Plans proposed by The Consolidated Street Railway That Will Bring Into Touch With The Heart of the Commonwealth Thousands of People Now Unreached By Electric Lines—The Argument of the Railroad Authorities Justifying Their Attitude In Asking Consolidation.
by Sylvester Baxter
Worcester Magazine- January 1912
The Worcester Public will doubtless be pleased to learn of the important developments in contemplation for the local-transit service of the city and its surroundings. Nothing so extensive in the way of physical improvements, to be taken in hand practically all of a piece, has ever been proposed since the period of transition from animal to electric traction. This large and comprehensive scheme means much for Worcester—its growth and its prosperity.
First in magnitude among these improvements comes a new radial line, involving something like twenty-five miles of high-class construction out in the hill country to the northwestward. The various trolley lines radiating out to the neighboring cities, towns, villages, play an important part in maintaining Worcester’s commanding position as the mercantile trade centre. The projected line makes Worcester a centre for one of the most beautiful regions in central Massachusetts—a region of hills, woodland, lakes and streams—now largely without transportation facilities and capable of high agricultural development. It is an extension of the local line now ending at Tatnuck. It continues through Paxton, thence to Rutland, where it crosses the central Massachusetts line of the Boston & Maine, thence through a corner of Oakham Township at Coldbrook Springs, thence through Barre and on to a terminus at Petersham, reaching the centre by way of Nichewaug village.
Of these towns Paxton and Petersham are entirely without railroad facilities of any kind. Rutland and a corner of Oakham are traversed by the Central Massachusetts, outlying parts of the Barre Township are coursed by the Central Massachusetts and the Ware River Branch of the Boston & Albany. But Barre Centre lies three miles from the nearest. That means a great deal for one of the finest old hill towns of Massachusetts, which somehow in spite of its lack of transportation, has managed to flourish and to maintain its admirable character as one of the highest types of rural New England Communities.
Barrer now has an automobile coach service to and from the railroad station, but three miles in a crowded motor car on a cold winter night makes hardly a pleasure trip. Paxton, however, depends upon a primitive looking stagecoach apparently of the vintage of 1850. The sight of it carries the fancy back to ante-railroad days. Indeed Paxton has not yet emerged from those days.
A high-class trolley line will bring to the outside world a knowledge of the uncommon landscape charms of that old town. It seems strange that a community so off the lines of travel, so remote, should actually be a next door neighbor to Worcester. And yet Worcester itself now one of this country’s large cities and well on its way to rank as a great, was of less significance than Paxton and many another outlying town within considerably less than a hundred years ago. Indeed, it well along in the nineteenth century before Worcester began to amount to anything at all; it was merely her central location that made her the shire town of the new country. But it was the railroad that made Worcester what she has come to be. So it was that the second largest of Massachusetts cities is also one of the newest of towns.
This interesting group of old Worcester County hill towns that will be served by the new lines full of historical interest. Rutland is the parent town of Oakham, Barre and half of Paxton—the other half being a child of Leicester. This extensive territory was purchased by the original settlers from a group of Indians with very queer names, Pugastian and Pompamamay among them. Still queerer are some of the local names conferred by the Indians: Wallamanimpscook, Sassakatafick, Ahumptunshauge.
Among the first settlers were many sturdy Irish immigrants. That was in 1716, but it was not until the middle of eighteenth century that the considerable immigration set in which gave a large and perhaps pre-ponderating proportion of Irish blood to the hill country of central and western Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. It was the period when Massachusetts apportioned the extensive holdings of public lands in the unsettled portions of the province. The attraction of the cheap and virgin land was comparatively as great for the immigrants of those days as later were the Federal governments acres in the great West.
In that earlier day the first settlers of Rutland stood in constant danger from Indians, bears and wolves. The first child, born in 1719, was honored with the gift of a 100-acre farm.
Oakham was known as the “West Wing” of Rutland until 1762, when it was made a town by itself, three years after its settlement by immigrants from the north of Ireland. One of their first acts was a vote to “tax the inhabitance ten pounds to support pitching.” When it came to the organization of a Presbyterian Church, in 1767, some objections were made to the habits and character of certain proposed members. Whereupon a rather liberal minded Scotchman or “Scotch-Irish-man” remarked, “Well, if the Laard wants a church in Oakham he must tak’ them such as they be.”
