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EVEN men dominate the financial and railroad policies upon three-quarters of the railroad mileage of the United States. Every great highway of commerce lies within the control of one or another of them. So complete is their command of the main arteries of traffic that nine out of every ten tons of freight and nine out of every ten passengers that move upon the rails pay tribute to their wealth and power.

The men who rule these principalities are Messrs. J. P. Morgan, William K. Vanderbilt, Alexander J. Cassatt, George Jay Gould, James J. Hill, Edward H. Harriman, and William H. Moore. Not one of them rules alone. Each has with him friends, lieutenants, bankers, who strengthen his hands or execute his commands. Yet, so direct is the personal domination of these men that each may rightly be proclaimed the sovereign lord of his estate. The word "control" does not by any means imply the ownership of more than half the stock of any road. Mr. James J. Hill never owned one-fifth of the stock of the Great Northern. Mr. Vanderbilt never owned onefifth of the stock of the New York Central. Mr. Cassatt does not own one-tenth of the capital stock of the Pennsylvania. Mr. Harriman has not, in recent years, owned more than a small fraction of the stock of the Union Pacific Railroad. Yet no man will deny that these men have controlled, and do control to this day, each his separate empire.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE HOUSE OF MORGAN

The Morgan sway extends over twenty railroads, which own more than 35,000 miles of track. Yet Mr. Morgan is not a railroad man: he is a banker. His power of control over the affairs of railroads came to him as an incident to the reorganization of those railroads, as the fruit of that tremendous decade that saw

the downfall and the reconstruction of nearly half the big systems of the United States. It is but a perquisite of the magnificent reign of the House of Morgan during that terrible period.

His influence is for peace-peace in finance, peace in management, peace upon the rails. He is against rate wars, invasions, needless hostility of any kind. In the reorganization of the Eric Railroad occurs a phrase that has become famous "community of interests"a phrase which Mr. Morgan still loves to dwell upon. His was the hand that brought about the famous "gentlemen's agreement," which ended the long duel between the Pennsylvania and the New York Central. His was the plan that made the "Anthracite Trust," so-called. By that diplomatic tour de force he made possible the Lackawanna, the Lehigh Valley, the Reading of to-day. He found them mere ragged, battered, disreputable gamins, fighting for crumbs of sustenance. He made of them gentlemen, clothed in purple and fine linen.

In this day, men are forgetting the Morgan of yesterday. The names of the younger men, and of that ever-youthful veteran of the North, J. J. Hill, are on the lips of every one. Men look upon the Union Pacific, with its 10 per cent. dividends, and upon the Great Northern, with its ever-lavish bounty to its stockholders, and marvel at the power and the brilliancy of the two great men who have brought these things about. Yet there is no other name that stands with the name of J. P. Morgan.

Shortly after Mr. Morgan had taken back the broken Dayton Road from the Erie, one of the seven men who rule the transportation world said this to me:

"Mr. Morgan is the biggest man this age has seen, and will continue the biggest until he leaves the world of activity of his own accord. The dollar looks smaller to him than the point

of a pin. We are like children, squabbling over trifles; like beggars, grubbing for pennies. Morgan is the measure of a man!”

Some historian of the future, delving into the records of this day, will probably write that the Morgan influence had almost entirely disappeared from the American railroad world by 1905. He will scan the records of railroad officials, and discover that Mr. Morgan held no important office at that date. He will find him a director of the New York Central, but will look in vain to find him in the Northern Pacific, the Erie, or the Southern Railway.

That is the Morgan way. Mr. Samuel Spencer could run the Southern Railway to his heart's content. Mr. Charles S. Mellen was master of the traffic destiny of the Northern Pacific. Mr. Frederick D. Underwood, under the Morgan hand, administered the affairs of the Erie Railroad according to his own ideas. In Morgan days on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, President Ripley was a free agent.

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Mr. Morgan is a maker of men. He does not bother about details. He lays out a great, broad, sweeping, imperial policy for a railroad. He gives the railroad and the policy into the hands of a man of his own choice, and judges the man by the results. He took a Pennsylvania lawyer, gave him a litigious, trouble"flea-bitten " railroad to run, and lo-Mr. George F. Baer, to whom the rest of the world is so small a thing that he trips over it every now and again! He took a second vice-president of the New Haven and made of him Mr. Charles S. Mellen, the best presiIdent the Northern Pacific ever had. President Underwood of the Erie, one of the ablest of the trunk-line presidents, was second vicepresident of the Baltimore & Ohio until Mr. Morgan gave him the Erie.

