THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 261 



Allentown Railroad, from Topton to Port Clinton, com- 

 pleted to Kutztown. 



" The company has also leased in perpetuity the 

 canal of the Schuylkill Navigation Company, extend- 

 ing from Port Carbon, Schuylkill county, to Philadel- 

 phia, a distance of 108 miles; also the Susquehanna 

 and tide-water canals, extending from Columbia to 

 Havre de Grace, on the Susquehanna river. The 

 chief business of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad 

 Company is the transportation of coal from the first and 

 second anthracite coal-fields of Pennsylvania to tide- 

 water in the Delaware river, at Port Richmond, Phila- 

 delphia. At this eastern terminus, extensive wharves, 

 23 in number, and extending from 300 to 800 feet into 

 the river Delaware, have been erected with trestlework 

 and chutes, allowing a direct discharge of coal from the 

 cars into vessels. To accommodate this immense ship- 

 ping business, 35 miles of track are distributed on the 

 wharves or their immediate neighborhood. The main 

 line of the road winds through the Schuylkill valley, 

 extending its numerous, branches east and west, drain- 

 ing completely the two southern coal-fields, and making 

 them tributaries to the main stem. 



" The heavy freight of this road, being generally in 

 one direction, that is, from the coal region to the sea- 

 board, the grades of the road have been adapted to its 

 economical working, by establishing exclusively down 

 grades and levels in the direction of the main traffic, 

 and the heaviest grades admit of a locomotive taking 

 back the same numbers of empty cars she is able to 

 move downward loaded. 



"At Lebanon, 28 miles west of Reading, a connec- 

 tion is made with the Cornwall Railroad, contributing 



