Facts and Figures Concerning the Hoosac Tunnel Part 2

But it is not eight hundred horse power, nor four hundred that is required to operate the drilling machinery and ventilate the tunnel; for two hundred and eight horse power is all that has ever been used or needed at Mt. Cenis. This leaves a pretty wide margin for drouths, _evaporation_, and other contingencies.

In his observations upon the power required, Mr. Bird becomes severe and sarcastic. He a.s.sails the opinion of the commissioners that "the loss of power by carrying the compressed air through five miles of pipe will be quite insignificant;" and after a.s.serting that there are no _data_ by which to test the correctness of this opinion, and claiming "some experience in such matters," prefers that such an "_experiment_" should be tried with somebody's money besides his own. It is gratifying to learn from Mr. Bird, himself, that he he has had experience in the matter of compressed air as a motive power, and that a "cussed furriner," as he elegantly phrases it is not to be allowed to bear off the palm of this great discovery uncontested. Doubtless M. Sommeiller will yield to the superior science and sagacity of Mr. Bird; but our countryman should lose no time in informing his fellow citizens of his investigations, experiments and success in arriving at the conclusion that compressed air cannot "be carried through five miles of pipe without a very serious loss of power through friction, leakage, &c."

But, unfortunately for this view of the case, there are data establishing the fact that compressed air has been conveyed through more than two miles of pipe at Mt. Cenis, and then operated the drills without any appreciable loss of power. If there is no loss in two miles, how can there be in five? It is no longer an experiment, but an established scientific fact.

The size of the present excavation next engages the attention of our observer, and he calls the commissioners to account because they have not followed their own recommendation to excavate the Tunnel to its full dimensions as the work proceeds. Since their recommendation was made in the winter of 1863, the commissioners have had much experience, and the price of labor has doubled. Only a small number of men can work on a heading, but when a heading has been advanced a large number of workmen can follow rapidly in enlarging the excavation, and will soon overtake those engaged on the heading. At Mt. Cenis, the pneumatic drills are only used on the heading, and the enlargement is done by numerous laborers with hand drills. It is apparent that the commissioners have been actuated solely by motives of economy in prosecuting the heading alone, at the present high rates of labor. The work of enlargement is comparatively easy and rapid, and might well await a decline in the cost of labor, though it must be admitted that the importance of completing this n.o.ble work, ought to outweigh the consideration of _any possible_ cost.

On the subject of pneumatic drills, Mr. Bird is emphatic. He says, "no intelligent man puts the slightest confidence in the successful working of any borer, or drill, in the rock of the Hoosac Mountain, unless operated by hand. In a strictly h.o.m.ogeneous rock, machine drills might work, but in a rock like the Hoosac, where the drills, working generally in a comparatively soft material, are liable at any moment to strike veins of quartz, and where a part of the hole will be in the slate and the rest in quartz, no machine drill has yet been found to stand." This reckless and false a.s.sertion is made in utter defiance of Mr. Storrow's report and all other authorities upon the Alps Tunnel, which has now been excavated nearly four miles with machine drills on the heading. Mr.

Storrow says that masonry is used because the rock "is not h.o.m.ogeneous in character. I stood at the front of the machines, watching them for three quarters of an hour. One drill was driving directly into hard quartz, advancing very slowly, and making the sparks fly at every stroke. Others working in softer spots, were cutting rapidly."

Mr. Bird has much to learn about pneumatic drills, and, without going beyond the borders of Ma.s.sachusetts, he can see a drill operate by compressed air, so indifferent as to the character of the rock it works upon, that it will penetrate the hardest granite and the composite rock of the Hoosac with the same facility, and at a rate which would astonish even M. Sommeiller.

