THE CHICAGO RAILWAY TERMINAL PROBLEM. 
 
 REPORTS 
 
 CHICAGO TERMINAL COMMISSION 
 
 MAYOR AND COMMON COUNCIL 
 
 CITY OF CHICAGO, 
 
 Dated May 12TH and July iith, 1892. 
 
 LETTERS, REPORTS, BRIEFS, OPINIONS, COURT DE- 
 CISIONS, AND LEADING ARTICLES 
 
 DISCUSSING 
 
 THE CHICAGO RAILWAY TERMINAL PROBLEM, AND 
 ITS SOLUTION, 
 
 FROM THE STANDPOINT OF 
 
 MECHANICAL AND HYDRAULIC ENGINEERS, LAWYERS, 
 JUDGES, AND THE PUBLIC PRESS. 
 
 M 
 
t 
 
 
 
THE CHICAGO RAILWAY TERMINAL PROBLEM. 
 
 REPORTS 
 
 CHICAGO TERMINAL COMMISSION 
 
 MAYOR AND COMMON COUNCIL 
 
 CITY OF CHICAGO, 
 
 Dated May 12th and July iith, 1892. 
 
 LETTERS, REPORTS, BRIEFS, OPINIONS, COURT DE- 
 CISIONS, AND LEADING ARTICLES 
 
 DISCUSSING 
 
 THE CHICAGO RAILWAY TERMINAL PROBLEM, AND 
 IT§ SOLUTION, 
 
 FROM THE STANDPOINT OF 
 
 MECHANICAL AND HYDRAULIC ENGINEERS, LAWYERS, 
 JUDGES, AND THE PUBLIC PRESS. 
 
PRESS OF 
 
 JENKINS &■ MCCOWAN, 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
 fc : 
 
 
Mayor's Office, 
 Chicago, Feb. 15, 1892. 
 
 To the Honorable the City Council of the City of 
 Chic a 00 : 
 
 Gentlemen — I beg leave to call your attention to 
 the subject of grade crossings of railroads and streets 
 within the city, and the importance of providing, 
 without delay, the best remedy for this evil. 
 
 There are within the city, I think, one thousand, 
 or thereabouts, of such crossings of streets and rail- 
 roads, at some of which a large number of railroad 
 tracks cross the streets at grade. 
 
 At these crossings, according to the report of the 
 Coroner, over three hundred persons met their death 
 during the last year. The deaths at these crossings 
 exceed in number, I believe, all the death casualties 
 of any other kind together. The injury to persons 
 and property is not the only great evil of grade cross- 
 ings. The delays occasioned are very serious. The 
 fire department was detained in reaching fires over 
 three hundred times during the last year, and the 
 total time of such delays was over sixteen hours. 
 The delays to traffic and business are enormous. These 
 are some of the evils to be considered in addition to 
 the great number of casualties caused by grade cross- 
 ings. The facts demonstrate the utter insufficiency 
 of the means of protection which have been hereto, 
 fore afforded at these crossings. In addition to the 
 
crossings now existing the public travel requires the 
 opening of new streets over these railroads. The 
 public necessity for streets must be accommodated, 
 and the crossings of the streets must be kept in a 
 reasonably safe condition for the public travel thereon. 
 On the other hand the public importance of speedy 
 transit upon the railroads is to be taken into account. 
 The people require rapid transit. To accomplish these 
 results grade crossings must be done away with. It 
 has been the policy of city authorities, heretofore, to 
 meet this necessity by carrying the streets over the 
 railroads by means of viaducts, and a comparatively 
 few streets are thus provided for. But the few via- 
 ducts constructed within the last sixteen years have 
 cost about three million dollars for construction and 
 land damages. Aside from this there is the cost of 
 repair and maintenance. The loss incurred by reason 
 of additional hauling up of the viaducts is enormous. 
 The number of viaducts is now entirely inadequate. 
 If viaducts were placed at ten times the number of 
 street crossings at which they now exist, the public 
 travel would not be met when their construction had 
 been completed. Some idea of the expense involved 
 in providing adequate crossings, by means of viaducts, 
 may be gained from consideration of these facts, but 
 the estimate would probably be then too small, and 
 the means thus provided would then be inadequate. 
 The necessity for additional crossings would be con- 
 stant, and if the public necessity were adequately 
 accommodated by viaducts, aside from the enormous 
 first cost, the cost of maintenance and reconstruction 
 would itself be enormous. 
 
 It would, therefore, seem that viaducts do not, 
 
and cannot be made to meet the necessities of the 
 case, or to afford any adequate remedy. 
 
 What is the remedy ? I beg to recommend that 
 this subject be taken up energetically and thoroughly; 
 that the best remedy be determined upon and be ap- 
 plied, and that our best thoughts be now given to this 
 subject, and that the same be not dropped or delayed, 
 but be pressed until this evil of grade crossings be for- 
 ever removed. 
 
 I assure you that it is my desire and purpose to 
 take hold of this matter with you in this way, and 
 with this end in view. 
 
 I beg to urge upon your consideration the question 
 of elevated terminals within the City of Chicago, and 
 of compelling railroads to elevate their tracks so as to 
 permit the crossings of streets underneath the tracks. 
 I am advised by the Corporation Counsel that the City 
 Council is possessed of adequate power in the prem- 
 ises, and an opinion to this effect has heretofore been 
 rendered to your Committee on Railroads. The trend 
 of late judicial decisions upon the subject of police 
 power confirms this opinion. The practical solution 
 of the question in this way, however, presents many 
 difficulties, and can only be reached, in my opinion, by 
 a careful consideration of all conditions. Our city in 
 this respect is peculiarly situated, and it would be un- 
 wise to disarrange the existing condition of affairs 
 until we are prepared to submit a remedy which shall 
 consider the interests, and all conditions fairly and 
 thoroughly. It has been urged that if all the railway 
 tracks within the city were now to be elevated, aside 
 from the cost to railway companies, a large number 
 of industries, great and small, situated along the roads 
 
of our respective railroads, which have been construct- 
 ed for their railroad facilities, and to conform to the 
 present state of affairs, would be destroyed. And it 
 has been represented on the part of the railroad com- 
 panies that the cost itself of making- this change in all 
 their tracks would be so enormous as to bankrupt the 
 companies. The conditions vary and might be met 
 by varying remedies. 
 
 It has been suggested that the remedy lies in part 
 in bringing about a removal of railway tracks and ter- 
 minals from the immediate business centre of the city, 
 and the consequent increase of the business district. 
 The railroads lying along or adjacent to the banks of 
 the river, where they are now crossed by viaducts lead- 
 ing to the bridges, present conditions different from 
 the railroads lying elsewhere. 
 
 The validity of any ordinance that you may pass 
 upon depends upon its reasonableness. Your ordi- 
 nance must be reasonable in order to be valid. Its 
 reasonableness will be determined in view of all the 
 considerations of the facts and circumstances in the 
 premises. But your conclusion upon that embodied 
 in the ordinance will go far to establish its own rea- 
 sonableness. You are the first judge of those condi- 
 tions, facts and circumstances. But they should all 
 be carefully investigated, gone over and considered, 
 and the solution of this problem which shall be ar- 
 rived at must be one that will afford permanent rem- 
 edy. The fact of the growth of the city must be con- 
 sidered, as well as its present condition and needs. 
 The remedy must be no temporary shift. These facts 
 all demonstrate that this problem cannot be settled 
 without a most careful consideration by persons desig- 
 
nated for this specific purpose, who, by their skill, judg- 
 ment, and broad-mindedness will be regarded as able 
 to cope with the problem. 
 
 I therefore suggest that a committee consisting 
 of three experts be appointed to immediately take up 
 this subject and proceed to make a complete and thor- 
 ough investigation of this subject and report to your 
 Honorable Body at the earliest possible moment, and 
 within three months from the date of their appoint- 
 ment. That they should be employed at a proper sal- 
 ary, in order that they may give their entire time to 
 this subject, and that they be authorized to em- 
 ploy such clerical and other help as may be necessary, 
 and to incur such legitimate expenses in their investi- 
 gation as the circumstances justify. 
 
 Respectfully submitted, 
 Hempstead Washburne, 
 
 Mayor. 
 
 In connection with the foregoing, Aid. Madden 
 presented a resolution providing for the appointment 
 of three experts as recommended by His Honor the 
 Mayor, and moved its passage. 
 
 The motion prevailed unanimously. 
 
 The following is the resolution as passed : 
 
 Resolved, That the Mayor be and is hereby autho- 
 rized to employ three experts who shall examine the 
 roads and construction of all terminal steam railroads 
 now centering in Chicago on grade crossings. That 
 said three experts be appointed for the purpose of sug- 
 gesting a remedy whereby grade crossings on all of 
 said terminal roads can be abolished by elevation or 
 otherwise. 
 
That said experts be required to report in each 
 case some method by which grade crossings can for- 
 ever be abolished within the City of Chicago. And 
 that they be authorized to collect such information 
 from abroad and at home, as shall fully advise them 
 upon the best methods to accomplish this result. 
 That the said experts and such assistants as they may 
 require, be paid from money not otherwise appropri- 
 ated. And that they be authorized to proceed imme- 
 diately with their work and to report to this Council 
 within three months from the date of their appoint- 
 ment. 
 
 Mayor's Office, ) 
 Chicago, May 16, 1802. j 
 
 To the Honorable the City Council : 
 
 Gentlemen — I herewith forward for your consid- 
 eration the report, with accompanying maps and 
 plans, of the Chicago Terminal Commission. 
 
 The report you will find ample and comprehensive 
 and well worthy of the perusal and attention of your 
 Honorable Body. 
 
 Respectfully submitted, 
 
 Hempstead Washburne, 
 
 Mayor. 
 
 The following is the report : 
 
 Chicago, May 12, 1892. 
 To the Ho?iorable Hempstead WasJiburne, Mayor of 
 
 the City of Chicago : 
 
 Dear Sir — Your Commissioners who were ap- 
 pointed to examine the road and constructions of all 
 terminal steam railroads now centering in Chicago on 
 
grade crossings, and to suggest a. remedy whereby 
 grade crossings on all said terminal roads could be 
 abolished by elevation or otherwise, beg leave to 
 make the following preliminary report: 
 
 Your Commissioners, acting upon instructions con- 
 tained in the resolution passed by the City Council 
 February 15, 1892, whereby this commission was cre- 
 ated, authorizing' the Commissioners to gather such 
 information from abroad and at home as would fully 
 advise them upon the best methods to accomplish the 
 result for which they were appointed, would say : 
 That they started with the Chief Engineer of the 
 Commission, Mr. Carl Binder, on the 5th day of April 
 to make a tour of eastern cities where the same sub- 
 ject has been under consideration, and had been suc- 
 cessfully dealt with, to investigate how the subject 
 had been handled by the city authorities, and to profit 
 by their experience in the solution of this most impor- 
 tant problem at home. 
 
 Our first visit was made to the City of Philadel- 
 phia ; here we found the main or terminal station of 
 the Pennsylvania road opposite the City Hall or Mu- 
 nicipal Building; this station was built about 14 years 
 ago. The line to the station from West Philadelphia 
 is an elevated structure about one mile long, having 
 three tracks. The ground floor of the station is used 
 for ticket offices, baggage rooms, and for the entrance 
 of carriages and other vehicles. Staircases and ele- 
 vators give access to the second floor where the tracks, 
 waiting-rooms, restaurants, etc., are located. About 
 240 trains arrive, and the same number leave this sta- 
 tion every twenty-four hours. The capacity of this 
 station is rather small for the large traffic, and an en- 
 
10 
 
 largement is planned for the near future. Other parts 
 of the ground floor of this elevated structure are used 
 for storage rooms, engine room and freight station. 
 
 The freight is received on the ground floor and is 
 by hydraulic lifts elevated to the second floor, and 
 loaded into the cars which are run in on side tracks; 
 the unloading is done in the reverse way. The sys- 
 tem works very satisfactorily according to the testi- 
 mony of the Pennsylvania Railroad officials, and they 
 would not care to go back to the old system under 
 any circumstances. 
 
 The Philadelphia & Reading Railroad is at present 
 building a new elevated station in the heart of the city, 
 at Market street, and is to come into this station on 
 an elevated structure. The main part of this elevated 
 structure is built as an embankment with retaining 
 walls. The streets are crossed by stone arches and 
 iron bridges; the station is elevated on iron columns. 
 Part of the ground floor and basement of this station 
 is already in use as a market, and is a very fine exam- 
 ple of how space below elevated railroads in cities 
 where property is valuable, can be utilized 
 
 The City of Philadelphia in conjunction with the 
 railroads is making great effort to abolish all street 
 crossings at grade ; most of them have already been 
 abolished, and the rest will be in the near future. 
 
 According to the contour of the locality, the 
 streets run over or under the railroads. The city en- 
 gineers of Philadelphia recommend, in accordance 
 with their long experience in this line, that 15 feet is 
 a minimum height for subways, but in the most in- 
 stances they would recommend 16 feet; 13 and 14 
 feet have been proven insufficient. 
 
11 
 
 The railroad companies are paying for all the im- 
 provements for the width of their right of way, while 
 the city in some instances, jointly with the companies, 
 pays the damages, if any, and the costs outside of the 
 right of way of the railroad; but, as a rule, the rail- 
 road companies pay all the damages to property; for 
 instance, the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Com- 
 pany, with its new entrance into Philadelphia, wanted 
 to make changes of their line crossing Broad street, 
 and, in return for this, the city requires the railroad 
 company to build a viaduct over Broad street. For 
 the payment of damages alone the Philadelphia & 
 Reading Road has filed a bond for $[,000,000. 
 
 The city authorities are also exerting their influ- 
 ence towards abolishing railroad crossings at grade; 
 for instance, the crossings of the Philadelphia & 
 Reading Railroad, with the Pennsylvania Railroad, 
 will be abolished this year by depressing the tracks 
 of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad. This im- 
 provement will cost about four hundred thousand 
 dollars. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Railroad Company is at present 
 engaged in doing away with the grade crossing of the 
 tracks of their western and New York divisions, so 
 that the tracks for the western division will go under 
 the New York tracks. This improvement involves a 
 great expenditure. 
 
 We are also informed by the city authorities of 
 Philadelphia that the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 
 which now comes into the city of Philadelphia at 
 street level, will have to elevate before long, and that 
 within two years the street railroad grade crossings in 
 Philadelphia will belong to the past. All this has 
 
12 
 
 been and will be accomplished by mutual concession 
 and without legal proceedings or litigation. 
 
 At Jersey City we found that the Pennsylvania 
 Railroad Company's tracks were elevated about three 
 years ago. Previous to the elevation of their tracks 
 the trains were obliged to run through the city very 
 slowly, and accidents, whereby people were killed or 
 injured, were almost a daily occurrence. They now 
 run their trains through the city on this elevated struct- 
 ure $t full speed. Part of the structure is of solid 
 earth between retaining walls, with bridges at inter- 
 secting streets, and about 3,000 feet of it is of iron 
 bridges, which support four tracks with the wooden 
 ties and planking. The structure is a very substan- 
 tial one and cost per lineal foot, including ties and 
 rails, about one hundred and fifty dollars. The foun- 
 dations have been very expensive; similar structures 
 could be put up in Chicago, at present prices for iron, 
 excluding ties and rails, at about five hundred thous- 
 and dollars per mile. This elevation, we are informed, 
 was done at the urgent request of the Pennsylvania 
 Railroad Company, said company paying all dam- 
 ages and expenses of elevating. 
 
 At Hartford, Conn., and Springfield, Mass., the 
 Boston & Albany Railroad has elevated its terminals. 
 The structure is partly iron trestle work and partly 
 solid earth between retaining walls. The depot at 
 Hartford accommodates also the New York & New 
 England Railroad, and the arrangement, by means of 
 subways, is so that passengers do not cross the tracks. 
 
 The city of Boston and State of Massachusetts ap- 
 pointed a commission about one year ago to study the 
 question of rapid transit through the city. This com- 
 
13 
 
 mission has worked out a plan for an elevated road 
 and partly tunnel through the Commons (a park in 
 that city). This plan provides for widening the 
 streets and connecting the different steam railroad 
 stations. In connection with this the commission has 
 tried to improve the terminal facilities of the railroads, 
 and has given to the different railroads one year's 
 time to make detailed plans for such improvements. 
 These proposed improvements for rapid transit are es- 
 timated to cost from sixty to seventy million dollars. 
 A larger part of this expense, however, will be for the 
 proposed widening and straightening of streets and 
 for paying damages to property in order that the pro- 
 posed elevated rapid transit line may connect with the 
 different steam railroad stations. The City of Boston 
 has already done away with a great many street cross- 
 ings at grade; for instance, the Boston and Albany 
 Railroad has abolished all such crossings within the 
 city limits. 
 
 At Rochester, N. Y., the New York Central and 
 Hudson River Railway Company elevated their tracks 
 through the city about nine years ago. The structure 
 is of solid earthwork between retaining- walls, and the 
 streets are crossed by the railroads on iron bridges. 
 At the time when this work was under consideration 
 the city obtained from the Legislature a right to ap- 
 point a commission, which was organized on the 26th 
 day of April, 18S0, and ended their work on the 29th 
 day of December, 1886. At that date the object for 
 which they were appointed was accomplished in a 
 very satisfactory manner. This commission, by an act 
 of the Legislature, was given power to agree with the 
 railroad company upon plans for elevation and also 
 
14 
 
 for closing or opening such streets, lanes and alleys 
 as they might deem proper, to make such concessions 
 as they thought advisable in order to hasten the com- 
 pletion of the elevated tracks, but they could not sub- 
 ject the city to any portion of the costs or damages 
 that might occur by the elevation of the said tracks. 
 The entire cost was paid by the New York Central and 
 Hudson River Railroad Company and, according to 
 the official statement made by the comptroller of that 
 corporation, was $1,726,617.62. 
 
 In the City of Buffalo the question of grade cross- 
 ings has been agitated for a long time. Four years 
 ago a commission was appointed to solve this prob- 
 lem, and a plan was designed for a Union Depot to 
 accommodate all of the railroads entering the city. 
 According to this plan the railroads would have been 
 elevated throughout the city, but as the New York 
 Central and Hudson River Railroad Company 
 claimed to have better depot facilities for their own 
 roads, and as they wanted at least the controlling in- 
 terest in the Union Depot, this plan had to be given 
 up. After considerable discussion with the railroads 
 a new plan was made, which does not make any ma- 
 terial changes in the present depot facdities and tracks, 
 but proposes viaducts and subways, according to the 
 locality. 
 
 Some of the railroads, particularly the New York 
 Central and the Hudson River Railroad, which op- 
 posed the Union Depot scheme, have shown their wil- 
 lingness to give relief to the city traffic by carrying 
 out this plan, and the other railroads will be brought 
 in line by the enactment of special laws by the Legis- 
 lature of the State of New York, so that the subways 
 
15 
 
 and viaducts will be built by the city with a lien on 
 the property of the railroads if they refuse to make 
 improvements as ordered by the city authorities. Ac- 
 cording to some agreements already made, the rail- 
 roads pay the whole costs within their right of way 
 and two-thirds outside of it, while the city is to pay 
 the remaining^ one-third. 
 
 From our observations in eastern cities where ele- 
 vated systems are now in successful operation, we 
 have come to the conclusion that railroad tracks with- 
 in the city limits of Chicago as a general rule can be 
 and should be elevated, thereby abolishing street 
 grade crossings. We are not prepared at present to 
 recommend how this most important problem can be 
 solved, as it involves so many different interests which 
 should be carefully considered before we can reach a 
 final conclusion. 
 
 We have been at work daily since our appoint- 
 ment and have had meetings and consultations with 
 different railroad and city officials and citizens, and 
 we have been over the line of several railroads to the 
 city limits and have carefully examined the numerous 
 street grade crossings of the same, and we are now at 
 work preparing plans. It is our intention to go over 
 the line of every railroad entering the city, in order to 
 become perfectly familiar with the peculiarities of 
 each road, so that we can recommend a plan for each 
 road that will do away with street grade crossings 
 within the city limits. This, of course, will require 
 some time, and as the city council ordered us to make 
 a report in three months, we would respectfully ask 
 that the time be extended, inasmuch as we find it im- 
 possible to make a clear and comprehensive report in 
 
16 
 
 that time. We are, however, pushing the work forward 
 as rapidly as possible, and will make, from time to 
 time, reports about the terminals of the different roads. 
 
 In other cities where the problem has been of vast- 
 ly less importance, it has taken years to bring about 
 the desired result. Take for instance the city of 
 Rochester: here the agitation of elevated tracks was 
 commenced in 1874, and it was not until 1882 that the 
 work of elevation was actually begun. 
 
 At Buffalo a commission has been at work for four 
 years, and has just succeeded in devising a plan that 
 promises to solve the problem. 
 
 You will, therefore, see that Chicago, the greatest 
 railroad center on this continent, and probably the 
 greatest in the world, cannot expect to solve the prob- 
 lem in three months time; nor can your commission, 
 even in that time, be expected to recommend a plan 
 that would be at all satisfactory. 
 
 On account of sickness Mr. Fred S. James, one of 
 the Commissioners, was unable to make the tour of 
 eastern cities, and therefore has not signed this re- 
 port. 
 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 Geo. Hackney. 
 E. S. Drever. 
 Carl Binder, 
 
 Chief Engiiieer. 
 
 Mayor's Office, 
 Chicago, July 11, 1S92. 
 
 To the Honorable, the Common Council : 
 
 Gentlemen — I herewith submit for your consid- 
 eration the report of the Railway Terminal Commis- 
 
17 
 
 sion appointed by your authority, under an order of 
 Feb. 15, 1892. 
 
 It is unnecessary for me to review this exhaustive 
 and comprehensive report, and I therefore submit it 
 to you. I desire to thank the members of this Com- 
 mission for their arduous and exhaustive labors and 
 for the able report they submit, and trust it will meet 
 with your favorable consideration. 
 
 I desire personally to thank the members of this 
 Commission, now that they are about to disband, and 
 to say I believe the result of their work will greatly 
 aid the City Council in shaping legislation, so much 
 needed by the city, to render life and limb secure, 
 and free our streets from the burdensome traffic now 
 so detrimental to our thoroughfares. 
 
 Respectfully submitted, 
 
 Hempstead Washburne, 
 Mayor 
 
 To the Honorable Mayor and Common Council of the 
 city of Chicago : 
 
 Gentlemen — At the meeting of the Common 
 Council of the city of Chicago, held Feb. 15, 1892, 
 his Honor the Mayor submitted a message on the sub- 
 ject of grade crossings of railroads and streets within 
 the city, and the importance of providing, without 
 delay, the best remedy for this evil. 
 
 In this message the orreat loss of life, the incon- 
 venience to the public, the injury to abutting property 
 and other considerations, were recited as showing the 
 pressing necessity for some immediate action to give 
 relief from existing conditions. 
 
Pursuant to the recommendations of the message, 
 the following resolution was unanimously adopted : 
 
 " Resolved, that the Mayor be and he is hereby- 
 authorized to employ three experts, who shall examine 
 the roads and construction of all terminal steam rail- 
 roads now centering in Chicago on grade crossings. 
 That said three experts be appointed for the purpose 
 of suggesting a remedy whereby grade crossing on 
 all of said terminal roads can be abolished by eleva- 
 tion or otherwise. 
 
 " That said experts be required to report in each 
 case some method by which grade crossings can for- 
 ever be abolished within the City of Chicago. And 
 that they be authorized to collect such information 
 from abroad and at home as shall fully advise them 
 upon the best methods to accomplish this result. 
 That the said experts and such assistants as they may 
 require, be paid from money not otherwise appropriated. 
 And that they be authorized to proceed immediately 
 with their work and to report to this Council within 
 three months from the date of their appointment." 
 
 The undersigned having, in pursuance of said reso- 
 lution, been appointed by his Honor the Mayor as 
 Commissioners to examine and report upon all the 
 questions covered by the said resolution, beg leave to 
 refer to the former report made by them, dated May 
 12, 1S92, addressed to his Honor the Mayor, and by 
 him submitted to the Council, and published in the 
 proceedings of the regular meeting of that body for 
 May 16, 1892. 
 
 By a resolution of the Council, May 23d, the time 
 of service of this Commission was extended three 
 months from that date. 
 
19 
 
 Your Commission has continued its labors, and as 
 a result thereof, after mature consideration and a 
 study of all the problems involved, submits the follow- 
 ing recommendations, as being, upon the whole, the 
 best to secure the results desired in the interests of 
 the public, and as we believe of the railroad compa- 
 nies themselves. 
 
 I. 
 
 By reason of the division of the City of Chicago 
 by the Chicago river into three districts, the North, 
 South, and West sides, it is evident to your Commis- 
 sion that the different railroads entering the city 
 through these districts must be arranged and classified 
 into separate groups. 
 
 II. 
 
 The necessity for the immediate adoption of some 
 plan for removal of traffic of the steam railroads from 
 the surface of the streets and highways of the city 
 is imperative and unquestionable, and should not 
 longer be postponed. 
 
 This necessity arises from the highest of consider- 
 ations, namely, the protection of human life, both 
 with respect to those using the streets for the primary 
 purposes for which they were created, as well as pro- 
 tection to those traveling upon, or operating the trains 
 of the steam railroad lines. 
 
 This overruling necessity found expression in the 
 message of the Mayor, above referred to, and in the 
 prompt and unanimous action of the Council thereon, 
 and is strongly emphasized in the voice of public 
 sentiment by the people and through the press. 
 
20 
 
 In this connection we have had compiled statistics 
 by persons employed by us, showing, from 6 a. m. to 
 7 p. m., a period of thirteen hours, the number of 
 vehicles, street cars, street-car passengers, pedestrians, 
 number of delays, total time of delays, delays to 
 vehicles, delays to street cars, delays to street-car 
 passengers, delays to pedestrians and cost of delays 
 at a number of the principal intersections within the 
 city, from which it will appear that the item of delay 
 alone, computed on the basis of a fair day's average 
 of delays for the entire year, involves an expense to 
 persons, vehicles, etc., delayed, of nearly one-half a 
 million dollars annually, and this, too, at only thirty- 
 six out of fifteen hundred and upward of crossings. 
 A table showing the foregoing in detail is submitted 
 herewith. 
 
 The number of persons (not including railroad 
 employes) killed upon steam railroad tracks within 
 the city has been so recently the subject of extended 
 discussion in the public press, that it is not necessary 
 to dwell upon the harrowing details. 
 
