The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway (11 page)

On June 15, 1887, three months after Whitney’s impassioned speech, the general court of Massachusetts passed an act that gave Whitney all that he asked for: consolidation and permission to “locate, construct and maintain one or more tunnels between convenient points in said city, in one or more directions under the squares, streets, ways and places, and under public and private lands, estates and premises in said city.”

With one fell swoop Henry Whitney, a man who had spent the first half of his life squandering opportunities and searching for a purpose, had taken a confusing, expensive mess of a transportation network in Boston and consolidated it into one company. Whitney’s action had, in an instant, handed him control of 3,700 employees, 1,700 street railway cars, 8,400 horses, and 200 miles of track. Those were numbers that made him the sole owner of the single largest street railway system in the world, bigger than anything in London, Chicago, or New York, cities whose populations dwarfed Boston’s.

To better organize the business operations, the West End Street Railway Company was split into eight divisions with distinct territories to cover, and each one was responsible for managing their own passengers, employees, horses, and cars. Routes were identified by different colored signs, and signs were placed on cars to tell passengers the final destination. A final change was made that showed the impressive clarity that Whitney had in mind for his system. Instead of continuing to charge riders fares based on how far they traveled, from a few pennies up to ten cents, he implemented a flat, nickel fare for all rides and even allowed free transfers at certain stops. The flat fare was criticized by the small number of riders who rode only a few stops, but they were far outnumbered by the cheers from the increasing number of passengers coming to Boston from the suburbs, who were used to paying the most expensive fare.

WILLIAM

When he returned home to New York in the summer of 1883, William Whitney focused on his grieving wife. Flora comforted herself the only way she knew how, in a world of ball gowns, operas, and extravagant parties. Whitney was content to let her be, knowing the joy she took from entertaining. When his father-in-law ran for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, Whitney was there to help him. And when New York Democrats came looking for a name to run for the presidency, Whitney threw out the name of the man he had already helped get elected once. “If our delegation will present the name of Mr. Cleveland with any degree of unanimity, he will, in my opinion, be nominated,” Whitney said.

He was right again. Cleveland won the Democratic nomination. And on November 4, 1884, when the electoral college votes were counted, Cleveland had 219 to Republican James G. Blaine’s 182. No state decided the election more than New York. Cleveland had won Whitney’s home state by 1,149 votes. That meant if a mere 575 votes for Cleveland had instead gone to Blaine, New York’s electoral votes would have gone to Blaine, and he would have won the White House. Only a few people could reasonably claim that they had personally helped convince at least 575 New York voters which way to go in the election, and therefore could argue they had a direct role in electing the president. Surely one of them was Joseph Pulitzer, whose
World
newspaper had aggressively hammered Blaine for months and lampooned him as the candidate for the rich. Another was William C. Whitney. Grover Cleveland was the next president of the United States, and there was no way he was going to Washington without the man who landed him there.

*   *   *

ON A FRIDAY EVENING
late in 1884, Whitney sat down in his palatial home on West Fifty-seventh Street, took out several sheets of small stationery, and began to pen a letter to his good friend, the president-elect of the United States.

“Governor—Pay no attention to newspaper or other advocacy of me,” Whitney wrote. “You owe me nothing and I should feel really hurt if I thought you would have any feeling of obligation to me. What I have is from sense of duty to our party and our country—It was right (the result has proved it) and that’s enough—I want you to succeed and you will. If for reasons personal and sound you should desire me that’s one thing—but I hope you believe this of me—that if you shouldn’t it would not make the slightest difference in our relations nor in my feelings nor in what I would do for you—I must free my mind by saying this.” The letter went on for four pages and was serious and business-like, and it ended with Whitney promising to visit Cleveland in upstate New York in the next few weeks.

