ment and growth which marked the
period. It was at this time that the Pittsburgh district took its
permanent place as the great center of steel and iron manufacture. The
discovery of petroleum in western Pennsylvania, creating an enormous new
industry in itself, proved to be an event of far-reaching significance
for the Pennsylvania Railroad. The extensive opening up of the soft coal
sections of western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, also meant much for
this great system of railroads.

Still further developments in other directions accrued to the benefit of
the Pennsylvania Railroad. In this period, by obtaining the control of
a line to Washington, the system acquired a Southern artery running
through Wilmington, Delaware, and Baltimore to Washington. Afterwards,
with other roads, the Pennsylvania acquired control of the Richmond,
Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad and thus obtained a line to
Richmond, Virginia. On the north and to the east the expanding movement
also went on. In addition to the development of its main line from
Philadelphia to Jersey City, the Pennsylvania acquired many other New
Jersey lines, including the West Jersey and Seashore, a road running
from Camden to Atlantic City and Cape May.

During the whole of the aggressive administrations of both Thomas A.
Scott and George B. Roberts the great system continued to spread out
steadily until it had penetrated as far as Mackinaw City on the north
and Chesapeake Bay on the south. Its network of lines stretched across
the Eastern section of the continent from New York to Iowa and Missouri,
while the intensive development of shorter lines in the State of
Pennsylvania and to the north was unceasing. The Northern Central
running south from Sodus Bay on Lake Ontario through central
Pennsylvania to Baltimore, the Buffalo and Alleghany Valley extending
from Oil City northward and joining the main system to the east, the
Western New York and Pennsylvania operating north from Oil City to
Buffalo and Rochester--these lines the Pennsylvania Railroad acquired
and definitely consolidated in the Roberts regime.

After the retirement of Roberts, Frank Thomson, a son of the earlier
president of the same name, was placed at the head of the system for
three years. But in 1899 Alexander J. Cassatt, who had for many
years been identified with the Pennsylvania as officer, director, and
stockholder, took the helm, and a new chapter and probably the greatest
in the histor