The figures upon which Bird bases a "calculation" as to the time of completing the Tunnel, are as far from being correct as his general statements are from the truth. One example is enough to ill.u.s.trate, and by this the reader may fairly judge what the "calculation" is worth. He says the total length of the Tunnel is 24,586 feet, when the _fact_ is that it is 25,586 feet. This is no mistake of the printer, for the figures repeatedly occur in the pamphlet, and always the same; and it is with this gross blunder that the "calculation" sets out. The truth is that any careful reader of this article, is a Better judge of the whole subject than Mr. Bird, because he will have reliable dates, facts and figures, by the aid of which he can make a calculation for himself, or'

form an opinion as to the time within which the work can be done, which will be quite as likely to be correct as any, "I undertake to say," of the oracular Bird.

On the 1st of December, 1865, the penetration at the East end was 2904 feet; at the East heading of Western shaft, 414 feet; West heading of same shaft, 280 feet; at West end heading, 756--in the whole, 4354 feet.

The central shaft had been sunk two hundred and twenty feet. The average progress on this shaft during the months of August, September, October and November was 18 3-4 feet per month. a.s.suming this for the average in December, January and February the shaft was 275 feet deep, on the 1st of March, the whole depth to grade being 1037 feet. The average progress on the East face of Western shaft was sixty-three feet per month.

Allowing that average for December, January and February, and the penetration on this face is now more than 600 feet. The average on East end was forty-four feet. Add this average for the last three months, and the penetration at this end is now 3036 feet, and the total penetration 4675 feet, with 575 feet of shaft sunk.

Mr. Laurie states in his report that in the ten tunnels which he names, in this country and Europe, the average progress made on each face from a shaft was thirty-eight feet, and on the end faces fifty-four feet per month. Let the intelligent man who forms opinions and conclusions for himself, compare the statistics which have been given in the course of this writing in relation to tunneling in Europe and in this country, and then, taking into consideration the inadequate means which have, until recently, been applied to the Hoosac enterprise, and surveying the progress which has been made whenever the work was prosecuted with vigor, let him judge how soon, and at what cost, the Tunnel may be completed, even without the aid of machine drills.

The concluding pages of the pamphlet contain a general charge against the commissioners, or rather Mr. Brooks, the chairman, of mismanagement.

The only "_ill.u.s.trations_" of this charge are, first, that Mr. Brooks declined to sell the 3,000 tons of railroad iron which had been purchased, and distributed along the graded track from Greenfield to the mountain, and "other saleable property;" second, that he has "disregarding the advice of others, whose judgment was ent.i.tled to weight, put his own constructions upon the acts of the Legislature relating to the powers and duties of the commissioners, in opposition to the construction and in defiance of the orders of the Executive Council;" third, he has seriously contemplated "the amazing folly of building the railroad from Greenfield to the mountain!"

It is gratifying to know from more reliable authority than the intimation of Mr. Bird, that Mr. Brooks did justify the opinion which is generally entertained, of his good sense and judgment, by contemplating that "amazing folly," and the only evidence of serious mismanagement on his part, which Mr. Bird can produce, is that he did not, at once execute his purpose, lay the rails and put the road in operation from Greenfield to the mountain. The additional facilities which the completion of this road would have afforded for expediting the work, and reducing its cost, are too obvious to be enumerated. The extent and value of the resources and material of the region through which the road pa.s.ses, and the importance of their speedy development, have already been shown. The distance from Greenfield to the mountain is about thirty miles, by a very uneven and hilly road; and yet, in 1861, the amount of freight transported over it, was 12,350 tons, and the freight and livery receipts were nearly $50,000. With a good railroad in operation, in the place of a rugged highway, and the summer travel which it would induce, there can be no doubt whatever, that the local business alone would afford receipts very far beyond the estimates, upon which it is presumed the offer of the Fitchburg and Vermont and Ma.s.sachusetts companies to take a lease of the road was based, that is, $21,500 a year more than running expenses.

Whether Mr. Brooks is responsible for the delay in putting the road under contract, and for the waste and damage which have resulted from a neglect of three years, or whether Mr. Bird _did_ succeed, while a member of the Council, in procuring an absolute injunction, the public cannot now well determine, for, as the reader has already observed, Bird declares that Mr. Brooks had absolute power, that the whole responsibility rests with him, and yet boasts that he "did something"

towards preventing the completion of the road.

