Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1893 — BY FAITH AND FIVE DOLLARS. [ARTICLE]

BY FAITH AND FIVE DOLLARS.

How U Plucky Man Built 800 MUei or Railroad In Texan. For real pluck and enterprise the building of the beginning of the Aransas Pass Railroad in Texas is probably uuequaled. This, which is now one of the great systems of the State, was built by a man whose only resources were faith and a borrowed $5 bill. He move i up from Corpus Chlsto to San Antonio with all of his possessions heaped on a two-wheolod cart Ho got a charter to build a railroad from San Antonio to Aransas Pass. He graded a mile of It, throwing a good deal more than one shovel of dirt, with his own hand. The receiver of another road loaned this Indefatigable builder enough old rails for a mile of track. In a distant part of tho State was purchased an engine whioh had been oondemnod six years before and sent to tho shops to be wrecked for scrap iron. Two old oars were picked up somewhere else at a bargain. And that old engine, drawing those old oars, steamed Into San Antonio. On engine and oars in bold lettering was painted in lamp-blaok "S. A A. P. / With one mile of old-rall track and with the equipment of the old engine and the two old cars, Urlao Lott Started the Aransas Pass system. There has been somo tall financiering in the history of railroad building in this country, but there isn’t anything which, for dazzling pluck, quite approaches the story of tho building of this 600 miles of road in South Texas. To the one mile of traok throe were added—three miles by a dicker for some second-hand rails which a street oar oompany bad bought from a narrow-guage oompany. On this basis a orejdlt trado was made with a Pennsylvania rolling mill for ten miles of rails. When they arrived there wasn't money enough in the treasury to pay the freight. But it was got somehow. Ten miles of traok gave the foundation for bonds whioh built forty miles more, and so the system grew Into Its present proportions. This man who built the Aransas Pass system rode from San Antonio to Chicago at one critical period on his enterprise without a oent In his pooket. He had transportation, but he hadn’t anything to buy food, and he went through hungry.