Harriman’s approach produced his signal contribution to the modernization of the American railroad industry: his acquisition and rehabilitation of the Union Pacific—the one major trunk line that Morgan had so carelessly shunned.
The name of Edward Harriman carries less weight for Americans today than Morgan’s. The main reason is that Morgan, through the partners he trained and the financial foundations he built for his firm, created a dynastic institution that has maintained its global influence over business and finance without a break from his time to ours. Harriman’s legacy is harder to detect. His Wall Street firm was not a partnership as Morgan’s was, but an expression solely of his vision, determination, and skill. His name lives on today in the nameplate of Brown Brothers Harriman, one of the nation’s largest private banks, but that firm is the product of a merger between the Brown Brothers merchant bank and W. A. Harriman & Co., which was founded in 1922 by Averell Harriman, Edward’s son, with the fortune he was left by his father.
But Harriman’s legacy is deeply embedded in the Union Pacific, the great line that remains part of the steel spine of America’s railroad network to this day. In the words of Maury Klein, the official historian of the Union Pacific, it was Edward Harriman who bequeathed the railroad “the leadership and the principles to ensure continuity through rapidly changing times.”
In a way, while rivals, Morgan and Harriman ultimately were complementary competitors—opponents who, together, remade America in their image and brought it into the modern era.
Acknowledgments
As a chronicle of bygone times, this book is necessarily the product of much solitary research amid dusty tomes and files dispersed coast to coast. But I could not have finished this work or brought the story to life without the indispensable assistance of many others.
I owe gratitude to the staff of the Morgan Library and Museum, which provided me with the time and assistance to mine its records for crucial primary documents, not least the handwritten journals kept by Frances Louisa (“Fanny”) Morgan during her family’s trip across the United States by rail in the summer of 1869, at the very dawn of the era of transcontinental rail travel.
Sabina Beauchard of the Massachusetts Historical Society helped unearth crucial pages from the personal memorabilia of Charles Francis Adams Jr. in which he describes firsthand the meetings in 1888 and 1889 at which Pierpont Morgan attempted to fashion a “community of interest” out of a herd of obstreperous railroad presidents. Greg LeRoy provided invaluable insights into the business of George Pullman and the Pullman Strike of 1894. Archivists at the Chicago History Museum, the Pullman State Historic Site, the Smithsonian Institution, the Wyoming State Archives, and the New York Public Library helped to turn up pertinent images to illustrate this story.
I offer particular thanks to the staff of the Langson Library of the University of California, Irvine, which—as has been the case with several of my previous books—functioned as my bibliographic home away from home during the research stage of Iron Empires.
Every book presents its own unique combination of problems to solve. In this case, I was fortunate to have the help of Alexander Littlefield of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, whose grasp of the themes and advice on shaping the myriad narratives of this book made him a full partner in its creation. My agent, Sandra Dijkstra, as always, brought to this project the enthusiasm, advocacy, and confidence on which I long ago came to rely, along with the assistance of her very able staff.
Finally, but most importantly, this book could not have been researched and written without the love, forbearance, and support of my wife, Deborah, or the inspiration of my sons, Andrew and David.
Notes
Introduction: Agents of Transformation
* * *
page
* * *
“the power of healing”: James B. Hedges, “The Colonization Work of the Northern Pacific Railroad,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 13, no. 3 (Dec. 1926), 315.
“prosperity, freedom”: Oberholtzer, vol. 2, 128.
“a $50 lot”: Josephson, The Robber Barons, 98.
“shed but a dying”: Quotes from Stevenson regarding his journey are from Across the Plains, 3–77.
“Here,” he wrote: Charles Francis Adams and Henry Adams, Chapters of Erie, 335.
from fewer than: See Department of the Interior, Census Office, Report on Transportation Business in the United States at the Eleventh Census, 1890, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1894–95).
America’s largest industrial: Chandler, The Railroads, 97.
“The railway kings”: Bryce, vol. 2, 1314.
“before a spadeful”: See Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now, chap. 9.
“ Your roads”: Strouse, 196. The emphases appear to be Strouse’s.
“The question might”: Larrabee, 205.
“They are but . . . upon us”: Thoreau, 19, 33.
“excessive freight . . . extortionate charges”: Chandler, The Railroads, 188–90.
“A great change”: Henry George, “What the Railroad Will Bring Us,” Overland Monthly, October 1868, 297–306.
The historian Frederick Jackson Turner: See Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 41st Annual Meeting, Dec. 14, 1893 (Madison, WI: Democrat Printing, 1894), 10.
“domestic values”: Richter, 32.
“thirty-three women”: Dall, 19.
“but two or three”: Quoted in Richter, 45.
“a squealing pig”: New York Times, Mar. 30, 1882.
“He tried to”: Wells, 18–19.
“A Darky Damsel”: Ibid., 19.
“alike in every respect”: Ibid., 19–20.
“a rustic”: Croffut, 2.
“I see over”: Whitman, Complete Poems, 430.
* * *
1. Uncle Daniel and the Commodore
* * *
“dreadfully mangled”: See Massachusetts Historical Society, Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection, vol. 39, 178–79, http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/php/diaries (accessed July 16, 2017). The description of Vanderbilt’s injuries is taken from the testimony of his personal physician, Jared Linsly, at the surrogate court’s proceeding after Vanderbilt’s death, reported in the New York Sun, Nov. 14, 1877. Croffut incorrectly dates the accident as October 1833.
Now he was lying: Stiles, 90.
“I’m a steamboat man”: Croffut, 71.
“a mere plaything”: Ibid., 28.
