Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1910 — INTERESTING OLD DOCUMENT. [ARTICLE]

INTERESTING OLD DOCUMENT.

la 1828 School Board Referred to Railroads as “a Device of Satan." Alexander Wells, an old citizen of Wellsville, Ohio, has a copy of an interesting and novel document issued by the school board of the town of Lancaster, Ohio, in 1828, says the Illinois Central Employes’ Magazine. The questions of steam railroads was then in its incipient stage, and a club of young men had been formed for the purpose of discussing the points at issue. They desired the use of the schoolhouse ror purposes of debate. Thiß was looked upon by the members of the school board as an innovation bordering upon sacrilege, as indicated by the reply of the board to the request, which is the document in the possession of Mr. Wells. It reads as follows: , “Ysu are welcome to the use of the schoolhouse to debate all proper questions in, but such things as railroads and telegraphs are impossibilities and rank infidelity. There is nothing in the word of God about them. If God had designed that His intelligent creatures should travel at the frightful speed of fifteen miles an hour, by steam, He would clearly have foretold it through His holy prophets. It is a device of Satan to lead immortal souls down to hell.” Such sentiments possibly reflected the feeling to some extent in the days of sixty-five years ago, but they sound strange at the present time, when the “device of Satan” is daily carrying people over the land at the rate of sixty or seventy miles an hour. The world has progressed somewhat since 1828.