The influence of Mr. J. P. Morgan is the influence of the men that he has made. The historian must place on the credit side of his account the doings (but not, let us hope, the sayings) of Messrs. Baer, Mellen, Underwood, Spencer, Ripley, and many lesser men. When When that is done, he may trace that mighty pacific influence from Boston Bay to the Golden Gate. He will find it making of the Erie a real trunk-line from lakes to sea, unravelling the tangled threads left over from the reign of pillage and rapine. He will find it making of the Southern Railway a fit highway for the growing commerce of the South, shoving new

railroads into the long-neglected corners of Kentucky, Georgia, and Virginia. He may find it the dynamic force behind the new extensions of the crafty Santa Fé, creeping down toward the Gulf from western Texas, creeping up toward Oregon from San Francisco. He will find it telling the kings of the West what they shall do or shall not do with the great bankrupt terminals at Chicago. He will even find it hammering hard common sense into the Vanderbilts, reading the riot act to the wreckers of the Dayton road, gathering up the loose ends of the soft-coal situation, coaxing James J. Hill into some semblance of reason about his vast ore lands, and bridging over, at the last, the yawning gap that lay between that stiff old trader and the Steel Corporation.

For twenty-seven years Mr. Morgan has stood as a buttress of strength to the New York Central and its allied railroads.

VANDERBILT-THE RAILROAD ARISTOCRAT

Then, what of the Vanderbilts? Go up to the Grand Central Depot; go out to the big station on La Salle Street, Chicago. Go, if your patience will carry you so far, into the Vanderbilt offices at St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Indianapolis. You will hear new names, new phrases, new ideas from the lips of the Vanderbilt forces. Two years ago there was division, confusion, weakness from one end of the Vanderbilt system to the other. Now, all this is changed. There is aggression, snap, vim in its management.

There are men now in charge of the New York Central Railroad. Two years ago, they were but shadows of a greater man, a man who seldom saw the system beyond the four walls of the Grand Central Depot, who spent half his time upon the highways of France, a gentleman of leisure-William K. Vanderbilt. Through many weary years, that blight of indolence lay upon the New York Central, the grandest of the trunk-lines. Big men broke their hearts trying to run that road. Traffic was stolen at every junction point. The Pennsylvania Railroad gathered in the Western New York and Pennsylvania, and the Baltimore & Ohio, took command of the bituminous coal traffic, girt Pittsburg tight about with coil on coil of unbreakable steel. Still the Vanderbilts moved not. The agreement by which peace came to the big trunk lines in 1899 was the beginning of the tremendous "Cassatt policy" on the Pennsylvania. To Mr. Vanderbilt, it seemed

but a fit opportunity to rest and enjoy the fruits of the rich season of life.

Men have accounted for the sudden change in many ways. Some say that Mr. E. H. Harriman and the Rockefellers took the road out of the feeble hands of Mr. Vanderbilt in the great panic. Yet others say that Mr. Morgan read the riot act to Mr. Vanderbilt in no uncertain terms, even threatening to cast the votes of the English stockholders against him in the elections. Certainly, the ownership of the New York Central stocks has seen great changes in the past four years. Even more important, the New York Central now has a fixed and determined policy—“To hold that we have and to make it sure forever!"

One of the factors that galvanized the New York Central into life was the rumor of a Pennsylvania tunnel under the North River, to bring the rails into New York City. The rumors of such a plan brought scoffs from the Grand Central Depot, but cable tolls went up with a rush. The actual announcement fell like a thunderbolt.

"Now," said one official to me, "it's hustle

or hell for us!"

The Vanderbilts, whether of their own volition or by "persuasion," chose the former alternative. The shackles were struck from the hands of President Newman. Brilliant junior officials, like W. C. Brown of the Lake Shore and W. J. Wilgus of the engineering department of the New York Central, suddenly ceased to be figureheads. They had a lot of real work to do. The measure of the New York Central's progress since 1901 is the measure of the way they did it. The New York Central ceased to be a broad highway leading to the railroad graveyard, and became one of the richest fields of railroad endeavor. No man is now ashamed to say: "I am a Vanderbilt man!" He was ashamed in 1901, because the next question might be: "How did you get it, politics or blood-relationship?"

got it. He captured the Chicago & Northwestern while its owners were not looking. The present Vanderbilt very nearly lost it in 1902, when the Moores came within a few hundred votes of taking it out of his pocket. No railroad is safe in these days of licensed piracy, unless it be locked up in a safe-deposit box with only one key.

Mr. Vanderbilt hates roughness. He was shocked when the Moores raided the Northwestern. He likes to see things run along smoothly, does not see why Newman wanted to fight the Pennsylvania, can't understand why, a few years back, some of his men wanted to clamber into Pittsburg. His gospel, until recently, appears to have been, "Everything's all right!" Complacency, smug self-satisfaction, the consciousness of power, hedged him round about. His influence seems to have chilled, deadened, repressed his men. Mr. Samuel R. Callaway fretted, protested, and at last rebelled against this policy. President Newman, probably as able an executive officer as there is in the East, is only now beginning to show what he can do with the New York Central.