It must have been a difficult note to write. Grover Cleveland was Whitney’s close friend and political ally, a man he helped get elected governor of New York and then president of the United States. The two men owed each other enormous debts of gratitude. Cleveland knew that he would not be headed for the White House were it not for Whitney’s wealth and power in their home state and his ability to round up votes. And thanks to Cleveland’s victories, Whitney was officially a man of influence, no longer dependent solely on the fame of his wife’s family.

It was as if Whitney wrote the letter hoping to convince Cleveland not to offer him a cabinet position in Washington. But Cleveland’s inauguration was scheduled for March 4, 1885, and he was determined to have his full administration in place by then. With Whitney’s involvement in his father’s freight-carrying Metropolitan Steamship Company and his legal background, he seemed like the perfect fit for secretary of the interior. In mid-February, however, Whitney received a telegram at his home, and inside he found a different and unexpected job offer. Three weeks later, on March 7, 1885, William Collins Whitney was sworn in as secretary of the navy.

HENRY

On a summer’s day on the outskirts of downtown Boston in 1887, a problem was reported on Boylston Street of the Roxbury Crossing line of the new West End Street Railway Company. Rather than dispatch one of his men to investigate, the president of the company, as he enjoyed doing from time to time, took to the matter himself. He did not want to cause any alarm among the drivers on the Roxbury line by announcing his intentions, so he merely stepped onto the front end of one of his horse-drawn cars, paid his five-cent fare, and quietly blended in with the rest of the passengers. He stood with one foot on the step and the other on the platform, holding on with both hands while looking down at the experimental conduit beneath the car. He knew his position to be against the railway regulations, but he wanted to see if he could spot the problem himself without making a fuss or attracting attention from passengers. Suddenly, he felt a tap on his shoulder.

“Excuse me, sir, please step up onto the platform,” the conductor told him.

Henry Whitney turned and nodded, but he did not come all the way up as required, and so the conductor stopped the car a few seconds later and walked back over to him.

“You’ll have to step up on this platform,” he said. “It’s against the rules of the road to ride on the step. You might fall off and get hurt and then you’d be suing the road for damages and where would I be?”

Whitney laughed at the irony in the conductor’s words. If anyone sued the company, Whitney would be the one faced with the consequences. As the owner of the largest streetcar company in the world, Whitney was an immensely popular boss. He visited his car stables frequently, chatting up his workers about their personal lives, riding in the front of cars with drivers or the rear with the conductors, and, most important to them, reducing their hours and raising their wages from two dollars to two dollars and twenty-five cents a day. Even when a grievance arose, the workers were encouraged to simply go see the president, and he would hear them out and resolve the issue then and there. When he would bump into one of his men on the street, he acted as if they were friends, greeting them with a bright smile and firm handshake.

But there were always times when he believed it best to avoid interacting with his workers, and so when Whitney was asked a second time to step up onto the platform, he did so without ever identifying himself so as to avoid embarrassing his conductor. As the car rolled into Boston’s congested business district, Whitney discreetly hopped off near the Arlington Street stop, stepping right into a muddy puddle that splattered his dark pants before vanishing into the sea of people. As the trolley pulled away, a passenger on board who had witnessed and overheard the exchange approached the conductor.

“Do you know who that was?” he asked.

“No, and I didn’t give a damn,” the conductor said.

“That’s President Whitney,” the passenger said, before bursting out laughing and getting off the car himself a few stops later.

A look of fear crossed the conductor’s face. He had just chastised his boss without recognizing him. Was this to be his last day working for the company? Hardly. The company president never mentioned the incident, and the conductor gained a special appreciation for how genuine Henry Whitney was.

*   *   *

ON JANUARY 26, 1888,
Whitney hired Daniel Longstreet from Providence as his new general manager. Getting Longstreet was a coup. One of Rhode Island’s most respected public figures, he had joined a Rhode Island Civil War regiment when he was just fifteen and earned great respect for taking such risk so young. Three years later, he took his first job as a conductor in Providence on a Union Railway Company horsecar, and very quickly he rose up the ranks into a clerk’s position and soon treasurer, which put him in charge of the finances of over six hundred men, and of fifty miles of routes. He was seen as a prince of a man, and when it was announced he was joining Whitney in Boston, the papers described it as a devastating blow for the city he was leaving. “How the company can spare the services of Mr. Longstreet is the puzzle of Providence,”
The Globe
wrote when his hiring was announced.

