Morse's genius for seeing a profit led the firm to branch out into other fields. Pine lands were purchased in the South and the cut of other firms was bought outright. The firm— which then included Charles W. Morse, B. W. Morse, his father, and H. F. Morse, his cousinsupplied lumber to the Bath shipyards and to some customers in New York and Boston. They sold ice at wholesale in Philadelphia and cities further South, as well as in New York, and most of it they carried in their own vessels. In 1880 the firm of Morse and Company was established in New York and five years later C. W. Morse left Maine and settled there. At first, he confined his operations to managing his fleet of vessels, doing a general ship brokerage business, and carrying on wholesale operations in ice and lumber.

But this did not last. It is said in Bath that Morse has always had his eye on the main chance, and by the main chance they mean money. A shortage in the ice crop put some of the retail ice companies into his power. He accepted the opportunity and the public got its first taste of his genius for combination. In 1897, he formed the Consolidated Ice Company.

Before this, however, he had become a man of importance in the ice business in New York, and had formed some financial connections. By 1898, he was a director of the Bank of the State of New York, of the Sprague National Bank of Brooklyn, vice-president and director of the Garfield National Bank, and the president and a director of the Consolidated Ice Company. His connection with banks and trust companies was one of the most important steps in his career. It meant credit to him, the power to finance purchases and consolidations. Yet, until 1900, Mr. Morse had never attracted public attention. He was simply one of many of New York's successful men.

The ice supply of New York came from the Hudson River and from the Kennebec and Penobscot Rivers in Maine, and the greater proportion of the supply was controlled by the Consolidated Ice Company and the Knickerbocker Ice Company. The former did almost all the wholesale and retail business in New York and the latter operated in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. On March 11, 1899, Mr. Morse incorporated the American Ice Company under the laws of the state of New Jersey. The stock of the two old companies amounted to $20,000,000, although their prop

The Ameri

erty was not worth that amount. can Ice Company exchanged its stock, share for share, for the stock of the two companies and then issued $15,000,000 more stock. The $35,000,000 was regularly listed upon the New York Stock Exchange. The wisdom of his connection with the banks and trust companies now becomes apparent. To finance such a scheme, he needed their help. He smoothed his way in another direction also. He was a good friend to Tammany; Mayor Van Wyck and his brother and John F. Carroll were all shareholders in the ice company. Pleasant relations with the powers that be is a most valuable asset to an ice company, because of its need of pier facilities. A very nice regard even for appearances would have prevented a mayor of the city from being interested in the Morse company, particularly since it was a monopoly. Yet Van Wyck and other Tammany politicians were in it. The consolidation earned for Morse the title of "the Ice King," and almost immediately the people tried to throw off his yoke. In the summer of 1900, the American Ice Company raised the price of ice in New York from thirty cents to sixty cents a hundred pounds, which caused untold suffering among the poor. The company became known as the Ice Trust and "Ice Van Wyck” was used as a term of reproach. The papers began a crusade against the company. AttorneyGeneral John C. Davies, at the instigation of Mr. Hearst, began an examination of the company in New York. The World started a similar procedure in Brooklyn. Neither the criminal nor the civil cases against the company ever amounted to anything, but the facts brought out in the examination aroused such popular resentment that the company dropped the price again. Its stock declined rapidly in value and finally the company had to be reorganized. Mr. Morse, however, is credited with having made $12,000,000 out of the whole transaction. Blood money of the poor, Mr. Morse's enemies called it. That is hardly a fair characterization, yet there is little to be said in favor of the giant combination, either from the point of view of the investor or of the

consumer.

What money Mr. Morse actually made is not of so much importance.

A list of the companies in which he was interested in 1902 shows what part the formation of the American Ice Company had in his career:

Mr. Morse already had money beyond the point where money can mean anything but power, and, aside from his own private fortune, he had the strength of the institutions which he controlled. He had worked the ice business about as far as he could and had to change.

The condition of the coastwise steamship lines gave him just the opportunity he wanted. These lines had, in many cases, little more than a nominal capitalization and their control was centred in the hands of a few people. And Mr. Morse already owned a fleet of sixty or seventy sailing vessels and he knew something of the condition of the coastwise traffic. His His first acquisition was the Eastern Steamship Co., the consolidation of four companies that for sixty or eighty years had been running between Boston, the Maine ports, and St. John, N. B. His second purchase was the Hudson Navigation Co., with lines from New York to Albany and Troy. His purchases had not attracted much attention up to 1905, when he began the operations which earned for him the title of the "Steamship King."

His methods of acquiring the different lines has not varied materially. He makes an offer to the owners, who are usually few in number, for most of these companies were family affairs and had little outstanding indebtedness. If they accept, he reorganizes the company as soon as he assumes control. Bonds are issued up to about the value of the physical property of the company or equivalent to the insurance which is carried. These bonds, or the money

from their sale, is used to purchase the line. Besides the bonds, the reorganized company issues stock to two or three times the amount of the bonds. Part of this must be held to keep control of the company. The rest is sold and the proceeds may be devoted to paying the purchase price of the line, if the bonds did not cover it. What is left is presumably profit. His banks enable him to have the ready money or credit to put these deals through. He told a broker not long ago, with some show of pride, that he had never been connected with a bad bond issue; "but," the broker continued, "a man takes chances on Morse stocks, for he is liberal in his capitalizations."

Under this method he acquired the Metropolitan Line, which runs from New York to Boston around Cape Cod. Then came the old Clyde Line, with its fleet of twenty-two ships touching at almost all the Atlantic ports from Boston to Jacksonville, and at West Indian ports as well. That was merely a step in his career. The Mallory Line, which has been bringing cotton from Galveston to the New England mills since 1866, was the next link in his chain. Thirty-five million dollars' worth of stocks and bonds were issued against these two lines. But Mr. Morse was not done. His next purchases came so quickly on each other's heels that even Wall Street, where office boys discuss millions with equanimity, was excited.