Since the foregoing pages were written, Mr Bird has published and distributed another pamphlet, the remarkable audacity of which challenges our attention. If one half of the a.s.sertions it contains were true, if one half of its calculations and estimates could be demonstrated, the Hoosac Tunnel ought to be abandoned at once, as the greatest folly of the nineteenth century, and its ruins sacredly preserved as a monument to coming generations of a monstrous popular delusion: and if the epithets--swindlers, tricksters, liars, plunderers, thieves, ingrates, rascals, traitors and fools--which Mr. F. W. Bird, of Walpole, so freely and indiscriminately applies to everybody who has advocated or favored the building of this Tunnel, were deserved; then a very large proportion of several legislatures, a majority of several executive councils, and many distinguished citizens and state officers, including the late governor and attorney general, ought to be lodged for the remainder of their days either in the state prison, or the asylums for idiots.

This last publication of Bird's is mainly a repet.i.tion, "with embellishments," of his previous pamphlet, with the addition of a preface purporting to be the history of tunnel legislation to the beginning of the present year, a string of calculations and conjectures as to the capacity of the Western Railroad to transport ( provided it were properly managed, and the double track completed) all the Western freight and travel for all future time, and several pages of coa.r.s.e denunciation of Mr. Brooks, chairman of the Tunnel Commissioners, and the manner in which he has managed the trust committed to him. The subdivisions of these subjects are:--

1st. Tunnel Legislation. 2d. Abuse of Mr. Brooks. 3d. Power Drills. 4th.

The Deerfield Dam. 5th. "Porridge." 6th. The Western compared with the Tunnel line. 7th. The Possible Capacity of the Western Road. 8th. The Cost and Time required to Complete the Tunnel.

It is not our purpose to expose _all_ the misrepresentations and perversion of facts to which Mr. Bird has resorted in the treatment of his subject; but only enough of them to show what disreputable means the foes of the Tunnel are capable of using in order to deceive the community. Late results in the progress of work at the mountain, and in the perfection of machinery, will enable us to ill.u.s.trate the utter absurdity of several of the most important of Mr. Bird's calculations, or rather speculations, and enable the reader to judge what reliance can be placed upon any of them.

In a review of the history of tunnel legislation, as given in this pamphlet, pa.s.sing by the frequent charges of "packed committees,"

"deceived legislatures," and "tricks of legislative legerdemain," we come to an account of the Act of April, 1862, by which it appears that the bill pa.s.sed was not materially different from that prepared by Mr.

Bird, and offered by Mr. Swan. It was _ent.i.tled_, "An Act for the More Speedy Completion of the Hoosac Tunnel," yet the anti-tunnel league considered its pa.s.sage "a substantial defeat of the scheme," because they believed that Governor Andrew "was opposed to the Tunnel," and would appoint commissioners whose opinions were in harmony with his own.

And the virtuous and honest member of the "Third House," through whose adroit management, a bill bearing a t.i.tle so inconsistent with its purpose, was framed, affects a pious horror of legislative trickery!

Whatever Mr. Bird may have to say upon any of his various topics, he never forgets to abuse Mr. Brooks; "_Carthago delenda est_" at any rate; and he returns to the a.s.sault at the beginning or end of almost every chapter, with renewed spitefulness. On page 21 it is represented that Mr. Laurie, the engineer who had been designated by the governor and council to make surveys, had a personal interview with Mr. Brooks, and that the following colloquy took place:--

"I am here, Mr. Brooks, to make the surveys ordered." "What order?

What surveys?" "The surveys ordered by the governor and council."

"I have ordered no surveys and want none. When I need your services I will send for you. Go about your business."

