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Excerpt from The Erie War The great leader in this fight is Mr. Vanderbilt. He and his crowd have the Hudson River, Harlem, New York Central, Lake Shore from Erie to Toledo, and the virtual control of the line from Buffalo to Erie. Over this vast extent of line he reigns supreme. In his attempts to reach Chicago, he was arrested at Toledo by his inability to get control of the Michigan Southern. To counteract his plans, it became the interest of this, and of all the roads entering Chicago, as well as of the Erie, to Open, if possible, a new and independent line to New York. Indeed, we may say that such a line was of the most vital importance. It required the construction of only about 100 miles of new road, extending from the Atlantic and Great Western to Toledo. When the broad gauge reached the latter point, the Michigan Southern Railroad agreed to lay a third rail to Chicago. As the new link could be constructed at a very small cost, there were plenty of parties who stood ready to supply the money, provided the Erie Company would guar antee the payment of the bonds of the company that was to put in the link, to the amount of This the Erie Company agreed to do. The Vanderbilt party, seeing in this arrangement the defeat of their gigantic monopoly, sought by every means to defeat such action, both by buying up the stock of the Erie Company and by every possible resort to Courts of Law. Hence the tremendous struggle which we now witness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of im