Taking the Train to Metamor; W. Irvine

Not long ago I took my family on the train to Metamora. Shortly after we pulled out of Con nersville, I noticed the faint outline of the now defunct Whitewater Valley Canal running parallel to the railroad track. There was no sign of water in this canal; there was only a ditch with slumping banks and with rather sizable trees growing from the bottom. (The presence of these trees made it almost impossible to visualize barges ever using the canal.) From time to time, we passed the crum bling remains of canal locks. It was only when I looked out the other side of the train that I realized that besides taking a train trip, I was traveling over a particularly interesting piece of the economic landscape. For on the other side of the train was a modern highway,being used by a variety of vehicles, including cars that had stopped to watch the steam locomotive go by. ProfessorIrvineteachesphilosophy at WrightState Uni versityin Dayton, Ohio.

There, within the space of a few hundred feet, was a history of modern transportation: a canal, paral leled by a railway, which in turn was paralleled by a highway. I examined the scene in much the same way as a geologist might examine a road cut (where engi neers have cut through a hill in order to lay a road bed). To a geologist, a road cut offers valuable clues to the geological history of a region because it reveals the successive layers of sediment that were laid down by ancient oceans. Where the untrained eye sees a change in the color or texture of the strata, the geologist sees evidence of the rise of a new form of life, of changes in climate in years gone by, or of volcanic eruptions. The canal, railroad track, and highway, lying side by side, were the economic equivalent of geo logical strata, but instead of revealing geological epochs, this economic landscape revealed succes sive revolutions in the technology of transporta tion, as well as revealing-to the trained eye-evi dence of changes in the political climate in years gone by.

The juxtaposition of canal and rail and highway was also evidence of how dramatically the eco nomic landscape can change. The people who built the canal probably didn't imagine that a tech nology would arise to make it obsolete, and the people who built the rails probably did so confi dent in the belief that theirs was the ultimate form of transportation.

207 Whitewater Valley Railroad today By what, I wondered, will the highway be replaced? The obvious answer is that it will never be replaced, but this is what the canal-and railroad-builders thought. They were mistaken. Is there any reason to think that we are not likewise mistaken in thinking, as we often do, that we have reached the end-point in economic evolution? Indeed, it is entirely conceivable that my chil dren will tell their grandchildren about the old days when people used to ride around in cars. My great-grandchildren will listen wide-eyed and comment that things must have been difficult before they invented-I would like to be able to finish this sentence, but I don't know how to do so. My great-grandchildren willmost likely pity me for having to live without-again, I do not know what yet-to-be-invented something they will hold to be essential if one is to enjoy life. And why shouldn't they pity me? I pity my great-grandpar ents for having had to live without television and antibiotics and jet airplanes. Of course, I don't feel like a person worthy of pity; I don't feel like I'm *In what follows,I am relyingon WilliamE. Wilson'shistoryof thecanal,as relatedin his Indiana:A History(Bloomington:Indiana UniversityPress,1966).

missing anything, and I don't suppose my great grandparents did either. OnlyChangeIs Certain When it comes to predicting the economic land scape decades hence, only one thing is sure: It will be radically different-almost unimaginably dif ferent-from that of today. Generally, if there were someone who could tell us the future, we would not believe him. We instead prefer to believe those who tell us, in reassuring tones, that tomorrow will be like today, even though such people are almost never right. The juxtaposition of canal and rail and highway alsoraisesa number of questions:How does a canal or railroad come into existence? How does it die? Did this particular canal and railroad die natural deaths, or were they, in effect, murdered? And if they were murdered, who was the murderer? As it turns out, the history of the Whitewater Canal* is intertwined with the history of Indiana itself, and it is a history that demonstrates the extent to which politics can shape the economic landscape.

208 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1990 When Congress admitted Indiana to the Union, it allowed a certain portion of the funds from the sale of public lands to be used for developing transportation within Indiana. There were those, including Governor James Ray, who saw canals as a dying technology and favored instead construc tion of railroads. In the end, though, the state set off on a binge of canal and railroad construction, authorized by the Mammoth Internal Improve ment Bill of 1836, and funded both by Federal money and by $10million borrowed by the state of Indiana. The Whitewater Canal was one of the projects thus financed. The problem was that young Indiana was not ready to service the debt necessary to cover these appropriations: by 1839the state was bankrupt. In the end, the state came up with a solution to the debt problem that was "just short of repudiation." The state got out of the canal-building business, and private enterprise finished the job that the State of Indiana had begun. By 1846,the Whitewa ter Canal connected Lawrenceburg with Cam bridge City; the section of the canal between Con nersville and Metamora is included in this stretch.

Once built, the Whitewater Canal's days of use fulness were numbered. By 1865 the Whitewater Valley Railroad had built the line that paralleled the canal (the line that the train to Metamora takes), and the.canal was rendered superfluous. It wasn't long, however, before the Whitewater Val ley Railroad itself fell on hard times. By 1877, it was bankrupt. The Whitewater Valley Railroad recovered from this setback, but it ultimately suffered the fate of the canal: In this century, it ceased to be a commercially viable operation. What killed it? Again, this is a complex question. A case can be made, though, that in the same way that the rail road killed the canal by paralleling it, the modern highway-more precisely, the system of modern highways.,.--killed the railroad. Furthermore, a case can be made -and many have made it-that the railroads died not because they are technolog ically obsolete (one need only look at Europe or Japan to realize as much) but because the govern ment decided to nourish their competitor, the highway system.

In the early 1970s,the not-for-profit Whitewater Valley Railroad Company revived the Con nersville-to-Metamora route as a train for tourists, and in 1984 the company purchased from Penn Central the track between Connersville and Meta mora. Thus it was that I found it possible to take the train to Metamora. On arriving in Metamora I purchased some rail road paraphernalia and took my family for a snack. The restaurant that looked the most promising was located in the basement of an old bank building. The problem was that the place seemed full.We were about to leave when a waiter came up and asked whether we would mind sitting "in the vault." I wasn't sure what he meant, but we followed him and soon found ourselves inside a long and narrow concrete bank vault. The place was barely big enough for a table and had a bit of an echo, but was nevertheless a treat. (I did expe rience some anxiety about accidentally being locked in-who, after all these years, would know the combination?-but my fears were unfound ed.) No doubt those who built the vault would be as surprised to learn of the ultimate fate of their works, as would those who built the canal, those who built the railroad, or as we will be, if we are lucky enough to be around decades hence. D 209 The Theory of Due Reparations by Ridgway K. Foley,Jr.