Paxton set off from Rutland and Leicester in 1765, was given a name neither of its own choosing nor at all to its liking. The name was not in the act when it went to the council. It chanced that the honor went to Charles Paxton, marshal of the admiralty court and a friend of Governor Bernard and Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson—a man of polished and pleasing manners but regarded as a “despicable sycophant.” Later when it became known that Paxton had helped devise the act imposing a tax on tea for the Colonies there was wrath in the young town, and the people tried to get a change, something more agreeable to the inhabitants and the public in place of the “execrable name” imposed upon them. Somehow they failed in their attempts and their town still perpetuates in its name a little known connection with an occurrence that was a potent factor in bringing on the Revolution. Taken in itself the name of the town is a good one: Paxton, “Peacetown.”
Barre had better fortune in a similar situation. It had been called Rutland’s “Northwest Quarter” until 1774, when it became a town. That was almost on the threshold of the Revolution. The people had petitioned to be called “Barre”, in honor of Col. Issac Barre, one of the Irish members of Parliament, the son of a French refugee in Ireland and a strong friend of the Colonies. But at the instigation of General Gage the new town was given the name of the lieutenant-governor. So it began its independent existence as Hutchinson. The undesired name was not borne long. When the Revolution broke out they petitioned for the name they had first asked for, accompanying their prayer with a scathing indictment of Hutchinson, said to have been written by the Rev. Peter Thatcher. The petition was promptly granted. A name that had been suggested for the town was “Wilkes,” rather than curiously in view of the combination “Wilkes-Barre” borne by the Pennsylvania municipality.
Petersham was settled in 1733 as Nichewaug plantation. Later it was known as Voluntown, or Volunteer’s Town, because of its settlers volunteering in a campaign against the Indians. In 1754 it became a town, deriving its name from the English Petersham in Surrey, just outside of London.
All of these towns have admirable records in the Revolutionary Struggle. They sent many men into the Continental army, and the heavy taxes they laid upon themselves in the cause attested not only their patriotism but the flourishing circumstances of these agricultural communities in those days. Oakham had appropriated ––– £ 3676 for Revolutionary expenses previous to the inflation of the currency. Petersham’s revolutionary debts had amounted to £ 53,000 – something like a quarter million dollars! – in 1780. Much of this must have been represented by inflated currency. It was in 1780 that Petersham made the salary of its minister £ 100 a year, guaranteeing that sum to have a purchasing power of 666 ₹ bushels of Indian corn.
A Rutland man was one of the most distinguished figures in the Revolution—Gen. Rufus Putnam, the eminent engineer of Washington’s staff, who designed fortifications for Dorchester Heights that made the British evacuate Boston. General Putnam was the pioneer in organizing the settlement of Ohio from Massachusetts. The Rufus Putnam house remains to-day a treasured landmark in Rutland. It was in Rutland that the prison camp for Burgoyne’s army was located in 1778.
The Revolutionary conflict, of course, did not directly touch this part of the Commonwealth, but the Massachusetts afterclap of the Revolution, “Shay’s Rebellion,” was at its strongest in these hill towns, and it was in Petersham that it finally collapsed.
In this important trolley line from Worcester to Petersham, Barre will receive a long-deferred consolation for the dashing of her hopes when the Boston, Barre & Gardner railroad was realized. That railroad, now the Boston & Main line from Worcester to Ashburnham, was carried by its final surveys far to the eastward of Barre.
Both Barre and Petersham already stand in high favor as summer resorts. Their attractiveness for such purpose will be greatly segmented when they are conveniently accessible by the new line from Worcester, connecting also with the Central Massachusetts and the Ware River Branch. The other towns, Rutland, Oakham and Paxton, can not fail to share in this good fortune under the stimulus of the new transportation facilities. All of them are uncommonly attractive in landscape, climate and in the character that makes them representative of rural New England at its best.
In Paxton, for instance, rises the novel contour of the Asnabumskit Hill, second only to its neighbor, Wachusett, as the highest elevation in Massachusetts east of the Connecticut. At its foot spreads the beautiful lake of the same name.
Petersham largest owes its attractiveness for summer residence to its charmingly typical old New England character. A notable factor in maintaining this quality has been the Village Improvement Society organized in 1878. A feature of the town is its Agricultural High School, one of the earliest fruits of the practical development of our educational methods in the direction of vocational training. Schools of this sort are destined to be leading factors in the revival of New England Agriculture which the new transportation facilities are helping to bring about.
