er be used; the southern counties were mountainous, sterile,
and worthless, and afforded no products requiring a market; and, in any
case, these counties should find their natural outlet in the valley of
the Mohawk. This antagonism was successfully opposed, however, and the
construction of the road was begun in 1836.

The panic of 1837 interfered with the work, but in 1838 the state
Legislature came forward with a construction loan of three million
dollars, and the first section of line, extending from Piermont on the
Hudson to Goshen, was put into operation in September, 1841. In the
following year the company became financially embarrassed and was placed
in the hands of receivers. This catastrophe delayed further progress for
years, and it was not until 1846 that sufficient new capital was raised
to go on with the work. The original estimate of the cost for building
the entire line of 485 miles had been three million dollars, but already
the road had cost over six millions and only a small portion had been
finished. The final estimate now rose to fifteen millions, and, although
some money was raised from time to time and new sections were built,
there was no certainty that the entire road would ever be completed.
Ultimately the State of New York canceled its claim against the
property, new subscriptions of some millions were secured, and more
money was raised by mortgaging the finished sections.

Finally, in 1851, after eighteen years of effort, the line was opened to
Lake Erie. In addition there had been added various feeders or branches,
giving the road an entry into Scranton, Pennsylvania, and into Geneva
and Buffalo, New York. It had its terminus on Lake Erie at Dunkirk
and its eastern terminus at Piermont, near Nyack on the Hudson, about
twenty-five miles by boat from New York City.

The financial condition of the Erie at this time manifested the
beginning of that general policy of improvidence and recklessness
which afterward, for nearly a generation and a half, made the company
a speculative football in some of the most disreputable games of Wall
Street stock-jobbers. For though the original estimate had been three
millions and the highest estimate of the cost during construction had
been fifteen million dollars, the company, in 1851, started its career
with capital obligations of no less than twenty-six millions--a very
large sum for those days.

The fact that these initial obligations constituted a heavy b