120 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



business with the Travelers who were compelled there to disembark and 

 take other trains. In 1853, the New York Line decided to standardize 

 its gauge so that uninterrupted passage would be possible. In December 

 when the word reached Erie that the railroad had begun at the state 

 line to change the gauge, cannons were fired to summon the citizens 

 to a public meeting. A mob quickly assembled, tore up the railroad 

 track, destroyed a railroad bridge, the disorder reaching to neighboring 

 towns. When the work crew changing the gauge reached the outskirts 

 of the Borough of Erie, fresh disturbances occurred in the neighboring 

 town of Harbor Beach where the track was torn up, the grade partly 

 plowed up, and a bridge destroyed. The issue became hotter and hotter 

 until litigation on the subject was carried to the United States Courts. 

 One bridge was torn up and rebuilt four times. A feud between the 

 states of New York and Pennsylvania practically resulted, and cities 

 as distant as Buffalo, Cincinnati and Philadelphia held meetings of 

 protest. 



Horace Greeley, caught in the uncomfortable situation wrote in his paper, 

 the New York Tribune: "I was compelled to ride seven miles through 

 a cutting storm of wind, snow and sleet. Let Erie have her way and 

 all passengers and freight must change cars before her pie shops." 



Finally, the situation in Erie became so acute that the ofl&cers of the 

 railroad company living there were practically driven out of the borough. 



It was not until 1854, when the deep and troublesome issue of slavery, 

 in the form of the Missouri Compromise, swept the national mind, that a 

 mutual agreement was reached which enabled the railroad to change its 

 gauge and run its through trains without molestation. 



During my researches on standardization, I found many interesting 

 facts. One writer called attention to the fact that in 1820 an army 

 officer in charge of the United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry had 

 turned out one hundred rifles whose parts were so accurately made that 

 every one of them were interchangeable. This was unheard of up to 

 that time. Today, when war requires the production of tens of millions 

 of rifles, each type with its parts interchangeable, we little realize how 

 important the achievement with respect to the one hundred rifles at 

 Harpers Ferry in 1820 was. 



It was m}' privilege, while Chief of the Bureau of Markets, collaborat- 

 ing with Colonel Francis M. Caffey, Solicitor of the Department of 

 Agriculture, and other assistants, to prepare the Food Control Act so 

 efficiently administered by Mr, Hoover, which played such an important 

 part in our war-time economy. In the first, second and third drafts 

 of that proposed legislation, a section empowering the federal govern- 

 ment to establish standards for agricultural and food products was incor- 

 porated. Each time misunderstanding and opposition forced the sec- 

 tion out of the bill. Finally, the Food Control Act was passed without 

 it, but the Food Production Act had not yet passed. Thereupon I suc- 

 ceeded in getting the section placed in the Food Production Act, but 

 here again, before the bill came to its final passage, the section was lost. 



This has been the history of attempts to introduce standardization 

 throughout the world. 



