s have bills stuck up [re]questing them not to smoke.”⁵¹

Europeans recognized that American cars were different from the ones they rode in their home countries, so they provided lengthy descriptions. Charles Lyell wrote that a car he rode in North Carolina in 1841 was “according to the usual construction in this country … in the shape of a long omnibus, with the seats transverse, and a passage down the middle, where, to the great relief of the traveller, he can stand upright with his hat on, and walk about, warming himself when he pleases at the stove, which is in the centre of the car. There is often a private room fitted up for the ladies, into which no gentleman can intrude, and where they are sometimes supplied with rocking-chairs, so essential to the comfort of the Americans, whether at sea or on land, in a fashionable drawing-room or in the cabin of a ship.”⁵² German emigrant Louis Heuser described first-class accommodation on railroads in Virginia in 1852: “The first class was extremely well furnished; it is possible to walk from one side to the other, and on the sides are comfortable easy chairs for lounging. Inside the entrance is a place for smoking and across from it is a buffet. At each station a Negro came aboard with water, as well as boys with fruit. In this country women can undertake long journeys alone without the slightest fear.”⁵³

Figure 6 shows a Delaware-built car on the Charleston and Savannah Railroad dating from 1860. It illustrates the design that caught the eye of European travelers: a central aisle running the length of the car, with seating on either side. The drawing also illustrates how cars progressed from Burford’s time. Now, platforms stood at the end of each car, with steps provided to aid the traveler in getting on and off. And a ladies’ compartment afforded female travelers some privacy. Although the interior decoration is not revealed by this drawing, some attention was paid to the appearance of the outside, as there is decorative work on the outside corners and the doorframe, as well as paneling on the door and two windows with rounded tops.

Some evidence indicates that passenger cars must have been somewhat colorful or even ornate, but unfortunately few detailed descriptions of color and ornamentation have survived.⁵⁴ William Harden reported that the CRRG employed an “ornamental painter,” although precisely for how long he was so employed and what work he did are unclear. John McRae ordered two passenger cars from a northern company in 1849, specifying that they should be “perfectly plain painted claret color in the best style.” McRae also noted, “Curtains do not answer as well as blinds in our climate & it will be desirable that blinds be used in those made for us if done at an additional cost.” Evidently the color was not correct, because McRae later complained that the company’s president “would have preferred that they had been painted claret colour like one that struck his fancy on your Road.”⁵⁵

Figure 6. Drawing of a passenger car created by the Harlan and Hollingsworth Car Company of Wilmington, Delaware, for the Charleston and Savannah Railroad, December 1860. The bird’s-eye view shows a separate compartment for ladies in the upper right-hand corner. Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.

Beyond color, the SCRR balked at spending too much money on what it viewed as unnecessary ornamentation. In 1850 President James Gadsden noted that although passenger cars were slightly more durable and were not as exposed to the heavy abuse that freight cars were, the ornamental portions of the passenger cars, constructed of wood, were liable to deteriorate quickly. Gadsden charged that cars of “northern importation” were “too gaudy and ornamental in the interior finish and unnecessarily expensive.” He urged the company to purchase passenger cars that were “equally as commodious, fully as tasty and neat, [and] without unnecessary ornament.” But not everyone agreed with Gadsden. The shops of the Georgia Railroad turned out a sleeping car that included “black-walnut paneling, scarlet plush-covered seats, and drawing room furniture.” In short, southern railroads were not necessarily dingy affairs but made an effort to let their passengers travel in style and comfort.⁵⁶

Other specialty cars turn up in the historical literature. As early as 1839, the RFPRR owned a car “designed for night travel,” which featured “swivel chairs in which the passengers can sleep comfortably during the trip.” In 1847 Thomas Hobbs wrote that he was able to sleep all night in the train, thanks to “comfortable berths like a steamboat.” The CRRG told stockholders that it would need “ten fruit cars” in 1859. Such cars, the company noted, “will answer admirably for other freight, particularly for carrying horses and other stock.” The Southside Railroad reported that when its forty-two “rock cars” were finished with their work hauling rock, they could be “converted into box and flat cars for the regular transportation of the road.”⁵⁷