This new trolley line to Petersham is to be of the most substantial construction, as high-class and enduring as the best modern steam line work. The Southbridge & Palmer line, the thirteen miles of which cost an average of $53,000 a mile, illustrates what may be looked for here. The most purled local improvements that are on the programme for the Worcester Consolidated are all calculated to facilitate movement, promote public convenience and thereby accelerate the growth of the city. First there are the provisions to be made for the new feature of the trolley freight. Many express cares, together with other expensive equipment, will have to be purchased for this purpose. Then a large express station must be established in the midst of the mercantile district, where land is expensive. This station will need ample track room, platform and storage space and yard rooms for teams. Another improvement demanded to meet the increasing requirements for more power is the completion of the great powerhouse at Millbury. Again, there is a lot of extension and double-tracking to be done, all of which means the saving of time for the public, the increase of traffic and then a corresponding building up of the localities concerned.
A double track for Hamilton Street will abate much troublesome congestion and promote the convenience of the multitudes that resort to Lake Park since the opening up of the popular excursion route, a single track being incapable of caring adequately for the many cars that run to the Park.
Other improvement projects are:
An extension of the Granite Street line to the Orphanage.
A double track for Lincoln Street from Brittan Square to Boylston Street,
A double track for Burncoat Street from Brittan Square to Barnard’s turnout.
A double track for Southbridge Street.
An extension of the Hope Cemetery line to the Auburn town line.
These improvements involve large outlays. A total of $2,000,000 is a moderate estimate for the whole programme. This projected line s an instance of modern trolley policy. With its underlying principle of comprehensive rural development it justifies the attention here paid it as an element in the general scheme for new construction and improvement in and about Worcester. Otherwise what has here been said about it might seem disproportionate in view of the magnitude of the interests affected by the features enumerated in what follows. The latter lack the picturesque qualities that make the former so interesting. But nevertheless they have to do with very substantial realities. On their face these may seem matter of fact and prosaic. But in their bearing upon the future of a large, wealthy, and prosperous city they appeal to the popular imagination more than the public concerned may have yet appreciated. They involve steps that lead to making the city far greater, wealthier and more prosperous.
The management of the Worcester Consolidated realizes what the future is bound to be. Its confidence is so complete that powerful interests stand ready to assume a responsibility in the development of Worcester as a great centre of trade and industry—a responsibility comparable to the initiative which the mist advanced and liberal municipal authorities might be expected to take.
To pave the way towards such a development by making the present process of growth as free and unimpeded as possible there has been prepared a programme for extensive construction, to be undertaken in and about the city in the very near future, a programme so far beyond the resources of the ordinary street railway management that under such auspices its execution would have to spread out year after year. The growth would thus be promoted, however, is so great that for the sake of assuring it, it seems worth while to carry this programme into effect as a consistent whole and practically all at once.
The wholesome growth of a city stands in vital relationship to its circulation system, to the freedom of movement which the community enjoys, and therefore depends upon the excellence and the extent of the means of transportation in its command. If these are adequate to the needs of the community trade will thrive, industry will flourish and the city will grow at its best. Confidence in the growth of Worcester to the rank of a very large city therefore induces the railway management to facilitate that growth by providing the underlying conditions to the fullest extent at command, in the shape of a well balanced and correspondingly well equipped scheme of local transportation comprising these three elements:
An urban network to serve the needs of the extensive traffic demanded to bring the public conveniently and promptly into the central sections where the conditions of Trade and Industry tend to ferment such movement. Suburban lines radiating from the centre in all directions where called for to provide opportunity for free expansion and correspondingly to prevent the evils of a congested population. Finally, long distance lines extending well out into the surrounding territory as feeders for the city by developing the region’s traversed, supply connections with surrounding communities and interurban communications with more remote centres.
Altogether this makes an extraordinarily large order for improvements it includes, as we have seen, a costly long distance line of high-class construction designed to give Petersham the status of a second Lenox, make Barre a second Stockbridge, all in accordance with the new social and economic tendencies that are making all rural Worcester County another Berkshire— filled with beautiful and costly estates and prosperous with the modern agricultural and industrial rejuvenation that is coming upon the New England countryside in all directions where modern transit with its good roads, motor traction in trolley lines extends its helping hand. The execution of such an order is beyond the capacity of an independent street railway company, even when so large and well conditioned as the Worcester Consolidated. How then can it be realized? Its realization is contingent only upon making effective the conditions necessary to secure the financing of the improvements thereby to be assured. There should, of course, belittle question as to the advisability of such a procedure what it is considered how the well-being of a great community absolutely depends upon adequate transportation service.