Whitney knew what he was getting in Longstreet, an experienced manager with strong opinions. They would not always agree, and Whitney was better for it. He was no longer the impetuous, risk-taking businessman. He was thorough, patient, and smart. And he knew of some interesting trolley experiments taking place in Pennsylvania and in Richmond, Virginia, where he had already made one trip to meet with a promising young engineer. With his consolidation complete and his eyes set on tunneling under the Common, Whitney forged a new course for Boston. He told Longstreet to pack his bags. He had reached a conclusion. The experimental battery wasn’t the future of transit. And neither was the cable streetcar that had gained popularity out west in San Francisco but had quickly proved to be prone to breakdown. Steam was too dirty. And the horse was too slow.

On a mild spring day in 1888, the two men boarded a steam train in Boston. A young man down south had something he wanted to show them.

4

HISTORY MADE IN RICHMOND

IN THE THIRTY YEARS AFTER
the Civil War, Richmond, Virginia, was one of America’s fastest-growing cities. Between 1860 and 1890, its population more than doubled, to 81,388. By the mid-1880s, some of the city streets were paved and the Richmond City Railway was running steam trains through much of the downtown, along with horsecars. Three suburban districts had been swallowed up by the city, and there was a desperate need to expand transportation out to the people in those parts. The owners of the horsecar companies, however, had no desire to go there. Too far, too expensive. Only when the Richmond city council gave its approval in March 1887 to build the Richmond Union Passenger Railway did the owners realize they could be replaced. They agreed to expand. But they were too late. The West End Ward and the Clay Ward were both too far removed from downtown, and getting to them required going over a stretch of land that was rugged, hilly, and unpaved. Horses couldn’t make it. And cable would be too expensive. Richmond’s city officials prepared to build a new railway to reach its outlying areas. And they wanted to operate the railway with electric power. All they needed was the right engineer for the job.

The quest to find something faster than the horse, cleaner than the steam locomotive, more reliable than cable cars, and capable of powering entire transit systems would take nearly a decade and become one of man’s great pursuits of the second half of the nineteenth century. For some of the world’s most brilliant engineering minds, it was an outright obsession. Their names were Charles Van Depoele, Walter Knight, Edward Bentley, Thomas Edison, Werner Siemens, Leo Daft, and, one of the last and the youngest entrants into the field, Frank Sprague. The solution was obvious to all of them: electricity. But discovering the best way to harness it, to turn it into a source of power that could move not just one but multiple trains over rolling hills at the same time, that was the real challenge. In what evolved into a fierce competition, these men followed each other’s progress closely in designing an electric street railway system. Sometimes they teamed up with one another. Sometimes they sold out to one another. At other times they complained that their valuable ideas had been stolen. Yet if they shared one belief, it was that while the London Underground was an impressive achievement and the cable streetcar was a sight to behold, rolling through the streets as if it were being pulled along by some invisible magical force, neither of them were the long-term solution for cities.

*   *   *

IN THE SPRING OF 1882,
a skinny young American naval officer with round glasses and a slight lean to his walk stepped off the
Lancaster,
a naval ship that was docking in Gibraltar near the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. He was a long way from his hometown of Milford, Connecticut, a city on Long Island Sound about ten miles southwest of New Haven. But while he was only twenty-five years old, Frank Julian Sprague was fast on his way to becoming one of the most promising engineers in the world. After making his way north to London, he walked down a steep staircase to ride the Underground for the first time, and he made his way over to the Crystal Palace Electrical Exhibition, where the latest breakthroughs from around the world in the field of electricity were on display.