THE FARMERS WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 23 



These roads demonstrated the fact that heavy loads 

 could be drawn with a slighter expenditure of power 

 than must be used on the ordinary highways. Admir- 

 able results had been obtained in Europe by the adop- 

 tion of -this system, and by the close of 1827 it had 

 come to be acknowledged in the United States that the 

 railway was the best method of transporting freight. 

 Accordingly measures were set on foot in many of the 

 States, especially in Massachusetts, New York, New 

 Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and South Carolina, 

 for the construction of various roads, some of which 

 were designed upon a grand scale. 



Steam had now been introduced upon the European 

 roads as a motive power, and the managers of the 

 American roads at once adopted it as the cheapest and 

 the best means of propelling their cars. The Delaware 

 and Hudson Canal Company began, in 1828, the con- 

 struction of a road from their coal mines to Honesdale, 

 the terminus of the canal. Before the road was fairly 

 begun, they sent Mr. Horatio Allen to England to in- 

 vestigate and report upon the railways of that country, 

 and also to purchase their railroad iron. Later still, he 

 was directed to buy three locomotive engines. These 

 purchases were made, and the first, a locomotive, built 

 by George Stephenson, at his works at Newcastle-upon- 

 Tyne, arrived in New York in the Spring of 1829. It 

 was exhibited for some time in New York, and attracted 

 great attention. The other locomotives were built by 

 other persons, and arrived and were placed on the road 

 in the latter part of 1829. They were the first loco- 

 motives used in this country. They were engines on 

 four wheels, furnished with the multitubular boiler and 

 the exhaust blast. 