Briefly stated the facts are as follows: Some years ago the present management of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company made the ownership and operation of trolley lines a feature of its transportation policy. The idea was to build up a comprehensive secondary railway system as an adjunct to its primary lines. This was not for the purpose of eliminated competition, either actual or potential. Many railroad men assert that there can be no real competition between trolley lines and steam lines and declare that the functions of the two forms of service are radically different. They say that the trolley lines act as feeders for the steam lines; they collect and distribute traffic; they established more intimate connections between the main lines of movement and the public served; they carry both passengers and freight farther on the way to and fro and accomplish a more intimate penetration of the territory served with traffic facilities; thereby they bridge gaps and movement that otherwise are costly and inconvenient to cross.
The argument presented by the believers in consolidation of transportation matters- as in all other forms of public utilities-—is as follows: with these economies in time and in outlay the trolley lines, operated in conjunction with the steam lines, perform an invaluable service in developing the territory served. Another consideration lies in the circumstance that with the tendency towards electrification of steam lines and towards operating trolley lines over their own rights of way when outside of cities and towns rather than upon public highways, the distinction between steam lines and trolley lines is gradually diminishing. The latter serve as branches for the former, and when the forms of motive power are the same, very material economies are possible by utilizing the same source in common. These ways the public interests are better served. The community prospers correspondingly.
In pursuance of this policy the New Haven management acquired the principal trolley properties in Connecticut, and Rhode Island and in large part of Massachusetts– including the Berkshire, Springfield, Worcester and Blackstone Valley systems. In Massachusetts, however, this policy was thwarted by the decision of the Supreme Court which obliged the Railroad Company to divest itself of its trolley holdings in this Commonwealth, The New England Investment and Security Company, which had been a holding company for the railroads trolley properties, thereby had to become an independent holding company—its securities held by outside parties not connected with the railroad company.
One of the properties so held, the Berkshire Street Railway Company, was subsequently sold back to the New Haven under legislative authority, conferred for the sake of enabling the people of this section more immediately concerned to secure the transportation development that they otherwise could not obtain.
This left the holding company with two large and remunerative properties in its possession: The Worcester Consolidated system and the Springfield system. Public sentiment in western Massachusetts now calls for the consolidation of the Springfield system with the Berkshire, in order to secure the construction of certain desirable extensions in that section which otherwise could not be realized. This, however, would involve the retention if the Worcester Consolidated system by the holding company and a hampering of connections and relationships between the Worcester and the Springfield Systems, which are becoming of great and increasing value to the two communities concerned. With the Berkshire and Springfield systems united under railroad ownership, and the Worcester system still controlled independently, these connections and relationships could not well continue as before.
In view of the difficulties involved, the holding company, the New England Investment and Security Company, has petitioned the General Court either for incorporation as an operating street railway company, to be financed by the New Haven, or for permission to sell its properties to the New Haven.
Certain economic considerations make it for the interest of the Worcester public the either one or the other of these courses be taken. The people of Worcester apparently appreciate that the Worcester consolidated is that present in satisfactory condition. Equipment power and service are now good. Various things, however, might be done which would greatly improve the service. But these things would involve a very considerable outlay, and the money required is not easily obtainable. The street railway business to-day does not enjoy the favor with investors that it had in the palmy days of electrification, when large ideas of economies and prophets induced a many of her trolley line construction.
The Worcester Consolidated System and its extensive urban suburban services and interurban connections is now making an excellent financial showing. In street railway operation, however, the margin of profit is so small that after meeting fixed charges there is little left to go into improvements. Sooner or later large sums are needed for extensive improvements, if the service is to be kept up to the requirements of a flourishing the rapidly growing community. A street railway property however, does not in itself offer the security demanded by bankers in return for advancing the funds. Such security can only be given by parties and possession of large properties, like those of great railway corporation. In the case in hand the New York, New Haven & Hartford Enjoys the credit called for it– stands ready to advance the money for trolley improvements of a magnitude the under independent ownership would be out of the question, for the reason that for some years to come they would not justify themselves in developing the needed returns. The railroad company, however, finds its return in the development of its territory by improved trolley services and the consequent growth of new business. Hence we have in the foregoing the reason why Worcester can look forward to important improvements in local transit in case the desired conditions are fulfilled.
