The Adams has extensive and profitable interests in the middle States. There are some cities in New Jersey, like Elizabeth, Newark, and New Brunswick, for instance, of whose remarkable growth in business importance we ought to have had some mention by the superintendent of the "NEW JERSEY " and "CENTRAL EXPRESS "lines (belonging to the Adams), and in the absence of the particular information, which he has failed to furnish, we are left to infer that the company is doing so large a business in his territory that he has no time to jot down the desired data. Par consequence, it may be properly inferred, too, that to yield such quantities of Express matter, the multitude of manufactories in the big bee-hive, which we call New Jersey, are all worked to their utmost capacity by the extraordinary demand for their products this season; and the national thanksgiving was never more suitable in that fruitful State than at the auspicious close of the autumn of 1879.

J. H. Ackerman, the able assistant superintendent of the NEW JERSEY EXPRESS, is "aided and abetted" by W. H. Glenn, route agent, and S. Lindsley, cashier, in the Newark office.

George Eager is the efficient freight clerk in the New York office.

Newark is famed for many products, but chiefly for its tons of jewelry.

THE CENTRAL EXPRESS (F. A. Runyon, assistant superintendent) has a few stations in New Jersey; but its strong points, of which it has many, are in Pennsylvania, which it shares, territorially, with the excellently well-managed UNION EXPRESS COMPANY-an enterprise of many years' standing, and owned jointly by the Adams and American (T. J. Hudson, assistant superintendent), by whom it is operated in some portions of Ohio also. The "N. J." has about a dozen Express offices in Pennsylvania; the "Central," 165; the Union, 185; and the parent company nearly as many more. Its New York office, at 59 Broadway, is in charge of Mr. Chas. Carter, a veteran in the service.

The UNION EXPRESS COMPANY, local in Pennsylvania and Ohio, is not identical with, or in any way related to, the new expresses recently started in the southwest and dubbed with the same name, or something almost like it.

F. Lovejoy, superintendent of the Pennsylvania division of the Adams Express, and located in Philadelphia (where the main office is "a feature" of the business centre of that grand old city), supervises, also, the "Central" and "New Jersey Express" lines, and consequently finds full exercise for his well-known and long-approved experience as route manager and metropolitan executive.

His assistant on the Central is F. A. Runyon. A. N. Wilking is route agent, and H. B. Arrison, auditor. Mr. Runyon is a man of superior intelligence, business acumen, and that kind of talent and address just suited to the service in which he has been so long and creditably engaged. At this date (1880) he resides at Easton, Pa., and, if he is as good a citizen as he is an expressman, must have secured a high position in the estimation of the people of that thriving place. It is a luxury to be allowed the opportunity to print the praises of expressmen who are an honor to their kind; and he is one of them.

J. H. Ackerman, of Newark, is the assistant superintendent of the "New Jersey." The company is fortunate in having him, and such able co-workers in the operation of that important line.

In Philadelphia the Adams is supreme in its control of the Express business. Neither of the other great companies have any part or lot in it. The foundation so well laid by Edward S. Sanford, personally, as the local manager of Adams & Co.'s Express in Philadelphia, in conjunction with Shoemaker's management of it in Baltimore and Washington, from 1845 to 1854 (when the firm became a corporation), and for nearly ten years later, was substantial and durable; for it was founded upon mutual kind appreciation between the company and its customers-Sanford's course being pre-eminently liberal and conciliatory.

Naturally enough, in making this brief allusion to the very large business done by the sole great Express company within its vast circumference, I would like to "let on" (a phrase which, I believe, had its origin in the Quaker City), about the increased magnitude of Philadelphia, and the wonderful growth of its mercantile power (more especially its manufacturing

forces), since Wm. F. Harnden ran his first Express to it in 1840, and his agent, E. L. Stone, hired desk-room on Chesnut street.

In that earlier day, neither Sanford nor Shoemaker was in the service (Sanford commencing two years later, in New York city), and the Burke & Co. enterprise had not ventured further south or west than New York.