 III. 
 
 Your Commission is advised by the law officers of 
 the city, that as to the control of the streets and high- 
 ways within the city, its charter confers upon the Com- 
 mon Council full authority for preserving the streets 
 and highways to the free and unrestricted use of the 
 public and the protection of human life in the exer- 
 cise of this right. 
 
 Your Commission is further advised that in the 
 exercise of the powers so conferred upon it, the Com- 
 
OBSERVATION OF CROSSINGS. 
 
 TOTAL TRAFFIC. 
 
 FOR THIRTEEN HOURS: 6 A. M. TO 7 I>. M. 
 
 Streets. 
 
 Harrison 
 
 Twenty-second. 
 
 Thirty-first 
 
 Thirty-ninth . . 
 Forty-seventh . 
 
 State 
 
 Taylor 
 
 Clark 
 
 Archer avenue. 
 
 Root 
 
 Fifty-fifth 
 
 Sixty-third 
 
 State. 
 
 Wabash 
 
 Michigan 
 
 Halsted 
 
 State 
 
 Grand Boulevard 
 
 Clinton and Kinzie... . 
 
 May 
 
 Robey 
 
 Lake 
 
 Madison 
 
 Van Buren 
 
 Twelfth 
 
 Jefferson - 
 
 Ashland Boulevard . . 
 
 Wood 
 
 Western avenue 
 
 Rush 
 
 Division 
 
 North avenue 
 
 Chicago avenue 
 Halsted and Division. 
 
 Ashland avenue 
 
 Milwaukee avenue . 
 
 Totals for one day. 
 
 Railroads 
 
 L. S. & M. S. and C, R. I. & P. R. Rs. 
 
 L. S. & M. S. and P., Ft. 
 C. & W. I. R. R. 
 C. & W. I. and others. 
 C. & W. I. R. R. 
 
 W. & C. R. Rs. 
 
 St. Charles Air Line. 
 
 Union Stock Yards R. R. 
 
 C. &N. W. and P., C, C. & St. 
 
 P., C, C. & St. L. and C. & N. 
 
 R. Rs 
 R. Rs 
 
 C, B. &Q., etc. 
 
 C. & W. R. R. 
 
 C, M. &• St. P. R. R. 
 
 2,475 
 1,906 
 
 979 
 
 978 
 
 1,034 
 
 647 
 
 1,960 
 
 2,510 
 
 1-395 
 
 1,681 
 
 384 
 
 711 
 
 3,091 
 
 4,836 
 2,734 
 
 918 
 1,790 
 4,635 
 
 968 
 
 666 
 
 1,179 
 
 708 
 
 699 
 
 2,444 
 
 S89 
 
 500 
 
 547 
 
 1,006 
 
 9,801 
 
 1.389 
 
 992 
 
 1,961 
 
 4,342 
 
 912 
 
 1,119 
 
 33 
 293 
 470 
 123 
 
 661 
 526 
 
 433 
 
 232 
 
 1.066 
 
 990 
 
 716 
 
 235 
 676 
 458 
 562 
 
 108 
 194 
 184 
 
 287 
 258 
 640 
 
 65 
 5,920 
 4 163 
 
 ',435 
 
 18,605 
 '2.7S3 
 3,3°S 
 
 i,7H 
 
 50,044 
 54,404 
 
 50,044 
 
 3.000 
 18.000 
 6,000 
 6,000 
 
 1.940 
 3,083 
 1,494 
 7,940 
 4,000 
 8,000 
 
 10,874 
 3,"3 
 3,753 
 2,370 
 2.384 
 2,S 7 4 
 3-322 
 1,320 
 2, 5 '9 
 2,594 
 
 541 
 1,685 
 3,128 
 4,344 
 4.462 
 8,126 
 2,639 
 1,428 
 5,897 
 
 728 
 i,47o 
 1,161 
 2,852 
 
 857 
 2,360 
 2,298 
 2,417 
 1,448 
 2.072 
 14,724 
 3-332 
 1,706 
 6,359 
 4.280 
 1,732 
 2,012 
 
 129 
 
 100 
 
 9 2 
 
 158 
 
 26 
 
 192 
 160 
 
 52 
 60 
 71 
 
 68 
 144 
 20 
 49 
 123 
 77 
 43 
 54 
 IC9 
 
 403 
 200 
 
 231 
 226 
 287 
 
 -120 
 
 278 
 26S 
 
 31 
 89 
 
 95 
 93 
 98 
 320 
 33 
 37 
 344 
 200 
 
 88 
 106 
 158 
 107 
 165 
 394 
 199 
 238 
 259 
 
 10 
 156 
 160 
 
 47 
 
 375 9,145 261,94'. 119,181 3,031 16,136 
 
 1.234 
 567 
 435 
 398 
 430 
 88 
 661 
 
 1.233 
 
 599 
 
 656 
 
 8 
 
 Ii2 
 362 
 408 
 
 457 
 
 1,212 
 
 48 
 
 70 
 
 2,160 
 
 179 
 
 199 
 
 199 
 
 123 
 
 120 
 
 594 
 
 474 
 
 37 i 
 
 78 
 
 302 
 
 219 
 
 158 
 
 3'6 
 
 40 
 
 79 
 
 402 
 
 247 
 192 
 
 "61 
 126 
 124 
 
 63 
 
 206 
 
 15,003 I 2,320 
 
 36 
 
 2,520 
 
 1,495 
 683 
 
 11,316 
 6,002 
 1,463 
 
 451 
 
 5.922 
 6,820 
 
 1,645 
 
 806 
 5-485 
 1,218 
 
 912 
 
 ' 3 I 
 
 ,148 
 
 77 
 625 
 
 1,482 
 
 729 
 
 1,891 
 
 1,279 
 
 770 
 234 
 47i 
 346 
 579 
 477 
 29 
 347 
 333 
 300 
 
 179 
 3,031 
 173 
 45 
 1,250 
 240 
 152 
 220 
 320 
 154 
 296 
 602 
 420 
 217 
 427 
 69 
 402 
 150 
 399 
 
 51,367 I 18,212 
 
 S51 oo 
 
 22 60 
 81 10 
 54 86 
 
 24 98 
 
 5 12 
 
 28 00 
 1 10 26 
 
 88 84 
 
 29 00 
 
 1 12 
 >2 93 
 70 31 
 67 73 
 10 23 
 76 71 
 
 23 20 
 86 
 
 95 58 
 
 6 54 
 
 6 88 
 195- 
 64 71 
 26 17 
 50 53 
 48 44 
 
 7 84 
 13 93 
 
 25 55 
 
 2 81 
 
 15 5t 
 
 15 37 
 4 90 
 
 16 83 
 
 1 91 
 12 13 
 
 7 R. R. tracks; all of them main; gates; view obstructed; trains run slow. 
 
 4 R. R. tracks; all of them main; gates; view obstructed; trains partially, 
 6 R. R. tracks; four of them main; gates; view obstructed; trains partially. 
 
 8 R. R. tracks; four of them main; gates; view clear. 
 
 13 R. R. tracks; four of them main; gates; view obstructed. 
 
 25 R. R. tracks: four of them main; no gates; view obstructed by cars and curves. 
 
 Many tracks; all of them main; gates; view obstructed; trains run slow. 
 
 12 R. R. tracks; all of them main; gates. 
 
 6 R. R. tracks; all of them main; gates; view obstructed partially; slowly. 
 
 13 R. R. tracks; four of them main; gates; view clear. 
 2 R. R. tracks; both of them main; gates; view clear. 
 
 2 R. R. tracks; both of them main; gates; view obstructed. 
 
 2 R. R. tracks: both of them main; gates; view obstructed. 
 
 2 R. R. tracks; both of them main; gates; view obstructed partially. 
 
 2 R. R. tracks; both of them main; gates; view obstructed; trains run rapid. 
 17 R. R. tracks; all for switching; no gates. 
 
 2 R. R. tracks; no gates; view clear. 
 
 2 R. R. tracks; no gates; view clear. 
 
 17 R. R. tracks; mostly main; some gates; view obstructed; delays serious. 
 16 R. R. tracks; four of them main: some gates; view obstructed. 
 15 R. R. tracks; four of them main; some gates; view obstructed partially. 
 
 7 R. R. tracks; four of them main; some gates; view clear. 
 
 6 R. R. tracks; four of them main; some gates; view clear, partially, 
 
 7 R. R. tracks; four of them main; some gates; view obstructed partially by cars. 
 
 9 R. R. tracks; four of them main; some gates; view bad; curves; fast trains; dangerous. 
 27 R. R. tracks; six of them main; some gates; view obstructed; trains run rapid. 
 
 10 R. R. tracks; six of them main; some gates; view obstructed; trains run rapid. 
 15 R. R. tracks; six of them main; some gates; view obstructed; trains run rapid. 
 9 R. R. tracks; fix of them main ; some gates; not in use; trains run rapid. 
 
 1 R. R. track; street on heavy grade; view obstructed. 
 
 5 R. R. tracks; three of ihem main; gates; trains run rapidly. 
 7 R. R. tracks; three of them main; gates; view clear. 
 
 4 R. R. tracks; two of them main; gates; view obstructed by curves and buildings. 
 
 2 R. R. tracks; both of them main; gates; view obstructed; two street car lines. 
 2 R. R. tracks; both of them main; gates; view obstructed, partially. 
 
 2 R. R. tracks; both of them main; gates; view clear. 
 
 Expense for one year, thirty-six crossings S435>82S.20 
 
21 
 
 mon Council has authority to adopt such plan as it 
 may deem most efficient to accomplish this result. 
 
 \ T our Commission is further advised that this power 
 exists not only with respect to streets and highways 
 in existence when a railroad is built, but as well 
 streets and highways created subsequent to the con- 
 struction of a railway. 
 
 Your Commission is further advised that the power 
 so conferred upon the Common Council extends to 
 requiring the removal of all steam railroad tracks 
 from the surface of the streets and highways of the 
 city and to granting permission to the owners of such 
 tracks to elevate the same above the surface of the 
 streets, or to carry the same beneath the surface of 
 the streets, or to carry such streets and highways 
 over or under such tracks by means of viaducts or 
 subways, so far as it may deem advisable. 
 
 Your Commission is fully convinced, from the ad- 
 vice of the law officers of the city, that the Common 
 Council possesses the most ample and unquestioned 
 powers for the protection of the public interests with 
 respect to the streets and highways in the city. 
 
 IV. 
 
 It being, therefore, not only within the power of 
 the Council, but its duty as well, in the protection of 
 the public interests, to adopt some means to that end, 
 we are brought to the consideration of several plans 
 which are possible from an engineering point of view. 
 
 (a) The Subwav Plan. — The surface of the City 
 of Chicago is so near the level of the water in the lake, 
 that any subway plan involves an excavation for the 
 
22 
 
 railroad tracks, which must be over twenty feet below 
 the surface of the lake, in order to escape contact 
 with sewers, gas pipes, water pipes, etc., and secure 
 sufficient head-room for the movement of trains. 
 This would require the placing of the rails in the track 
 so that the surface of the rails will be not less than 
 thirty feet below the surface of the streets. 
 
 Drainage of the track would be necessary, and 
 could only be secured by creating large reservoirs at 
 stated intervals, and operating the same by steam 
 pumps. 
 
 In addition, the discomforts to passengers arising 
 from insufficient ventilation, coal smoke, etc., would 
 make travel almost unendurable, besides which, the 
 cost of construction, maintenance and operation, 
 would largely exceed that of either of the other plans. 
 
 This plan may, therefore, be laid aside as wholly 
 impracticable. 
 
 (f) Viaduct Plan. — The topography of the City of 
 Chicago is such that the streets and highways in their 
 natural condition are practically level, and in the ex- 
 ercise of the powers conferred and the duties imposed 
 upon the Common Council, as above stated, they 
 should be preserved in the same condition to the 
 public use, unless there are controlling reasons to the 
 contrary. The construction of viaducts requires for 
 the protection of the lives of those operating the trains 
 of the railroad companies head-room of about twenty 
 feet between the top of the rail and the lowest pro- 
 jection of the viaduct above. This means raising the 
 street above its natural level not far from twenty-two 
 feet. 
 
 As there are within the limits of the citv, more 
 
23 
 
 than fifteen hundred intersections of streets and high- 
 ways by steam railroad tracks, consisting of from two 
 to eighty parallel tracks, it will be seen that the adop- 
 tion of the viaduct plan would involve the creation of 
 a large number of steep hills in the streets, thus con- 
 stituting a serious obstruction and interference with 
 their free and proper use by those for whose use they 
 were created, besides seriously injuring adjacent 
 property. 
 
 In addition to the injuries which the public would 
 suffer from the artificial inequalities thus raised in the 
 streets and highways through the diminution of the 
 loads to be moved, and the interference with rapid 
 transit, the damages for which the railroad companies 
 would be liable, arising from the change in the grade 
 of the streets to owners of the property abutting on 
 the streets where these changes occur under the pro- 
 visions of the constitution of this State, relating to 
 compensation for property damaged, as well as prop- 
 erty taken, make this plan, in view of your Commit- 
 tee, extremely objectionable and unsatisfactory to 
 the public. 
 
 The total amount hitherto expended for the few 
 viaducts built in the city is nearly four millions of 
 dollars, to which the city has contributed more than 
 one-third, and is sued for damages to property abut- 
 ting on the viaducts and approaches for an amount 
 aggregating more than a million and a half dollars. 
 The amount hitherto expended, and the liabilities in- 
 curred on account of the few existing viaducts, 
 shows, in our judgment, that that system will involve 
 a very large outlay. 
 
 In addition, the cost of maintenance, renewal and 
 
24 
 
 repair of any considerable number of viaducts would 
 involve a large annual outlay. 
 
 It is suggested in the interest of some of the rail- 
 road companies, that this plan could be somewhat 
 simplified and the expenses reduced by closing a 
 number of the streets crossed by the railroad tracks. 
 
 But we cannot but believe that the public inter- 
 ests would suffer very much thereby ; experience has 
 shown that in a great and growing city, like the city 
 of Chicago, all the streets and highways are abso- 
 lutely required for the public use, and in addition to 
 this, the large damages which owners of property 
 abutting upon streets which are turned into cul-de-sacs 
 by that plan, would be altogether disproportionate to 
 any good that would flow either to the public or to 
 the railroad companies. 
 
 (/) Depression of the Streets Below the Rail- 
 roads. — As the head-room for the streets, if depressed 
 below the railroad tracks, requires fourteen to sixteen 
 feet, and as many of the sewers are placed about 
 seven feet below the surface of the streets, this plan 
 is, therefore, and for the reasons stated in plan a, en- 
 tirely impracticable. 
 
 It is obvious that a plan which would involve the 
 entire reconstruction of the sewerage, water and gas 
 systems of the city, cannot be adopted, and need not 
 be further considered. 
 
 (d) Modified Plan, So-called. — A plan has been 
 somewhat discussed which involves the partial eleva- 
 tion of the railroad tracks, and the partial depression 
 of the streets ; that is to say, the elevation of the rail- 
 road tracks about eight feet, and the depression of 
 the streets an equal distance from their present level. 
 
25 
 
 This plan, so far as the depression of the streets is 
 concerned, embraces substantially all of the evils of 
 all the plans already referred to, and especially the 
 disarrangement of the sewerage, water and gas pipe 
 systems of the city. 
 
 In addition to this, it is extremely objectionable 
 because it prevents the utilization of land beneath the 
 railroad tracks, at points where its use is demanded 
 for storage and other business purposes. 
 
 In connection with this plan the suggestion has 
 also been made that certain streets be vacated. We 
 have already adverted to the objectionableness of this 
 feature, and our remarks need not be repeated here. 
 
 This plan would also involve the damages which 
 abutting owners would suffer and be entitled to re- 
 cover under the constitutional provision above re- 
 ferred to, arising from changes in the established 
 grades of the streets. 
 
 (e) The Elevated Plan. — This plan contemplates 
 the entire separation of the traffic of the streets from 
 the traffic of the railroads, thus securing the restora- 
 tion of the streets and highways of the city to all the 
 uses and purposes for which they were originally 
 created. This, in the opinion of your Commission, is 
 the only plan which is sufficiently comprehensive to 
 meet all the requirements of the present and the 
 future of this city. 
 
 Any plan to be satisfactory must provide not only 
 that existing restrictions be removed, but must also 
 admit of the widest development and expansion of 
 the traffic upon the streets and highways of the city 
 and the railroads entering it. 
 
 In dealing with this problem, which is, beyond 
 
question, the most important one confronting this city 
 in its business and other interests, any partial solu- 
 tion, which will be merely a tempory makeshift, will 
 be altogether unacceptable to the public and unwise 
 in every respect. 
 
 As Chicago is now one of the most important 
 railroad centers of the world, and is clearly destined 
 in the near future to lead all other cities on this con- 
 tinent in the struggle for commercial supremacy, we 
 believe that this question should now be dealt with 
 on the most comprehensive basis once for all. 
 
 Your Commission are of opinion that at an early 
 day the government of the city should take steps to 
 cause the different railroad companies now occupying 
 the streets and highways of the city with their tracks, 
 to remove the same and restore the streets and higfh- 
 ways to the same uses for which they were originally 
 intended. 
 
 The present crowded condition of the streets, the 
 difficulty in transacting business, and the certainty 
 of a larcre increase in the volume of travel, trade and 
 business upon the streets in all parts of the city, 
 make this plan an imperative necessity. 
 
 In making these recommendations, your Commis- 
 sion are not unmindful of the expense and inconven- 
 ience which will be occasioned by their adoption, but 
 we are of opinion that these disadvantages will be 
 more than overbalanced by the increased facilities 
 which the railroad companies will have, and the 
 diminished expense of maintenance and operation of 
 their lines. It is an undeniable hardship to railroad 
 companies which have but recently constructed ex- 
 pensive viaducts by order of the city authorities, to 
 
27 
 
 now be compelled to adopt other and different plans 
 for protecting the public interests in the streets of the 
 city, but, as above stated, your Commission are of 
 the opinion that these individual instances ought not 
 to stand in the way of the public interests, which 
 demand a more perfect and comprehensive system. 
 Besides, it must not be overlooked that the viaduct 
 system of the city is at present only in its infancy, 
 and if pursued as a permanent policy, hundreds of 
 others must be erected at an expense enormously 
 greater than has been incurred up to the present time. 
 
 In addition, the greater number of viaducts 
 already constructed were constructed at the joint 
 expense of the railroad companies and the city, and 
 there are now pending suits against the city in behalf 
 of abutting property owners injured by the change 
 in the grade of streets, resulting from the construc- 
 tion of these viaducts and approaches, aggregating 
 one and one-half millions of dollars, from which the 
 city and the railroad companies would be relieved 
 by the adoption of the elevated plan. It is perfectly 
 manifest that the location of the railroads within the 
 city limits relatively with each other, and the topog- 
 raphy of the city, are such in the different districts, 
 that the elevated plan in one portion and the viaduct 
 or a different plan, in another portion, cannot be suc- 
 cessfully carried out, with a due regard to all inter- 
 ests. 
 
 Another element to be considered in connection 
 with this subject is the great expense indispensable 
 in the maintenance and renewal of viaducts which, 
 as we have been informed, has in whole, or in part, 
 been assumed and hitherto paid by the city. We 
 
28 
 
 have no hesitation whatever in expressing the confi- 
 dent opinion, that in view of existing conditions, and 
 taking into consideration the future growth of the 
 city, and its commercial interests, the plan which we 
 recommend will be cheaper, better, more efficient and 
 more satisfactory than any other. The experience of 
 eastern cities in the United States and of all the 
 large cities of Europe, confirms this opinion. 
 
 The City of Chicago, more than any other, re- 
 quires and demands the best and most improved 
 facilities known to modern science. 
 
 Your Commission do not feel that it is required 
 or warranted in going voluminously into the minute 
 details of the plan which they recommend. They 
 deem it sufficient to say that in their judgment, as 
 confirmed by the experience of the city authorities of 
 Philadelphia and other cities, the elevated railway 
 should be so constructed as to leave not less than 
 sixteen feet in the clear between the top of the curb 
 and the lowest projection of the elevated railway. 
 
 They also believe from the investigations which 
 they have conducted that there will be no serious 
 difficulty in accommodating the industries of the city 
 by the elevated plan. It is believed that industries 
 now enjoying railway facilities can be rearranged 
 with but little expense so that they may be accom- 
 modated with railway facilities, and that when so 
 rearranged, the business may be transacted much 
 more expeditiously and economically. 
 
 Freight houses, several stories high, can be built 
 and so arranged that cars may be run to any story 
 by means of hydraulic lifts and switches, and han- 
 dled by hydraulic power, thus dispensing with the 
 
29 
 
 expensive and cumbersome methods and appliances 
 now in use. 
 
 It is well known that in convenient localities the 
 lands necessary for freight-house purposes command 
 high prices, and railroad companies can scarcely 
 afford to own the lands required for terminal pur- 
 poses, when they have only the use of the surface of 
 the lands for the purpose, whereas the plan which 
 multiplies this by the use of many stories, reduces 
 the capitalization necessary for furnishing the public 
 the facilities required. 
 
 A number of the streets in the city are occupied 
 lengthwise by railroad tracks, in many instances 
 entirely excluding the public therefrom. 
 
 We are advised by the Corporation Counsel that 
 the Supreme Court of this State has recently decided 
 that the City Council has no authority to permit or 
 grant the right to railroad companies to use the streets 
 to an extent which excludes the public therefrom. 
 
 We are further advised that this decision was 
 made in a case concerning the use of Archer avenue 
 in this city, which is now occupied lengthwise by the 
 Chicago, Madison & Northern Railroad Company (a 
 corporation owned or controlled by the Illinois Cen- 
 tral Railroad Company and the Atchison, Topeka & 
 Santa Fe Railroad Company, the interest of the 
 Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Company 
 having passed to the Chicago Elevated Terminal 
 Railway Company; under which the Atchison, To- 
 peka & Santa Fe Railroad Company is now using the 
 same). 
 
 The distance which this street is thus occupied is 
 about 1,450 feet; and, in our judgment, immediate 
 
30 
 
 steps should be taken to recover the use of all the 
 streets in the city so occupied. 
 
 The necessity for early and prompt action in re- 
 claiming- and recovering the use and possession of 
 streets occupied lengthwise by railroad tracks is 
 emphasized by the effect of delay on the part of the 
 city, which, as your Committee is informed, resulted 
 in its losing valuable rights in the litigation between 
 the city and the Illinois Central Railroad Company. 
 
 Attention is also called to the fact that one or 
 more of the railroad companies entering the city are 
 now claiming a portion of Clark street as belonging 
 to them, and have erected walls in the street for the 
 purpose of emphasizing that claim. 
 
 Railroad companies can, undoubtedly, by agree- 
 ment, greatly reduce the expense to themselves of 
 the improvements in question. If they can reconcile 
 their respective interests, they will be able in the dis- 
 tricts referred to, to come in together in parallel lines 
 to a joint passenger depot, and create freight houses 
 and other terminal facilities, and relieve much of the 
 property now owned or occupied by them, so that it 
 may be used for business and other purposes. 
 
 The lines in the Southern District, so-called, could 
 stop at Twenty-second street, and join in the erection 
 of an elevated union passenger depot (the same as is 
 now done on the surface on the West Side, at Canal 
 and Madison streets) of a size, plan and character 
 sufficient to accommodate all the business they now 
 have or would be likely to have in the future, thus re- 
 lieving a large amount of property lying north of 
 Twenty-second street, now used by them, and which 
 is demanded at the present time for business pur- 
 
31 
 
 poses, and relieve the city from the necessity of con- 
 structing the extremely high buildings now in the 
 course of construction on account of the circum- 
 scribed area to which business is confined at the 
 present time. 
 
 The lines of the West Side, North Side and South 
 Side Districts, so-called, should be excluded from 
 the streets within the. following boundaries, to wit: 
 On the west, by the west line of Canal street, on the 
 north by the north line of Kinzie street, and on the 
 south by the south line of Twenty-second street. 
 
 We have had the valuations fixed, by the Valua- 
 tion Committee of the Chicago Real Estate Board, 
 of the real estate (excluding all improvements) lying 
 between Madison, Twenty-second, State and Canal 
 streets, owned by the railroad companies, containing 
 11,616,719 square feet, and.submit herewith their cer- 
 tificate showing the value of said real estate at the 
 present time to be upward of fifty millions of dollars, 
 together with maps of such real estate. 
 
 The amounts which the railroad companies could 
 thus realize from the sale of the lands owned by them 
 which would be unnecessary for use under the forego- 
 ing plan, would go far toward defraying all the 
 expenses to which they would be put for the im- 
 provements in question. 
 
 It ought, perhaps, to be mentioned that inasmuch 
 as the Common Council has granted to the Chicago 
 Elevated Terminal Railway Company the right to 
 construct, maintain and operate an elevated railroad 
 as far north as the south line of Twelfth street, that 
 the other railroad companies on the South Side 
 should not be restricted to Twenty-second street, un- 
 
less the Chicago Elevated Terminal Railway Com- 
 pany shall also be restricted in the same manner. 
 
 The St. Charles Air Line Railroad Company, a 
 corporation owned or controlled by the Chicago, Bur- 
 lington & Quincy Railroad Company, the Chicago & 
 Northwestern Railroad Company, the Illinois Cen- 
 tral Railroad Company, and the Michigan Central 
 and Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad 
 Company, owns side tracks extending from the 
 south branch of the Chicago river to a point of 
 connection with the Illinois Central Railroad track 
 east of Michigan avenue to a point between Fif- 
 teenth and Sixteenth streets, which crosses many 
 important streets, and is exclusively used for trans- 
 fers. 
 
 Inasmuch as the elevation of this railroad would 
 interfere with the Alley Elevated Road, which is now 
 in operation from a point near Van Buren street, south 
 to Fortieth street, and is destined to be one of the 
 main passenger lines of the city, and inasmuch as the 
 railroad companies entering the city have substantial- 
 ly all become owners of the Chicago Union Transfer 
 Railway, and as the latter has established facilities in 
 the suburbs in the city, for the interchange of freight 
 traffic between all the railroads entering the city, to 
 remove as far as possible from the business portion of 
 the city the transfers between them, and inasmuch as 
 the traffic interchanged between the Chicago, Madi- 
 son & Northern Branch of the Illinois Central and its 
 main line can be effected, as far as its freight business 
 is concerned, through the instrumentality of the Chi- 
 cago Union Transfer Railway, and so far as its pas- 
 senger business is concerned, by the Belt Lines exist- 
 
33 
 
 ing in and about the city, and inasmuch as we are not 
 able to find the said St. Charles Air Line R. R. Co. 
 has any right to maintain said tracks permanently, we 
 recommend that the same be removed. 
 