Even those who have never reckoned Mr. Bird a man of strict veracity will be surprised to learn that this story is a pure fabrication, that no such conversation, and no such interview ever took place. The communications between the two gentlemen were a letter from Mr. Laurie, who was at Hartford, and a reply by telegraph from Mr. Brooks, who was in Boston. Mr. Laurie wrote,--"Presuming that you wish me to make these surveys, I will come to Boston," &c. Mr. Brooks telegraphed,--"The new survey has not been acted upon by commissioners."

On the same page of the pamphlet it is stated that Mr. Brooks, not being satisfied with Mr. Laurie's conclusions, "demanded the suppression of some portions of the report, and the modification of others." "Mr.

Laurie, after making such concessions as he could honestly make, resolutely refused to yield to Mr. Brooks' imperious demands upon material points." Now' this representation is just as false as the story about the colloquy. Mr. Brooks did not make any such demands. An exposure of both these fabrications is made in a communication to the Boston Advertiser of March 10th, which contains copies of all the correspondence on these subjects, between Mr. Brooks and Mr. Laurie.

On page 23, we are requested to "look at the item of the amount of the people's money applied by _Mr. Brooks_ to the payment of Mr. Haupt's debts," than which "there never was a more atrocious swindle." By referring to the records of the executive council for May, June and July of 1863, it will be seen that the subject of paying these claims was referred to a committee of the council, consisting of Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k, F. W. Bird and Joel Hayden for special investigation. Upon the question of the meaning and intent of the Act of 1862, and its legal interpretation, the committee took counsel of Dwight Foster, Emory Washburn, and Isaac R. Redfield, lawyers who had been designated by the governor, as a commission to whom should be referred such questions upon legal points as might arise in prosecuting the work, and in accordance with the advice of these gentlemen, and their own convictions, a majority of the committee (Mr. Bird of course opposing) reported that the claims ought to be paid. A majority of the council and the governor being of the same opinion, the claims were paid. The part performed by Mr. Brooks and his a.s.sociates was merely to audit and allow them. They could not draw a dollar from the state-treasury for any purpose except upon the governor's warrant. _If_ the payment of these claims was "an atrocious swindle," then the governor, a majority of his council, and the three lawyers, as well as the commissioners, were the atrocious swindlers. It would appear that the incorruptible and virtuous Bird was the only person about the state house, at that time, who could make any pretension to honesty or fidelity.

The motives of Mr. Bird, in these unscrupulous attempts to disparage the judgment and asperse the character of Mr. Brooks are best known to himself, but it will be remembered that when Mr. Brooks received his appointment he was thought to be opposed to the tunnel enterprise. He has proved to be one of its ablest and most resolute friends. The disappointment and grief of Mr. Bird may have been rendered more poignant by his defeat last fall as a candidate for the honor of representing his district in the Legislature, a defeat which he has publicly attributed to the opposition of Mr. Brooks.

The only noteworthy thing in this pamphlet concerning the Deerfield Dam, is an absurd attempt to misrepresent the commissioners' report of its cost. They state that it is $125,919.74. It was finished last fall. Mr.

Bird says "the dam will have cost when finished, at least $275,000," and thereafter to the end of his chapter on that topic, a.s.sumes that sum to be the actual cost. He obtains these figures by adding to the real cost of the dam, that of all the ca.n.a.ls; buildings and machinery which are being constructed between the dam and the tunnel. He might, with equal propriety, have added the cost of the Walpole meeting house, or that of his own paper mill. In a supplementary note we are informed that the dam across the Connecticut at Holyoke, 1017 feet long, cost about $115,000.

We may a.s.sume that Mr. Bird applies these figures to the present dam, and not to the one which gave way some years since. The cost of the first dam is not given, and the inquisitive reader might ask what that was, or whether the $115,000 should not with more propriety be considered as an expenditure for repairs of an old dam rather than the cost of a new one. However that may be, the cost of labor and material at the time the new dam was built, or the old one repaired, was less than one half of the cost of labor and material, at any time since the Deerfield dam was commenced. It is possible that a cheaper structure might have been built, which would answer the purpose, but the commissioners and their engineers, warned perhaps, by the Holyoke disaster, may be excused for constructing a work that will not be washed away, though done at some additional cost for its security.

