DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHWAY TRAVEL MITMAN 333 



venture, and as rapidly as the traveling public took advantage of it 

 and patronized the stage companies, the latter returned the favor 

 by improving the riding qualities of their wagons and by not includ- 

 ing freight in the same payload with passengers. They also in- 

 creased the distances between the termini of their runs, increased the 

 number of scheduled runs a week and reduced the time of runs be- 

 tween points. Thus, in 1771, John Mercereau advertised that his 

 " Flying Machines " would make during the summer months three 

 scheduled trips a week each way between New York and Philadel- 

 phia in the remarkable time of I14 days. He ends his advertisement 

 in this fashion : "As the Proprietor has made such Improvements 

 upon the Machines, one of which is in Imitation of a Coach, he hopes 

 to Merit the Favour of the Publick." In his reckoning of a day and 

 a half elapsed time between the two cities Mercereau apparently 

 did not see fit to consider that a New York passenger bound for 

 Philadelphia had to leave his home the night before a scheduled run, 

 take a sail boat to Perth Amboy and get aboard the " Flying Ma- 

 chine " at 3 o'clock in the morning ! 



Despite these and other discomforts suffered by the paying pas- 

 sengers, public transportation agencies thrived, and by 1800 com- 

 peting stage lines made scheduled runs between all of the principal 

 cities and intervening towns in the East. It was possible, too, to get 

 to the border of Indiana by stage wagon, although it required 2 

 weeks time riding 16 hours a day over the roughest kinds of roads 

 and cost $45 in stage fares plus $20 for board and lodging en route. 

 The wagons were very much improved, however. They were still 

 without springs, but the body had been enlarged both in height and 

 width ; the oval top had been replaced by a flat-roofed one with lea- 

 ther or cloth side curtains ; the benches had either wooden backs or 

 strips of leather stretched across the wagon to serve as back rests; 

 and, in rare instances, the seats were set on wrought-iron springs or 

 swung in leather straps. The wagons were painted in bright red, 

 gold, and blue, and were usually drawn by four horses. 



After the first decade of the nineteenth century, the stage coach 

 became a very permanent institution in American life and with it 

 came the organization of a distinct coach and carriage making indus- 

 try. Competition between lines was keen, and to secure and main- 

 tain patronage the companies sought coachmakers' and wheelwrights' 

 help to design vehicles accommodated to the peculiar requirements of 

 stage travel, with the result that there were soon on the highways 

 stage coaches of a number of patterns. They were built in many 

 places — at Salem and Worcester, Mass., Troy and Albany, N. Y. 

 All were famous in their day, but in the 1820's came the still more 

 famous Concord coach of Concord, N, H., the basic design of which 

 was followed in the making of practically every stage coach con- 