 All that portion of the tracks of the Union Stock 
 Yards & Transfer Company lying east of their pres- 
 ent connection with the Lake Shore and Rock Island 
 Companies should be absolutely removed, as there is 
 no longer any use for their continuance east of that 
 point, there being connection between their tracks 
 westerly therefrom and all railroads entering Chica- 
 go either directly or through the instrumentality of 
 the various Belt Lines ; and the remainder of the 
 tracks of this company, inside of the city limits, should 
 be elevated, as their connecting lines are required to 
 elevate, as above recommended. 
 
 The adjustment of matters by the railroad com- 
 panies among themselves so as to come in in groups in 
 parallel lines would entirely do away with the vast 
 expense and great danger now arising from the vast 
 number of complicated and dangerous intersections 
 now existing in the City of Chicago. 
 
 It is remarked among railroad men that the most 
 complicated network of railway intersection in the 
 civilized world is to be found in the City of Chicago. 
 The delay occasioned thereby, the expense resulting 
 from the construction and maintenance thereof, the 
 great number of collisions and the consequent injury 
 to persons and property which have resulted there- 
 from, suggest in the strongest terms the necessity of 
 adopting measures for relief. 
 
 Another great advantage gained from the elevat- 
 ed plan will be the impossibility of persons getting 
 
upon the tracks and endangering their lives, and those 
 of persons upon the railway trains. 
 
 Every one is familiar with the custom of people 
 using the railway tracks as a highway in passing from 
 point to point. 
 
 The elevations which the foregoing plan contem- 
 plates could be accomplished in sections and gradu- 
 ally, so as to relieve railroad companies, as far as the 
 public interests will permit, from an immediate outlay 
 for the entire work. 
 
 In conclusion we desire to sav that we have care- 
 fully examined the terminal facilities of the most im- 
 portant railroad companies of the United States in the 
 largest cities, including Philadelphia, New York, Jer- 
 sey City, Boston and Rochester. 
 
 We have consulted eminent engineers, leading 
 railway men of the United States, the publications of 
 the important railways of Europe, and especially the 
 portions bearing on elevated tracks and elevated ter- 
 minal facilities. 
 
 We have examined large warehouses in New York 
 City, operated by hydraulic power, owned by the 
 leading wholesalers, where elevators are used for 
 transferring teams from story to story, and have giv- 
 en the entire subject our best thought, and have de- 
 voted nearly our entire time, since our appointment, 
 to the subject, and we are fully convinced of the en- 
 tire practicability of elevating railroad tracks and ter- 
 minal facilities within this city, and that it is decided- 
 ly the best plan which can be adopted in this city, for 
 the best interests not only of the public, but the rail- 
 road companies themselves. 
 
 Elevated railroads and elevated terminal facilities 
 are no longer an experiment; experience has demon- 
 
35 
 
 stratecl that they are the most efficient and economi- 
 cal method of handling a large and extensive business 
 in a city whose business is so large and varied as that 
 of the City of Chicago. 
 
 All the materials for the construction of elevated 
 railroads and terminal facilities are erected, and cheap- 
 ly too, by manufacturers within the City of Chicago. 
 
 Elevated railroads would enable quicker transit 
 between the business portion of the city and its sub- 
 urbs; the danger now existing at street intersections 
 would be entirely removed; the proneness of people 
 to make a thoroughfare of railroad tracks would be 
 entirely done away with, and all the grievous loss of 
 life and injury now existing would be entirely stopped, 
 and all the vast expense to which railroad companies 
 are now subjected for policing their tracks, the estab- 
 lishment and operation of gates, fences, guards, 
 watchmen, lights, etc., would be entirely avoided. 
 
 The expense of handling freight traffic, with the 
 new and improved terminal facilities above suggested, 
 would be largely reduced. 
 
 We submit herewith two opinions of the Corpora- 
 tion Council of this city, which have already been re- 
 ferred to in the foregoing. 
 
 Having now accomplished the purposes for which 
 we were appointed, as far as lies in our power, and 
 thanking the Common Council and his Honor the 
 Mayor for the confidence reposed in us, we submit 
 the foregoing as our final report, and beg to tender 
 herewith our resignations. 
 
 Dated, Chicago, Ills., July 11, 1892. 
 
 (Signed) Geo. Hackney. 
 
 E. S. Dreyer. 
 Fred S. James. 
 
3G 
 
 Chicago, March 24, 1892. 
 
 John S. Miller, Esq., Corporation Counsel, City Hall, 
 City : 
 
 Dear Sir — Is there any decision by the court reg- 
 ulating the laying of railroad tracks in our public 
 streets, and have the railroad companies a right to lav 
 tracks and occupy the public streets of Chicago ? 
 Have the Council aright to grant permission to a rail- 
 road company or other corporations to lay tracks in 
 said public streets ? We have noticed in the press 
 that the Supreme Court of the State has rendered a 
 decision on this subject lately. 
 
 A delegation of citizens has called upon us late- 
 ly to get us to recommend the laying of about twen- 
 ty-five additional tracks on the Chicago, Pittsburg & 
 Ft. Wayne line and 51st street. Should we recom- 
 mend the request of the Ft. Wayne Co. it will become 
 necessary for us to also recommend that said railway 
 company shall be allowed to lay their tracks on a num- 
 ber of street crossings. 
 
 An early reply to the above questions will greatly 
 
 oblige 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Geo. Hackney, Chairman. 
 
 Chicago, March 2S, 1892. 
 
 George Hackney, Esq., Chairman, 1306 Chamber 0/ 
 Commerce : 
 
 Dear Sir — In reply to yours of the 24th, in regard 
 
 to the right of railroads in the streets, I beg to say : 
 
 Railroad companies have no right to lay railroad 
 
37 
 
 tracks in or across the public streets without the au- 
 thority of the City Council. The City Council has 
 the power, however, to grant such permission, such 
 power being limited as hereinafter mentioned. This 
 power is contained in the city charter. The charter 
 provides, however, that the City Council shall have no 
 power to grant the use of or right to lay down any 
 railroad tracks in any street except upon the petition 
 of the owners of land representing more than one- 
 half of the frontage of the street or so much as is 
 sought to be used. 
 
 The City Council would have the power by ordi- 
 nance to grant the Pittsburg, Ft. Wayne & Chicago 
 Railroad Company the right to lay the tracks you 
 speak of across the streets in question. 
 
 This power of the City Council has been recog- 
 nized by the Supreme Court in numerous decisions. 
 
 Moses v. Pittsburg, Ft. Wayne & C. R. R. 
 
 Co., 21 111. 516. 
 St. Louis, A. & H. R. R. Co. v. Belleville, 
 
 20 App. Ct. R. 580. 
 Chicago Dock Co. v. Garrity, 115 111. R. 
 
 161. 
 Ohiey v. Wharf, 115 111. R. 520. 
 
 The City Council cannot, however, grant to the 
 railroad company an exclusive use in the streets, so as 
 to give it the right to exclude the ordinary public trav- 
 el on the streets, but can only give such a use as may 
 be consistent with and still permit such ordinary trav- 
 el with reasonable safety and convenience. 
 
 The late case to which you refer, is, I apprehend, 
 
38 
 
 the case of Ligare v. City of Chicago. In that case the 
 Supreme Court laid down the principle last mentioned, 
 and held an ordinance, giving the Chicago, Madison 
 & Northern R. R. a right on a per tion of Archer ave. 
 to be void, because that ordinance, as the Supreme 
 Court held, assumed to give the railroad company an 
 exclusive right in the' street over the right of public 
 travel, and so as to exclude public travel from that 
 portion of the street. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 John S. Miller, Corporation Counsel. 
 
 Opinion of Corporation Counsel Miller Regard- 
 ing Elevated Terminals. Submitted to the 
 Special Committee of the Common Council, 
 September 19, 1891. 
 
 Gentlemen — You ask my opinion as to the power 
 of the City Council (1) to require railroad companies 
 to elevate their tracks, or (2) to require them to con- 
 form their tracks to the grade of streets. In my opin- 
 ion the council has, in each case, such power. 
 
 The charter of the city gives the power to the City 
 Council, among other things, "to provide for, and 
 change the location, grade and crossings of anv rail- 
 road " (art. 5, sec. 1, clause 25), and " to require rail- 
 road companies to provide protection against injury to 
 persons and property in the use of such railroads," 
 and " to compel railroad companies to raise or lower 
 their tracks to conform to any grade which may at 
 any time be established by the city." (Ld., clause 27.) 
 I think these provisions of the charter cover the 
 ground, and they are valid as a grant of police power 
 
39 
 
 even as against the railroad companies whose tracks 
 existed in or crossed the streets of the city at the time 
 of the passage of the act. Of this grant of power to 
 provide or change the location, grade and crossings 
 of railroads, the Supreme Court has said that " the 
 law leaves to the discretion of the City Council the 
 question as to the cases in which the power shall be 
 exercised and the question as to what provisions shall 
 be made upon the subject in each case. Over this dis- 
 cretion the courts have no contol." (C and //". /. R. 
 R. Co. v. Dunbar, ioo 111. 135/ Tudor v. Chicago and 
 South Side Rapid Transit Co., not reported.) This 
 power refers to the location of the railroad upon the 
 property of the company as well as the grade and 
 crossings of streets, and the power of the railroad com- 
 panies to locate their line is, in cities incorporated un- 
 der the general law, subject to such provision in this 
 respect as the City Council may lawfully make. The 
 City Council is also given the power by the charter 
 " to regulate the use of the streets " and " to pass and 
 enforce all necessary police ordinances." This is a 
 grant of all necessary police power, which is to pass 
 and enforce any ordinances of laws within the limits 
 of the city which are reasonably necessary to the pub- 
 lic safety, health and welfare. Such power in the 
 City Council are inalienable. From such police pow- 
 ers, when properly exercised by the Legislature or 
 City Council, even vested private rights are not ex- 
 empt. 
 
 But the property and business of railway compa- 
 nies are "clothed with a public interest;" in the lan- 
 guage of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
 "submit to be controlled by the public for the com- 
 
40 
 
 mon good." (_Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 126 / Georgia 
 Banking Co. v. Willenberg, 11 7 111. 203.) The public 
 control for the common good, within the city and as 
 to the matter in question here, is clearly vested in the 
 City Council. It extends so far as may be necessary 
 to protect the public against danger. 
 
 Railways in this State are declared by the consti- 
 tution of the State to be public highways, and are as 
 such subject to regulation and control by public au- 
 thority. (Constitution, art. xi., sec. 12.) The streets 
 of the city are held in trust for the use of the entire 
 public, and the grant to railroad companies of the 
 right to use or cross streets is justified in law upon the 
 ground that such use is one of the proper public uses 
 of the streets. But such rights of railroad companies 
 is public right, and must be always subject to such 
 conditions and regulations as shall, in the judgment 
 of the government authorities, be reasonably nec- 
 essary for the common good. The authority here is 
 the City Council, and its power to regulate and con- 
 trol such uses of the streets for the best interest of the 
 entire public is exclusive and ample. The doctrine of 
 the vested rights has no proper application to the 
 rights of railway companies in their use of public 
 streets. It is vested private rights that are protected 
 by the constitution from invasion by legislation. It 
 is private property that the constitution provides shall 
 not be taken or damaged for public use without just 
 compensation. These constitutional guarantees do 
 not apply to save public rights from control by the 
 public for the common good. There can be no vested 
 right in a public agency which saves it from govern- 
 mental control. There can be no vested right in a 
 
41 
 
 railway company (whose business and property are 
 pitblici juris, and whose road is a public highway) to 
 the use of the public streets of the city which is not 
 subject to such regulations and legislation as the ne- 
 cessity of the public who travel such streets may, in 
 the judgment of the City Council, reasonably require. 
 
 The power above mentioned applies, in my opin- 
 ion and for reasons above given, to streets laid out 
 and now existing over the right of way of a railroad 
 company, as well as to streets existing when the rail- 
 road track was laid. 
 
 There is another principle of the law that I think 
 ample in the premises. It is that where a railroad 
 company is given the right to cross, to lay down and 
 operate its tracks upon a public street, such right does 
 not authorize it to appropriate any part of the street 
 to the exclusion of, or material interference with, pub- 
 lic travel thereon. With the grant of such rights, 
 there is imposed upon the railroad company the duty 
 to restore the streets so that it may be safely and con- 
 veniently used by the public, and to maintain such 
 necessary structures as to do whatever is required to 
 make the streets reasonably safe and convenient for 
 public travel. This duty is a continued one, and re- 
 quires that that be done from time to time, which, un- 
 der changing conditions as they may arise, is reason- 
 ably necessary. It is not satisfied by making the 
 streets safe and convenient at the time that the track 
 is laid or at any one time; but whenever, by reason of 
 the increase of its own traffic or of the public travel 
 upon the streets, anything further or additional be- 
 comes necessary to make the streets so safe and con- 
 venient, it is the duty of the railway company to make 
 
42 
 
 such alterations as may meet the needs of the public 
 who have occasion to use the streets. The above prin- 
 ciple, as applied to the streets as existing when rail- 
 road tracks were laid, does not depend upon any stat- 
 ute, but, as stated by the Supreme Court of Illinois, 
 "is a well settled principle of the common law resting 
 upon the obvious considerations of justice." {People 
 v. C. & A. R. R. Co., 67 111. 119.) It is, however, ex- 
 pressly provided by statute in this State that "hereaf- 
 ter, at all the railroad crossing's of highways and streets 
 in this state, the several railroad corporations in this 
 state shall construct and maintain said crossing's 
 and the approaches thereto within their respective 
 rights of way, so that at all times they shall be safe 
 as to persons and property." (Rev. Stat., chap. 114, 
 sec. 41.) This, applied as to streets existing when the 
 tracks were laid, adds nothing to the common law 
 duty. It extends it, however, to streets afterward laid 
 out. And such an act is constitutional. (///. Ccn. 
 R. R. Co. v. }}^illcubcrg, 117 111. 203 ; Portland, etc., R. 
 R. Co. v. Deering, 78 Me. 67.) 
 
 Under this common law principle it is the duty of 
 the railroad company to do whatever may be neces- 
 sary to make the street safe and convenient, as near 
 as reasonably may be, as it was before the railroad 
 was laid thereon, or it would be if it were not there. 
 If, in order to accomplish that result, it is necessary 
 that the tracks upon the streets should be raised or 
 lowered, and the streets constructed and maintained 
 below or above the tracks of the railroad company, 
 in my opinion such duty would require the railroad 
 to make that change. 
 
 It is plain that in the case of very many streets 
 
43 
 
 of Chicago which have been crossed or occupied by 
 the tracks of one or more railroad companies to the 
 use of the streets by the railroad and the necessity of 
 public travel thereon are such that this restoration of 
 the streets could only be accomplished by doing 
 away entirely with crossings at the grade or other 
 occupation of the surface of the streets by railroad 
 tracks. In case of some streets this has not been 
 accomplished at all, and the result is that the streets 
 or portions thereof have been appropriated by the 
 railroad companies and the public travel thereon 
 wholly or almost wholly excluded. In the case of 
 crossings of many streets the city has, in order to 
 restore the streets to a safe condition, erected viaducts 
 at a great expense, carrying streets over railroad tracks. 
 In some cases, where ordinances granting- railroad 
 companies the right to cross streets have been passed 
 in recent years, the ordinances have provided for the 
 payment by the railroad companies of the expense of 
 constructing viaducts. In the case of railroad com- 
 panies having older ordinances, no such provision for 
 the payment by the railroad company of the cost of 
 viaducts was inserted in the ordinance. Railroad 
 companies having such older ordinances have denied 
 any legal obligation to construct or pay for viaducts 
 over their tracks, but have in many cases " voluntarily" 
 contributed a comparatively small portion of the 
 expense. Suits are pending, however, against several 
 railroad companies to recover such expense. 
 
 In my opinion, under the common law principle 
 above cited, by which it is the continuing legal duty 
 of railroad companies laying their tracks across or 
 upon existing streets to restore and maintain the 
 
44 
 
 streets so that they shall be reasonably safe and 
 convenient for the public travel — substantially as 
 capable of free and proper use by the public as they 
 were before — such railroads shall be compelled to 
 build viaducts or bridges and sufficient approaches to 
 carry the streets over their tracks, and to pay all land 
 damages where such means are reasonably necessary 
 so to restore such streets and make them safe and 
 convenient. That has been held in several cases in 
 other States (State v. St. P. M. and M. R. R Co., 35 
 Minn. 131 ; State v. St. P. R. R. Co., and N. R. R. Co., 
 38 Minn. 246 ; State v. Mo. and St. P. R. R. Co., 39 
 Minn., 219; State v. Mo. and P. R. R. Co., 35 Kan- 
 sas, 171 ; L. and N. R. R. Co. v. State, 3 Head, 524). 
 
 And upon the same principle I think they may be 
 compelled to raise or lower their tracks in case such 
 means are reasonably necessary to restore the streets. 
 In other words, the legal duty of the restoration 
 is only complied with when that is done, whatever 
 it may be, which is necessary to make the streets 
 reasonably safe and convenient for public travel. 
 And in my opinion the City Council, under the pro- 
 visions of the charter above mentioned, is vested 
 with the power to determine the manner in which 
 railroads shall so restore the steets and the occasion 
 thereof. 
 
 Of course the ordinance of the City Council must 
 be reasonable. But within that limit there is a wide 
 field for the exercise of its legislative discretion, with 
 which courts will not interfere. And upon a subject 
 of this character, which is one calling for the exercise 
 of the legislative rather than the judicial discretion 
 and judgment, it is largely for the City Council to 
 
pomnQL 
 
 " OEDt 
 
 KUDfflDL 
 DDDDdC 
 
 DDD[ 
 OXDOT 
 
 ir 
 
 The area shaded in black represents the property used for railroad purposes, upon which a valuation of over $50,000,0300 is'placed by the Valuation Committee of the Chicago Real Estate Board. This map does not show the portions 
 of streets occupied by tracks of steam railroads. The Chicago Terminal Commission recommends that all steam railroad tracks should be removed from the area bounded by Canal Street on the west, Kinzie Street on the north, and Twenty- 
 second Street on the south. 
 
45 
 
 determine what is reasonable, and with its determina- 
 tion a court will be reluctant to interfere. 
 
 An ordinance applying to one or two railroad com- 
 panies whose tracks occupy or cross certain streets, 
 would .not, in my opinion, be necessarily void, because 
 it was so limited in its application, and because other 
 railroads, occupying" other streets, or with different con- 
 ditions, might be omitted therefrom or required to do 
 something different. While all laws should be general 
 in their operation, it is only required that they apply 
 to all in like situation, and all placed in the same city 
 do not necessarily require the same local regulation. 
 One regulation might be proper in the case of one 
 street or district of the city, and another regulation in 
 another street or district. It is the province of the 
 City Council to make the necessary discrimination in 
 this particular. {Railroad Co. v. Richmond, 96 U. S. 
 
 529)- 
 
 Respectfully submitted, 
 
 John S. Miller, Corporation Counsel. 
 
 Chicago,, June 29th, 1S92. 
 
 The Chicago Terminal Commission, Chamber of 
 Commerce Building, Chicago : 
 
 We, the undersigned, members of the Valuation 
 Committee of the Chicago Real Estate Board, have 
 carefully considered your application for a valuation 
 of the property in this city, as shown by the maps sub- 
 mitted to us and hereto attached, being the railroad 
 land located between Madison and Twenty-second 
 streets, and State and Canal streets, and containing 
 11,616,719 square feet. 
 
46 
 
 In our judgment the present value of said railroad 
 land, without improvements, and provided all railroad 
 tracks are removed, is fifty millions, two hundred and 
 seventy one thousand, three hundred and twenty-six 
 dollars ($50,271,326.00). 
 
 Signed : Willis G. Jackson, 
 
 Joseph Donnersberger, 
 Eugene H. Fishburn, 
 William A. Bond, 
 George Birkhoff, Jr. 
 
 Valuation Committee 
 
 of the Chicago 
 
 Real Estate Board. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Containing Information in Relation to the Chi- 
 cago Railway Terminal Problem, from Engin- 
 eering, Legal, and Other Standpoints. 
 
 Report of George H. Reynolds, Consulting Engineer, upon 
 the Economy and Use of Hydraulic Power and Ma- 
 chinery at Railway Terminals in Europe. 
 
 Chicago, May 10, 1892. 
 
 To John A. Roche, Vice-President Crane Elevator 
 
 Company : 
 
 Dear Sir — Pursuant to instructions from you, I 
 left New York on the 1 7th of February, to visit 
 England, France and Scotland to investigate the sub- 
 ject of Railway Terminals and the methods there 
 employed for handling- cars, freight and passengers. 
 On my arrival in Liverpool on the 27th of February, 
 I at once began my investigations, which were con- 
 tinued uninterruptedly until the 7th of April, when I 
 sailed for New York. 
 
 During this time I visited all the principal railway 
 stations of England and of Paris, and all of the prin- 
 cipal docks of London and Liverpool, the Mersey 
 Tunnel Railway, the Electric Underground Railway 
 
48 
 
 of London, the London Hydraulic Power Company's 
 works at London and Liverpool, and also made 
 thorough investigations of the Compressed Air Sys- 
 tem as used in Paris, and also the Compressed Air 
 System of Birmingham, England. I had expected at 
 first to confine my investigations wholly to hydraulic 
 machinery, but I found it necessary to go into many 
 other subjects which are intimately connected with the 
 uses of hydraulics. 
 
 This communication is intended only as a prelimi- 
 nary report upon the Terminal Railway Systems as 
 they are arranged and operated in the countries named, 
 and is based upon my personal observations and 
 knowledge gained from the railroad officials and from 
 the workshops where the operating machinery of these 
 terminals has been built. As this report is intended 
 to be only preliminary, and to give a general idea of 
 what is being done with hydraulics at the places 
 visited, it will not be accompanied with drawings 
 illustrative of the various devices which I have seen 
 in operation and which are here described. But when 
 I make my final and full report it will be accompanied 
 by drawings in detail of all the machines which are 
 treated of. 
 
 RAILWAY TERMINALS. 
 
 These terminals in all of the principal cities may 
 be divided into three classes : 
 
 Class i . Where the cars come into the stations on 
 grade of the streets. 
 
 Class 2. Where the cars come in above the street 
 level, and are lowered to the street level for the pur- 
 
49 
 
 pose of unloading and loading, and are again raised 
 to the upper level for dispatch. 
 
 Class 3. Where the cars come in below the street 
 level and are raised up to the street level for the pur- 
 pose of unloading and loading, and again lowered to 
 the lower level for dispatching. 
 
 Prominent examples of the first-mentioned class 
 are found at Paris in the Batignolle station, the Forth 
 station at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Camden station, 
 London. At the Forth station, while it is true that 
 the cars are received and dispatched from the street 
 grade level , use is made of the entire area below the 
 floor of the station for the storage of beer, butter, 
 cheese, and articles which require to be kept cool, 
 these articles being lowered from the station through 
 convenient trap-doors, and are raised again by 
 hydraulic power to be delivered. At the Camden and 
 Batignolle stations no use is made of the parts below 
 the tracks. 
 
 A good example of Class 2 is found at the London 
 and Northwestern Railway Company's Broad Street 
 station, at St. Pancras, London, and the St. Lazare 
 station, Paris. And of the 3d Class, at White Cross 
 station, Midland Railway, London. 
 
 In the methods employed for handling cars and 
 freight in these three classes of stations above 
 described, there is a general sameness ; that is, the 
 transportation of freight, so far as the railway proper 
 is concerned, ends when the train is delivered in the 
 yard. From this time onward until the train is again 
 made up to be pulled out of the yard, the entire 
 handling of cars and train is clone with hydraulic 
 power. The cars are hauled along the track, are 
 
50 
 
 turned around and sent across the yard to any other 
 track, in fact, are moved in any and all directions, 
 any car being taken out of any part of the train and 
 put on any other track in the yard without the use of 
 switching" engines, and with very little disturbance of 
 the general work going on over the whole yard. This 
 is accomplished by a system of turn-tables, transfer- 
 tables, capstans, cranes, and car hoists, these latter 
 only being used where it is necessary to move the cars 
 from the upper to the lower levels, or vice versa, as is 
 the case in Classes 2 and 3 of the stations named. 
 
 APPLICATION OF HYDRAULIC POWER. 
 
 Hauling Goods. — The method of dealing with 
 goods, either in receiving or delivering, loading or 
 unloading, or in transit, as performed by hydraulic 
 cranes, lifts, capstans, traverses and turn-tables, is as 
 follows : 
 
 Bv Traversing. — On receipt of a train in a goods- 
 shed, the cars are sorted for the various districts in 
 which they are to be delivered, by means of a traverse, 
 which is a traveling section of the road running on 
 wheels and hauled either by rams and chains under 
 the flooring, for short distances, or, when the distance 
 to be traversed is longer, by capstans, which are so 
 conveniently placed as to most readily command the 
 station without being in the way. The traverse, with 
 its car, is thus shifted from the main arrival line to 
 any other portion of the shed or yard where it is 
 required, or by turn-tables and capstans, where the 
 traverse is not used. 
 
 Hoisting and Lowering. — If it is required to 
 
51 
 
 descend to a lower level, the car is hauled off by 
 capstan power and placed on a hoist, by which means 
 it is lowered to that level in the building in which it 
 is required, and again hauled into position for unload- 
 ing by cranes, which are usually of 1,500 to 2,500 
 pounds lifting power. 
 
 Turn-Tables and Capstans. — Where turn-tables 
 are employed, in the case of single turn-tables, that is, 
 those with single tracks only over them, gearing is 
 dispensed with, and the rope of an adjoining capstan 
 is hooked on to the car and the table pulled round to 
 the position required. Where larger turn-tables with 
 double roads, on which two cars may be taken on 
 abreast, are employed, they are traversed round by a 
 pinion wheel, engaging in a circular rack which goes 
 around the outer rim of the table. It is put in or out 
 of gear by a clutch movement, and hydraulic power 
 is used. 
 