If there is one thing which Mr. Bird absolutely loves it is "porridge,"

and he returns to this topic with great vivacity. It may be briefly stated that in December last, after the heading from the West portal had been carried forward 111 feet, progress was stopped by an inlet of water from a brook overhead and a spring below. This water operating on the rotten rock, produced what Mr. Bird calls "porridge." It was a difficulty which had been foreseen, but was never regarded by the commissioners or engineers as of a formidable character. Soon after work was suspended at this point, responsible parties came forward with an offer to construct an arch lined with solid masonry through the "porridge" to the Western shaft, a distance of about 2000 feet, for less than $700,000; and to furnish satisfactory security for the performance of their contract. The offer was declined.

When Mr. Bird learned that work at this point was suspended, he became jubilant. He has filled ten pages of his two pamphlets with "porridge,"

and excited some fears on the part of his friends that the stuff has found access to the thinking part of his own person, and "muddled" it badly. But of this the reader may judge by noting on page 34 of the last pamphlet an a.s.sertion that the distance from the West portal to the shaft is all demoralized rock; and on pages 36 and 37 a calculation that it will cost $5,430,300 _in gold_, to construct this section of 2000 feet! But "porridge" is unreliable, and that at the Hoosac, has given out; and so Mr. Bird's hopes and calculations, which were based upon it, fall to the ground. Work has been recently resumed, and twenty-seven feet beyond the point at which it was discontinued, solid rock was reached, in which the workmen are now drilling and blasting without molestation or fear of "porridge." The brook is pa.s.sed, and in the artesian well about half way from the portal to the shaft, solid rock has been reached at 130 feet above grade. "Porridge" has served its friends a mean trick and "well might _Mr. Bird_ exclaim in the language of Woolsey (slightly altered,)"

"Had I but served _the truth_ with half the zeal I served my _porridge_, _it_ would not, in my need, Have left me naked to mine enemies."

The theoretical capacity of the Western Railroad is a fruitful subject for speculations and array of figures, but facts and demonstrated truths are what practical men wish to deal with. A comparison of the Tunnel and Western lines is of no significance, when both are urgently needed. In 1847, when the Western Road was opened to Albany, it transported from Albany to Boston 88,438 tons of freight, and last year, only 87,254 tons, 1184 tons less. Yet in 1847 it had no double track, and in 1865 it had 116 miles of double track. The greatest tonnage was 116,288, in 1864: and that same year, 588,207 tons of through Eastward freight arrived at Albany and Troy, and the total amount to those two points was 3,866,025; nearly three fourths of which was transported on the Erie ca.n.a.l, an inst.i.tution which is entirely left out of Mr. Bird's calculations. More than six million tons of freight were brought from the West last year to the Hudson river. Of this vast amount only a little more than one sixtieth found its way to Boston over the Western Road. In 1864, 471,919 tons of freight were transported from Albany and Troy to Boston by the circuitous routes we have mentioned.

Mr. Bird makes a calculation that the capacity of the Western Road can be so increased, by finishing the double track, increasing the rolling stock and adding special auxiliary force to draw its freight trains up the steep grades, that it can bring 1,797,120 tons of freight in a year.

It may be presumed that he means both local and through freight. But his "calculation" is as baseless and flimsy as any of his numerous statistical bubbles which have already been p.r.i.c.ked. The best answer to his whole argument is contained in a memorial of the Albany Board of Trade to our legislature, with some extracts from which, our review of this topic will be closed. But a few more of Mr. Bird's misrepresentations must first be exposed. On page 56 he represents Mr.

Brooks as claiming that the whole through freight from the West to Boston_ eight years hence_, will amount to 448,101 tons. This estimate was made three years ago, and the words "eight years hence" were used at that time, and not now, as Mr. Bird represents.

