CHAPTER VII. ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES BOWEN-1841 TO 1843. I. A GOLDEN Opportunity THROWN AWAY: The Fatal Mistake that Made Possible All of Erie's Subsequent Woes — But for that Mistake there would be no Vanderbilt Kingdom, and the History of Wall Street and of Railroads in this Country would have been Entirely Different All of the Present Great Terminal Possessions of the Vanderbilt System at Forty-second Street in New York City might have been Erie's by a Nod of the Head and the Outlay of Less than $90,000! - The Offer not Accepted. II. GETTING RESULTS, GOOD AND BAD: Rosy Prognostications on the Threshold of Disaster - The Company's Treasury again Empty -- And Owes $3,000,000 to the State - Politics, the Press, and the Erie Question — Futile Aid Meetings in New York - The State Turns its Back, and the Company Assigns - The Railroad Advertised for Sale, but the Sale Postponed by Action of a Special Session of the Legislature. I. A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY THROWN AWAY. JAMES BOWEN, who was then Vice-President and Treasurer, was elected to succeed Eleazar Lord as President of the Company, and he had the honor and glory of presiding on the historic occasion when the first portion of the New York and Erie Railroad was opened for traffic, although it was through no direct effort of his that the work had progressed thus far. Others who had been striving and hoping for years for even this consummation of the long-laid plans had no active part in the event. Upon many such not even the courtesy of being an invited guest was bestowed. Mr. Bowen was a native of New York City, a man of wealth, a member of the Union Club, and of the Kent Club, famous in that day, in which James Watson Webb, Moses H. Grinnell, Richard M. Blatchford, and similar spirits, were conspicuous. President Bowen was a leader in that coterie, and was especially an intimate of General Webb. latter had supported the New York and Erie project in his paper, The New York Courier and Inquirer, from the beginning, and it was as a friend of his that James Bowen entered the Directory of the Company, and through his influence that Bowen was advanced to the Presidency. The So far as the public knew, the affairs of Erie were easy. Work was actively progressing all along the line. On the Eastern Division it had reached a stage so near completion that it was only a matter of a few weeks when the track would be laid the entire distance between Piermont and Goshen and the rail Already road put in operation. In fact, a month after Bowen became President, a train was run between Piermont and Ramapo, a distance of twenty miles. the fact that, even with the railroad in operation on the Eastern Division, its Eastern terminus would still be nearly twenty-five miles from New York City, which distance was to be overcome by steamboat between the city and Piermont, began to excite much discussion, and the advantage that would. accrue to the Company if it might have the terminus at or near New York became apparent to observant people who gave the matter thought. "A railroad that begins twenty-five miles away from the place it was chartered to bring into communication with some other place," the Hon. Francis Granger remarked in opposing an effort of the Company to obtain public aid, "does not seem to be warranted in supposing that it is entitled to a confidence in its purposes that it would have if it could show that it would deposit its traffic where it protested it intended to deposit. it." The charter of the Company gave it the privi lege of constructing its railroad from New York, or from a point near New York. The uniting of the seaboard with the lakes by a railroad which would attract traffic of the great West to New York was the one idea the projectors of this railroad dwelt upon in seeking the charter. So the fact that the road was to come no nearer the great center of the country's trade than twenty-five miles grew to be a question of much comment. April 25, 1831, almost a year to a day before the corporation that became the New York and Erie |