 Power. — The power obtained for working this 
 machinery is supplied by direct - acting pumping- 
 e-ngines, which are horizontal or vertical, as may be 
 required, this being a matter of space and grouping. 
 The engines are direct acting, that is, with the pump 
 and piston rods coupled on the same axis central line; 
 the suction pipe leading to the pump barrel is coupled 
 on to the supply main, which again terminates in a 
 receiving tank, or receiver attached to the company's 
 or city mains, as the case may be. This tank is 
 placed above the level of the pumps, and the delivery 
 pipe from them connected direct to the bottom of the 
 stalk of the accumulator, which in its turn is again 
 connected to the main delivery leading to the cranes, 
 capstans, hoists, etc. 
 
52 
 
 Accumulators. — The accumulator ram is weighted 
 to a maximum of 750 lbs. per square inch, so that 
 when it is pumped up (floating) the weight in the 
 delivery mains represents that pressure. 
 
 Ram Movements. — The whole operation of the 
 hydraulic machinery, however placed, is in principle 
 the movement obtained from rams, whether it be in 
 capstans of quick action, or in hoists and cranes, in 
 which the movement is much slower. 
 
 Anchor Pulleys. — The efficiency of the applica- 
 tion of hydraulic machinery in capstan working, is 
 materially affected by means of snatch heads, or 
 anchor pulleys, placed in suitable positions. By the 
 use of these snatch heads, one capstan is rendered 
 capable of pulling a car in any direction. 
 
 Freezing. — The universal testimony of all of the 
 engineers at the various stations and docks in 
 England where hydraulic power is used, is that no 
 trouble whatever has ever been experienced by them 
 on account of frost, even with the temperature at 
 zero, provided that in such severe weather during the 
 night time, or when the machinery is not in operation, 
 the water is allowed to slowly circulate around 
 through the pumps. The engineer of the Midland 
 Railway, who has had charge of their machinery for 
 many years, stated that by leaving one capstan 
 running slowly on the entire system of many miles 
 of pipes, no freezing had ever taken place. 
 
 At all of the railway stations along the docks, 
 unless the distance traversed by the hydraulic mains 
 is very great, the water, when discharged from the 
 various machines, is returned through suitable pipes 
 back to the pump-room, where it is delivered into 
 
53 
 
 receiving tanks to be again pumped under the 
 accumulators ariti again sent through the system, so 
 that the amount of water actually consumed is only 
 that which may be due to leakage, and this is not of 
 sufficient amount to be taken into consideration. 
 
 Pipes. — The pressure pipes in all cases are made 
 of cast-iron with joints bolted together ; while all of 
 the return pipes are ordinary cast-iron water pipes 
 with socket joints. 
 
 Traverse-Tables. — The traverse -tables used are 
 made of wrought iron or steel, strongly bracketed, 
 the ends fitted with hinged deflecting points to make 
 an easy ascent for the car. 
 
 Capstans.- — The capstans in use at the terminal 
 stations of railways and along the docks are of con- 
 siderable range in power, varying from one to five 
 tons direct pull upon a rope. All of the various 
 types show great ingenuity in their adaptation to 
 the work to be done by them, and in the very in- 
 genious contrivances for economizing the use of 
 water. 
 
 Car Hoists. — The car hoists as used at the Mid- 
 land Railway I consider the best of their kind which 
 I saw. These hoists are fitted with three rams each 
 of different size — the smaller of the three being 
 always open to the pressure of the main, and counter- 
 balancing the weight of the table and the other two 
 rams. The second is a little larger, and is sufficient 
 as an auxiliary to lift the ordinary freight car with 
 its load, or, say, fifteen tons; and the larger ram will, 
 with the assistance of the other two, lift any weight 
 up to twenty-five tons, and is so arranged that when 
 not required it will fill its cylinder by suction, and 
 
54 
 
 thus give a firm and rigid wheel-base for wagons that 
 may be passing over the platform. 
 
 The framing of the platforms of these car hoists 
 is made of steel structural beams, firmly riveted 
 together, and is capable of standing the severest uses. 
 
 Platform Cranes. — These are placed at con- 
 venient distances upon all of the platforms where 
 freight is to be received or delivered, and are in power 
 from 15 to 30 hundred weight capacity as a general 
 rule. Many of these cranes are made with double 
 rams for the purpose of economizing the use of water, 
 the smaller ram being used in all cases where the 
 loads are not more than 1,500 pounds; and where more 
 than 1,500 pounds is required to be lifted, then the 
 larger ram is placed in commission by the hand of 
 the operator. One such crane used continuously 
 during ten hours will handle, in loading or unloading, 
 300 tons per day. 
 
 Hydraulic Engines and Principle of Construc- 
 tion. — The engine, as before stated, may be of either 
 the horizontal or vertical type. But at the Midland 
 and London and Northwestern railways, horizontal 
 engines are used, and are of two types of construc- 
 tion. In one type the engines are what are known as 
 outside-connection, and the other, inside-connection ; 
 that is, the crank-shaft is forged in one type, plain, 
 with cranks on the outer end and fly-wheel in the 
 middle, and in the other type, double-throw right- 
 angle cranks are between the fly-wheels, which are 
 upon the outer end of the shaft. This, however, I 
 consider a mere matter of taste and cost, either one 
 doing equally good work. 
 
 Accumulators. — At the Batignolle station in Paris 
 
 
55 
 
 the accumulators are placed in the open station without 
 any support whatever above their bases, and are 
 exceedingly neat and efficient. The general type of 
 accumulators used, however, is one in which the 
 weight at the head of the ram moves in guides sup- 
 ported in a brick shaft. 
 
 The Midland Railway Company have in their 
 London district thirty-three hydraulic engines and 
 fourteen hundred hydraulic coal tips, wagon hoists, 
 capstans, cranes, sack lifts, traverses and turn-tables. 
 
 Cost of Power. — The cost in the Midland system 
 is 25 cents per thousand gallons delivered into the 
 mains. In this cost is included 5 per cent, on the cost 
 of the machinery, and 6 per cent, on the cost of 
 repairs, coal, oil, waste, wages, etc. 
 
 MACHINERY AT RAILWAY STATIONS. 
 
 BROAD STREET STATION, LONDON & NORTHWESTERN rV. 
 
 7 boilers, locomotive type. 
 
 5 pairs hydraulic pumping engines. 
 
 1 1 7-inch accumulator. 
 
 2 iS-inch accumulators. 
 1 20-inch accumulator. 
 
 54 3-ton hydraulic cranes. 
 
 3 hydraulic jiggers, 3,000 lbs. 
 1 5-ton hydraulic crane. 
 
 1 10-ton hydraulic crane. 
 
 2 16-ton hydraulic car-lifts. 
 2 14-ton hydraulic car-lifts. 
 
 2 hydraulic hoists, 3,000 lbs. each. 
 
56 
 
 26 hydraulic capstans, 
 126 capstan dummies. 
 
 1 5-ton yard crane. 
 
 Camden Station, London. 
 
 4 boilers, locomotive type. 
 
 2 pairs hydraulic pumping engines. 
 1 1 7-inch accumulator. 
 
 1 20-inch accumulator. 
 
 38 hydraulic cranes, 2,500 lbs. capacity. 
 
 2 hydraulic cranes, 4,000 lbs. capacity. 
 
 1 hydraulic crane, 6,000 lbs. capacity. 
 
 2 hydraulic cranes, 10,000 lbs. capacity. 
 1 hydraulic crane, 2,000 lbs. capacity. 
 
 27 hydraulic capstans. 
 168 capstan dummies. 
 
 93 warehouse cranes, 1,500 lbs. capacity. 
 
 3 warehouse cranes, 3,000 lbs. capacity. 
 1 yard crane, 1,500 lbs. capacity. 
 
 1 yard crane, 4,000 lbs. capacity. 
 1 yard crane, 10,000 lbs. capacity. 
 
 1 yard crane, 40,000 lbs. capacity. 
 
 Forth Station, Newcastle-on-Tyne. 
 
 28 capstans. 
 50 cranes. 
 
 19 turn-tables. 
 
 4 traverse-tables 
 
 3 locomotive boilers, 1 in reserve. 
 
 2 hydraulic pumping engines. 
 1 17-inch accumulator. 
 
 1 iS-inch accumulator. 
 
57 
 
 Batignolle. 
 
 2 car hoists. 
 
 iS turn-tables 
 
 12 cranes. 
 
 4 transfer-tables. 
 
 2 baggage hoists. 
 
 4 accumulators. 
 
 The power station is one mile from the point at 
 which the greater part of the power is used. 
 
 These figures give you some idea of the work 
 which is done by hydraulics in the way of placing 
 cars in position to be loaded and unloaded, and also 
 to load and unload the same in lieu of the switching 
 engines for handling the cars, and in place of hand 
 power for loading and unloading, as is done by us 
 here. 
 
 MACHINERY AT DOCKS. 
 
 To give vou an idea of the work along the docks, 
 I may name only a few of those of which I was at 
 the trouble to make notes of the actual number of 
 machines in use — although the number here enumer- 
 ated is but a small per cent, of those which I saw : 
 
 The Albert dock at Hull has a 6o horse-power 
 engine, supplies water for working an 8o-foot swing- 
 bridge, 19 hydraulic engines for working sluices, 
 gates, capstans; 3 20-ton coal hoists; 1 15-ton crane; 
 1 3-ton crane, and 34 i)4 -ton cranes. Pressure used, 
 775 lbs., which is delivered through 5,350 feet 5-inch, 
 1,400 feet 4-inch pipe, with 2-inch and 3-inch branches 
 to the various machines. 
 
58 
 At Cotton's wharf in London there are 10 hvdrau- 
 
 J 
 
 lie cranes, 2,500 lbs. capacity, lifting 40 feet ; 4 of 
 4,000 lbs. capacity, and 1 of 9,000 lbs. capacity, and 
 1 48-ton direct lift ; pressure used, 700 lbs. per square 
 inch. 
 
 At St. Catharine's docks, engines of 140 horse- 
 power pump against 600 lbs. pressure. They pump 
 through 1,200 yards of 7-inch pipe. The power is 
 used to work a swing-bridge, 75 cranes and 2 direct 
 lifts. 
 
 The London docks, 185 horse-power pumping 
 engines, 750 lbs. pressure, pump through 1,450 yards 
 of 5-inch pipe, 640 of 4-inch and 550 yards of 3-inch. 
 These engines work 100 cranes, hoists, and lifts. 
 
 At the Victoria docks, 280 horse-power pumping 
 engines are used. These pump against 780 lbs. 
 pressure through 700 yards of 5-inch pipe, 2,000 yards 
 of 4-inch and 200 yards of 3-inch pipe. The power 
 exerted annually is more than 401 million foot-tons, 
 and here, as in the other docks, the power is used to 
 operate a swing-bridge, capstans and upward of 100 
 cranes and hoists. 
 
 The Great Western Railway at Paddington uses 
 water at 700 lbs. to the square inch. The)" operate 3 
 car hoists, 3 capstans, 3 hauling engines, 20 turn- 
 tables, 54 cranes of 2,500 lbs. capacity, 16 hoists, 3 
 traverse-tables, 2 drawbridges. 
 
 Cost of Power. — Taking coal at $2 per ton, and 
 allowing 15 per cent, for interest on the cost of the 
 plant and depreciation of the same, wages, oil, waste, 
 etc., the cost per 100 foot-tons of power is about 2^ 
 cents. 
 
59 
 
 DESIRABILITY OF THIS SYSTEM OF TER- 
 MINALS FOR CITIES. 
 
 The railways and docks of England have had in 
 very general use for the last twenty-five years the sys- 
 tem which I have briefly described, and the machinery 
 of the London & Northwestern Broad Street station 
 has been in use for thirty years and is still in perfect 
 condition, doing its regular work every day just as 
 well as when first put in. 
 
 The various hydraulic appliances in use at railway 
 stations and docks, though built by different parties, 
 all show great ingenuity in their construction and 
 adaptability to the work required of them, and many 
 of them show in their construction the highest engi- 
 neering skill. 
 
 The system of operating cranes, hoists, engines of 
 all descriptions on a much greater scale than is done 
 by any of the docks or railway companies in any one 
 plant, is found in the London Hydraulic Power 
 Company of London, who are delivering water under 
 750 lbs. pressure through sixty-four miles of street 
 mains, and supplying power to more than 2,000 
 machines. 
 
 The Liverpool Hydraulic Power Company, and 
 many others, are also furnishing power from a central 
 station, to hundreds of consumers. 
 
 This system is also being laid down in Glasgow 
 and Manchester by the city authorities for general 
 distribution of power to whoever may require it. 
 
 I mention these facts, not that they have any 
 relation practically to what is required in the railway 
 
60 
 
 terminals of Chicago, but simply to show you that the 
 system has long since passed far beyond the experi- 
 mental stage. It is fully developed and proven to be 
 the most reliable, economical and convenient power 
 so far known. 
 
 There is no difficulty whatever in constructing the 
 pumps to deliver the water under the pressure required, 
 nor is there difficulty in manufacturing the pipes and 
 machinery, nor in maintenance. 
 
 In this connection I will state that I saw in Liver- 
 pool pipes being removed from the ground, which had 
 been in constant use with 750 lbs. pressure upon them 
 for thirty-five years, and they were, to all appearance, 
 just as good as new. They were being taken up to 
 make room for elevated railway foundations. 
 
 In my final report to you I will give drawings 
 of the various machines which I have described, and 
 which are used for performing the various functions 
 of terminal railway service, and also give some data 
 as to work performed, I will in this preliminary 
 report, however, give you some figures as to what is 
 daily performed at the White Cross station of the 
 Midland Railway in London, which is at the inter- 
 section of Red Cross and Gewin street, and is a very 
 good example of what can be done upon a small 
 piece of ground. The Midland Railway Company 
 are under very strict regulations as to when they can 
 arrive and depart from this station. 
 
 The ground occupied is irregular in shape and 
 altogether only about one acre in extent. The base- 
 ment is excavated to the level of the Metropolitan 
 Underground Railway, and in this basement all cars 
 are received. They are then lifted up to the street 
 
61 
 
 level, about 25 feet above, and are there loaded and 
 unloaded, and then lowered again, train made up and 
 forwarded to destination. Above the street level 
 there are two stories connected with those below by 
 elevators ; these storage rooms are for such freight as 
 is not called for, or which the company is not at the 
 time prepared to deliver. This station has its own 
 power house, with its hydraulic service pipes, capstan, 
 cranes, and 2 car lifts, 4 elevators for the upper stories, 
 2 accumulators, 2 locomotive boilers, 2 pumping 
 engines. These are also located upon the 1 acre of 
 ground. The water pressure used is 750 lbs, to the 
 square inch. I saw 19 cars transferred from the lower 
 level to the higher one on one oj the lifts in twenty 
 minutes, while the other was delivering cars in the re- 
 verse direction at the same rate. Between the hours of 
 6 p. m. and 11 p. 111., 160 cars in and 160 cars out are 
 handled, that is, 160 cars which come in loaded are 
 taken up 25 feet, unloaded, loaded up again, and brought 
 down and put into a departing train and sent away, or, 
 in short, one car per minute is received, sent up to the 
 street level, unloaded, loaded up, sent down again, and 
 sent away. One can be excused if he has doubts of the 
 truthfulness of this statement, but it is true nevertheless. 
 I may state, in brief, that hydraulic power is so 
 universally used throughout England — along her 
 docks for loading and unloading the ships, for pulling 
 them into position, for turning bridges, opening dock 
 gates, etc., and for all railway terminals, and over 
 large areas of many of her cities, that hydraulic 
 power may be considered " on tap ; " and I find 
 myself asking of myself, why is it that in England — 
 a country speaking the same language as ourselves, 
 
62 
 
 engaged in the same general traffic, so far as railways 
 and shipping are concerned, the habits of the people 
 being generally the same, with the cost of labor about 
 one-half of what it is with us — how is it, I ask 
 myself, that these people use the hydraulic system so 
 generally for doing the work which I have described, 
 and we use it not at all ? With cheap labor, as in 
 their case, the necessity for motive power of any kind 
 for doing work which can be done by the hand of 
 man is less than with us, where labor is so high. And 
 the only answer I can make which satisfies me in this 
 respect is, that this English system of terminals has 
 generally been investigated by men from America 
 who were not skilled in hydraulic appliances ; and as 
 our cars are larger and heavier than those used in 
 England, it has seemed to those men that we could 
 not apply the same machinery to our system which 
 has been so successfully used in England and else- 
 where. Another reason why we have not adopted 
 the system may lie largely in the fact that the rail- 
 ways in England, where their terminals exist, were 
 built when the cities through which they ran were 
 already in existence, and the necessity of economy in 
 use of ground, and in rapid and cheap means for 
 handling trains and goods, was forced upon the 
 attention of railway builders at the outset ; while with 
 us we built our railways in a greater degree without 
 any cities, or, if any, small ones, and there was no 
 necessity for economizing in space. Now that our 
 cities are built, the same questions are forced upon 
 us in regard to terminals in our cities which were 
 forced upon English engineers at the beginning. To 
 my mind, however, there is no good reason why we 
 
63 
 
 cannot handle our larger cars just as well as the 
 smaller ones. In practice we find no difference in a 
 hydraulic lift, whether we raise a barrow of ashes 
 from the basement of a building to the sidewalk, or 
 whether, as in the Mersey Railway of England, they 
 lift a car Sy feet from the railway to the surface, at a 
 speed of 200 feet per minute, these cars being 19 feet 
 6 inches by 16 feet 6 inches, and 10 feet high, and are 
 loaded with 15,000 lbs. of passengers ; it is simply a 
 question of size of the hydraulic machinery. The 100- 
 ton guns built by Armstrong are handled by hydraulic 
 power as readily as if they weighed but a pound. The 
 truth is, the weights to be handled by hydraulic press- 
 ure need not be taken into consideration ; it is only 
 that the engineer in making his calculations shall know 
 what are the weights to be handled. 
 
 In constructing the terminals of England, great 
 wisdom has been shown in utilizing the small terminal 
 space covered by them, but with our knowledge of 
 elevator work, which is not equaled by anything 
 which the English people possess, we may safely go 
 still further than they have gone ; they have but 
 pointed the safe way. 
 
 In constructing: the terminals here, in addition to 
 all I have seen in England, I would advise that the 
 stations be built several stories in height, and made 
 great terminal warehouses. I would lift by hydraulic 
 power the loaded car directly up to any floor of this 
 warehouse, haul it off from the elevator platform, 
 unload it and send it down again. If these goods are 
 again to be shipped by rail, the empty car should be 
 sent up to the floor where the goods are stored, and 
 there loaded and sent clown. 
 
64 
 
 The cost of taking this car up and down again, so 
 far as coal is concerned, is just the friction of the 
 moving parts of the machinery, because all of the 
 power which was required from the pumps to raise 
 the loaded car to the top floor of this warehouse, will 
 be given back by descent of the car when again sent 
 down loaded. 
 
 It is also true that the weight of goods descending 
 from the various floors of this warehouse will give 
 back all the power which was required to raise them 
 up there, less the friction of the parts. 
 
 The cost of power, however, per ton of freight 
 moved in the yard in transfer of cars from one posi- 
 tion to another, and the loading and unloading of the 
 trains, is an amount so small per ton as hardly to be 
 considered in calculating the terminal expenses. 
 
 With these double-level stations, you of course 
 have double the area for tracks, and with the aid of 
 hydraulic machinery for handling the cars and freight, 
 you will have again doubled several times the capac- 
 ity of the terminal for handling cars. 
 
 There is not a shadow of doubt in my own mind 
 as to the wisdom of a very liberal expenditure of 
 money to produce in the City of Chicago, and in fact, 
 in all of our principal cities, this form of terminal and 
 method of operation. 
 
 This enumeration of railway stations and docks 
 where hydraulic power is used is not to be taken 
 as any indication of the extent to which such power 
 is used, but comprises those places where I took the 
 trouble to get exact data. 
 
 One significant fact which I took note of at the 
 stations and docks which I inspected, was that while 
 
G5 
 
 there was a general sameness in the hydraulic machin- 
 ery in use, each had a somewhat different arrange- 
 ment and used machines different in details from 
 the others. But all of the machines showed careful 
 designing and great engineering skill in adapting the 
 various machines to accomplish the ends sought 
 for. 
 
 In comparing the cost of handling freight in and 
 out of the railway stations of England, with the same 
 class of work in and out of our railway stations, I have 
 not yet been able to tabulate the figures obtained so 
 as to be very accurate as to the difference between 
 the cost in England and the United States, but I 
 can safely state that the difference is very great in 
 favor of England, and near the ratio of 3 to 1. In 
 my complete report, which is to follow this soon, full 
 data as to amount of freight handled and number of 
 cars and trains which enter and leave the principal 
 stations will be presented, together with plans of the 
 machines in use and the cost of same. 
 
 Respectfully submitted, 
 
 Geo. H. Reynolds, 
 
 Consulting Engineer. 
 
GG 
 
 THE CHICAGO RAILROAD TERMINAL 
 PROBLEM, FROM THE ENGINEER- 
 ING STANDPOINT. 
 
 BY E. L. CORTHELL. 
 
 Your committee has not only given careful atten- 
 tion and study to the conditions existing in the City of 
 Chicago and in other cities of the United States, but 
 it has also, through one of its members, studied the 
 question of terminals and complicated railway situa- 
 tions in Europe. This member of the committee has 
 examined during the last summer nearly forty rail- 
 way terminals and complicated railway situations in 
 large cities. Also twenty-two harbors and the rela- 
 tions of the railways to them, and over fifteen hydrau- 
 lic plants for the handling of freight and express 
 goods at freight stations. 
 
 The method adopted in Europe, and used for many 
 years to facilitate both the railroad and marine com- 
 merce and make safe the street traffic, presents many 
 features applicable to a city like Chicago. 
 
 In England the law prohibits grade crossings of 
 any kind. The railroads are carried over or under 
 each other. The streets, roads and even farm roads 
 are placed over or under the railroads. It would bur- 
 den this report to give details and extended illustra- 
 tions of the methods employed, but a few prominent 
 examples may be given. Near Liverpool, on the 
 London and Northwestern Railroad, at Edge Hill, 
 where there is a very extensive yard for making up 
 
67 
 
 freight trains, an ingenious plan has been recently 
 carried out which avoids railroad grade crossings by 
 carrying the tracks over or under each other in making 
 connections, so that this extensive yard can be oper- 
 ated without interfering with the business of any of 
 the main lines of the railroad. Another prominent 
 and well-known example is Clapham Junction, near 
 London. At Manchester, at the London Road sta- 
 tion, the freight trains come in on a high level. The 
 cars are lowered to the low level of the streets, 
 where they can be reached by drays. At the great 
 Central station of the Caledonian Railroad at Glas- 
 gow, there is an elevated entrance. At Queen Street 
 station of the same city, the entrance is made by an 
 elevated structure, and underneath, crossing at right 
 angles, is a belt railroad largely underground, and in 
 order to make a still better entrance into the city, one 
 railroad is building a tunnel under Argyle street, one of 
 the main streets of the city. At Birmingham a union 
 station is provided in the center of the city and the 
 entrance is by sub-ways from either direction. In 
 London every railroad is brought into the city in such 
 a way as to avoid grade crossing, and the entrance is 
 always by overhead structures, or by tunnels or sub- 
 ways. Several of the lines cross each other, and many 
 of them connect with the Metropolitan District Rail- 
 way, which is largely an underground road. At the 
 White Cross station, St. Pancras, Broad street, White- 
 chapel, Bishopsgate and several other stations, there 
 are special hydraulic appliances for handling cars from 
 a high level or the reverse with these hydraulic lifts 
 and capstans, traversers, turn-tables and other appli- 
 ances for moving the freight cars across or along sev- 
 
68 
 
 eral tracksto the desired position for loading or unload- 
 ing. The universal opinion of railroad men in England 
 is in favor of the use of hydraulic plants for handling 
 freight cars. Hydraulic lifts are also used in pass- 
 enger stations, not only in England, but on the Con- 
 tinent, in handling baggage and express and postal 
 matter from one level to another, and also for transfer- 
 ring, by means of sub-ways in the station, from one 
 track to another without crossing the track at grade. 
 To still further prevent the crossing of tracks by the 
 public, the stations, in England at least, and generally 
 in large stations on the Continent, are so arranged 
 that it is unnecessary for any purpose for passengers 
 to cross the track at grade; over-head bridges and 
 sub-ways, well-lighted and convenient, being provided 
 for passengers in taking or leaving trains. All the 
 arrangements for operating the road with safety to 
 human life are so perfect in England that the fast ex- 
 press trains run almost always with a speed of sixty 
 miles an hour through large cities, past great stations, 
 where there are crowds of passengers and trains on 
 other tracks, without accidents. It is the general 
 opinion of railroad men there that all the precautions 
 taken by them are absolutely required for the safe 
 and prompt movement of trains and the proper trans- 
 action of their business. 
 
 It is now necessary to examine briefly into the con- 
 ditions existing in Chicago, in order to show the great 
 contrast there is with the conditions above described 
 in European cities. The rapid growth of this city in 
 the last fifty years, raising it from a village to a great 
 metropolitan center, has brought about most unusual 
 commercial conditions. It is still growing with great 
 
69 
 
 rapidity, more, probably, than any other city in the 
 world. 
 
 Compared with the other great cities of this country, 
 the ratio of increase in population in the last decade 
 has been nearly three times that of New York, nearly 
 four times that of Philadelphia, Boston and of St. 
 Louis. Nor has the time come, as it does eventually 
 to all great cities, when it has ceased to grow. 
 
 The great advance in population is still too great 
 to be arrested for the next two decades. At least it 
 may be safely estimated that the growth of this city, 
 for each decade in the future will not be less than one 
 million. Still further bearing on the railway problem 
 of this city, is the fact that it is the largest city of the 
 Northern division of the United States, the popula- 
 tion of which is, by the census of 1890, over 22,000,000 
 of people, and that the increase in this grand division 
 of the United States is greater than that of any other. 
 As still further indicating the movement of population 
 in this country, is the fact that its center of gravity 
 has nearly reached the longitude of this city. 
 
 On its streets are more miles of double-track horse 
 and cable railroads than on the streets of any other 
 citv. The magnitude of its marine commerce is given 
 elsewhere in this report. 
 
