Ellet, Jr., Charles

The Position and Prospects of the Schuylkill Navigation Company [with] To the Stock and Bond-Holders of the Philadelphia and Reading Rail-Road Company (1845)

Philadelphia: 1845. Disbound. near Very Good binding. Item #9254

Octavo. 36 pp. First edition. Removed from binding. Vertical crease from folding; minor toning; small, contemporary ink hash marks at the top of the title page.

This pamphlet constitutes a request for a loan to replace one line of locks on the Schuylkill canal in order to increase the capacity of the tonnage of coal that might be conveyed from the Pennsylvania "coal region." A portion of his argument is that the Reading Railroad "was not originally intended for the conveyance of coal, and was not, consequently, planned and executed in a style suitable for the economical accommodation of heavy freight." Hence, modifications to the canal capacity being an obvious solution. This followed in some detail by other deficiencies of the railroad. Not surprisingly the Reading Rail-Road Company took issue. Folded and tipped in behind the title page is a large 3-page leaflet, To the Stock and Bond-Holders of the Philadelphia and Reading Rail-Road Company, printed on thin paper. It is signed in type by Samuel R. Morris and Lewis R. Ashurst. This letter is a response to Ellet's pamphlet, which is perceived to be "an attack upon the credit of this Company. . . ." While the Ellet pamphlet is fairly uncommon with only a handful of institutional holdings, this tipped in letter is all the more so with only one institutional holding at the University of Missouri, St. Louis according to OCLC. American Imprints 45-2154.

Price: $200.00