September 1953 page 4

Birth
of a
Railroad

The past, Carl Sandburg once wrote, is a bucket of ashes. True,
perhaps. But what, more than a bucket of ashes, could remind us
better of a fire that once burned brightly and gloriously. The roots
of our own railroads grow deeply into the ashes of the golden era of
empire builders—the age of the Vanderbilts, the Fords, the Rocke-
fellers, the Dukes. This is the first in a series of several articles
which will attempt to reconstruct the birth of the Piedmont and
Northern Railway, its adolescent years, andn its development into
maturity.

JANUARY, 1911, was just an ordinary
month in an ordinary year.

President William Howard Taft was
urging Congress to appropriate $5 mil-
lion to fortify the new canal in Panama.
War drums were thumping along the
border between Haiti and Santo Domingo.
A daredevil flyer flew 13 miles in a frail
craft and landed on a wooden platform
built over the afterdeck of a Navy
cruiser. There were the usual murders,
suicides, and buggy accidents. Corn
whiskey, rye, and gin were being adver-
tised at $1.50 a gallon; a Buick auto-
mobile was priced at $550; and a good
five-room house could be rented for
$15.00 a month.

The big news down in Carolina that
January—in Greenville, Spartanburg,
Charlotte, Anderson, Gastonia—con-
cerned a proposed interurban electric
railroad that would link together some
of Carolina's most prosperous towns.
James B. Duke, esteemed tobacco and
electric power tycoon, was making a tour
of the Piedmont to explain the idea. It
was front-page news everywhere he
went.

Mr. Duke and his associates were
out to sell a dream. For two years they
had been formuating plans for a great
interurban railroad to serve the budding
textile industry, connect street railway
systems in a number of Piedmont cities,
and provide fast, dependable freight
and passenger transportation between
the points it served. The organization of
two predecessor companies were already
an accomplished fact. Now they were
ready to unfold their consolidation plans
before the public.

A community project

Mr. Duke had already decided to in-
vest heavily in the enterprise himself.
But he wanted citizens in the communi-
ties involved to have a financial interest
in the project, too, so that he could de-
pend on public support and enthusiasm
for the venture. He also saw the neces-
sity of obtaining an indication of sup-

SEPTEMBER 5