 It is the greatest railroad center in the United 
 States, probably in the world, as far as mileage is 
 concerned. The length of main lines of railroads 
 that terminate at this city is over 54,000. The magni- 
 tude of its freight business is also very great. In 1S89 
 there were received and forwarded four and one- 
 quarter millions of freight cars, making the daily hand- 
 ling nearly 12,000 cars. There were moved over 43,- 
 
TO 
 
 000,000 tons of freight, There were over 18,000,000 
 passengers moved over its main lines, and on its sub- 
 urban lines nearly 11,000,000. The railroads, as they 
 enter this city and reach their terminals, which are 
 well into the center of the population, are laid at the 
 grade of the streets and at the grade of each other, 
 wherever they cross. An attempt, unsystematic and 
 desultory, has been made to raise the streets at points 
 of great danger above the railroads by means of via- 
 ducts, of which there are twenty-nine. The following 
 facts are very suggestive of delays and dangers, es- 
 pecially when compared with their entire avoidance 
 by the English railroads as above described. The 
 main lines of the Chicago railroads cross each other 
 at grade at over iod points. These lines cross sid- 
 ings or yard tracks at over 30 points. The load tracks 
 running into yards cross main tracks or sidings at 
 more than 120 points. There are, as a partial protec- 
 tion to the public, 487 gates at crossings. It is diffi- 
 cult to ascertain how many traveled streets are crossed 
 by railroads, but there are probably 1,000 or more. 
 According to statistics stated elsewhere in this report, 
 there were last year on these grade crossings over 
 200 people killed. The growth of the railroad traffic 
 keeping pace, as it must necessarily do, with the 
 growth of the population, has brought about the 
 greatest difficulties in handling this business. The 
 areas of the city freight yards have become altogether 
 too restricted for their purpose. The building of belt 
 railroads has relieved the pressure to a certain extent. 
 One of these belt railroads, St. Charles Air Line, is in 
 the heart of the city and crosses its main avenues and 
 streets at grade. The railroads make transfers with 
 
71 
 
 each other through the Union Stock Yard Tracks. 
 The Western Indiana, built in the outskirts of the city, 
 is situated so as to relieve to some extent the city ter- 
 minals, and this is shown by the fact that, since 1884, 
 its business has so increased from 223,757 cars per 
 annum to 557,752 in 1890. There have been recently 
 put into operation several lines of another belt railroad, 
 called the Calumet Terminal, which is also now doing 
 a considerable transfer business. There is still another, 
 the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern, about twenty miles from 
 the city, which runs from the Lake on the north to 
 the Lake on the east, and has connection with all the 
 railroads entering the city. Although this road has 
 been opened but a short time, the necessities for trans- 
 fer between the railroads is bringing to it a large 
 business. The volume of the business at present is 
 cars. Useful as these railroads are in divert- 
 ing from the busy parts of the city the freight which 
 is destined for consumption here, they are not a 
 large factor in relieving the congested condition of 
 the city terminals, for the reason that the products 
 required by the city itself, for its own consumption 
 and business, are so rapidly increasing that the pres- 
 ent restricted terminals cannot handle the business 
 promptly or economically; and it is discouraging to 
 note that, except at extraordinary expense, the areas 
 occupied by the railroads for freight purposes cannot 
 be very greatly extended on account of their proxim- 
 ity to very valuable property. 
 
 From the information given above, it will be ap- 
 parent that the greatest evil (which in some way 
 must be cured or abated) is the danger of the street 
 traffic and the inconvenience as well, both to the pub- 
 
73 
 
 lie and the railroads, of the grade crossings. Every 
 new street that is opened, the annual increase of 
 travel on all the streets crossing the railroads, the in- 
 crease of trains and in the length of trains, and the 
 increase in the switching and otherwise handling of 
 cars, constantly increase the delays and dangers. 
 When the whole situation is known, and the one fact 
 is stated, that this city is growing in population at the 
 rate of 1,000,000 per decade, the extraordinary ob- 
 stacles in the way of both railroads and street traffic 
 would be appreciated. 
 
 The question now arises, what shall be done to 
 solve the difficult problem ? Your Committee have 
 carefully studied the entire situation, and can see but 
 one plan that is practicable, and that is, to at once 
 adopt the principle and rule of raising the railroad 
 tracks to a suitable height above the streets, and to 
 cease the unsystematic and ill-advised method of 
 raising the streets here and there, by means of via- 
 ducts, at great cost, occasioning great damage to 
 property and thus converting an otherwise level city 
 into one of abrupt undulations — hills and valleys, as 
 it were. Your Committee would suggest that, in 
 order to avoid the construction of an elevated railway 
 for each of the railroads, they should be combined in- 
 to three groups of elevated railroads, one entering the 
 city from the southwest, one from the west and one 
 from the north. 
 
 It is evident, from the fact that the largest num- 
 ber of railroads enter the city from the east, south, 
 and northwest, that the elevated entrance from these 
 directions should be of large dimensions. An elevated 
 railroad with from six to ten tracks on its main stem 
 
entering the city as far as practicable, would be re- 
 quired for the immense business that enters from these 
 directions over the present surface tracks of the Lake 
 Shore & Michigan Southern, the Rock Island & Paci- 
 fic, the Western Indiana and its tenants, the Ft. 
 Wayne, and the Chicago & Alton, the Chicago, 
 Madison & Northern, and the Atchison, Topeka & 
 Santa Fe. This would embrace nearly all the roads 
 coming from the east, from the south, and from the 
 southwest, except the Illinois Central and its tenants, 
 which enter the city along the lake front. In order 
 to adapt this elevated entrance, those methods which 
 have been found practicable and economical in 
 Europe, the clear height of this road above the streets 
 should be sufficiently great to give a free and unre- 
 stricted movement of street traffic under it. It should 
 be floored over, beneath the tracks, by a solid steel 
 and concrete construction, so that the extensive area 
 beneath could be used for yards for the various rail- 
 roads, or for warehouse and other similar purposes. 
 Connected with this, at points where the present sur- 
 face areas covered with tracks would not in any way 
 interfere with the street traffic, could be arranged ex- 
 tensive freight yards. The cars entering the city on 
 this elevated structure, whose destination is for city 
 delivery, could be lowered to corresponding tracks 
 beneath the structure by the means of hydraulic plants. 
 To avoid the use of locomotives on the low level 
 tracks at the surface of the ground, hydraulic turn- 
 tables, capstans and traversers, could be used just as 
 they are in many parts of Europe. One immense 
 hydraulic installation, with its pipes running the en- 
 tire length of this elevated structure, six or eight 
 
74 
 
 miles, with auxiliary accumulators at suitable points, 
 would not only economically and promptly handle 
 the entire business of the railroad, but would also fur- 
 nish power for handling goods in warehouses, manu- 
 factories and various industries that might be estab- 
 lished along the line of this elevated entrance. As 
 to the two smaller groups of elevated roads from the 
 west and north, combining- all the roads coming from 
 these directions, the method should be adhered to of 
 an elevated entrance wherever the present conditions 
 of track, streets, viaducts, and the river permit. This 
 would give three great elevated passenger terminals, 
 which should be so located that they might be con- 
 veniently united by a connecting elevated railway, so 
 that passengers coming into the city in one direction 
 and desiring to pass through the railroads leaving on 
 opposite sides of the city, could make the transfer 
 without the inconvenience of omnibuses, street cars, 
 street vehicles, or on foot as now. 
 
 If, in connection with the important work now 
 contemplated and under charge of the Board of 
 Trustees of the Sanitary District, there should result 
 the replacing of a large number of swing bridges by 
 fixed bridges, the connection between the elevated 
 railroad entrance above suggested could be much 
 more conveniently arranged. 
 
 Your Committee, however, cannot assume the 
 responsibilities belonging to the Sanitary District 
 Trustees to devise a plan to meet the requirements of 
 the law, under which the Board of Trustees is acting. 
 That Board must decide how it will obtain sufficient 
 water from the lake to dilute the sewage according 
 to the requirements of the law, and at the same time 
 
70 
 
 furnish adequate accommodation for navigation, also 
 intended by the law. Your Committee is not aware 
 that any plan for this important work has been 
 adopted by the Board of Trustees. It might possibly 
 be found practicable to obtain the necessary velocity, 
 volume and depth of water in the present channels of 
 the Chicago river by removing all the swing bridges, 
 with their center piers, and by sufficiently widening 
 the river everywhere and establishing new dock lines. 
 The swing bridges could be replaced by bridges with 
 two leaves opening up, like those of the Tower bridge 
 in London, now under construction, and with a foot 
 passageway high enough to clear the masts of vessels 
 with topmasts struck. This foot passageway should 
 be provided with large hydraulic elevators; the hy- 
 draulic plant for operating the railroad terminals 
 could be enlarged so as to furnish power for hand- 
 ling the bridges and their elevators, also as in many 
 European harbors, for handling the vessels into the 
 dock and to perform other work along the river re- 
 quiring power, also in warehouses, coal yards, ore 
 docks, etc. This suggested plant for utilizing the 
 Chicago river for the admission of lake water for 
 sanitary purposes would, no doubt, require the low- 
 ering of tunnels and the river bed to a depth of 
 twenty-two feet or more. The value of the property 
 required for widening the river to a uniform width of 
 say, 250 feet, might be excessive and possibly prohib- 
 itory, but the suggestion is entitled to a careful con- 
 sideration. Considering all the facts referring to the 
 methods in Europe and to the conditions existing in 
 Chicago, and the suggestions which have been made, 
 your Committee would advise that, whatever plan is 
 
adopted, the principle of entirely separating the street 
 and railroad traffic should be adopted at once, and 
 carried out as rapidly as it is practicable. There 
 should, in the future, in no instance be permitted, in- 
 side the city limits, any grade crossings. All these 
 changes in the traffic conditions could not, of course, 
 be done in one year or in two years, but they should 
 be made as rapidly as the railroads and the city 
 could jointly furnish the means for the work, and 
 the expensive and unwise plan of building viaducts 
 over the railroads should be at once abandoned. 
 
THE CHICAGO RAILROAD TERMINAL PROB- 
 LEM, FROM THE LEGAL STANDPOINT. 
 
 NATURE AND EXTENT OF THE DUTY TO THE PUBLIC OF 
 RAILROAD CORPORATIONS WHOSE LINES CROSS THE SUR- 
 FACE OF STREETS IN THE CITY OF CHICAGO, AND THE 
 REMEDY FOR ITS ENFORCEMENT."' 
 
 The large extent to which the streets of the city 
 are occupied by its vast network of railroads; the 
 obstruction to the public use occasioned thereby; the 
 hindrance to the movement of traffic upon the rail- 
 ways and the injury to and destruction of persons 
 and property at these intersections; the necessary 
 augmentation of these evils in the future by the con- 
 tinued growth of the city, and the consequent increase 
 of business and travel upon the streets, and especially 
 that which will be produced by the coming exposi- 
 tion, demand a radical change in the policy hitherto 
 pursued by the public authorities. 
 
 It is a matter of the first importance in the consid- 
 eration of the subject, to determine where the respon- 
 sibility rests with respect to the expense of such 
 changes and alterations as will preserve the streets to 
 the public use, free from any substantial or material 
 obstruction by the railways. 
 
 It would seem, upon principles of natural justice, 
 
 * The Board of Directors of one of the largest systems of railways termi- 
 nating at Chicago, wishing to take independent advice as to the power and 
 duty of the company in its occupancy of certain of the streets of the city, with 
 its tracks, submitted the question to one of the most eminent corporation law- 
 yers in the northwest for opinion, which is here given in full. 
 
78 
 
 inasmuch as the railway occupancy of the streets is 
 exclusively for the private gain and advantage of 
 the railroad corporations, without any corresponding 
 benefit to the public, that the burden should be 
 borne by the agency which creates the necessity for 
 the change. 
 
 More than eighty years ago this principle was 
 declared by the Court of King's Bench, in The King 
 v. The Inhabitants of Lindsey, 14 East's Rep., p. 317. 
 
 There authority was given to make the river Bain 
 navigable, and in the execution of that purpose a cut 
 was made in the river at a point where a highway in- 
 tersected it and crossed by means of a ford; the cut 
 made the highway impassable at its intersection of 
 the stream, but the court held that, although the act 
 of parliament conferring the right to improve the 
 navigation of the river and to make the cut in ques- 
 tion, did not require the restoration of any highway 
 injured or destroyed thereby, yet that duty was im- 
 plied from the very nature of the case. 
 
 To the same effect is Rex v. Kerrison, 3 Maul & 
 Selwin, 526. 
 
 In re Trenton Water Power Company, 20 N. J. 
 Law, 659, the same question was presented. 
 
 The Water Power Company was authorized to 
 construct a canal or cut a sluice or raceway; it did so 
 across a highway so as to render a bridge necessary 
 where none was required before. 
 
 No duty was expressly imposed by its charter or 
 by law to build this bridge. 
 
 The court said: " In accordance with these views, 
 it has been repeatedly held in England that where a 
 private corporation, in the prosecution of its own ob- 
 
79 
 
 jects, has rendered a bridge necessary in a public 
 highway, where none was necessary before, it was 
 their duty, and not the duty of the county, to erect 
 and maintain such bridge. It was in the pursuit of 
 their own advantage that they rendered the bridge 
 necessary, and therefore they ought not to burden 
 the public with its maintenance; qui sentit commodum 
 sentiri debet et onus. Thus a canal company author- 
 ized by an act of parliament to make the river Bain 
 navigable, and to make and enlarge certain naviga- 
 ble cuts and build bridges and other works connected 
 with their navigation, having for their own benefit 
 made a navigable cut and deepened the ford which 
 crossed the highway, and thereby rendered a bridge 
 necessary for the passage of the public, and which 
 was accordingly built at the expense of the company 
 in the first instance, the Court of King's Bench held 
 the company bound to maintain the bridge; and that 
 the burden of repairs was not to be thrown upon the 
 inhabitants of the county. Rex v. The Inhabitants of 
 Lindsey." Supra. 
 
 " In Rex v. Kerrison the case was that certain per- 
 sons and their successors were authorized by act of 
 parliament to make a river navigable and to cut the 
 soil of any persons for making a new channel ; and 
 by virtue of which they cut through a highway and 
 rendered it impassable, and a bridge was built over 
 the cut, over which the public passed, and which had 
 been repaired by the proprietors of the navigation. 
 The court held that the proprietors, and not the coun- 
 ty, were bound to repair. 
 
 " No express obligation was imposed by the act of 
 parliament on the proprietors of the cut in the case 
 
80 
 
 last cited, and it was argued on their part that, as 
 there was no mention of bridges nor any words of 
 condition in the act, no obligation arose to build 
 bridges ; though it was admitted that the necessity of 
 the bridge originated with the making of the cut. 
 
 " The defendant also relied strongly on the cir- 
 cumstance that it was not proved that the proprietors 
 of the cut (whom he represented) originally built the 
 bridge, but only that they had occasionally repaired it. 
 
 " Lord Ellenborough met this argument thus : 
 'The act enables them to cut new channels as occa- 
 sion should require ; and if occasion requires them to 
 cut through a public highway, their duty is to furnish 
 a substitute to the public by means of a bridge.' 
 
 " Can we put any other construction upon the act 
 but this: that the legislature intended that so far as 
 regarded the making of the river navigable, and the 
 cutting new channels for that purpose, neither public 
 nor private rights should stand in their way ; but still 
 they should make good to the public in another shape, 
 the means of passage over such ways as they were 
 empowered to cut through ? 
 
 " Mr. Justice Bayley added: 'There would have 
 been no difficulty in framing an indictment against 
 the proprietors for not building a bridge.' 
 
 " The indictment might have charged them with 
 cutting across the highway, and if they had pleaded 
 the act of parliament, the court would have determined 
 upon it that they had power only to make the cut sub 
 modo ; that is, providing a substitute to the public. 
 
 " I fully concur in the reasoning of the court in 
 that case, and am, therefore, of opinion that the Tren- 
 ton Water Power Company is under an obligation to 
 
81 
 
 build and keep in repair, bridges over their canal or 
 race-way wherever it crosses any public highway or 
 street." 
 
 This case was decided in 1846. 
 
 In Louisville & Nashville R. R. Co. v. The State, 
 3 Head (Term.), 523, it was held that : 
 
 " It was the duty of the Company to have built, 
 not only under the general principles of the common 
 law, but by the terms of its charter, in which it was 
 made its duty so to construct its road across a public 
 road or highway as not to impede the passage of per- 
 sons or property along the same." 
 
 This case was decided in 1859. 
 
 To the same effect is Veazie v. Penobscot R. R. 
 Co., 49 Me. 121, decided in i860. 
 
 To the same effect is Phcenixville v. the Phoenix 
 Iron Company, 45 Pa. St. Rep. 135, decided in 1863, 
 citing numerous cases where like principles are 
 announced, and approving the English cases above 
 cited. 
 
 In 1873 the principles announced in the foregoing 
 cases were fully approved by the Supreme Court of 
 Illinois, in the case of The People v. the Chicago & 
 Alton R. R. Co., 67th 111., 1 18, thus: 
 
 "It is a well-settled principle of the common law, 
 resting upon the most obvious considerations of just- 
 ice, that any person or corporation that cuts through 
 a highway for the benefit of such person or corpora- 
 tion, must furnish to the public a proper crossing, even 
 though acting lender a license from the proper author- 
 ities. With reference, of course, to cases where the 
 legislative power has not in terms relieved the person 
 or company that interferes with a highway from the 
 
necessity of removing any obstructions they may 
 create. 
 
 "In the absence of such an express provision, it is 
 palpable that a railway company is under the obliga- 
 tion to leave every highway that it crosses in a safe 
 condition for the use of the public. 
 
 "As illustrating the common law rule, we refer to 
 Queen v. Inhabitants of Eli, 69 E. C. L. 843." 
 
 In 1 8 74 the English cases above referred to were 
 approved by the Court of Queen's Bench in Oliver v. 
 The Northeastern Railway Co., The Law Reports, 
 Q. B., Vol. 9, p. 409. 
 
 The same principle was announced in 1876 by the 
 Supreme Court of Maryland in the Northern Central 
 Ry. Co. v. Mayor, etc., 46 Md. 445. 
 
 Also in 1878, in Eyler v. County Commissioner, 49 
 Md. 269. 
 
 Also in 1882, by the Supreme Court of Kentucky 
 in R. R. Co. v. Commonwealth, 80 Ky. Rep. p. 147. 
 
 Also by the Supreme Court of Michigan in 1883, 
 in Maltby v. Chicago & West Michigan R. R. Co., 17 
 N. W. Rep. 717, citing numerous cases. 
 
 In The City of Minneapolis v. St. Paul, Minne- 
 apolis & Manitoba Ry. Co., 28 N. W. Rep. p. 3, de- 
 cided in 1886, the whole subject was thoroughly con- 
 sidered and the adjudged cases examined, and the 
 same principle laid down as in the cases above re- 
 ferred to. 
 
 Same case, 35 Minn. 131. 
 
 Also in the subsequent case of the City of Minne- 
 apolis v. the Minneapolis & St. Louis Ry. Co., decid- 
 ed in 1888, 39 N. W. Rep. p. 153. 
 
 Also The City of Minneapolis v. the St. Paul, 
 
83 
 
 Minneapolis & Manitoba Ry. Co., 36 N. W. Rep. p. 
 870. 
 
 Also in Chesapeake, Ohio & Southwestern R. R. 
 Co. v. Dyer County, 1 1 S. W. Rep. p. 943, in which 
 the whole subject is thoroughly considered and the 
 adjudged cases examined and approved. 
 
 These well settled principles have, in many of the 
 States of the Union, been enacted or declared by 
 statute. 
 
 In Illinois, substantially, the following provisions 
 have been in force for a long period. 
 
 " Hereafter at all of the railroad crossings of high- 
 ways and streets in this State, the several railroad 
 corporations in this State shall construct and maintain 
 said crossings and the approaches thereto within their 
 respective rights of way so that at all times they shall 
 be safe as to persons and property." 
 
 II. 
 
 The nature of the duty thus imposed upon railroad 
 corporations is a continuing one, whether the duty 
 rests upon the principles of the common law above 
 announced, or upon expressed statutory provision. 
 
 In Commonwealth v. New Bedford Bridge, 2 Gray, 
 352, it was held that the duty of making and main- 
 taining draws in the bridge was a continuing duty, 
 and required such changes in the character and size 
 of the draw, as the changing condition and circum- 
 stances of trade and increase in the size of vessels 
 might from time to time require. 
 
 In Manly v. Canal & Ry. Co., 2 Hurlstone & Nor- 
 man, 840, it was held by the court that : 
 
84 
 
 "Whether or not the bridge was sufficient at the 
 time it was built, the company were bound to main- 
 tain a bridge sufficient with reference to the present 
 state of circumstances." 
 
 In English v. R. R. Co., 32 New Jersey L. 245, it 
 was held that the general duty over restoration 
 imposed by statute or the common law, requiring the 
 widening of a bridge to carry a highway over a rail- 
 road track rested upon the railroad company when- 
 ever public convenience and necessity required it. 
 
 In Burritt v. City of New Haven, 4.26. Conn. 198, 
 the court held, referring to English v. Railroad Com- 
 pany, sapra : 
 
 "That a bridge over a railroad crossing- of this 
 company in the city of New Haven was constructed 
 of suitable capacity to accommodate the public when 
 the railroad was first built ; but by the increase of 
 travel incident to the growth of the city, the public 
 convenience afterwards required a material enlarge- 
 ment of the bridge, and was held that the obligation 
 of the company was a continuing one, and commen- 
 surate with the increasing necessity of the public. 
 The original duty was fully discharged, but a new 
 and additional one was created by a change of cir- 
 cumstances, and its performance was required, not 
 because it would be beneficial to the company to per- 
 form it, but because the convenience, necessity and 
 safety of the public demanded it." 
 
 In Cook v. Boston & Lowell R. R. Co., 10 Am. 
 & Eng. R. R. Co., p. 330, the Supreme Court of Mas- 
 sachusetts, construing statutory provisions declaratory 
 of the common law duty of restoration, say : 
 
 "Nor can we accept that construction of the 
 
85 
 
 statute which would limit the duty and obligation of 
 the railroad company to providing for the wants of 
 travelers at that time. 
 
 "The Legislature intended to provide against any 
 obstruction of the safe and convenient use of the high- 
 way for all time ; and if by the incresaing population 
 in the neighborhood, or of an increasing use of the 
 highway, the crossing, which at the outset was ade- 
 quate, is no longer so, it is the duty of the railroad 
 corporation to make such alteration as will meet the 
 present needs of the public who have occasion to use 
 the highway." 
 
 See also numerous cases cited in notes to the same. 
 
 In Mayor v. Railroad . Company, 2 Atlantic Re- 
 porter, 262, the Supreme Court of New Jersey hold 
 that the duty imposed to restore is a continuing duty, 
 and say : 
 
 "Suppose a public street in a town to have been 
 originally laid out over the surface of the railroad 
 track, and that by reason of the growth of the busi- 
 ness of the railroad at locality, trains should pass in 
 such quick succession as to render the street almost 
 impassable, there can be no doubt that under such 
 circumstances, the railroad company could not dis- 
 charge themselves from the obligation which this 
 section imposes, except by passing the street thus 
 obstructed under the railroad so as to restore it to 
 public use." And see cases cited therein. 
 
 See also the following cases: 
 
 Rex v. Inhabitants of Kent, 18 East. 220. 
 Leopard v. Ches. & O. Canal Co., 1 Gill, 
 (Md.) 222. 
 
86 
 
 Inhabitants of Cambridge, 7 Met. 70. 
 Parker v. Boston & Me. Ry., 3 Cush. 115. 
 Nicholson v. Ry. Co., 22 Conn. 74. 
 Commonwealth v. Deerfield, 6 Allen, 449. 
 Titcomb v. Fitchburg Ry. Co., 12 Allen, 254. 
 R. R. Co. v. State, 32 N. J. L. 220. 
 White v. Inhabitants of Quincy, 97 Mass. 
 
 430- 
 Cott v. Lewiston, etc., Ry. Co., 36 N. Y. 
 
 214. 
 Richardson v. N. Y. Cent. & H. R. R. R., 
 
 45 N. Y. 847- 
 Johnson v. P. & S. Ry. Co., 10 R. I. 365. 
 Railroad v. Moffitt, 75 111. 524. 
 Farley v. C. R. I. & P. Ry., 42 Iowa, 234. 
 Hays v. N. Y. Cent. & H. R. R. R., 9 Hun 
 
 (N. Y.) 63. 
 N. Cent. R. R. v. Mayor of Baltimore, 46 
 
 Md. 425. 
 R. R. Co. v. Commissioners, 31 O. St. 338. 
 People v. N. Y. C. & H. R. R. R., 74 X. Y. 
 
 302. 
 Masterton v. N. Y. C. & H. R. R. R., 84 
 
 N. Y. 247. 
 Paducah, etc., Ry. Co. v. Commrs., 80 Ky. 
 
 147. 
 Cooke v. Ry. Co., 10 A. & E. Ry. Ca. 328. 
 Jersey City v. Jersey Cent. Ry. (X. J.), 2 
 
 At. Rep. 262. 
 N. Y. & G. L. Ry. v. State, 32 A. & E. R. 
 
 R. Ca. 186. 
 Long Island Ry. Co. v. Brooklyn, 8 X. Y. 
 
 Sup. S05. 
 
87 
 
 To the same effect are the Minnesota cases above 
 cited, in the first of which the court says: 
 
 "The duty prescribed is to keep at all times, and 
 under all circumstances, the streets at points where 
 they are intercepted by the railroad, in a condition 
 and state of repair, so as not to impair or interfere 
 with their free and proper use. 
 
 " And if this cannot be done with a surface cross- 
 ing, the company must do it, either by carrying their 
 tracks over or under the highway, or the highway 
 under or over their tracks; and the duty of thus re- 
 storing or preserving the free use of the street includes 
 the doing of whatever is needed to accomplish the 
 required end, and which is rendered necessary to be 
 done by reason of the presence of the railroad in the 
 street. 
 
 "It is clear upon both reason and authority that 
 this duty is a continuing one. 
 
 " It is not fulfilled by simply putting the street, at 
 the time the railroad is built, in such condition as not 
 to impair or interfere with its free and proper use at 
 that time, or even by maintaining it in such condi 
 tion as would have accomplished that end had the 
 circumstances and conditions onginallv existing con- 
 tinued. 
 
 "The requirement of the statute has a wider scope 
 than this, and has reference to all future exigencies. 
 
