CHAPTER 1
NEW YORK TO "THE END OF THE LINE"
Back in the early sixties, as the announcer of the arrival and
departure of trains at the old Thirtieth Street Depot, New York City,
over the Hudson River Railroad, was calling "Chicago express now
ready,'' the author of this little volume, grip in hand, was about to
follow the admonition of the greatest editor the New York Tribune ever
had - "Go West, young man !'' This particular young man had recently
graduated from the Columbia College Law School, and on account of his
health had decided to start a stock ranch on a large tract of land in
western Iowa left to him in the will of his grandfather, Judge Daniel
Cady. Think of the transformation from a law office in Nassau Street to
an isolated stock ranch on the Missouri River! While the train was
passing West Pointwe
were performing the disrobing act prior to our
taking advantage of the inventive genius of one Mr. Wagner. For eight
hours of refreshing sleep we returned thanks to mine host Wagner. As
we passed through the metropolis of the West, situated on the western
shore of Lake Michigan in that one-time bog-hole where Fort Dearborn
once stood little did I know what an important part in my
future the
Union stockyards of that great city were to play.
Upon my arrival at Chicago I got my first glimpse of the breezy West.
How different was the metropolis of the West at that time from that of
the East! How different the citizenship of State Street from that of
Broadway! Men predominated on State Street. Instead of the fashionably
dressed lady of Fifth Avenue, you met her Western sister plainly
garbed. How great the contrast between the men of the "wild and woolly
West" and those of the East! The slouch hat instead of the English
tile. Ill-fitting clothes and an unkempt appearance instead of the well
groomed. The citizens of the great and mighty West beyond mingled with
the throng. Mountaineers from the Rockies, cowboys from the plains,
stockmen from the grazing country and wheat kings from the Dakotas
rubbed shouhlers as they bustled along the thoroughfares of the great
city by the lake, the supply depot for the vast country to the West,
the recipient of the products of the States between the lakes and the
Great Divide, the greatest railroad center in America and the receiver
of more grain and stock than any city of our Union. Fortunate for me it
was that at the Sherman House - at tliat time the leading hostelry of
Cliicago - I met a gentleman whose acquaintance I formed in New York,
Mr. Dalrymple, the wheat king of the world. With him I visited the
great elevators through which the grain raised over the prairie States
passed into vessels and in them over the lakes and across the sea. We
also visited the packing houses from which the world drew its supplies.
I thought I had seen at Castle Garden in New York a motley crowd of
immigrants, but the sight I beheld at the depot of the Northwestern
Railroad capped anything I ever saw at the Battery, and the worst of it
was that the immigrant cars were being hitched onto the train I was
taking, and for some unaccountable reason they were coupled on between
the sleeper and the regular passenger coaches. What a mixture of
humanity was on that train. The regular day coaches were occupied
solely by men, the majority of them recruits from New York City and
Chicago, for some special work in the West. The effluvia from the
immigrant cars so permeated the sleeper that I spent most of the time
in the day coaches. In my young days I circulated along the Bowery and
thought I had seen a tough element, but the boys who occupied the
smoker and day coaches of that train had the Bowery left at the post.
Every one of them had anywhere from a pint to a quart of whiskey and
were playing cards, swearing and fighting the length of the cars. It
was a choice between the American citizen in the front cars and the
effluvia of the newly arrived in the immigrant portion. I wondered what
those immigrants thought of the natives of the country of which they
were about to become citizens.
After leaving Chicago as we crossed the level prairies of the State of
Illinois I recalled the great debate of those two sons of tlie Sucker
State, Lincoln and Douglas. What an example the greatest President
since Washington set of honesty both in and out of politics. Has the
greed for the almighty dollar so warped us all that we care not to
emulate his noble example? If Lincoln were alive to-day does any one
doubt where he would stand in the contest being waged between the
rights of the individual and the wrongs of the combination? How long is
the great and mighty West to be dominated by Wall Street? But the
awakening will come, and by the people and through the people. Though
legislative halls and courts fail, still it will come. I saw an
uprising once, but God forbid that I ever witness another. I refer to
what was known as the July riots of 1863 in New York City. For three
days the great City of New York was at the mercy of the mob. The police
dared not leave their precincts, the militia kept to their armories,
everybody was cowed, there was no government. I was a deputy for a
time, sworn in to protect Mayor Opdyke in his palatial residence on
Fifth Avenue. I there saw how helpless was government when the mob
arose. During one of those awful days I was the custodian of Horace
Greeley at the home of my uncle, Dr. Bayard, at 6 West Fourteenth
Street. Mr. Greeley was taken away from his own home to save his life
from an infuriated mob. Notwithstanding that Mr. Greeley was alwavs a
defender of the right, yet they sought his life. From that circumstance
I learned that no prominent person is safe when revolution breaks
forth.
