THEODORE D. JUDAH.

 

            AS THE years slowly unwound after history began its record, from the works of all the myriads who lived and died in the ancient world, seven achievements were separated from the rest and called the ''Seven Wonders of the World." The first was the pyramids of Egypt. They were built by slaves to gratify the whims of kings and to make for those kings sepulchres, when their work should be done. The second was the Pharos built by Ptolemy Philadelphia to be a watch-tower on the Nile. The third was the hanging gardens of Babylon, built to gratify the pride of a king or queen. The fourth was the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, which was built by the Asiatic states very much as the people of Utah built the Salt Lake temple. It required the patient labor of thou- sands of men and two hundred and twenty years of time to complete it. The fifth was the statue of Jupiter at Olympia, altogether glorious in ivory and gold and precious stones. The sixth was the mausoleum which Artemesia built for the tomb of her husband, and the last was the colossus of Rhodes, a statue of brass built in honor of the sun.

            It will be noticed that none of these were to be of any practical use to the world except the watch-tower built by Ptolemy. The rest were either for tombs or in honor of the deities which the various nations worshiped. In our day another wonder has been added to the wonders of the Old "World. It was not for a tomb ; it was not to gratify kingly pride; it was not to make an ostentatious display of wealth that it was created. The object was to open a new highway for trade and to make new capitals for commerce across the continent. I refer, of course, to the first Pacific railroad across the Sierra Nevada mountains and the deserts east of them.

            For a long time efforts had been made to begin some tangible work looking to the building of a transcontinental railroad. Benton had advocated it; Fremont had advocated it;

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the press of California constantly agitated the subject, pointing out its needs, expressing belief in its practicability, and the glory that would come with its construction. California senators and representatives had urged the undertaking, some half-hearted preliminary surveys had been made, but as a whole the people of the country, cowed by the distance and the descriptions of the route, believed the work impossible.

            Doubters explained that even could the road be built, it would be impossible to manufacture rolling stock that could stand the strain of a three thousand mile journey. Capitalists, when approached, began to lock their safes. With that air which is apt to attach to a man who has been a long time a banker, they would explain that could it be possible to build the road, the revenues from it would not for fifty years be sufficient to pay for the lubricating fluid in the boxes of the car wheels.

            Then they would pull down their maps, show the great American desert as it was outlined ; explain that from the Missouri to the Pacific there was a stretch of 2,000 miles of arid lands, desert mountains of rock and barren sand ; then question the sanity or honesty of any man who seriously advocated the pursuit of such an impossibility.

            It makes one smile to think what has been done since : how limited was the sagacity, how impotent the capacity, how narrow were the horizons of those wise asses of fifty years ago.

            But there was one man, Theodore D. Judah, of different mold. He was among men what the eagle is among birds. His way of mounting a height was by riding up it on the strong wings of enthusiasm and courage, but he was careful to assure himself in advance that the wings were strong enough to make the giddy flight.

            When on the crags, no matter how rude his eyrie might be, he was sure of its safety, for he himself had anchored it, so when the hurricane was raging it was a joy for him to flap his strong pinions and join his defiant scream to the clamors of the gale.

            When the work of building the road is spoken of or

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thought of, the glory goes to four men in Sacramento whose names have been so closely linked with that road that all other people are, by the great masses of men, forgotten in that connection. But Judah was the man who first dreamed of the enterprise, and followed his dream with his instruments. He scaled all the mountain tops : he made his surveys ; he worked year after year upon his theme. Because of him the project finally rounded into form. Because of him the road was be run.

            He was a civil engineer, poor in purse, but with visions in his brain sweeter than the thirst for gold.

            He built the road from Sacramento to Folsom. As he laid out that line his eyes every day stretched to the blue mountains beyond, until the idea of scaling those heights with the iron horse became an absorbing passion with him. So on his own account he laid his lines across them on three different routes. He followed the dream through half as many years as Columbus did before the Italian obtained the three little ships and their poor fittings with which to push back from the face of the ocean the veil and reveal a new continent. He tried the rich men of San Francisco. They heard his story ; they smiled at his enthusiasm, but they secretly buttoned up their pockets and locked their safes and said wisely to each other that the man was an enthusiastic lunatic.

            Judah had made the preliminary surveys and established that the work was practicable ; that it was but a matter of pluck, energy, persistence and money to construct the road. But months and years slipped away. Talk about the inertia of matter ! It does not compare with the inertia of provincial minds, or at times, with the inertia of public opinion.

            In July, 1859, the great Comstock mines east of the Sierra Nevadas were discovered; later the rush to that new field began which soon swelled into a stampede.