 " The legislature never intended to fix or limit the 
 duty of the company by the necessities of the public 
 at any one time or under any particular state of cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 " They intended to impose upon the company the 
 duty, from time to time, of putting the street in 
 
such condition and state of repair as changed circum- 
 stances, such as the increased travel on the street, 
 or increased traffic on the railroad, might render 
 necessary to its free and proper use. 
 
 " A condition of the street or mode of crossing- the 
 railroad might be entirely adequate for the accom- 
 modation of the public under one condition of things, 
 and entirely inadequate under another; and conse- 
 quently a provision which at one juncture would be 
 a discharge of this statutory duty would at another 
 amount to its violation. 
 
 " For example, a single track laid on the surface 
 of a street in a small town where the traffic on the 
 railroad and the travel on the street were limited, 
 might not, and probably would not, seriously inter- 
 fere with the use of the street; while numerous tracks 
 in constant use, thus laid upon a crowded thorough- 
 fare of a populous city, might almost entirely deprive 
 the public of the use of the street. 
 
 " In the latter case it would be a mere technical 
 quibble for the railroad company to say that it had 
 performed its duty because it had put the surface of 
 the street in proper condition, although by reason of 
 constantly passing trains the public were as complete- 
 ly prevented from crossing it as if the street had been 
 divided by an impassable gulf." 
 
 See also Memphis, etc., Ry. v. State, n S. W. Rep. 
 
 947- 
 Mills on Eminent Domain, p. 386, sec. 198. 
 Wellcome v. Leeds, 51 Me. 313. 
 City of Chester v. B. & P. R. R. Co., 21 
 
 At. Rep. 320. 
 
89 
 
 State v. C, B. & O. R. R. Co., 45 N. W. 
 
 Rep. 469. 
 State v. City of Camden, 21 At. Rep. 565. 
 State v. M. & St. L. Ry. Co., supra. 
 
 In the latter case the court say: " The fact that 
 respondent formerly laid its tracks at a considerable 
 expense upon the grade of the streets, by the author- 
 ity of the City Council, does not exempt it from 
 bridging when the increased use of both the streets 
 and the railways renders that necessary." 
 
 III. 
 
 AS TO THE REMEDY. 
 
 In re Trenton Water Power Company, supra, the 
 obligation rested wholly upon the principle of the 
 common law, in the absence of any express statute 
 upon the subject. The court said: 
 
 "The only remaining question is whether the obli- 
 gation of the company is so clear that the court ought 
 to grant a mandamus. For it is undoubtedly improp- 
 er to grant this writ except in cases of clear obliga- 
 tion. 
 
 • The writ itself, in its very form, prejudges the 
 party on the matter of his obligation. 
 
 "True, he may return to the first writ any matter 
 of avoidance; as that he does not sustain the office or 
 the relation which the writ supposes, as was done in 
 the case of State v. Holliday, when brought before the 
 court in 3d Halsted's Reports, 265. 
 
 " But if the defendant admits or cannot deny his 
 
90 
 
 office or the capacity or relation in which the writ sup- 
 poses him to stand and the facts recited in the writ, 
 he cannot question or deny his duty and obligation in 
 point of law. But where the court has no doubts on 
 the question of obligation, and the act or omission 
 complained of is admitted, I can see no good to be at 
 tained by putting the parties to the expense and delay 
 of proceeding by indictment before granting that re- 
 lief which it is clearly seen must in the end be 
 awarded. 
 
 "And as the obligation of the defendants in this 
 case appears to my mind to be clear and free from all 
 doubts, I am decidedly of opinion that we ought to 
 grant the motion of the applicants. 
 
 " Mandamus awarded." 
 
 People v. D. & C. R. R. Co., 58 N. Y. 152, is a most 
 thoroughly considered case on the subject of manda- 
 mus in such cases, the opinion being read by Mr. Jus- 
 tice Folder. 
 
 In that case the statute imposed the duty of resto- 
 ration generally, without conferring upon any public 
 authority the duty or power of prescribing any partic- 
 ular mode of restoration. The court held that the 
 writ should point out in what particulars the corpora- 
 tion had failed to restore, and to specify the particu- 
 lar manner of restoration. 
 
 This case is to be commended for its very thor- 
 ough and philosophical consideration of the office and 
 purpose of the modern writ of mandamus. 
 
 In the Minnesota cases, the City Council of Min- 
 neapolis were, by the municipal charter, vested with 
 the general control of the streets and alleys. 
 
 The Council adopted a specific plan of restoration, 
 
91 
 
 which in the first case involved carrying- one of the 
 streets under the railroad tracks, while in the other 
 cases a plan was adopted which involved the lower- 
 ing of the numerous tracks of the railroad companies 
 crossing four streets, some ten feet below the existing- 
 surface of the streets, and the construction of bridges 
 above the tracks, with a headway of twenty feet in 
 the clear. 
 
 In the first case the court said : 
 
 " Whether respondent has in fact complied with 
 the requirements of its charter, is a question which 
 neither it nor the city can determine absolutely with- 
 out the assent of the other. 
 
 " Like all other matters involving a controversy 
 concerning public duty and private right, it has to 
 be adjusted and settled by judicial inquiry and deter- 
 mination. 
 
 " Hence the decision of the City Council is not con- 
 clusive upon the questions of the duty of the company 
 to build this viaduct or that it should be built upon 
 the plan proposed. These are matters, if put in issue, 
 for the determination of the court upon the hearing." 
 
 Citing Commonwealth v. New Bedford Bridge, 
 Cook v. Boston & Lowell R. R. Co., supra, it must be 
 conceded that the surface of the streets in this city, 
 except perhaps in some of the remote suburbs, 
 are so obstructed by railway tracks that the duty 
 arises on the part of the railroad companies responsi- 
 ble therefor, to restore them, in the language of the 
 provisions of the statutes cited above. Undoubtedly 
 mandamus would lie to at once require the perform- 
 ance of the duty imposed both by the principles of 
 the common law and the provisions of the statute. 
 
92 
 
 And the writ might run in general terms requiring 
 the restoration, but leaving the mode to the discre- 
 tion of the railroad companies, unless that discretion 
 is taken away by the provisions of the statute which 
 will be presently cited. 
 
 The provisions of the charter of the City of Chicago 
 placing the control of the streets and alleys and pub- 
 lic grounds in the hands of the City Council undoubt- 
 edly confers upon that body power to prescribe any 
 reasonable plan or mode of restoration. 
 
 And any ordinance prescribing a plan of restora- 
 tion either by the construction of viaducts or requir- 
 ing railway tracks to be constructed above the streets 
 would be enforceable in the courts by the writ of 
 mandamus, unless such ordinances could be avoided 
 upon the ground of unreasonableness. 
 
 And this proceeding could be brought by the city 
 through the interest which it has by virtue of the pro- 
 visions of its charter. 
 
 But the statutes of this State confer express power 
 to prescribe the plan or mode of restoration : 
 
 " Whenever any railroad corporation shall neglect 
 to construct and maintain any of its crossings and 
 approaches, as provided in Section 8 of this Act, it 
 shall be the duty of the proper public authorities hav- 
 ing the charge of such highway or streets, to notify, 
 in writing, the nearest agent of said railroad corpora- 
 tion of the condition of said crossing or approaches, 
 and direct the same to be constructed, altered, or re- 
 paired in such manner as they shall deem necessary 
 for the safety of persons and property." Paragraphs 
 71, 72, jT> an d 74, Starr & Curtis, Annotated Statutes. 
 
93 
 
 IV. 
 
 Inasmuch as the duty of restoring" streets inter- 
 sected by railroads to their former state of usefulness 
 to the public, and free from any substantial obstruc- 
 tion, rests wholly upon the railroad companies, and 
 the expense thereof is entirely to be borne by them, 
 both by the terms of the statute and the principles of 
 the common law, no good reason is perceivable why 
 the municipality of Chicago should continue the 
 policy hitherto pursued, of sharing in the expense so 
 occasioned. 
 
 Indeed it may well be claimed that the use of the 
 public moneys in the manner indicated subjects the 
 public officers responsible therefor to a prosecution, 
 civil or criminal or both, for misapplication of the 
 public funds. 
 
 It is a well-settled principle that the public funds 
 cannot be used for a purpose not expressly authorized 
 by law ; hence the use of these funds for the purpose 
 indicated amounts to nothing less than a donation, 
 which the public officers have no authority to make. 
 
 And it might well be contended that the railroad 
 corporations which have received these funds or their 
 benefit, through their application to the restoration of 
 a street, the expense of which was imposed on them, 
 are liable to account therefor as a trust fund wrong- 
 fully secured upon both legal and equitable principles. 
 
 Finally, it is submitted that in no large city in the 
 civilized world has there been in the past, or is there 
 now in effect, a policy on the part of the municipal 
 authorities which sanctions such comprehensive and 
 intense obstructions and interference with the public 
 
94 
 
 highways as that adopted by the public authorities in 
 this city. 
 
 And it is high time that both the public authorities 
 and the railroad corporations awoke to the fact that a 
 proper regard for their own interests severally, as well 
 as considerations of humanity, requires that the high- 
 ways and the railroads should be divorced upon a 
 plan which shall secure to the public, when traveling 
 upon the highways, immunity from injury to, and de- 
 struction of, human life, and the public and the rail- 
 road companies enabled to transact their business free 
 from interference or obstruction by each other. 
 
95 
 
 THE CHICAGO RAILROAD TERMINAL PROB- 
 LEM AS PASSED UPON BY THE SUPREME 
 COURT OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 
 
 LIGARE V. CITY OF CHICAGO.* 
 
 {Supreme Court of Illinois. Oct. 31, 1891.) 
 
 Municipal Corporations — Ordinances — Eminent Domain — Opening Streets 
 — Obstruction of Water-Ways. 
 
 1. Where a City Council on the same day passes two ordinances, the one 
 providing for widening a certain street, and the other granting a railroad com- 
 pany a right of way on the street as widened, and requiring it to pay the ex- 
 pense of condemning the land necessary for widening the street, as provided 
 for in the other ordinance, the two ordinances will be treated as if they were a 
 single ordinance. 
 
 2. A City Council has no power to condemn land for streets for the ex- 
 press purpose of giving a railroad company the use of the street in such a 
 manner as to exclude all other travel therefrom. 
 
 3. A street cannot, by condemnation proceedings, be so laid out across a 
 navigable water-way as to destroy the water-way. 
 
 4. Rev. St. 111. 1S74, c. 24, art. 5, §1, cl. 31, which authorizes cities "to 
 construct and keep in repair canals and slips for the accommodation of com- 
 merce." does not give them power to fill up slips. 
 
 Appeal from Superior Court, Cook County ; John 
 P. Altgeld, Judge. 
 
 This is a petition by the City of Chicago to con- 
 demn land under two city ordinances, The condem- 
 nation was ordered as prayed for. George A. Ligare, 
 one of the owners of land sought to be taken, appeals. 
 Reversed. 
 
 The first ordinance provides as follows : " Sec- 
 tion 1. That, in consideration of the agreements 
 
 * Reported by Louis Boisot, Jr., Esq., of the Chicago bar. 
 
96 
 
 hereinafter contained, the right is hereby granted to 
 the Chicago, Madison & Northern Railroad Company, 
 its lessees, successors, and assigns, to construct, main- 
 tain, and operate a railroad with two or more main 
 tracks and necessary side or connecting tracks, turn- 
 outs, switches, and appurtenances, over such lands as 
 it now has, or may hereafter in any manner acquire, 
 the right to lay tracks upon, and over, across or along, 
 all intervening streets, alleys, and public grounds 
 along and upon the following route. * * * Sec. 
 5. Whereas an ordinance has been introduced and 
 is now pending in the City Council for the widening 
 of Archer avenue, between Bushnell street and San- 
 ger street, by appropriating therefor the land on the 
 south side of said avenue lying north of the following 
 described line, to wit : " " * Now, in case said ordi- 
 nance shall go into effect and s^id avenue is widened, 
 permission and authority are hereby granted to the 
 Chicago, Madison & Northern Railroad Company, 
 its lessees, successors, and assigns, to lay down, main- 
 tain, and operate four railroad tracks, and to the Chi- 
 cago & Alton Railroad Company, its lessees, suc- 
 cessors and assigns, to lay down, maintain, and oper- 
 ate two railroad tracks, on that portion of Archer 
 avenue, when widened as aforesaid, lying between 
 the two following lines, to wit : One line north of, 
 and nearly parallel to, and seventy (70) feet distant 
 from the south line of widened Archer avenue, as 
 said line is above described; the other line north of, 
 and nearly parallel to, the said described line, and 
 one hundred and sixty (160) feet distant therefrom. 
 The permission and authority granted in this section 
 are upon the condition, however, that no steam rail- 
 
road track shall be laid down or maintained on said 
 Archer avenue, between Bushnell street and Sanger 
 street, except between the two lines last above de- 
 scribed; and upon the further condition that the cost 
 and expense of procuring the land necessary for the 
 widening of Archer avenue as aforesaid, and all dam- 
 ages occasioned thereby, and the cost of grading and 
 paving the same, and also so much of the said street 
 adjoining it on the north as shall be occupied by the 
 tracks of the Chicago, Madison & Northern Railroad 
 Company and the tracks of the Chicago & Alton 
 Railroad Company, shall be paid for by the Chicago, 
 Madison & Northern Railroad Company, and a spe- 
 cial assessment for the aforesaid cost and expense 
 may be levied solely on the property of said railroad 
 company. And the said Chicago, Madison & North- 
 ern Railroad Company shall build, at its own ex- 
 pense, in conformity to plans to be approved by the 
 commissioner of public works, along the south side 
 of its roadway, the entire length of Archer avenue, 
 which it shall traverse, a substantial brick or stone 
 wall 12 feet in height, with stone coping, which said 
 company shall keep in good condition and repair, 
 and shall also construct a sidewalk along the south 
 side of said wall whenever the same shall be ordered 
 by the municipal authorities of said city. Sec. 6. 
 The rights and privileges hereby granted to the sev- 
 eral railroad companies herein named in Archer av- 
 enue are subject to the rights and privileges therein 
 of the Chicago City Railroad Company, and permis- 
 sion and authority are hereby granted, upon the com- 
 pletion of the widening of Archer avenue, as afore- 
 said, to the said Chicago City Railroad Company, if 
 
98 
 
 it elects so to do, to remove their tracks from their 
 present location in that portion of Archer avenue so 
 to be widened, and to relay them upon the south 70 
 feet of Archer avenue, as widened : provided, how- 
 ever, that said removal shall not be made until a per- 
 mit therefor shall be obtained, and the proposed lo- 
 cation of said tracks on said 70 feet has been ap- 
 proved by the commissioner of public works, and 
 said tracks shall be relaid subject to the approval of 
 the said commissioner. Such removal shall be a 
 waiver and abandonment of the rights of said Chi- 
 cago City Railway Company as to the portion of 
 Archer avenue from which said tracks are removed. 
 Sec. 7. All that portion of Ogden slip lying south of 
 the north line of Archer avenue, as the same shall be 
 widened as recited in section 5, shall be permanently 
 filled with earth, and the cost of the said improvement 
 shall be paid by the Chicago, Madison & Northern 
 Railroad Company." * * * 
 
 The second of said ordinances is as follows: " Sec- 
 tion 1. That the portion of Archer avenue, lying be- 
 tween a point on the south line of said avenue, 100 
 feet east of the east line of Bushnell street, and the 
 easterly line of Sanger street, be, and the same is 
 hereby, ordered widened, as follows, viz.: By taking 
 or appropriating therefor the land on the south side 
 of said avenue lying north of the following described 
 line. * * * Sec. 2. Any legal proceedings neces- 
 sary to accomplish the widening of Archer avenue 
 as aforesaid are hereby authorized, and the counsel 
 to the corporation is hereby directed to file a petition 
 in a court of competent jurisdiction in Cook County, 
 111., in the name of the City of Chicago, praying that 
 
99 
 
 the just compensation to be made for private proper- 
 ty to be taken or damaged for said improvements or 
 purpose specified in this ordinance shall be ascertained 
 by a jury; and to file a supplemental petition in ac- 
 cordance with the provisions of section 53, of article 
 9, of an act of the General Assembly of the State of 
 Illinois, entitled, ' An act to provide for the incorpora- 
 tion of cities and villages.' Sec. 3. The improve- 
 ment hereby ordered shall be made and the cost there- 
 of paid for by a special assessment to be levied upon 
 the property benefited thereby, to the amount that 
 the same may be legally assessed therefor, and the 
 remainder of such cost to be paid by general taxation, 
 in accordance with article 9 aforesaid." 
 
 C. C. Bonney and R. S. Thompson, for appellant. 
 E. H. Gary, for appellee. 
 
 Schlofield, C. J. It is, to our minds, clear that 
 both ordinances before us in this case are but parts 
 of a single and entire scheme. They were adopted 
 on the same day, and the former expressly refers to, 
 and is by its terms dependent upon, the adoption and 
 enforcement of the latter; and it requires that the 
 entire cost and expense of enforcing both ordinances, 
 and all damages which may be adjudged against the 
 city by reason of their being adopted and enforced, 
 shall be paid by the railroad company. Moreover, 
 the attempt to widen Archer avenue for the limited 
 distance, and in the peculiar manner described in the 
 second ordinance, is manifestly to meet a local want 
 in that respect; and the first ordinance conclusively 
 shows that that local want is space for laying down 
 additional railroad tracks, and nothing else. It is also 
 of some significance, as confirmatory of this view, that 
 
100 
 
 the petition for condemnation alleges that the second 
 ordinance contemplates the closing and rilling up of 
 Ogden slip, and that can only be upon the assump- 
 tion that the first ordinance is supplemental to the 
 second; for Ogden slip is not mentioned or referred 
 to, directly or indirectly, in the second ordinance. 
 The case must, then, be treated precisely the same as 
 if both ordinances had been embodied in one; and we 
 shall therefore treat them as a sing-le ordinance, for 
 widening a street in the manner proposed, at the same 
 time giving the use of all of the old street, at the place 
 where the street is widened, and a part of the new 
 street added by the widening, exclusively to steam 
 raiiroad companies for laying and operating their 
 tracks, and also for closing and filling up a public 
 waterway. Archer avenue is sixty feet wide. One 
 steam railroad track is now laid on it, and operated 
 by the Chicago & Alton Railroad Company. The or- 
 dinance adds, at the point under consideration ioo 
 feet to the street, and takes 30 feet of that and adds 
 it to the 60 feet, making 90 feet; and upon this au- 
 thorizes the Chicago and Alton Railroad Company 
 to lay and operate two additional tracks, and the Chi- 
 cago, Madison & Northern Railroad Company to lay 
 and operate four tracks, making in all seven tracks 
 to be laid and operated by steam engines within this 
 90 feet, or one track for every 12 6-7 feet, and then 
 requires that the part thus to be used shall be cut off 
 from the remaining 70 feet of the street to be added, 
 by a stone or brick wall 12 feet in height. The space 
 to be occupied by the railroad tracks has also a line 
 for street-cars operated within it, but permission is 
 given to remove that to the 70 feet south of the wall. 
 
101 
 
 We shall take no time to demonstrate that the 60 
 feet of old street and the 30 feet of new street, thus 
 to be occupied by seven steam railroad tracks, are ex- 
 clusively devoted by the ordinance to the use of rail- 
 road companies. Hemmed in by the wall on the one 
 side, and by the buildings or inclosures on private prop- 
 erty on the other, no rational being would, at the risk 
 of the inevitable dangers from passing engines and 
 cars, use that part of the street as a common high- 
 way, unless under stress of most extraordinary cir- 
 cumstances. It is not material that the public are not, 
 by the words of the ordinance, forbidden the use of 
 this part of the street. The effect of the grant is in- 
 evitably an exclusion of all but these railroads from 
 its use, and the law deals with results, and not with 
 mere forms, in such matters. Undoubtedly it has 
 been held, in many cases in this court, that it is a 
 legitimate use of a street to allow a steam railroad 
 track to be laid and operated upon it when there is 
 legislative authority therefor, but it has never been 
 held that, under legislative authority merely author- 
 izing tracks to be laid in streets, it is competent for a 
 municipality to grant the exclusive use of a street to 
 a railroad company. 
 
 The leading case on this question is Moses v. Rail- 
 road Co., 21 111. 516. It was there sought to enjoin 
 the laying of a railroad track in a street, and it was 
 held that it was admissible for a Common Council, in- 
 vested with legislative authority to that end, to au- 
 thorize a railroad track to be laid in the street, because 
 streets are for no exclusive mode of passage of per- 
 sons and property, and therefore all modes may be 
 tolerated. The gist of the reasoning is in the follow- 
 
102 
 
 ing sentence from the opinion of the court : " A street 
 is made for the passage of persons and property, and 
 the law cannot define what exclusive means of trans- 
 portation and passage shall be used." In Stack v. 
 City of East St. Louis, 85 111. 37/, action was brought 
 against the city for permitting a railroad company to 
 obstruct a street by a necessary embankment made 
 for its track in approaching a bridge, and the action 
 was maintained upon the ground, in part, that a rail- 
 road company cannot be allowed to exclude other 
 uses of the street. And it was, among other things, 
 said in the opinion : "It has, however, been held that 
 a city or village may authorize the laying of railroad 
 tracks in their streets ; that such a use is not incon- 
 sistent with the trust for which they are held by the 
 city. But, in thus permitting them to be used, the 
 city has no right to so obstruct the streets as to deprive 
 the public and adjacent property-holders of their use 
 as streets. The primary object is for ordinary passage 
 and travel, and the public and individuals cannot be 
 rightfully deprived of such use." To like effect, also, 
 is Canal Co. v. Garrity, 115 111. 155, 3 N. E. Rep. 
 448; City of Olney v. Wharf, 115 ill. 523, 5 X. E. 
 Rep. 366. And so it has been held, in Missouri, it is 
 not competent for a city to authorize such use of a 
 street, dedicated as a street, as will destroy it as a 
 thoroughfare for the public. Dubach v. Railroad Co., 
 89 Mo. 486, 1 S. W. Rep. 86. See, also, Railway Co. 
 v. City of Louisville, 8 Bush. 419. 
 
 It is so familiar that we need not stop to demon- 
 strate it, that cities, villages, and towns are only 
 empowered to lay out, open and improve streets for 
 such public use, and that persons and property within 
 
103 
 
 the municipality may be legitimately assessed or 
 taxed for payment therefor, and that persons and 
 property within a municipality cannot be legitimately 
 assessed or taxed for the right of way, or making or 
 improving of a road for a railroad company alone. 
 This being conceded, authority will in vain be sought 
 for a municipality to devote a street which has been 
 improved and maintained by municipal expense to an 
 exclusive use for which it has no authority to lay out, 
 open, or improve it. We do not deny that the city 
 has power to widen streets generally, and that when 
 it has undertaken to do so the motives that may have 
 actuated those in authority are not the subject of 
 judicial investigation, but the purpose for which a 
 thing is done is very different from the motives which 
 may have actuated those by whom it is done, and is, 
 in the present instance, a legitimate subject of judicial 
 investigation ; for the right to exercise the power of 
 eminent domain is in all cases limited by the purpose 
 for which it shall be exercised. Thus, private prop- 
 erty may be condemned for public use, but it may 
 be shown that the use in fact is not public, but pri- 
 vate. Railroad Co. v. Wiltse, 116 111. 454, 6 N. E. 
 Rep. 49 ; Sholl v. Coal Co., 1 18 111. 427, 10 N. E. Rep. 
 199. 
 
 Statutes conferring power to exercise the right of 
 eminent domain are to be construed strictly. Unless 
 both the letter and spirit of the statute relied upon 
 clearly confer the claimed power, it cannot be exer- 
 cised. City of East St. Louis v. St. John, 47 111. 463 ; 
 Railroad Co. v. Wiltse, and Sholl v. Coal Co., supra. 
 It is not a question whether the person or corporation 
 seeking to exercise it might not do so with as great 
 
104 
 
 safety to persons and property as any other person or 
 corporation, or whether it would work out an equita- 
 ble result to allow a particular person or corporation 
 to exercise it in a given case. The question is purely 
 one of legal power. That person or corporation 
 which the statute says may exercise it for a stated 
 purpose may exercise it for that purpose, but for no 
 other purpose, and no other person or corporation not 
 thus authorized can exercise it for that purpose. And 
 so we held in Railway Co. v. Gait, 133 111. 657, 23 N. 
 E. Rep. 425, and 24 N. E. Rep. 674, that a railroad 
 company, under authority to condemn property for 
 its right of way, cannot condemn property for a street 
 of a city ; and obviously, if this be true, the reverse 
 must also be true. A city cannot, under authority to 
 condemn property for streets, condemn property for 
 a railroad track, for the principle must be the same. 
 But may the city here do indirectly — by mere change 
 in the form — that which it cannot do directly ? 
 Although the city may not condemn property for the 
 use of the railroad company, yet, inasmuch as it may 
 allow railroad tracks to be laid in its streets, may it 
 not first condemn property for itself, and then after- 
 wards allow the railroad tracks to be laid upon it to 
 the extent of excluding- all other uses ? But we have 
 seen that, under the power merely to authorize rail- 
 road tracks to be laid in streets, a city has no right to 
 authorize railroad tracks to be laid upon streets so as 
 to exclude the other public uses of the street, so long 
 as it shall remain a public street ; and here it is shown 
 that the condemnation is for the express purpose of 
 enabling the city to give a part of the old street and 
 thirty feet of additional space to the exclusive use and 
 
105 
 
 occupation of railroad companies. The substance is 
 not to be lost sight of through any mere jugglery in 
 the use of words. This proceeding is, in fact, not for 
 the city, but for the railroad companies. Condemn- 
 ing for the railroad companies, and condemning for 
 the city to then give to the railroad companies are, 
 in legal effect, and so far as concerns this case, pre- 
 cisely the same thing. 
 