On page 50, is a list of names purporting to have been taken from the original subscription list of stockholders in the Troy and Greenfield Railroad. Mr. Otis Clapp is represented as having subscribed $200 in "services;" and Daniel S. Richardson's name is appended, with ciphers and exclamation points. The first of these misrepresentations has been exposed by Mr. Clapp, who writes to the Boston Advertiser that he never charged the company for any service, nor was ever credited by them for services, but that he did subscribe and pay $1151.43 for stock of the road. Mr. Richardson also writes to the Advertiser, and mildly suggests that he was never in any way connected with the Troy and Greenfield Railroad. On page 51, E. H. Derby is represented as being president of the Fitchburg Railroad a pure fabrication; and Alvah Crocker as having "large investments" in the same road, when its books show that at that time he owned but six shares of stock. The truth is, Mr. Bird has no hesitation or scruple in using other people's names in the same manner as he uses figures and statistics in his calculations.

Mr. Bird says lie never had any communication or correspondence with, and never received a dollar from, any person connected with the Western Railroad. That may be; but it is well known that Mr. D. L. Harris, president of the Connecticut River Railroad, has been for years the "_fidus Achates_" of Mr. Bird in "fighting the Tunnel," his colleague in the "Third House," his companion at the Hoosac Mountain, and the guide of his inexperienced feet in the wilderness of facts and speculations of civil engineering. It is not so well known, but nevertheless true, that Mr. Harris is made director and president of the Connecticut River Railroad by the influence and vote of Chester W. Chapin, president of the Western road. His zeal in the service of his benefactor has been manifested by an active hostility to the Tunnel, as persistent and unscrupulous as that of Mr. Bird; and, were it possible for that gentleman ever to act from other than disinterested motives, or a sense of public duty, his intimate relations with Mr. Harris might justify a suspicion that the "sinews of war" might be supplied through that channel. At all events, we may be permitted to say that, if these two men have organized and led the opposition to the Tunnel every winter for the last ten years, printed thousands and thousands of pamphlets, and spent a considerable part of each year in the lobby, and all this at their own cost, from a sense of public duty, then they have better deserved statues in front of the State House than Webster or Mann; and the Western Railroad management is even meaner than it has been generally considered. A corporation must indeed be without a soul, which can look upon such sublime virtue, and suffer it to pay its own expenses. But enough of Mr. Bird and his motives.

The statements we have made in regard to the necessity of a new route are, in every particular fully confirmed by a memorial which has been recently addressed to our Legislature from the Albany Board of Trade, through a committee of seven of their number. The gentlemen comprising this board are not theorists, but practical, clear-headed and reliable business men, who have been compelled by the urgent demands of yearly increasing business, to appeal to the people of Ma.s.sachusetts for aid and relief.

From a table in their memorial, it appears, that, while the increase, during the last fifteen years, of miles of railroad in eleven other States through which Western products press to the seaboard, averaged 169 per cent, that of Ma.s.sachusetts was only 26 per cent. But we proceed to quote from the memorial:--

"Twelve years of experience have convinced us that the Western Railroad is wholly inadequate to the prompt, rapid and cheap transportation of the commodities so extensively consumed by the people of the New England States. To ill.u.s.trate the diversion of trade from the natural route to Boston via Albany, occasioned by the incapacity of the Western road to meet the wants of commerce, we call your attention to the article of flour. We collate our facts from reports of the Boston Board of Trade and the official reports of the Western Railroad. In 1865, the Western road, according to its own report, transported from Albany and Troy to Boston, one hundred and fifty thousand barrels less than it did in 1847, nearly twenty years ago. During the thirteen years, including 1848 and 1860, the average of its transportation of this article, per annum, between the Hudson and Boston was 287,698 barrels. For the same period, there were received in Boston, via other and more circuitous routes, an average per annum of 670,233 barrels. The next four years, including 1861 and 1864, the average per annum by the Western road was 572,637 barrels. Boston received from other routes an average, per annum for the same period, of 824,937 barrels.