            The men who later were the magnates of the Central Pacific road the big four undertook the building of a stage road from Dutch Flat, California, on the west flank of the Sierras to what is now Truckee on the eastern slope. They gave the direction of the work to Judah. \Yhile that was in

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progress he laid the results of his investigation before the men who later organized a company which finally undertook the work. He pointed out that the plan was feasible; that it was possible to scale those heights and to build the western end of a transcontinental line. At last he awakened enough of their sympathy for them to begin to help him. They intended to try to build the road for fifty miles to connect with the western terminus of the wagon road. He begged them to take another route, pointed out that by taking that route 1,600 feet in elevation would be saved, but they shook their heads incredulously. They said, "Possibly we can, but such subsidies as we can get and by such help as we can draw to us, complete the road as high as Dutch Flat, and then if the Comstock mines hold out for a few years we can all make little fortunes." And while they were speaking that way, this man was in thought starting a train from Sacramento, seeing it scale two great ranges of mountains and the desert which stretched away between these ranges and making a revolution in the world's commerce. In thought he saw cities spring up along the trail which he should blaze in the wilderness. He saw the exhaustion, the terror and the fatigue of crossing the plains taken away, and so while he talked strict business to the principals in the enterprise, and while by his skill no mistakes were made in estimating grades or curves, when the day's work was finished the lullaby that he went to sleep on was the far off echo of the whistles which would blow in midcontinent before his work should be done.

            This work was not like the work of the ancients. It was a monument built to Industry. Its object was to forge a mighty link to connect with steel the two great oceans. It was to push the frontier back. It was, through a dreary and fearful wilderness, to smooth a way so that civilization might, with unsoiled sandals, advance along this new path and build to herself temples. It was to be a monument to progress which was to shine out on the world fairer than did the watch tower on the Nile ; fairer than the statue of Minerva, with its gold and ebony and ivory and precious stones. It was to be a notice of American power, much more impressive than was the statue

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that stood at the entrance of Rhodes in honor of the sun. It was to herald a new epoch.

            It was to create clouds by day and pillars of fire by night which for all time should light the way for commerce. It was to be a rolling fort of defense against savages. It was to make possible the driving away of the frown from the repellant face of the desert, and to make it possible for fair homes and great cities to appear where before all had been desolation since the beginning of time. It was to solve new 7 feats in engineering, and to give mankind a new notice that the earth and all therein are subject to the domination of royal brains. The work has been duplicated north and south since then, but that does not detract in the least from the glory of the first achievement, and the inauguration of that glory was due, is due and always will be due more to T. D. Judah than to any other one or to any other ten men. He dreamed it out first.

            He established its practicability by his unerring instruments. He turned all the enthusiasm of his great nature into the work until he infused some cool business brains with some of the fervor of his energy and hope. When the first stakes were set he went to Congress and renewed there his impassioned arguments in favor of the project, and when the line was completed to Ogden, then when its success had been established, he tried with all his strength to bring to his associates the aid necessary to purchase the Union Pacific, and make a continuous line under one company, from the Missouri to Sacramento. He wore himself out, and died in the mighty work, but his life was spared until the road was finished, and now it is his monument. He needs no other. The Union Pacific company, in gratitude for the solid business persistence which drove west the eastern end of the transcontinental line, built for the Ames on the summit of the Rockies a monument of granite. Judah needs no other monument but the road itself. But it would be a graceful thing for the company which was organized through his genius and carried to success by his genius, to build to him on the Sierras a monument of marble.

            He was a great man. Among men he was like Saul. He was taller than most of them ; he was strongly made ; he was

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massive every way. He was given the enthusiasm of the poet and the solid combinations of the scientific engineer. He consecrated his life to the eighth wonder of the world. He saw it completed and then, worn out, lay down and died. When the names of the strong men and the great men who found California a wilderness and then caused the transformation which revealed a glorified State, are called over, one after the other, close to the very head of the shining list should be the name of T. D. Judah.

            The near friends of the stalwart men who built the road may hold that the foregoing is a slighting of the builders' sagacity, public spirit and prescience. It is not so intended. What they did was a wonder, but it is true that at first they did not believe in the possibility, much less the feasibility, of the enterprise. When they began, their hope was to complete a road to Dutch Flat only. But that was far in advance of the opinions of the masses of men in California, almost infinitely in advance of the "sound thought" of the wise financiers of the East.

            It was all clear to Judah from the first; the splendor of it, the practicability of it, what it would be to native land.

            It came of the sagacity, the poetry, the patriotism of the man.

            He heard the far-off call and gave the command. The mountains were bowed down, the valleys exalted, the rolling waves of the desert subdued.

            On Memorial days, when the list of the names of the masterful men of California is read, when that of Judah is reached the chariots of the world's commerce should be halted as the great name is spoken.