 We also fail to find any authority in the law to 
 condemn and fill up Ogden slip. The evidence is 
 much less satisfactory as to what this slip is than it 
 should have been. There is enough, however, to show 
 that it is a navigable water-way, connected with the 
 south branch of Chicago river, and appurtenant to ap- 
 pellant's lots. A map in evidence shows its location, 
 and it was spoken of by witnesses, without objection, 
 as appurtenant to these lots and as a water-way. 
 Thus, George M. Bogue said he had examined appel- 
 lant's lots fronting on Ogden slip ; considered it as 
 having a dock frontage. Edward Campbell said that 
 he was familiar with Ogden slip. "Travel has never 
 been obstructed by vessels, heavily laden, getting 
 stuck there in the slip, mostly in the summer time — 
 vessels laden with coal. The slip was used but little 
 last summer; mostly by canal boats for the stone-yard. 
 Larger vessels have not used the slip lately." Ed- 
 ward C. Huling said that appellant's property has a 
 water front, and could receive from slips. " The clos- 
 ing up the slip " — i. c, Ogden slip — " would shut off 
 all water front." There are other references in the 
 testimony of the witnesses of like character, but these, 
 we think, are sufficient. The right of navigation and 
 the right of crossing the water-way are equal. Both 
 
106 
 
 are to be exercised, and the rights of each are to be 
 guarded. Illinois Packet Co. v. Peoria Bridge Ass'n, 
 38 111. 467. When a franchise is granted to construct 
 ways in streets across a water-way, there is no implied 
 right to destroy the water-way, but it must be so bridged 
 that its use will not be unnecessarily impaired. El- 
 liott's Roads and Streets, p. 32 ct seq. If it be conceded 
 that the State may authorize the taking or destruction 
 of a water-way, it devolves on those who claim that 
 the State has done so to show it; and, since that is not 
 done by simply showing power to lay out, open, and 
 improve streets across water-ways, no such power is 
 here shown. Power is given the city by the thirty- 
 first clause of section 1, art. 5, c. 24, Rev. St. 1874, p. 
 218, " To construct and keep in repair canals and slips 
 for the accommodation of commerce." But we have 
 found no power granted to the city to close them and 
 fill them up. We think, counting as we do, the two 
 ordinances as one, the condemnation adjudged is for a 
 purpose unauthorized by law; and the court erred in 
 admitting the ordinances in evidence, and in render- 
 ing judgment as it did. The judgment is reversed. 
 
107 
 
 Supreme Court of Illinois. 
 
 ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY AGAINST THE CITY 
 
 OF CHICAGO. 
 
 Nos. 81, 82, and 83. 
 
 Decision rendered May 12, 1892. 
 
 Northwestern Reporter, Vol. 30, No. 12, page 
 1044, June 3, 1892. 
 
 OPINION BY MAGRUDER, C. J. 
 
 These are three bills in chancery filed by the ap- 
 pellant company against the appellee in the Circuit 
 Court of Cook County ; and as the cases involve the 
 same questions and have been submitted upon the 
 same abstracts and briefs, they have been taken and 
 considered as one cause. The object of the bills is to 
 enjoin the City of Chicago from extending certain 
 streets across the right of way of the Illinois Central 
 Railroad Company. The first bill alleges that, on 
 Sept. 22, 1890, the city passed an ordinance for open- 
 ing Fifty-sixth street across such right of way, and 
 thereafter filed its petition in the said Circuit Court 
 for the condemnation of the land necessary for such 
 improvement ; that on Sept. 15, 1890, the city passed 
 an ordinance for the opening of Seventy-ninth street 
 across said right of way, and thereafter filed its peti- 
 tion to condemn in the same court ; that on Jan. 19, 
 1 89 1, the city passed an ordinance for opening Sixtieth 
 street across said right of way, but no proceeding for 
 
108 
 
 condemnation in pursuance of this ordinance appears 
 to have been begun at the time of the filing of the 
 bill on Feb. 28, 1891. 
 
 The second bill, filed on June 15, 1891, alleges 
 that, on March 16, 1891, the city passed an ordinance 
 for opening Seventy-second street across said right of 
 way, and thereafter filed its petition for condemnation 
 in said court. 
 
 The third bill, filed on July 24, 1891, alleges that, 
 on March 30, 1891, the city passed an ordinance for 
 opening Eighty - second street, between Dobson 
 avenue and Stony Island avenue, by condemning 
 therefor that part of appellant's right of way lying 
 between the north and south lines of said street, both 
 produced eastwardly across said railroad, and there- 
 after filed its petition for condemnation in the Superior 
 Court of said county ; that on June 2, 1891, the city 
 passed an ordinance for opening and widening Nine- 
 tieth street, from Manistee avenue to the west line of 
 appellant's right of way, by condemning therefor cer- 
 tain specified parts of appellant's right of way ; that 
 the land over which it is so proposed to extend 
 Eighty - second and Ninetieth streets is "railroad 
 yard " land ; that eight tracks have been laid in that 
 part of the " yard " where Ninetieth street will cross, 
 and two tracks are in course of construction in that 
 part where Eighty-second street will cross ; that the 
 city thereafter filed its petition in said Superior Court 
 to condemn the land necessary for so opening and 
 widening Ninetieth street. 
 
 The bills pray for injunctions against the opening or 
 extension of these streets across the railroad tracks or 
 right of way, at grade, or otherwise than by viaducts 
 
109 
 
 over or subways under such right of way or tracks. 
 The bills charge, and the answers of the city thereto 
 deny, that the extension of streets as ordered in said 
 ordinances will be an irreparable injury to the railroad 
 company, and will obstruct the use of its tracks as 
 now located, and materially and unnecessarily impair 
 its franchises. Both sides introduced testimony, and 
 after hearing was had, the court below dissolved the 
 injunctions and dismissed the bills. From such de- 
 cree of dismissal the present appeals are prosecuted. 
 
 The material questions here involved have been 
 settled by recent decisions made by this court in the 
 cases of Illinois Central R. R. Co. v. City oj Chicago, 28 
 N. E. Rep. 740, and Chicago & N. W. Ry. Co. v. City 
 of Chicago, 29 N. E. Rep. 1 109. In view, however, of 
 the great ability and ingenuity with which counsel 
 have again pressed these questions upon our attention, 
 we will re-state our views. 
 
 The appellant company, like every other railroad 
 company, holds its right of way subject to the right 
 of the public to extend the public highways and 
 streets across such right of way. 
 
 The constitution of the State provides that " the 
 exercise of the power and the right of eminent do- 
 main shall never be so construed or abridged as to 
 prevent the taking by the General Assembly of the 
 property and franchises of incorporated companies 
 already organized, and subjecting them to the pub- 
 lic necessity, the same as of individuals." (Cons, of 
 1870, art. 1 1, sec. 14.) 
 
 By the Act of 1872, to provide for the incorpora- 
 tion of cities and villages, the General Assembly con- 
 ferred upon the City Council in cities the power " to 
 
 J 
 
110 
 
 lay out, establish, open, alter, widen, extend, grade, 
 pave or otherwise improve streets, alleys, avenues, 
 sidewalks, wharves, parks and public grounds and 
 vacate the same.'' (Rev. Stat., chap. 24, art. 5, sec. 1., 
 paragraph 7.) If the Legislature had granted to 
 cities no other power in regard to the extension of 
 streets across existing railroads than the general 
 power conferred by paragraph 7, here quoted, it 
 might be necessary to consider and discuss a number 
 of authorities, to which counsel for appellant have 
 referred in their briefs. These authorities hold that 
 the land included in the right of way of an existing 
 railroad is already devoted to a public use by express 
 legislative grant. That the extension of a street across 
 it is such an appropriation of it to another public 
 use as is not authorized by a general power to open 
 or extend streets; that, in such case, the authority 
 must be created or the legislative intent must be 
 made to appear by express words, or by necessary 
 implication. The General Assembly has conferred 
 upon the cities in this State the power to extend 
 streets over railroad rights of way by express legisla- 
 tive authority. That authority is given by paragraph 
 89 of section 1 of article 5 of said Act of April 10th, 
 1872, in the following words: "The City Council shall 
 have power by condemnation or otherwise to extend 
 any street, alley or highway over or across or to con- 
 struct any sewer under or through any railroad track, 
 right of way or land of any railroad company (within 
 the corporate limits); but where no compensation is 
 made to such railroad company the city shall restore 
 such railroad track right of way or land to its former 
 state, or in a sufficient manner not to have impaired 
 its usefulness." 
 
Ill 
 
 Counsel say that the judgments to be rendered in 
 the condemnation proceedings will take the land it- 
 self, or the exclusive use thereof. Such cannot be the 
 effect of the judgment. We held in Illinois Central 
 Railroad Company v. City of Chicago, supra, that the 
 track to be condemned under the provisions of para- 
 graph 89 " for the extension of the street over and 
 across railroads, railroad rights of way and lands," 
 was intended by the Legislature to be "subject to the 
 joint use by the railroad in the exercise of its franchise 
 and by the public as a street." The use by the public 
 is, as matter of fact, subject and subordinate to the 
 use by the railroad company. The trains of the rail- 
 road company have a prior right to passage over the 
 crossing. The public, at whatever inconvenience it 
 may be to the interests or the business of the individ- 
 ual citizen, is compelled to wait until the cars of the 
 company have passed. The ordinances, in providing 
 for an extension of the streets across the right of way 
 and 'for the condemnation of railroad property for the 
 purposes of a street, provide only for the acquirement 
 of an easement by the public over the railroad land, 
 and not for any ownership in the fee thereof. The 
 petitions in the condemnation proceedings ask only 
 that land may be condemned for the improvements 
 specified in the ordinances, and the improvements so 
 specified are never easements to be acquired for the 
 purpose of crossing or passing over the tracks or 
 rights of way. No judgments have yet been entered 
 in the condemnation proceedings sought to be en- 
 joined, but such judgments, when entered, in what- 
 ever language they may be couched, can only clothe 
 the city with an easement or right to pass over the 
 
112 
 
 tracks. They cannot vest the city with the fee or the 
 land, or with the exclusive use thereof, because the 
 statute enters into and forms a part of the judgment, 
 and limits and qualifies the nature of the condemna- 
 tion therein ordered. As paragraph 89 authorizes 
 nothing more than an easement to be acquired by the 
 condemnation proceedings, it follows that the judg- 
 ment therein " would necessarily only have vested 
 the city with the right of use and occupancy of the 
 land condemned, subject to the rightful use of the 
 railroad company thereof. Neither will have the 
 right of occupancy to the exclusion of the other, but 
 each subordinate to the right of the other for the sep- 
 arate use contemplated; the one occupying and in 
 control thereof for all the legitimate purposes of a 
 public street, and the other for the reasonable and 
 proper exercise of its franchise." While, however, 
 the statute itself will limit the condemnation judg- 
 ment in the manner here indicated, as to the extent 
 of the right conferred by it, yet the court rendering 
 such judgment has the power to specifically state 
 therein the nature of the interest thereby vested in 
 the city. (///. Cent. R. R. Co. v. City of Chicago, 
 supra .) 
 
 We have also held, in the latter case, that equity 
 will not interpose to enjoin a condemnation proceed- 
 ing, at any rate for such reasons as are set up in the 
 present bills. Whatever just claims the railroad com- 
 pany may have to compensation can be set up in that 
 proceeding. " We are not aware of any authority 
 that authorizes or gives jurisdiction to courts of 
 equity to proceed by injunction unless there is an ex- 
 cess or abuse of the power conferred by law, or there 
 
113 
 
 is an attempt to take and appropriate the property 
 without authority of law, or in a manner and to an 
 extent not authorized by law." (111. Cent. R. R. Co. 
 v. City of Chicago, supra.) There is no such abuse 
 or unlawful attempt shown by the records in these 
 cases. 
 
 The allegations contained in these bills amount, in 
 substance, to complaints that the passage of trains 
 over the proposed crossings will be so frequent and 
 the amount of public travel upon the streets will be 
 so great as to subject the appellant company to great 
 inconvenience and hindrance in the operation of its 
 road. Allegations of a similar character were made 
 in the bill in L. S. and M. S. Ry. Co. v. C. and Ji\ I. 
 R. R. Co., 97 111. 506, where the complaining com- 
 panies filed a bill against the defendant company to 
 enjoin the latter from prosecuting a condemnation 
 proceeding instituted for the purpose of acquiring an 
 easement or crossing over the tracks of the former; 
 in the bill in that case, it was stated that complain- 
 ant's business was constantly increasing; that more 
 than 3,500 cars and about 400 engines passed daily 
 over the premises in question; that complainants in- 
 tended to construct other tracks; that the)' could not 
 properly transact their business, or do their duty to 
 the public without the use of the whole of said prem- 
 ises; that any interference therewith would cause 
 great and irreparable injury to them and to the inter- 
 ests of the public committed to their charge as car- 
 riers; that, if defendant's road should be constructed 
 and operated as proposed, the business would be al- 
 most doubled; that such increase would so hinder 
 and embarrass complainants in transferring freight 
 
114 
 
 and running trains as to cause an injury constantly- 
 increasing and not susceptible of compensation by 
 damages in a case at law, and would impair and in- 
 fringe and destroy the franchises of complainants, 
 and that the construction and operation of defend- 
 ant's road as proposed would necessarily be a nuisance 
 of a serious and irreparable nature in the delay of 
 business and increased danger to life; the bill was 
 answered, and after hearing had, was dismissed for 
 want of equity. We affirmed the decree of the court 
 below, and held that a court of chancery could not 
 relieve against the injuries complained of. The 
 charges made in the present bills are no stronger than 
 those made in the C. & J J'. I. R. R. Co. case. 
 
 It is claimed that paragraph 89 gives to the City 
 Council the option of extending the street either 
 above the railroad tracks by means of a viaduct, or 
 across it at grade, and that a court of chancerv will 
 require the Council to adopt the former rather than 
 the latter method of crossing, because less inconven- 
 ience will thereby be caused to the appellant in the 
 operation of its road. It is admitted by counsel for 
 appellant that the Legislature intended by the use of 
 the word " across " to provide for a crossing at grade, 
 but it is insisted that the word " over" was intended 
 to designate a crossing above the right of way, track 
 or land, by means of a viaduct. The two words 
 " over " and " across" may be used interchangeably 
 and as having the same meaning. Webster thus de- 
 fines the word "across": "from side to side; athwart; 
 crosswise; quite over." He defines the word " over" 
 as follows: " above, or higher than, in place or posi- 
 tion, with the idea of covering; across; from side to 
 
115 
 
 side of; upon the surface of." The word "over" has 
 been held to denote a crossing" upon the surface in 
 Newburyport Turnpike Corporation v. Eastern Rail- 
 road Company, 23 Pick. 326, where the Supreme Court 
 of Massachusetts said: " words ' over ' and ' under,' as 
 applied to the surface, are not precisely opposites. 
 One passes over a road, if he crosses it on the surface, 
 as well as when he crosses above it on a bridge." (B. 
 & JM.R. R. v. Mayor, etc., of Lawrence, 2 Allen, 107.) 
 But the word "over " has also been construed to de- 
 note a crossing" at a higher level and not on the same 
 level; and it has been held to mean "not upon but 
 above, so the railroad should pass under the highway." 
 (A\ R. Co. v. Royalton, 58 Vt. 2S4; B. & M. R. R. Co. 
 v. Mayor, etc., of Lawrence, supra') While, therefore, 
 the word " over," as used in paragraph S9, may be 
 construed as contemplating a crossing of the street 
 at the same level or grade with the railroad track, we 
 are inclined to think that its meaning is broad enough 
 to also confer the power of extending the street above 
 and over the track or right of way, by means of a 
 viaduct or bridge. 
 
 But the word " across " was evidently intended to 
 designate a crossing at grade or on the same level as 
 the railroad right of way. Consequently, the City 
 Council is vested by paragraph 89 with the power to 
 extend the streets either over or across the tracks, 
 either above the tracks by means of viaducts, or on 
 the same grade or level with the tracks. The Council 
 is thus clothed by the Legislature, not only with the 
 power of acquiring an easement by condemnation 
 or otherwise over the railroad tracks or right of way, 
 but also with the discretionary power of deciding as 
 
116 
 
 to the mode of crossing, whether above by viaduct, 
 or at grade and upon the same level. In the present 
 cases the ordinances do not provide for crossings by 
 means of viaducts, but for crossings at grade. The 
 municipal authorities have exercised the option or 
 discretionary power conferred upon them by the 
 Legislature, and have provided for crossings in one 
 only of the methods indicated in the statute, and have 
 instituted condemnation proceedings in pursuance of 
 the ordinances so passed by them. Their action in 
 this regard is political or legislative in its character, 
 and cannot be controlled by the courts. 
 
 Appellant in these cases is asking a court of chan- 
 cery to substitute its judgment for the judgment of 
 the City Council upon a question which belongs 
 exclusively to the legislative branch of the govern- 
 ment. They are asking a court of chancery to require 
 the City Council to repeal its ordinances for grade 
 crossings and, in the place thereof, to adopt ordi- 
 nances for viaduct crossings. Such relief as this can- 
 not be granted under the facts disclosed in these 
 records. While it may be true that inconveniences 
 and interruptions, both to appellant and to the public, 
 may result from street crossings made necessary by 
 the unparalleled growth of the population in the City 
 of Chicago, yet the proof does not disclose that the 
 ordinances in these cases are unreasonable in their 
 terms or in the methods provided therein for the exten- 
 sion of the streets. 
 
 In Curry v. Mount Sterling, 15 111. 320, we said: 
 " This power of the corporation to extend and open 
 streets applies to all lands within its boundaries, 
 whether the same be laid out into town lots or not. 
 
117 
 
 The extension of the street in question was a matter 
 of discretion on the part of the board of trustees (of 
 the town). The courts cannot review the exercise of 
 that discretion." 
 
 In C. R. I. & P. R. R. Co. v. Town of Lake, 71 111. 
 333, we said: " The taking and appropriating property 
 for a public street or highway by a municipality is a 
 public use in its nature, and cannot be questioned or 
 denied. * * When the use is public the judi- 
 
 ciary cannot inquire into the necessity or propriety of 
 exercising the right of eminent domain. That right is 
 political in its nature and not judicial. It belongs ex- 
 clusively to the legislative branch of the government, 
 and under our constitution the judiciary have nothing 
 to do with it." 
 
 The Curry case and the Town of Lake case were 
 reindorsed and approved in Dunham v. Hyde Park, 
 
 75 HI. 37*- 
 
 In BrusJi v. City of Carbondale, 78 111. 74, it was 
 said : " If the city is incorporated, then the Council 
 probably have power to open, grade and repair the 
 streets, and may, for aught we know, have ample dis- 
 cretionary power to do so, as to time, manner and 
 cost, and if acting under the general incorporation 
 law; """ " * the power is general, and confers a 
 large discretion in its exercise, and that power will 
 not be controlled by the courts unless there is abuse 
 operating oppressively upon individuals. * * * 
 Where persons or officers are acting within well rec- 
 ognized powers, or exercising a discretionary power, 
 a court of equity will be wholly unwarranted in inter- 
 fering, unless the power of discretion was being man- 
 ifestly abused to the oppression of the citizen." 
 
118 
 
 In Sheridan v. Colvin, 78 111. 237, we said : "The 
 second question is, what is the nature of the power 
 sought to be exercised in passing the ordinance under 
 consideration ? To that question there can be but one 
 answer, and we shall not stop to discuss it. The power 
 is legislative and discretionary. The third and last 
 question is, had the court of chancery jurisdiction to 
 interfere with the exercise of that power ? We are 
 clearly of the opinion that it had not. The subject is 
 purely political." 
 
 In L. S. & M. S. Ry. Co. v. C. & IV. I. R. R. Co. 
 supra, we said : " The question whether it is wise to 
 permit such railway company to select its own route 
 and choose the point and manner of crossing other 
 railroads, was also a political question for the General 
 Assembly to determine, and that determination can- 
 not be reviewed by the courts." 
 
 To the same effect are the text-books and the 
 decisions in other States. Dillon in his work on 
 Municipal Corporations (4th ed. vol. 1, sec. 95) 
 
 says: 
 
 "Where, by its charter, a Municipal Corporation 
 is empowered, if it deems the public welfare or con- 
 venience requires it, to open streets or make public 
 improvements thereon, its determination, whether 
 wise or unwise, cannot be judicially revised or cor- 
 rected." In Lewis on Eminent Domain it is said 
 (sec. 239): "Whether the power of Eminent Domain 
 shall be put in motion for any particular purpose and 
 whether the exigencies of the occasion and the public 
 welfare require or justify its exercise, are questions 
 which rest entirely with the Legislature. When the 
 use is public the necessity or expediency of appropri- 
 
119 
 
 ating any particular property is not a subject of judi- 
 cial cognizance." 
 
 {Boom Co. v. Patterson, 98 U. S. 403; C. & E. I. 
 R. B. Co. v. Wiltse, 1 16 111. 449; People v. N. V. C. & 
 H. Riv. R. R. Co., 74 N. Y. 302; M. & St. P. By. Co. 
 v. City of Faribault, 23 Minn. 167; Nat. Docks R. R. 
 Co. v. Central R. R. Co., 32 N. J. Eq. 755; Nat. Docks 
 & N. J. J. C By. Co. v. State, 21 Atl. Rep. 570; 
 Struthcrs v. Dunkirk, etc., By. Co., 87 Penn St. 282; 
 Central Ry. Co. of R r . f . v. State, 32 N. J. Eq. 220; 2 
 Wood's R'lw'y Law, page 981; Elliott on Roads and 
 Streets, page 598; I. C R. R. Co. v. Bently, 64 111. 
 438; People v. C & A. R. R. Co., 67 111. 118; L. M. & 
 C & X. R. R. Co.'sv. City of Dayton, 23 Ohio St. 510; 
 Johnston v. Prov. and Springfield R. R., 10 R. I. 365; 
 People ex ret. v. B. & A. R. R. Co., 70 N. Y. 569.) 
 
 We concur in the following views expressed by 
 the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio in L. ill. & 
 C & X. R. R. Cols v. City of Dayton, supra: 
 
 "The mere fact that the extension of the street as 
 proposed, will inconvenience the plaintiffs or subject 
 them to additional expense in transacting their busi- 
 ness and operating their road, constitutes no ground 
 for the interference of a court of equity. The same 
 results to a greater or less extent are produced wher- 
 ever a railroad is crossed by a public street or high- 
 way. These are matters which it is clearly the duty 
 of the City Council to take into consideration in de- 
 termining the necessity and expediency of the pro- 
 posed improvement, but so long as their proceedings 
 are regular and they act from proper motives and 
 within the limits of their authority, the discretion 
 confided to them in respect to the location and es- 
 
 i 
 
120 
 
 tablishment of streets is not subject to judicial re- 
 vision." 
 
 We have recently held, in Drexel v. Town of 
 Lake, 127 111. 54, that it was a question to be deter- 
 mined by the trustees of a town which one of two 
 modes of carrying off the sewage of a district should 
 be adopted as the best and most expedient mode, and 
 we there said: "The choice of expedients is within 
 the legislative discretion of the trustees of the town, 
 a discretion with which the courts will not interfere 
 unless clearly abused." 
 
 Paragraph 89 was adopted by the Legislature in 
 1872. Afterward, in 1874, the Legislature passed an 
 act requiring the railroad companies in this State to 
 construct and maintain railroad crossings of highways 
 and streets. {Chicago & A r . W. Ry. Co. v. City of 
 Chicago, snpra?) Considering paragraph 89 without 
 reference to the subsequent Act of 1S74, we cannot 
 see that the application of the second clause of the 
 paragraph to the facts of this case furnishes any justi- 
 fication for a resort to a court of equity. Such second 
 clause provides that, " where no compensation is 
 made to said railroad company, the city shall restore 
 such railroad track, right of way or land to its former 
 state, or in a sufficient manner not to have impaired its 
 usefulness." Without deciding the question wheth- 
 er any obligation does or does not rest upon the city 
 under the present proceedings, to restore the crossing 
 in a sufficient manner not to impair the usefulness of 
 the tracks, such obligation, if it existed, would not be 
 violated because the city chooses to extend the streets 
 at grade, rather than by means of a viaduct. The 
 language of the second clause is not to be taken liter- 
 
121 
 
 ally. It is well understood that the track or right of 
 way cannot, in the nature of things, be restored to 
 the same state of usefulness with the street thereon, 
 as before. It is to be restored so as not to impair its 
 usefulness more than is necessary, in view of its use 
 for the purposes of a street, subject to the use by the 
 railroad company; it is not to be rendered less useful, 
 except in so far as diminished safety and convenience 
 are inseparable from its use by the public as a street 
 crossing. It is not expected that the crossing can be 
 so restored as to obviate all danger or delay or incon- 
 venience. It is only necessary that there should be 
 no unreasonable impairment of the usefulness of the 
 railroad right of way. To this effect is the weight of 
 authority. 2 Wood's Railway Law, sec. 271, page 
 975, note 2, and cases; Com. v. Erie, etc., R. R. Co., 
 27 Penn St. 339; People ex rel. v. D. & C R. R. Co., 
 58 N. Y. 152; Johnston v. Providence & Springfield 
 R. R. Co., 10 R. I. 365; C, R. I. & P. R. R. Co. v. 
 Mojjitt, 75 111. 524; City of Bridgeport v. N. Y. & N. 
 H. R. R. Co., 36 Conn. 255. 
 
 2 Wood's Railway Law, sec. 271, page 981 note 1; 
 People v. Boston & Albany R. R. Co., 70 N. Y. 569; 
 State v. St. P., Minneapolis & Manitoba Ry. Co., 35 
 Minn. 181. 
 
 So far as the extension of the streets across Eighty- 
 second and Ninetieth streets is concerned the language 
 of paragraph 89 is broad enough to authorize the ex- 
 tension across the railroad " yard," as well as across 
 the tracks or right of way. The proof shows not only 
 that Eighty-second street is one mile from Ninetieth 
 street, but that what is called a "yard" is nothing 
 more than a collection of tracks; and hence the open- 
 
ing of the streets across the land embraced in the 
 yard is authorized by paragraph 89 under the rule 
 laid down in Pres't, etc., D. & H. C. Co. v. Vil. 
 Whitehall, 90 N. Y. 21. 
 
 The decree of the Circuit Court dissolving the 
 injunction and dismissing the bills is affirmed. 
 
 Affirmed. 
 
The Chicago Railroad Terminal Problem, 
 
 from the Standpoint of the People 
 
 and the Public Press. 
 
 [From the Chicago Herald, July 26, 1892.] 
 
