Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/72

 56 would receive no further support from him, because, under his management, the old New York & Flushing would now be revitalized and operated in a manner to give the service and satisfaction that the new road had been intended to secure.

The reaction of the directors and investors of the Woodside & Flushing R.R. varied from bewilderment to fury. The people of Flushing were in general disappointed, for they had been led to believe that two competing roads into the village would keep down fares and stimulate good service in a bid for patronage. Others were alarmed at having fallen into the clutches of Oliver Charlick, reputed to be a shrewd manipulator, and who, for the moment at least, enjoyed a monopoly of rail travel on Long Island. It is possible that Charlick's motives in engineering this coup were of the best; he doubtless saw in it the double advantage of ridding himself of two potential rivals, the New York & Flushing and the South Side R.R., and may sincerely have intended to give Flushing the quality service it sought. However, the investors who had subscribed to stock in the Woodside & Flushing R.R. failed to see any motives of benevolence in Charlick's act, and viewed his apparent interest in their road simply as a trick by which he frightened the management of the New York & Flushing into selling their road to himself.

Their indignation might have spent itself in impotence had not the times and circumstances offered a means of redress. North of Flushing lay the two new and growing communities of College Point and Whitestone. College Point owed its existence virtually to one man, Conrad Poppenhusen. Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1818, he came to America in 1843, and immediately opened a factory on Kent Avenue, Williamsburgh, manufacturing combs, brushes, buttons, etc. from whalebone. When hard rubber became practical in the 1850's, Poppenhusen adopted that product, and in 1854 moved his factory to the farm and woodland area of College Point. Within a few years he built not only a great brick India Rubber factory, but also company houses, stores, streets and a host of other improvements, so that it could be truly said that College Point was Poppenhusen's single-handed creation. The factory prospered enormously and enriched its owner. New settlers, attracted by the prosperity of the village, flocked to College Point, and by 1875 it boasted a population of 2,723.