He offered the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad $20,000,000, for their Long Island Sound Lines. On the 9th of February, 1907, the railroad refused the offer. Three days later, Mr. Henry P. Booth, president of the New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Line, admitted that Morse had bought control of his company. A week later it was known that he had the New York and Porto Rico Line. Then Mr. Morse organized a $60,000,000 corporation in Maine named the Consolidated Steamship Lines Co., as a holding company for his other lines. He then sailed away to Cuba.

For a week his purchases had averaged $2,000,000 a day and he had made one offer of $20,000,000 which had been refused. In about five years' time, this one man has gotten the possession of the principal steamship lines on the Atlantic coast between New Brunswick and the Gulf of Mexico, except those belonging to the railroads. And his method of getting them has been such that, without doubt, he has more money now than he did when he began

to buy the lines, and he has control of them besides. He is the same kind of a steamship man that Mr. Harriman is a railroad man. They both went at the transportation business from the Wall Street end. In all his operations, he has been for himself. Mr. Charles M.

Schwab is one of his directors; Mr. John W. Gates is another. Tammany was with him. But he is agent for no clique or interest. In all the deals that he has been in, C. W. Morse has been the boss.

The consolidation of the lines he has acquired

will save something in piers, reshipments, ticket offices, and clerical forces. One of his boats, the Governor Cobb of the Eastern S. S. Co., was the first turbine in American waters. When the new ships Harvard and Yale, of the Metropolitan Line, are finished in June, there will be a much needed competition against the New Haven Road's monopoly between New York and Boston. But Mr. Morse has not had a creative career. His genius has been in seeing opportunities for profit in buying, selling, and consolidation, and he has proved himself an adept at reorganization. Besides his steamship and banking interests he is a director in a gas company, in a publishing company, in a

real estate company, in a telephone company, and in a wall-paper concern.

The steamship king is a rather small man, with a tendency to be stout; he is the typical successful business man of New York who shows the lack of exercise.

He is loyal to his friends, he loves his native town, and he loves to make money. To Bath he has given a $60,000 high school. He has some of his ships built there, which helps the town, and he also incorporates many of his companies there so that Bath may get the taxes. He is only fifty-one years old. He still has his eye on the main chance and he has greater power than ever before.

O'

F THE rapidly disappearing buildings of antiquity left as heirlooms of the historic past, none can lay claim to greater distinction than the many ancient farmhouses with which Old England abounds. The reason is not far to seek; for, in many instances, their history dates backward to the Conquest and so little altered is the general aspect of many of these old homesteads that, even were it possible for their founders to "revisit the glimpses of the moon," they would find but little change in the actual buildings, so well preserved are they both within and without.

Following the dissolution of the English monasteries and their reversion to the Crown, a large percentage of these ancient institutions, together with their extensive parks and pastures, were granted to men that had not only rendered signal service to the State, but whose tastes inclined toward agricultural pursuits. And, in cases where the recipient's financial standing warranted additional royal favor, a further grant was frequently made, either in kine or coin, to enable them to uphold adequately the dignity of their newly acquired position. From this source is to be traced the true history and fortunes of many old English county families.

The village of Sulgrave is situated on the borders of the county of Northamptonshire and but a short distance from Helmdon station, on the Great Central Railroad. The Washington farm stands at the eastern end of the village, about five minutes' walk from the ancient church. church. Its history dates from A. D. 1090, when it was bequeathed by Earl Simon de St. Liz, the rebuilder of Northampton and founder of its ancient castle, to the Priory of St. Andrew, by whom it was held until its surrender to the Crown upon the suppression of the monasteries. After a prolonged and stubborn resistance, it was one of the last communities to surrender to the forces which Thomas Cromwell, Henry the Eighth's principal minister, brought to bear against them.

It was specially granted by Henry VIII, in 1539, to Laurence Washington for his services to the county and the State. This Laurence Washington was the great-great-great-greatgreat grandfather of the immortal George Washington. It remained in the family until 1610, when it was sold through stress of circumstances by his son and heir, Robert Washington, to Laurence Makepiece.

Laurence Washington, a lawyer by profession, removed from his home in Wharton, Lancashire, early in the sixteenth century, to

Northampton, where he rapidly rose in public favor and speedily gained for himself an enviable reputation. In 1533, he was elected chief magistrate of the county and fifteen. years later we find him again occupying the mayoral chair. He resided at the Manor Farm with his family, consisting of four sons and seven daughters, until February 19, 1584, upon which day he died and was buried in St. James' Church, Sulgrave, in the same vault with his wife, Amee, who had died some twenty years earlier.

During the early years of his tenancy of the Sulgrave mansion, the farming portion of the estate, which consisted chiefly of extensive pasture-lands, was managed by a salaried overseer who gained considerable fame for both himself and his employer as a successful wool-grower and breeder of prize cattle. But when, some twenty years prior to his death, Laurence Washington retired from active public life, he personally underundertook the entire supervision of the estate and with such success that he was soon compelled to extend the area of his operations. He then purchased an adjoining farm,

mortgagee foreclosed and the estate passed into other hands.

THE WASHINGTON FARM AS IT IS TO-DAY

The present owner of the farm, which now comprises about 210 acres, is Mr. Reginald Pack, and the occupant is Mr. Frank Cave, who has resided there for the last six years.

The dwelling is still in a good state of preservation and is externally rich in armorial bearings and lavishly embellished within with fine old oaken carvings and panels. On the south side of the building, just above the ancient doorway, the Washington shield, bearing