terrupt himself to guard his rear and flanks against attacks or to dash forward and give battle. But his frail, ill body, which had been kept together-as it were-by sheer force of will as long as the fight was raging, collapsed when the strain and tension was relaxed. In the early summer of 1909 he went abroad in search of health. A few months later he returned home to die. I have confined this sketch in the main to matters and considerations incidental to Mr. Harriman's business career. I have refrained, amongst other things, from touching on the important and somewhat stormy chapter of his political activities, as I have little firsthand knowledge regarding them, except in connection with certain episodes which are too reecnt and of too personal a nature to discuss at present. There is many another episode, many another manifestation of Mr. Harriman's character and spirit that I might and should like to relate but that I must pass over because of the limitations which discretion imposes. However, the picture would be essentially incomplete without making reference to his family life, which was a model of what an American home should be, and where he was ever surrounded by affection, gentleness, devoted care and sympathetic understanding. Nor should mention be omitted of his many acts of kindness and helpfulness, of his ever ready and generous support of charitable enterprises, altruistic efforts and public-spirited undertakings, and in particular of his active interest in the Boys' Club of the City of New York, of which admirable institution he was President for many years, and for the use of which he erected a fine building at the corner of Avenue A and Tenth Street. It was my privilege to be closely associated with Mr. Harriman, to be honored with his friendship and confidence, to see him almost daily during twelve years, to gain a close insight into the workings of his brain and soul. The better I got to know him, whom but very few knew and many misunderstood, the greater became my admiration for that remarkable man, the deeper my attachment. His career was the embodiment of unfettered individualism. For better or for worse-personally I believe for better unless we go too far and too fast-the people appear determined to put limits and restraints upon the exercise of economic power and overlordship, just as in former days they put limits and restraints upon the absolutism of rulers. Therefore, I believe there will be no successor to Mr. Harriman; there will be no other career like his. While I was writing this sketch a poem by Rudyard Kipling recently published came to my notice, which struck me as so appropriate, and so singularly descriptive of Mr. Harriman, and withal so fine in thought and language, that I beg leave to quote some of its lines as the closing note to these remarks: If you can keep your head when all about you If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, If you can wait and not be tired by waiting Or being lied about don't deal in lies, Or being hated don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise. If you can dream-and not make dreams your master; * If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew Except the will which says to them: "Hold on." 營 If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, STATISTICS OF AMERICAN RAILWAYS FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30 1910 PREPARED BY SLASON THOMPSON MANAGER OF THE BUREAU OF RAILWAY NEWS AND STATISTICS INTRODUCTORY THE PURPOSE OF RAILWAY STATISTICS. The year ending June 30, 1910, was one of increased operations, increased exactions, and increased distractions for the railways of the United States. The year ending December 31, 1910, was one of decreasing revenues, of increasing expenses and of multiplying vicissitudes, due to vexatious regulations and costly requirements. Regulation, which should be a staff to assist as well as guide, has been used almost wholly as a rod to chastise and a manacle to hobble. And in the midst of their other tribulations the railways have been called on to adapt their accounts to a new system of statistics. Into such confusion has the demand for innovations in accounting methods-superimposed on the preparation of elaborate and burdensome monthly and special reports thrown the returns of the railways that there exists no longer a continuous system of comparable railway statistics in the United States. In the multiplicity of relevant and irrelevant details the essential facts have been minimized and the purposes of publicity obscured. As much was admitted by the Interstate Commerce Commission when in its report for 1908 it said, "The changes in the income account submitted in the present report are so far-reaching in their results as to impair direct and close comparison with the corresponding statements contained in previous reports." Then fearing it had admitted too much it added, "The mean figures are, of course, comparable." "The development of railway statistics", says Prof. Henry C. Adams in his First Annual Report on the Statistics of Railways of the United States to the Interstate Commerce Commission for the year ending June 30, 1888, "is largely a matter of education, and demands, before all else, that an imperfect model should not receive the sanction of even a single publication." For twenty-one years, down to and including his twenty-second annual report, the purposes of publicity have been abused, and the case of the railways in the court of public opinion has been prejudiced, by Professor Adams following an imperfect model in the statement of the capitalization and income account of American railways. The full gravity of Professor Adams' departure from his own dictum is demonstrated and emphasized in the brief filed by Mr. Frank Lyon, attorney for the Interstate Commerce Commission, in the rate hearings recently concluded. In that brief, after presenting a table from the report just mentioned, purporting to give the amount and per cent of capital stock upon which dividends were paid and the amount and rate per cent of dividends paid for the years ending June 30, 1909, to 1888, Mr. Lyon says: "Thus it appears that in 1888, 38.56 per cent of the stock of railroads paid dividends averaging 5.38 per cent, making a total of $80,238,065, while in 1909 dividends were paid on 64.01 per cent and the rate was increased to 6.53 per cent. Total dividends for 1909 amounted to $321,070,626, an increase of 300 per cent over 1888. The year previous the dividends were $390,695,351, and judging from figures compiled in this investigation the dividend payments for 1910 have been the largest in the history of railroading." If the attorney for the Commission itself falls a victim to a system of statistics that more than doubles the dividends actually paid out of revenues derived from railroad operations, what chance has the general public to escape the effect of their reiterated publicity* Owing to the incompleteness of the first annual report, it is not practical to uncover the Ethiopian in Mr. Lyon's statement of the dividend situation in 1888. But the official figures are happily available for 1889 and for 1909, and from these has been prepared the following comparative summary of the income account of the railways of the United States, which disposes of absolutely every red copper derived by them from transportation: *NOTE: Since this was written the Commission has rendered its decision on the rate case and Commissioner Lane in his opinion incorporates and adopts the misleading table submitted by Mr. Lyon and adds to it the statement that the "amount paid in dividends" in 1910 was $405,131,650, making an "average rate on dividend paying stock" of 7.47 per cent. The exposure of the fallacy underlying Mr. Lyon's statement is applicable to Commissioner Lane's addition to it, as appears in the body of this report where the transportation revenues for 1910 are discussed. Of the $405,131,650 dividends reported paid in 1910 at least $200,000,000 were declared out of dividends and interest received by the railways. The decision forbidding an increase in rates was predicated mainly on the mistaken assumption that these dividends came from transportation revenues. |