Now, we hold that, by the natural laws of trade, most of this vast quant.i.ty of flour, which reaches Boston in these roundabout ways, would have left the Hudson river at Albany and Troy, had the requisite facilities for a cheap and rapid transportation been afforded. About one-fourth of the average quant.i.ty received in Boston from other routes, for the four years named above, reached that place via the Grand Trunk Railway and Portland, aggregating 956,945 barrels. Taking Detroit as the starting point, the distance from there to Boston via Portland, is 228 miles greater than the route to Boston via Albany. Yet, owing to the inadequate railroad facilities between Albany and Boston, the consignors of this flour prefer to send it via Portland, and pay the charges on 228 miles of additional distance. What is true of the article of flour is equally true of all the staple commodities produced at the West and consumed by the New England States. Large quant.i.ties were last year turned aside at Rochester and other points in our own State, to say nothing of points west of Buffalo, and sent to Boston and contiguous localities via the New York and Erie Railroad.

Boston is even now receiving flour from Albany, Troy and Schenectady, by way of Rutland, a distance of some fifty miles further than by the Western road.

We have no words but of commendation for the n.o.ble work which your State is pushing with such energy to open a still shorter route to the Hudson. We have no feelings of jealousy toward the new route, because it terminates in another city than Albany; a healthy rivalry will do more than moral suasion, to wake up the old route from that lethargy which seems so near akin to death. Had the Hoosac Tunnel been completed twelve years ago, we have reason to believe it probable that the people of Ma.s.sachusetts alone would have saved an amount in the way of cheap transportation, nearly if not quite sufficient to equal its cost.

We have spoken more freely in this paper than might be considered becoming in us, but for the fact that in the day of its need, Albany, along with Ma.s.sachusetts, came to the aid of the Western Railroad. And now that we are suffering so much from its insufficiency to meet the public want, we trust the presentation of these views and facts will not be regarded as obtrusive, but rather as properly coming from those, who, with you, aided to produce a common benefit, and are now suffering with you from a common cause."

The cost of the whole work was estimated by the commissioners in their first report, at $5,719,330, the estimate being based upon ordinary labor at one dollar a day, and of materials at a corresponding rate.

Nothing has yet occurred to invalidate this estimate, excepting the advance of the cost of material and labor, an incidental misfortune common to every public, as well as private enterprise, requiring labor and material, which has been prosecuted during the last three years. It is certain that these high rates will greatly decline, perhaps nearly to their former level within a year; but admitting that the Commissioners'

estimate should be swelled through these incidental causes to the sum of eight millions, would such an increase of expense justify the abandonment of this great enterprise, upon which so much has already been expended, and at the very period in its progress when the most formidable obstacles in its way have been surmounted, and its success become a certainty? Had the Western Railroad been utterly destroyed last year by a rebel raid, as were some Southern roads by the march of Sherman, or by any conceivable cause, would the consideration of twenty-five, or thirty, or even forty millions, prevent its being rebuilt at once? Why then should two millions stand in the way of the Tunnel line, which is now a greater necessity than the Western road was at the time of its construction?

The time required to complete the work, without the aid of machinery, was estimated by the Commissioners at eleven years and four months; and with the aid of such machine drills and power as had already been applied with success at Mt. Cenis, at seven years and a half. The work at Mt. Cenis was commenced in 1857, and up to July, 1861, 2142 feet had been excavated by hand labor; the machine drills were then applied, and the Italian government has recently announced that the work will be finished by the close of the year 1870. It will be seven and a half miles long. The Hoosac Tunnel will be about four and a half miles long, and at the present time it has been excavated 4675 feet, and shafts have been sunk to the depth of 575 feet. The machine drills will be applied in a few days; but they are drills which will do twice, and possibly three times the work of those at Mt. Cenis.