not to say luxurious, the accommodations, and
by unification enabling one to ride astonishing distances for a nickel
coin.

From the peculiar shape of the city and the converging of the
thoroughfares on Tremont Street, fronting the Common and the old
burying grounds, the space between Boylston Street and Cornhill was,
at certain hours of the day, in a painful state of congestion. Then
the stoppage of the cars, the loss of time, and the waste of temper
was something which no nineteenth century man could stand with
equanimity. How to relieve the congestion was the difficulty. Should
there be an elevated railway, or a new avenue opened through the midst
of the city? This was the question.

To this subject, Carleton gave his earnest attention. He remembered
the day when the now elegant region of the Back Bay was marsh and
water, when schooners discharged coal and lumber in that Public
Garden, which in June looks like a day of heaven on earth, and when
Tremont Street stopped at the crossing of the Boston and Albany
railway. Even as late as 1850 the population included within the
ten-mile radius of the city hall was but 267,861; in 1890, the
increase was to 841,617; and the same ratio of increase will give, in
1930, 2,700,000 souls. In 1871, seventeen million people were moved
into Boston by steam; in 1891, fifty-one millions. At the same ratio
of increase, on the opening of the twentieth century, there will be
100,000,000 persons riding in from the suburbs, and of travellers in
the street-cars, in A. D. 1910, nearly half a billion.

Carleton, the engineer and statesman, believed that neither a subway
nor an elevated railway would solve the problem. He spoke, lectured,
and wrote, in favor of a central city viaduct. For both surface and
elevated railways, he proposed an avenue eighty feet wide, making a
clear road from Tremont to Causeway Streets.

Moreover, he believed that the city should own the roads that should
transport passengers within the city limits. He was not afraid of that
kind of socialism which provides for the absolute necessities of
modern associated life. He expected great amelioration to come to
society from the breaking up and passing away of the old relics of
feudalism, as well as of the power of the privileged man as against
man, of wealth against commonwealth. He believed that transportation
within city limits should be under public ownership and control. He
therefore opposed the subway and the inco