Perhaps the most unique item manufactured locally by the SCRR was the patented barrel car (see figure 7). These barrel-shaped cars were used to carry both passengers and freight. The company claimed in 1843 that barrel cars “cost about half the expense of the square car of the same capacity, are much more durable, and require less repairs, and if thrown from the Road are not so liable to be broken.” To verify this final claim, the company rolled a car loaded with cotton down a hill, and the car was injured only by the “carelessness” of the workers who attempted to right the car and return it to the rails. When carrying passengers, the design had many advantages: it kept passengers out of the dust and sun, made them “warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer,” and provided more room for small baggage. Although the car was never widely adopted, the company still retained at least one, as McRae noted in 1850: “I am sorry we cannot send you the old barrel car just now. We have recently got so many of our passenger and baggage cars broken that we have no other than the barrel to carry negroes.”⁵⁸

Contemporary travelers sometimes commented that much of the rolling stock used in the South was of northern origin, explicitly or implicitly criticizing the South’s lack of industry and innovation. Frederick Law Olmsted wrote after his travels to the South that the “locomotives that I saw were all made in Philadelphia; the cars were all from Hartford, Conn., and Worcester, Mass., manufactories, and, invariably, elegant and comfortable.” Such statements should be treated with caution. Although cars and engines may have been built outside the South, they had doubtless long since been cared for, repaired, or improved locally.⁵⁹

The SCRR relied on its own shops for construction and repair at an early date. In May 1834 the road owned ninety freight cars and was building eight new cars every week. Within a few years, the SCRR noted that although it spent slightly more money on wages, less money was spent on machinery when it was manufactured and repaired in-house. Other companies found similar advantages. Von Gerstner reported that the CRRG had manufactured much of its own rolling stock: “As of the spring of 1840,” the company had “6 eight-wheeled passenger coaches; 2 eight-wheeled baggage cars; and about 25 freight cars, some with roofs. All these cars were built in the company’s shops.” The CRRG once “ordered 50 Box Cars built at once in our shops, by Mr. C. C. Millar, Master Carpenter,” and bragged that it had built “in our shops, two first class passenger, two second do. and baggage, three express, eight conductors, four stock, two fruit, and one negro sleeping car, at a cost of about $27,500.”⁶⁰

Figure 7. Barrel car patented by George S. Hacker, January 21, 1841. Patent 1937. United States Trade and Patent Office, Washington D.C.

Other companies saw that there was an advantage to local work. The East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad resolved in 1851 that the company should start to build its own freight and second-class passenger cars. The Southwestern Railroad expressed the same desires and reported, “We are now equipped … so as to be able to perform, with economy and dispatch, all necessary repairs to our motive power and cars, as well as to manufacture our own freight cars.” As the company claimed, “The manufacture of freight cars, in our own shops, will be continued to meet the increasing demand of our business.” The Southside Railroad went even further, opening its own foundry for the manufacture of locomotives and passenger cars. In sum, southern railroads recognized the cost savings of constructing their own rolling stock, and, while making use of northern manufacturers, were not completely dependent on these companies for their equipment.⁶¹

Southern railroads went in to their new businesses knowing that structure and organization would be critical in making their ventures a success. To that end, they set up their businesses in ways that would provide for accountability. Conductors and superintendents generated a trail of paperwork that allowed the corporation to track performance.

Contemporary railroaders understood how important time management was to railroad operations. Time infused the rhetoric of railroad promoters, was a guarantor of safety, and was the constant obsession of railroad employees. Southern railroads were quick to master the importance of time, as demonstrated by the SCRR’s adoption of clocks along the route. Corporations also demonstrated control over their employees through rules and regulations, and they used a range of specialized equipment to capture the passenger and freight trade along their routes.

While southern railroads may not have handled the volume of traffic that their northern counterparts did, an examination of their operating practices demonstrates that they were in step when it came to management. Though smaller in scale, southern railroads still valued efficiency, time management, and bureaucratic accountability.