What is now known as the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad was the
first railway across Iowa, and it liad rails laid at that time to the
town of Montana, now Boone, about 200 miles west of the Mississippi
River. Notwithstanding it is over forty years since I first saw that
frontier town, still I can see it to-day as vividly as when I stepped
from the train just as the sun was showing its head over the prairies
of the Hawkeye State. Daily stages started for the West, but I thought
I would tarry a day or two and look around. When I was attending
Colmnbia
College Law School in Lafayette Place, New York City, we were living on
West Forty-Fifth Street. I always walked to and from the school. My
course lay down Fifth Avenue to Broadway, and down Broadway to Astor
Place. There was nothing about Boone that reminded me of Fifth Avenue
or Broadway.
Imagine about two hundred one-story, detached, frame buildings, about
every other one a saloon, gambling-house or dance-hall, strung along a
street - simply a stretch of prairie about 60 feet in width - with not
a tree in sight, crowded with a sample of every brand of citizen from
border to border, and you can pretty nearly size up a town at ''the end
of the line." The buildings were thrown together, as it was only a
question of thirty days before they would be again moved to "the end of
the line." There was plenty of music and whiskey. Occasional fights
added to the excitement. Tall, black-mustached, rough-looking men, with
wide sombreros, their pants in their boots, armed cap-a-pie*, jostled
their way through the street looking for trouble and generally finding
it. Young officers from the government forts, dressed in the uniform of
the United States army, were sipping wine with straw-haired girls.
Indians decked out with feathers, moccasins and a blanket, were on the
still hunt for firewater to drink and dogs to eat. One of the Indians,
more successful than the others, got too much fircwater. He had shed
his blanket, and, in the garb of Adam, with the exception of feathers
on his head and moccasins on his feet, with a war-whoop, knife in hand,
undertook to carve a way up the street. Above the heads of the
retreating crowd circled a lariat, and as it settled over the red man's
shoulders it tightened, and Mr. Indian bounced behind a cowboy's pony
to the cooler.
Leaning against the bars were young men from the East, each a mother's
hope and pride, who had left their happy homes to seek their fortunes
in the new Elorado. The men behind the bar, those in front of it, and
the fellow waiting to be asked, were trying to express their views at
one and the same time. Capitalists from New York and England, with
mining engineers, were on their way to the Rockies. Unhaltered mules
wandered around the town, and every now and then some vicious cuss with
his ears back would kick a swath down the thoroughfare. I.umbering oxen
were slowly moving through the street yoked to wagons marked "U. S." -
loaded with grain and provisions for the forts and reservations. Long
lines of mule teams were constantly going down the grade carting
scrapers, grain and grub.
It is astonishing the profanity it requires to build a railroad. If
profanity were of intrinsic value and could be put in cold storage, I
heard enough of it the two days I passed in Boone to pay the dividends
on the stock of the Northwestern for generations to come. Prairie
schooners loaded with the families and household effects of sons of
toil from Indiana and Illinois were winding their way through the
outskirts of the town to accept Uncle Sam's hospitality and settle on
the plains to the westward. Herds of grass-fed cattle, smooth and fat,
were arriving from the luscious grasses of the Missouri River plateau
to be shipped to the Eastern markets, and paid-off cowboys would
ride on bucking ponies through the dance-houses shooting daylight
through the roofs. All night long ties and rails were being unloaded
from gondola and box cars. There was one great satisfaction in it all,
everybody was an American, and English the only language heard. The
immigrant from the other side had not yet driven the American from the
labor market. The sense of fair play pervaded the community, and there
was a body of citizens always standing around who took particular pains
to see that everybody, no matter who or what he was, got a square deal.
* From head to foot
Chapter 2
