This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
To cooperate or to compete is one of those dilemmas at the heart of the American experience. Is that classroom best which turns students into rugged individuals competing for the single A, or should students be put in groups to solve problems as a team?
There are many versions of those two classrooms in American history. Our Rock Island version involves the steamboat and the railroad.
Until 1854, the steamboat controlled transportation on the Upper Mississippi. Steamboats went where and when they wanted and charged all they could. But in 1854, there was a new kid on the block. In 1854, the tracks of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad reached the Mississippi River.
There was a brief moment of cooperation between the steamboat and its new competition. In June of 1854, Henry Farnham, the builder of the railroad, held a grand opening. On June 5th, more than 1,200 guests, including Millard Fillmore, thirteenth President of the United States, Charles Dana, editor of the New York Tribune, the historian George Bancroft, and many other prominent Easterners arrived at Rock Island from Chicago on two trains. Amid bands, fireworks, and parades, they boarded five waiting steamboats for a grand tour upriver to Minnesota to see Fort Snelling and the famous Falls of St. Anthony. Two extra boats were added to take care of the crowd.
On the way up, guests were wined and dined. Bands played and several boats were lashed together for dancing. The publicity made the railroad famous, a fame that lasted even when it became the Rock Island Lines.
More important, the grand tour by rail and boat to the Falls of St. Anthony could have become one of the must vacations for Easterners. But the cooperation did not last. The railroad built a bridge across the Mississippi at an angle that made steamboat navigation difficult. Steamboat men responded by arranged accidents which damaged the bridge, and both sides were soon in an acrimonious court battle that lasted for ten years.
And that "must" vacation? It ended up in Niagara Falls.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