 GIVE US THIS DAY A HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 If the people of Chicago were informed that every 
 day an assassin would steal into a home, and plunge 
 a knife into the heart of a citizen of this city they 
 would take instant measures to stop the horror. If 
 the assassin were so furtive as to not easily be caught 
 they would employ all the detective agencies in the 
 state to catch him. If he were a vampire skulking in 
 the wood until night afforded his desired opportunity, 
 they would employ hounds to run him from cover. 
 If he were a snake that lurked in secret den or slimily 
 escaped to rock or marsh after his daily deed of 
 blood, they would blast the rock and uproot earth to 
 destroy him. If a daily life were known to be order- 
 ed taken in Chicago by anything in human form, by 
 anything in animal form, by anything having life it- 
 self to be taken, an end of that life would end the 
 daily sacrifice. Yet a life a day is taken in Chicago, 
 and will be taken this year, next year, and the year 
 thereafter, indefinitely, unless the people of Chicago 
 put an end to the business. 
 
124 
 
 Whose life is to be the next sacrifice ? The grade- 
 crossing slaughterers carry on a lottery with the in- 
 habitants of Chicago. The Herald printed Sunday 
 the list of last year's victims ; a life a day for nearly 
 every day in the year. No one of the dead was warn- 
 ed in advance that the next turn of slaughter was to 
 be his or hers. Had such warning been given, the 
 intended victim might at least have made his will had 
 he property to preserve for helpless heirs. His chil- 
 dren would have pleaded, could they have known the 
 lot had fallen to their father, that he should not go 
 that day to his bread-earning work. The mother 
 would have endeavored to keep her son off the streets 
 could she have forecast his doom. The grade-cross- 
 ing assassins do not run their death lottery on fraud- 
 ulent principles. The management of the Louisiana 
 lottery were often charged with manipulating the 
 wheel so that they could keep big prizes within their 
 own circle, using dummy names on winning tickets. 
 Not so the Chicago grade-crossing death lottery 
 managers. They are square. They do not select 
 their victims on any but true lottery principles. 
 
 The victims are chosen without discrimination 
 against locality, sex, occupation, creed, race, politics, 
 poverty, wealth, youth, old age. It is enough that 
 the slaughterers get a victim a day. It satisfies them 
 that a human being is daily taken from the popula- 
 tion of Chicago by leave of the people of Chicago, 
 who make them a gift of grade crossings. It is all 
 the same to these life-takers whether the victim be 
 obscure or eminent. They are indifferent whether 
 they slay married or single. It is naught to them 
 that they make orphans of half a dozen children to- 
 
125 
 
 day or slay only a child. Give us this day our daily 
 victim, is their complete prayer. 
 
 Nor need they cease to pray this prayer so long as 
 the people of Chicago comply with it. A life a day 
 is a voluntary tribute by the people of Chicago to 
 the grade-crossing" slaughterers. The streets are the 
 people's. The crossings are the people's. Not a ves- 
 tige of right has any corporation on the streets or on 
 the crossings, except the right that has been given to 
 them by the people. They exist by consent of the 
 people. They run their slaughter machines on the 
 thoroughfares by the will of the people. They are 
 licensed slaughterers. They have as much legal right 
 to slay a citizen a day as any concern in the stock- 
 yards a steer a day. They perform their daily slaugh- 
 tering with as much regularity and as much zeal as 
 the stockyard butchers their daily task. The differ- 
 ence is, that at the stockyards slaughtering is done of 
 inferior animals that superior ones may be fed, while 
 at the grade crossings slaughtering is done only that 
 rich corporations may grow richer out of the sacrifice 
 of human beings. 
 
 How much longer will the people of Chicago con- 
 sent to extend the slaughtering privileges of the 
 grade-crossing corporations ? Give us this day our 
 daily victim contents these slayers of human beings 
 now. They may grow impatient with that limit 
 They may prefer to increase their speed w-ithin the 
 city. They may resolve to dispense with a few more 
 of their old and incompetent gate-watchers and flag- 
 men, and cease to make any pretense of warning cit- 
 izens that their slaughtering machines are approach- 
 ing the crossing. They may prefer whole street-car 
 
126 
 
 loads of victims, as on several occasions they have 
 come frightfully near doing within the past year. 
 There is nothing to prevent their doubling or trebling 
 their daily quota. Public indifference, official cor- 
 ruption, will tolerate two lives a day lost at grade 
 crossings, or three a day or ten a day as they tolerate 
 one a day now. 
 
 If a company were formed under the laws of Illi- 
 nois to traverse the streets with a guillotine every 
 day, and by lot sacrifice a citizen to its knife and bas- 
 ket, there might be a riot. The guillotiners would be 
 guillotined. But we suffer the grade-crossers to guil- 
 lotine a life a day, and we do nothing about it. If ap- 
 plication were made and granted for license for a 
 guillotine company, opinion would be warranted that 
 the licensing authorities of Chicago were all madmen. 
 Yet the grade-crossing slaughterers enjoy like privi- 
 lege, and the community flatters itself that it is quite 
 sane. 
 
 \JFrom the Chicago Herald, July 27, 1892.] 
 
 TWO VICTIMS MORE. 
 
 It is quite true that life is lost on railroads that do 
 not use grade crossings. Life is lost every day in one 
 way or another. Loss of life on land by rail is greater 
 than loss of life by water or casualties resulting from 
 navigation. Life is lost on elevated roads. Life is 
 lost on depressed tracks. Life will continue to be 
 lost on railroads in Chicago even after every railroad 
 in the city shall have elevated its city terminals. All 
 this, which is beyond dispute, is another reason why 
 
one daily cause of slaughter by railroads shall cease. 
 If life shall occasionally be taken after elevated 
 tracks are provided, there is so much the stronger 
 argument for stopping the life-taking that can be 
 stopped by elevated terminals. Monday two lives were 
 taken at grade crossings in Chicago. 
 
 One was at the grade crossing of One Hundred 
 and Thirteenth street. The man's body is at the 
 morgue. Who is ,he ? What family has lost its bread- 
 winner ? What wife is widowed ? How many chil- 
 dren are orphans ? How much more sorrow is cast 
 into the lines of a number of human beings who were 
 dependent on this human being ? 
 
 At Twenty-ninth street grade crossing a man was 
 killed. His dead body was taken to his home within 
 the city. It makes no difference who he is, whether 
 rich or poor, married or single, the cruel and shocking 
 manner of his death should create as much horror, 
 were he the lowliest of human beings, as if he lived on 
 one of the finest avenues and had been snatched by 
 the grade-crossing slaughter machine from a luxurious 
 equipage. Perhaps he owned no equipage. Proba- 
 bly he was unable to hire one. The part of the city 
 given as the region in which his home was contains 
 no fine palaces. No blooded stock occupies its barns. 
 He was as valuable in life to his family, nevertheless, 
 as the millionaire to his. In one sense he was more 
 valuable. The millionaire's familvmay suffer human 
 grief over the sudden taking off of a father dear to his 
 household. But his children would not be deprived 
 in consequence of his death of opportunity of school- 
 ing. They would secure a fair start in life. They 
 would not be crowded down and out. Compulsory 
 
128 
 
 ignorance would not be their necessary portion. It 
 is the crowning- cruelty of public slaughter of the 
 poor that the deed carries with it an entail of 
 cruelty passing from one member to another of the 
 unfortunate family. Public slaughter is the right 
 word. Every grade-crossing death is a public death 
 wrought by authority of the people of Chicago. 
 
 They have ample power in law to compel the railroad 
 corporations to lift their tracks and locomotives off the 
 streets that belong of right to pedestrians and vehicles 
 necessary for the transaction of business and the car- 
 riage of the people safely and securely. Every death at 
 a surface crossing by a railroad is an assassination by 
 the City of Chicago. 
 
 There are railroad deaths for which neither city 
 nor the railroads are to blame. Monday a young 
 man lost his life by attempting to alight from a run- 
 ning train. The railroad is not at fault for his death. 
 Neither are the people of Chicago. A man was run 
 over on the tracks of another railroad and mangled 
 to death. It seems to have been his own fault. The 
 road is not responsible for his death. Still another 
 man was killed on tracks but not at a grade crossing. 
 ■ Five lives altogether were lost Monday on railroad 
 tracks. The Herald is not charging on the railroads 
 or on the people responsibility for any but those due 
 to grade crossings and the impossibility of guarding 
 the crossings so as to prevent slaughter at them. 
 Last year the average of such deaths was about one a day. 
 
 This year it is probable that the average will be higher. 
 There is no remedy for this daily slaughter but ele- 
 vation of tracks within the city. The people have the 
 power to compel the railroads to elevate their tracks 
 
129 
 
 within the limits. It is will they lack. The corpora- 
 tions will not take a step toward it until the people 
 compel them. Meanwhile the daily sacrifice of hu- 
 man life will go on; and no home can foretell whose 
 turn will be next to be desolated. 
 
 [From the Chicago Evening Post, July 29, 1892.] 
 
 WHO WAS THE MURDERER? 
 
 It is a clearly established fact that Mrs. D. Pick- 
 ette, whose horrible death on the track of the Chi- 
 cago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad, near Indiana 
 street, was told in the Evening Post of yesterday, is 
 a victim of murder. The only question is, Who is 
 the murderer ? 
 
 Upon this question pertinent evidence is furnished 
 by the switchtender, Goshorn, who was interviewed 
 by a reporter of the Evening Post soon after the fa- 
 tality occurred and before he had time to be warned 
 into silence by the attorneys of the St. Paul road. In 
 these circumstances Switchtender Goshorn said : 
 
 " A train had to be taken to a sidetrack. I threw 
 the switch to take that train over, and went with it 
 about a block. I left the switch here open, not think- 
 ing that train No. 4 would move out till I got back." 
 
 " Why did you go with the train ? " 
 
 " I had to. I have to attend to seven switches." 
 
 " How far apart are the most widely separated of 
 these switches ? " 
 
 " About a block or more." 
 
 " Is it customary to leave main-track switches open 
 
130 
 
 while the switchtender goes a block or two away, 
 leaving his switch unattended ? " 
 
 11 It is done here every day." 
 
 " Was it not your duty to have closed that switch 
 immediately ? " 
 
 Mr. Goshorn did not answer this question. 
 
 Seven switches, separated by the distance of a block, 
 on a road over which an unremitting stream of pas- 
 sengers thunders day and night ! Was it possible for 
 one man to do the work ? If he tried and failed was 
 it his fault that human life was lost ? Or was it the 
 fault of a parsimonious management that cares more 
 for the paltry wages of an underpaid employe or two 
 than for human life and limb ? 
 
 We commend the question to the coroner's jury, 
 with perfect confidence that — the guilty persons will 
 be whitewashed as a thousand others have been. 
 
 The crossing slaughter goes bravely on! 
 
 \Frotn the Sunday Herald, July 31, 1892.] 
 
 WRITTEN WITH BLOOD. 
 
 RAILROAD SLAUGHTER IN CHICAGO, LIVES SACRIFICED BY 
 THE MAINTENANCE OF GRADE CROSSINGS INDIFFER- 
 ENCE OF THE CORPORATIONS TO THE PUBLIC SAFETY 
 HOW LONG WILL IT LAST ? 
 
 There were only nineteen persons killed in Chi- 
 cago during the past ten days by the cars of the sev- 
 eral railroads centering here. None of them were 
 men of note in this community; most of them 
 
131 
 
 were laborers, earning a scant subsistence by daily 
 toil, and few of them will be missed except in the 
 circumscribed area in which they erst lived, moved 
 and had their being;. A few of them had families 
 dependent upon them for support, and these families 
 will no doubt suffer for want of even the little which 
 they received of their earnings. They will mourn 
 their loss; perhaps they will anathematize the iron 
 Juggernaut beneath whose wheels their mainstay of 
 support was crushed to a shapeless, sanguinary mass, 
 but their sufferings and agony will go unheeded, for 
 the stockholders in the railway corporations are con- 
 stantly clamoring for larger dividends; the apathetic 
 aldermen are waiting for more boodle, and the grade 
 crossings remain, guarded by decrepit laymen or 
 protected by gates over which sleepy watchmen pre- 
 side when danger is remote but are always missing 
 when a wild engine comes snorting and panting 
 along" the rails, crushing and mangling; and killing; 
 whoever may chance to step upon the track. There 
 may be a momentary commotion — the gathering of 
 a curious crowd of passers-by; the rumbling of a 
 patrol wagon or ambulance; the verdict of a coroner's 
 jury of no one to blame; a few lines in the daily 
 newspapers, and the incident is forgotten. Death is 
 a monster of most frightful mien, but he is seen so 
 often on the streets of Chicago in the vicinity of the 
 railroad grade crossings that he is but little regarded, 
 and even frail women and young children become 
 familiar with his aspect and pass along without a 
 shudder. Constant familiarity with death in its most 
 frightful form has bred contempt, and it does not 
 appall. 
 
132 
 
 ASKING MUCH J GRANTING LITTLE. 
 
 Seven men were slain by one railroad within the 
 past ten days — the Illinois Central, a corporation that 
 has received much from the City of Chicago, and has 
 rendered little in return. Its stock is so valuable as 
 an investment that it is not for sale on the exchanges. 
 The more guilty of the other corporations are the 
 wealthiest — those that enjoy the greatest privileges, 
 and are the most persistent applicants for favors at 
 the hands of state legislatures and municipal coun- 
 cils. Scarce a week passes in the course of which 
 they do not petition the Common Council for the va- 
 cation of certain public streets or alleys for their bene- 
 fit ; that they do not ask the condemnation of private 
 property for depot, track, or yard uses ; that they do 
 not claim exemption from some of the burdens of 
 taxation imposed for the general good, and their own 
 benefit particularly. When viaducts across their 
 tracks are proposed they fight the plans inch by inch, 
 refuse to bear their share of the expense when they 
 are finally ordered, and pay their taxes — but a frac- 
 tion of their equitable share — only after every means 
 of delay known to shrewd lawyers has been exhaust- 
 ed. Their crossings and switches are guarded by de- 
 crepit old men who are hired for a song ; their gates 
 are seldom in working order ; the gongs, which the 
 law requires them to keep at crossings, are seldom 
 sounded, and if struck are found to be cracked and 
 practically useless ; their danger lights at night burn 
 but fitfully if at all, and their engines and trains rush 
 madly onward through the streets utterly regardless 
 
133 
 
 of the law regulating railway speed within corporate 
 limits. 
 
 But it is said that there is never a great loss with- 
 out some small gain. This is true of the railway 
 slaughter, as well as of other things. The grade 
 crossings are a source of great profit to the coroner 
 and his assistants. Without grade crossings the office 
 of coroner would not be worth the seeking. Inquests 
 upon the remains of victims of crossing accidents 
 help the coroner to make both ends meet, and give a 
 pittance for beer money to each of the six jurors he 
 summons. To be sure, the people have to pay the 
 bills, but the railroads care nothing for that. They 
 save the cost of elevating or depressing their tracks, 
 and that is an item worth their consideration. In per- 
 haps one case in a hundred they may be compelled 
 to pay damages to relatives of slaughtered men, but 
 the amount will be insignificant compared with the 
 cost of viaducts or subways or elevated terminals. 
 
 The people of Chicago are praying for relief from 
 the grade-crossing menace to life and property. Will 
 they ever receive it ? They are asking public officials 
 to enforce existing laws relative to guards at railway 
 street crossings. Will the city authorities comply 
 with the demands ? They are asking if they have 
 any right which railway corporations are bound to 
 respect. Have they ? They are asking the Legislature 
 and the City Council for the passage of laws which 
 will make life on the public thoroughfares reasonably 
 safe. Will such laws ever be passed ? They are de- 
 manding that the railroads render some equivalent 
 for the privileges they are enjoying. Will their wishes 
 be gratified ? 
 
134 
 
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140 
 
 [From the Chicago Herald, Aug. 2, 1892.] 
 
 THE SURFACE GRADE HALF-YEAR. 
 
 The Herald printed Sunday the names of the vic- 
 tims of surface-grade railroads for the half-year end- 
 ing July 28th. In each the date of the death was given, 
 the address of the victim, if known, and the name of 
 the railroad doing the deed. In every instance the 
 death was not due to the crossings. In a few cases 
 the victims were themselves largely to blame. But in 
 all cases had the road been elevated the casualty could 
 not have occurred. Deaths on elevated tracks from 
 the causes that heap up their numbers on surface 
 tracks are practically unknown. Accidents occur 
 wherever machinery and power are employed. Ele- 
 vated roads are not assured of absolute immunity 
 from deaths and maimings. But the proportion is 
 less by far; and the causes that make surface rail- 
 roads daily slaughterers of human beings are un- 
 known on elevated roads properly built and equipped. 
 
 The number of persons killed by surface-grade 
 railroads in Chicago since January 1st is 166. Of these 
 seven were never identified. When the stale joker of 
 the stage tells a rural audience that it is easy to go to 
 a big city, be killed and never heard of afterward, 
 the seeming jest calls forth roars of laughter. In six 
 months, as facts show, seven men have been killed 
 in Chicago whose identity remains unestablished. 
 
 For these seven no claim has ever been made to 
 the corporations that took them out of the world. 
 leaving unprovided for, in all probability, a number 
 
141 
 
 of human beings for whom their lives were useful 
 and necessary. Four of the seven were killed on 
 grade crossings, probably strangers who did not ex- 
 pect to find steam locomotives flying at grade through 
 a great city. Two were killed, as alleged, while 
 walking on the tracks. But the tracks were within 
 the city limits, and the ignorant men did not know 
 any other way of getting to the place they wished to 
 reach. Had the tracks been elevated these six lives 
 need not have been lost. The seventh, entered at the 
 coroner's office as "an unknown man," is described 
 as " railroad employe." He was employed, it appears, 
 on the road that killed him. Did not the head of the 
 gang or the crew, on the section in which he was em- 
 ployed, know his name ? Was he employed without a 
 name ? Scarcely. 
 
 Of the remainder, less than twenty were women ; 
 The great majority were able-bodied and industrious 
 men, engaged, as a rule, in occupations affording sup- 
 port to families. In every case, so far as known, a 
 family was left without its sole breadwinner. No mat- 
 ter how many children; no matter how deep the pov- 
 erty or how ill the health of the widowed mother, in 
 none of these cases was the slaughtering corporation, 
 no matter how clear its exclusive guilt, liable for more 
 than $5,000. How far would that sum go in taking 
 the place of a father able and eager to provide for the 
 education of his family and their maintenance in de- 
 cency and comfort ? But when was there a case in 
 which the guilty corporation voluntarily paid the lim- 
 it allowed by law to the victims of its slaughtering 
 wheels ? 
 
 Every claim is rigidly fought. The miserable or- 
 
142 
 
 phans in many instances never even attempt to com- 
 pel the corporation to pay a cent. Process lies 
 through the courts. Lawing costs money. Hapless 
 little children are often so desperately situated with 
 poor relatives that they cannot get one of them to 
 begin action. Costs must be paid to clerks and re- 
 tainers to lawyers before claims can be filed. Thus, 
 the authors of life-taking at a ratio of a human being 
 a day every day in the year, often escape even the an- 
 noyance of being requested to fight over the payment 
 of damages. 
 
 The people of Chicago have no reason to complain 
 of this. They are responsible for it. They license 
 slaughtering by surface-grade corporations. It lies 
 with them to end it. It is they who make every or- 
 phan, every widow. The surface grades must disap- 
 pear whenever they speak the word of authority and 
 elect a council to carry it out. 
 
 \From the Chicago Herald, Aug. 5, 1892.] 
 
 GIVEN TO A MOLOCH. 
 
 HUMAN SACRIFICES TO RAILROADS SLAUGHTER ON THE 
 
 ILLINOIS CENTRAL LINE DURING THE RECENT ' HOT 
 
 SPELL WHY THE CLAIM AGENTS OF THE CORPORATIONS 
 
 MAINTAIN SECRECY. 
 
 While the red-hot sun was striking people dead by 
 the score last week, attention was diverted from the 
 Juggernaut of the railroad crossings, but it seems that 
 the dreadful slaughterer was not idle during those 
 trying times, and the allegation was made yesterday 
 
143 
 
 that six persons had been killed in a single day within 
 the city limits by one road, the Illinois Central. 
 
 This seems to have been a mistake. Investigation 
 of the records of the coroner's office shows that the 
 mortality on the Illinois Central tracks within the 
 bounds named did not on any one day exceed four, 
 although an inquest on a fifth victim was held on the 
 same day, which was misleading in a sense. The 
 bald truth is horrible; no embellishments are neces- 
 sary. . 
 
 The bloody story of July 25th includes mention ot 
 the death under the wheels of the Illinois Central 
 Juggernaut of — 
 
 Gibbons, John, 8 One Hundred and Fourth street. 
 Schrober, Sr., John, 2502 South Park avenue. 
 Hurley, Patrick, 3436 Emerald avenue. 
 Fay, John, Chicago. 
 
 On the same date the coroner " sat on " the re- 
 mains of Joseph Neumann, 33 11 State street, and on 
 the 27th Henry Gilmore, 5437 Lake avenue, was run 
 over. The record as tersely stated by the coroner's 
 historian is as follows: 
 
 July 25 — Joseph Neumann was accidentally killed 
 by engine 221, drawing the Illinois Central train 154, 
 between Thirty-second and Thirty-third streets. Died 
 
 July 23d. 
 
 July 25— John Gibbons lies dead at Pullman. 
 Was run over by Illinois Central tram No. 5, drawn 
 by engine 331, near the One Hundred and Thirteenth 
 street crossing. Could not determine whether acci- 
 dental or not. 
 
 July 26— John Schrober, Sr., 62 years old, was 
 struck and run over by Illinois Central switch engine 
 
144 
 
 No. 3, July 25th, near Twenty-sixth street. The jury 
 believes the aecident to be due to gross carelessness 
 on the part of the engineer and fireman in not giving 
 warning by whistle or bell. 
 
 July 26 — Patrick Hurley was struck by Illinois 
 Central engine No. 303 near Thirtieth street, July 
 25th, and killed. 
 
 July 26 — John Fay was struck July 25th, between 
 Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth streets by an Illinois 
 Central engine and train and died from the shock and 
 injuries received in being run over. 
 
 July 28 — Henry Gilmore was killed at Sixty-second 
 street crossing by an Illinois Central train July 27th. 
 
 OTHER GRADE SLAUGHTERS. 
 
 In addition to the last week's fatalities above 
 enumerated, the Baltimore and Ohio killed Henry 
 Young at the Grand Central depot, the St. Paul 
 crushed the life out of Dora Pickette, the Burlington 
 furnished a case for the coroner in the person of Bas- 
 seleo Palumbo and a Northwestern express train ran 
 down a girl at Glencoe. 
 
 How many persons were maimed by the Jugger- 
 naut but escaped with their lives is not known. 
 
 A corporation has a horror of newspaper publica- 
 tion of accidents, for the reason that such publicity 
 inspires general criticism, and also because the law 
 firms that are engaged in the encouragement of acci- 
 dent damage litigation get their runners out after the 
 injured persons or the heirs of those who are killed. 
 In this way settlements on the company's terms are 
 made difficult, and victims are sometimes enabled to 
 force fair payment to compensate for injuries. 
 
145 
 
 This will explain the real secret of the clam-like 
 reticence of the claims departments when approached 
 for information in regard to accidents. If they can 
 settle a death for $2,500, get off with $3,000 or $4,000 
 for the amputation of a leg or an arm, or escape by 
 the payment of anywhere from $500 to $6,000 from 
 further liability for an accident that results in the 
 paralysis or other permanent injury of a person, the 
 claim agent of a corporation feels that he has scored 
 a great triumph. These victories are only possible 
 where the accidents are kept dark. Hence the policy 
 of silence that envelops the mutilation department of 
 a railroad corporation. 
 
 Elevate the tracks and stop the grade-crossing 
 slaughter. 
 
 MAIMED BY THE RAILROAD CARS. 
 
 VICTIMS OF THE GRADE TRACKS TAKEN TO THE COUNTY 
 
 HOSPITAL. 
 
 James Rogers was admitted to the county hospi- 
 tal last night with his left arm so badly crushed that 
 it will have to be amputated at the shoulder. Rogers 
 is a laborer, who came to the city yesterday from 
 Gorum, N. H., to seek employment. He said that a 
 brakeman on a Northwestern freight train pushed him 
 off the car at Clinton and Kinzie streets and that a 
 wheel passed over his arm. 
 
 Elevate the tracks and stop the grade-crossing 
 slaughter. 
 
 William L. Hall, living at 621 West Thirteenth 
 
146 
 
 street, and employed by the Northern Pacific Railroad 
 company, was struck by a Chicago, St. Paul and 
 Kansas City train at Twelfth street last night. He 
 received a deep cut over the right eye and his left 
 arm was broken. He was taken to the county hos- 
 pital. 
 
 Elevate the tracks and stop the grade-crossing 
 slaughter. 
 
 \_From Chicago City Hall Record {Official Paper), Saturday, 
 
 Aug. 20, 1892.] 
 
 Last Sunday's Herald contained a list of the rail- 
 road casualties that have taken place in this city dur- 
 ing the past six months, which was the most effective 
 sermon for the elevation of railway tracks that has 
 been given our citizens for many a dav. The list in- 
 eluded about two hundred victims for the period 
 mentioned, which is certainly something terrible to 
 contemplate. Two hundred deaths from railroad 
 " accidents " in six months ! Considerably over an 
 average of one victim a day, the aggregate being as 
 large a number as the death-rate from all causes for 
 a good-sized city of 50,000 or 40,000 inhabitants. 
 Many of the victims in the list have never been iden- 
 tified, giving room for the presumption that in many 
 cases family or friends are still looking for the absent 
 ones that have been sent so hurriedly to the presence 
 of their Maker. If there is one lesson in that sermon 
 that calls for special remark more than another, it is 
 that the duty of all public officials lies plainly in the 
 direction of redoubling their efforts to compel the 
 
147 
 
 railway corporations to come to some agreement that 
 will relieve the city of this shocking brutality. Here- 
 tofore the corporations have adopted a procrastinating 
 policy in reference to this matter that can no longer 
 be tolerated. The responsibility lies entirely with the 
 railway companies. It cannot be evaded or success- 
 fully shifted to the shoulders of others, and the first 
 duty of the Common Council when it reassembles, 
 and of the State Legislature when it convenes, should 
 be to put an effectual stop to this disgraceful loss of 
 life, no matter what the cost. We have arrived at 
 that stage in our civic development where our law- 
 makers must make provision for greater safety and 
 protection of human life. Evasions and delay on the 
 plea of extraordinary expenses should no longer be 
 accepted in lieu of action. No other city in the world 
 would permit such a wilful sacrifice of life, and the 
 people of Chicago will not put up with it much 
 longer. 
 


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