It was the outset of the famous political era, the Harrison campaign, and of the excitement in Congress and the country, caused by the multitude of anti-slavery protests, and the oldman-eloquent's persistent defence of the sacred right of petition; a time when a few words spoken in exculpation of John Quincy Adams, there anent, came nigh affording me a sudden pass out of Georgia; a season of anti-abolitionist riot even in the "City of Brotherly Love" itself, as I well remember, being there at the time.

But Philadelphia did not embrace, in those comparatively primitive days, the unkempt and turbulent districts which had grown up outside of the city limits, with their fighting volunteer firemen, and heterogeneous roster of law-defying roughs. Its population, through the annexation of those ultra-mural sections, and natural increase, has quadrupled in forty years; and from being a city of store-keepers, and a suitable minor percentage of mechanics and artisans, Philadelphia has become the location of thousands of manufactories, employing two or three hundred thousands of men, women, and children; and in this respect excelling even New York.

I have a very vivid recollection of how Philadelphia looked to me in the summer of 1836, because I was barely out of my teens then, and youthful impressions of important localities are stronger than in riper manhood. I well remember how I admired her ornamental squares and parks and waterworks; to say nothing of her First Congress building, and many other revolutionary relics. Also, her few able literary men, of whom my favorite was Joe C. Neal, the author of the inimitable "Charcoal Sketches." The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Post were then (if I remember rightly) the strong journals, and the Ledger was in its infancy, and might have been bought for a song. Now it is probably the most valuable newspaper proprietary south of New York, and that favored Child of for

tune, its original impecunious owner, is a millionaire. In short, the Ledger is, in some sort, an index, too, for it indicates in its own growth the growth of the great city which has sustained it. The Adams Express is another token of the prodigious progress of "The City of the First Congress."

In 1854, the owners of the three lines of Adams & Co., Harnden & Co., and Kinsley & Co., all doing business at that time in Philadelphia, united in consolidating them into one, entitled "The Adams Express Company ;" but for some years later the three parties to that arrangement seemed to be distinct proprietaries, each continuing its officers, operative force, and routes as before; because more satisfactory, in some respects, to the public. However, the general business depression which attended the incoming of the present decade, inculcated so strenuously the necessity of economy in Express expenditures, that the triplication of offices, &c., &c., was abandoned years ago, and now the names Harnden," and "Kinsley," once so familiar in Philadelphia and elsewhere, are things of the past.

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And, by the way, the son of Wm. F. Harnden has resided many years in San Francisco. He was a clerk with Wells, Fargo & Co. a long time, but subsequently obtained an easier and more remunerative position in a bank. In a recent letter to the author his allusion to that fact was suggestive.

The salaried employee is usually placed at a great disadvantage in times of unsettled prices for the necessaries of life. In the season of great business depression labor is cheap, and his pay is cut down correspondingly; but when prosperity returns to the mart and the manufactory, and prices of produce, groceries, meats, and dry goods, and rents go up, and it costs him a great deal more to live than it did when trade was dull (his own pay not being raised in like ratio), he is the victim of "the times," which ought rather to have improved his condition.

The venerated widow of Wm. F. Harnden is still (January, 1880) living, and in good health. In a letter recently received from her, she expresses a desire to enrich this volume with a good picture of her husband, the pioneer expressman, but fears it is too late. A like wish has been kindly expressed by the honored widow of Henry Wells, but the author cannot avail

himself of it in the present edition-a circumstance which he really regrets.

The "PENNSYLVANIA DIVISION" of the Adams, the head of which is F. Lovejoy, in Philadelphia, has an able force in that city. It consists of J. H. Rigney and J. H. Creswell, assistant superintendents; G. H. Marsham and James Kane, route agents; T. Fitzgerald, cashier; Wm. M. Davison, auditor; and prominent in the right flank, our old friend, Harry Gorman, and some other ancient favorites. Besides, there is a younger growth of helpful fellows who "make things spin" sometimes. May they all live through the score of years which remain to this nineteenth century to give a cheerful welcome to the advent of century No. 20. Really, the original Expresman is Father Time, and his runs stop for no man.