k to Albany. A new
tool but the same route. In time she passed into a more modern type.
The steamboat developed, and came the canal with its mule power. How
strange it seems in these days to think of mule power ever having been
considered. Yet I have in my possession a letter to the constructing
engineer of the Erie Railroad urging that it should be operated by
horses between New York and Buffalo and giving 10 very excellent
reasons why horses were far better than steam locomotives could be. It
took a lot of argument to keep the horses off the Erie Railroad.

Came the steam locomotive. Now the rail was not new any more than the
river was new. The railroad or tramway in England is far back, earlier
than the railroad in America. There were tracks laid many years before
anybody thought of a locomotive engine. The invention lies not in the
railway but in the tool put upon it. Again the principle of the tool
to the job. Also a new principle that the way, whether it was waterway
or railway or highway must adapt itself also to the most effective
kind of tool that could be put upon it. You could apply it but
partially to the river. When canals came along later, it became
apparent that you must not only have the best tool for your waterway,
but must suit the latter also to the tool. We understand this about
railways; we have not been so clear about it as to waterways and
highways.

It is within two years that the governor of a great State has
suggested to me that the use of large motor trucks be forbidden
because they destroyed highways. I ask you if you will warrant the
removal of locomotive engines because they are made 100 tons heavier
and would break the light rail made 40 years ago? The problem is a
duplex one. The best tool must be had for the job and the opportunity
must be provided for the tool to do its work.

So the railway came along and since the mechanical engine fitted so
perfectly into the American temperament and the national needs, the
railway and the tool for the railway developed together side by side.
Still with the coming of the railroad we thought of transportation as
a unity. Highways did not amount to very much. Men went by horseback
often, because they had to, not always because they wanted to. And
after the railroad came, the waterway was all but destroyed, because
we thought of transportation as a unity of railroads. Up to a very few
years ago all of us who are not far-seeing would have thought of