The chief end and aim of his endeavor must be to hold his traffic against the Pennsylvania. The days when these two giants fought their battles with the rate schedules as a weapon are gone forever. To-day, they are locked in a long, hard battle for the commerce of New York. Over the same ground where then they fought with suicidal rates, they are fighting again with millions upon millions of dollars as their weapons. The Pennsylvania spends $90,000,000 to get into New York with a new terminal; the New York Central replies with an expenditure of $70,000,000. The Pennsylvania this last year has spent over $30,000,000 on cars; the Vanderbilts immediately spend $25,000,000. It is a duel of endurance..

It will be noted that there is little of Mr. Vanderbilt in this sketch of his kingdom. Yet his shadow lies across it. The heavier the shadow the less the glory of the railroad. He was, and is, "the Railroad Aristocrat." He controls the New York Central, and through it all the other Eastern railroads of the system -simply because Commodore Vanderbilt, his progenitor, was a daring, restless, rough-andtumble financier, who never coveted anything that he did not try to get, and who generally

No man, no group of men, controls this road by the ownership of one-half its capital stock. If the ten biggest stockholders were to get

together, they probably would not hold enough stock to actually control the road. Yet one man votes each year a majority of the stock. The people who own this stock are scattered from one end of the world to the other. They send to one man the right to vote for them, and to vote as he pleases. If he proposes anything, they give him the stock to approve the proposal. If he wants to elect a certain man director, they send him their proxies so that he can elect the man.

The man in whom this power centres is Mr. Alexander J. Cassatt. He has been fortyfive years in the service of the Pennsylvania. He started by carrying a rod for the engineers when he was twenty-two, a poor man. In the span of his active life, he has made of himself a multi-millionaire and the president of the greatest railroad in the world.

The seven years of his presidency have been marked by the most aggressive, daring, and even reckless policy of improvement. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into the Pennsylvania Railroad. Mr. Cassatt, the president, has brought to realization many of the wildest dreams of Mr. Cassatt, the engineer. One of them is the entrance into New York City by the building of two long tunnels from Jersey City. Another is the building of two new lines of railroad from Pittsburg to Trenton, to relieve the strain of the traffic on the old roadway. Perhaps, before the full tale is told, another will be the making of a great shipping port out at Montauk Point, Long Island. Men have ceased to wonder at the doings of the Pennsylvania.

One day last spring, I went to a director of the Pennsylvania to ask him concerning a rumor that the road intended to raise money.

"I hear,” said I, "that the Pennsylvania is going to raise a lot of money for the extensions." "Why, no, that's hardly true-it isn't much!" said he.

"About how much?"

"Probably fifty millions!" was the quiet answer. That man, through being a director of the Pennsylvania Railroad, had actually come into a state of mind that made $50,000,000 look "not much." In this instance, the road not only raised that amount in New York, but, a month or so later, went to Paris and borrowed another $50,000,000.

The man who wields this power, who can command $100,000,000 of other people's money

within sixty days, may be said to rule the Pennsylvania. Yet he does not rule alone. Behind him looms the shadow of the biggest stockholder, a man of many occupations, yet of none, a busy man, a shrewd, far-seeing man -Mr. H. Clay Frick, once of Pittsburg, now of New York. Mr. Frick is the Ethiopian in the Pennsylvania woodpile. In fact, he may be said to make a profession of haunting woodpiles. He is a wonderful personality, this little, trim, gray man, who came from the little poverty-ridden hut of the Pittsburg steel-worker to be one of the mightiest of the mighty beneath the shadow of Trinity spire.

Mr. Frick is not a director of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He has no authority, so far as the by-laws go. He merely suggests things to Mr. Cassatt, his friend of many years. He has been getting some attention to his suggestions for some years back. Indeed, he is a gentleman who gets considerable attention wherever he happens to be, whether he sit in the executive committee of the Steel Corporation, the Union Pacific, the Sante Fé, or merely in his own private office, talking to Philadelphia over his private telephone. He is credited with being the heaviest single owner of railroad stocks in the United States.

These two, Messrs. Cassatt and Frick, have been and are responsible for the Pennsylvania policy. It was they who brought it about that the Pennsylvania bought practical control of the roads which dominated the soft-coal traffic. It was they who lost the fight to George J. Gould at Pittsburg. It was they who projected and carried through the tremendous extension of the road to New York. policy of the road is theirs. They are the Pennsylvania Railroad. They are that strange, elusive people-"the Stockholders of the Pennsylvania Railroad."

The

Their policy has one very direct result upon the relationship between the Pennsylvania and the public. They have vastly improved the railroad as a highway of commerce. They have made possible the growth of the commerce of New York, Philadephia, and Pittsburg. They have done far more than any other railroad to make it possible to pour an ever-increasing flood of traffic through the gaps of the Alleghany Mountains. In so far, the Cassatt policy on the Pennsylvania has been a public policy, and has made the road a better, more efficient servant of the public.

Of course, many smaller matters can be