in the handling of tools, in mechanical drawing, and in other skills 

 required by industry. 



The spirit of enterprise and financial acquisitiveness was candidly 

 portrayed by Frances Trollope in her well-known Domestic Aianners 

 of the Americans (1832) : 



During nearly two years that I resided in Cincinnati [i 828-1 830], or 

 its neighbourhood, I neither saw a beggar, nor a man of sufficient 

 fortune to permit his ceasing his efforts to increase it; thus every bee in 

 the hive is actively employed in search of that honey of Hybla, vulgarly 

 called money; neither art, science, learning, nor pleasure can seduce them 

 from its pursuit. This unity of purpose, backed by the spirit of enter- 

 prise, and joined with an acuteness and total absence of probability . . . 

 may well go far toward obtaining its purpose.^ 



The reward for business activity to those of acumen in such affairs 

 was generous, often as much as a 335^ percent return, but the number 

 of failures caused by unrestricted competition and speculation se- 

 verely restricted the continued enjoyment of such high profits to a 

 very few entrepreneurs. 



In an environment of thriving industrial activity, marked by busy 

 workshops and a plentiful supply of iron, brass, and coal, as well as 

 mechanics, it is not surprising that locomotives should be built. 

 Nearly every large manufacturing city in this country has at some 

 time in its history possessed concerns devoted to this industry. 

 Quite obviously, however, in each case there had to be a local 

 market before locomotive works could be successfully established. 

 New England, for example, experienced this country's first railway 

 boom, which began in the 1830's. During the next 20 years she 

 constructed nearly 2,500 miles of railroad line, giving her nearly a 

 third of the total trackage in the United States. This tremendous 

 activity, virtually a mania, stimulated many machine shops to 

 undertake locomotive construction in order to satisfy the huge 

 local demand. Many firms were opened specifically for this pur- 

 pose. The names of the New England builders — Amoskeag, 

 Hinkley, Manchester, Lowell, Souther, Taunton, and many others — 

 became known throughout the land. Naturally, when the New 

 England system was completed, the eastern locomotive builders 



1 Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of tlie Americans (New York: \'intage 

 Books, i960), p. 43. 



