24G RURAL MICHIGAN 



Doggett's "Railroad Guide,'* as quoted by Eing- 

 walt, gives the freight rates in Michigan for 1848 

 at $0.0844 a ton-mile for first-class freight. For 

 second-class freight the rate was $0.0650. The Michi- 

 gan Central Railroad in 1848 charged $6.04 to carry 

 a ton of wheat from Detroit to Kalamazoo. For 

 a ton of merchandise, the charge was $11.64. The 

 price for ten barrels of flour was $6. In 1850, this 

 same railroad charged $4.40 to transport a person 

 the same distance of 146 miles. Doggett's "Railroad 

 Guide" for 1848, according to Ringwalt, reports the 

 average passenger fare for the 241 miles of Michigan 

 railways at 3 cents a mile. These are significant 

 facts in relation to the settlement and development 

 of the Northwest. 



Time is also an important factor. Quoting Wil- 

 liams' "Traveller's and Tourist's Guide," Ringwalt 

 gives the time required for a journey from Boston 

 to Detroit in 1851 as forty-three hours, and from 

 Boston to Chicago as fifty-four hours. The Michigan 

 Central and the Michigan Southern railroads had 

 then not been completed, nor were their eastern con- 

 nections established. After their completion, Roberts, 

 in his "Sketches of the City of Detroit" (1855), 

 writes that the establishment of the direct line to 

 St. Louis, Missouri, via the Michigan Central and 

 the Joliet and Northern Indiana railroads, made it 

 possible to set down passengers in St. Louis forty- 

 eight hours out from NeM^ York.^ 



Statistics of the commerce of Detroit in 1854 con- 



^ 'Mich. Pioneer & Hist. Soc. Collections," XXXVIII, 605. 