“when I stepped”: Ibid., 18.
The conflict between: See Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 US 1 (1824).
“No one who has not”: Rev. J. McClintock, “Daniel Drew, Esq., of New York,” Ladies’ Repository, Sept. 1859.
ruthless mutual fare-cutting: Browder, 36.
“About the only”: Croffut, 95.
“You have no business”: McClintock, “Daniel Drew, Esq.” See also Browder, 36.
“relax in each other’s”: Browder, 66.
“shrewd, unscrupulous”: Charles Francis Adams and Henry Adams, Chapters of Erie, 5.
“a believer in the doctrine”: James Medbery, “The Great Erie Imbroglio,” Atlantic Monthly, July 1868.
“a country deacon”: Clews, Twenty-Eight Years, 156.
“dull and commonplace”: Croffut, 39.
“was not blessed”: Ibid., 20.
“a wharf rat”: Sobel, Panic, 124.
“to the great terror”: Ibid., 45.
“You have undertaken”: Croffut, 49.
By the time Vanderbilt: Ibid., 43.
“wealth and obvious soullessness”: “Commodore Vanderbilt,” Harper’s Weekly, March 5, 1859.
A proposal by: Moody, The Railroad Builders, 4.
“There was a road”: Ibid., 10.
America of that era: Gordon, 35.
the crop accounted: Sven Beckert, “Slavery and Capitalism,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 12, 2014.
“in fact America’s”: Ibid
.
having only about 9,800: Douglas, 96.
made the South: Ibid.
“Railroads are the greatest”: Cincinnati Commercial, Feb. 4, 1854, cited in Johnson, 127.
“I considered”: Douglass, 385.
according to a famous map: See Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright, Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States(1932), Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond, http://dsl.richmond.edu/historicalatlas/ (accessed May 28, 2017).
The outbound and return: For Whitney’s China trip, see Bain, 6ff.
“Time & space”: Diary of Asa Whitney, quoted in Thomas, 1.
“Memorial”: H.R. Doc. No. 72, 28th Cong., 2nd Sess. (1845).
“silly and chimerical”: Robert S. Cotterill, “Early Agitation for a Pacific Railroad 1845–1850,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 5, no. 4 (March 1919), 398.
Whitney withdrew: Bain, 46.
“We have drawn”: Ibid, 115.
“1, buy your railroad”: Croffut, 75.
“People who had never”: Taylor, 75.
“The stock was the favorite”: Fowler, 204.
“The Commodore did not”: Croffut, 71.
“Something was in the wind”: Ibid., 207.
Vanderbilt let the: Stiles, 377.
“When any one desired”: Ibid., 208.
Among those: Ibid., 393. Stiles casts doubt on the assertion, which evidently originated with Henry Clews, that Drew betrayed Vanderbilt in the Harlem corner. The confusion may arise from the fact that there were two Harlem corners managed by Vanderbilt, which followed closely upon one another; Stiles accepts that Drew sold Harlem shares against Vanderbilt’s interests in the second corner.
Put simply: For an explanation of Drew’s call strategy and its outcome, see Fowler, 350–56.
“These contracts”: Ibid., 356.
“No more through”: Croffut, 82.
“I was at home”: Ibid., 83.
* * *
2. Chapters of Erie
* * *
The founders also opted: Mott, 48.
“jerkwater affair”: Holbrook, 55.
“I tell Billy”: Croffut, 81.
By November 1867: Ibid., 84.
“between the ocean”: The line is the title of Mott’s chronicle.
“The great Vanderbilt”: Mott, 56.
had been “milked dry”: Nation, June 5, 1866.
“The road was acting”: Croffut, 88.
“one-stringed Chinese lyre”: Fowler, 439.
“at once a good friend”: Charles Francis Adams, chap. 5.
“conducting his roads”: “Erie Campaigns in 1868,” Fraser’s Magazine, May 1869, 571–72.
“more fiction than fact”: Browder, 144.
“small, cadaverous”: Harper’s Monthly, April 1870.
“a large burly”: Ibid.
in “fancy suits”: Swanberg, 2.
“beggary staring him”: Croffut, 89.
“all enjoining or commanding”: Charles Francis Adams, “The Erie Railroad Row,” American Law Review 3, no. 1 (October 1868), 51.
“impossible to keep”: Ibid., 52.
“If this printing press”: Croffut, 91.
“a police officer”: Browder, 164.
Drew: I’m sick: Swanberg, 58.
On one occasion: Browder, 184.
one Sunday: It was March 29, according to ibid., 185.
“Vanderbilt tole me”: Croffut, 95.
“The full and true history”: Charles Francis Adams and Henry Adams, Chapters of Erie, 52. Charles Francis Adams identifies Gould’s Albany hotel as the “Develin,” but this is almost certainly wrong. The premier hotel in the city at this time was the Delavan House, and there is no record of a “Develin.”
“to control elections”: New York State Assembly, Select Committee to Investigate Erie Railway Company, Report of the Select Committee to Investigate Alleged Mismanagement on the Part of the Erie Railway Co., May 16, 1873, p. xix.
“I have no details”: Ibid., 556.
“Gould wanted to wait”: Croffut, 96.
“You should be”: Clews, Twenty-Eight Years, 145.
“an empty shell”: Grodinsky, Jay Gould, 100.
“The iron rails have broken”: Memos quoted in Mott, 156ff.
“never have anything more”: Croffut, 97.
“His face, sir”: New York Sun, Nov. 27, 1872.
“With his deep-set”: Ibid., Nov. 28, 1872.
“It is sun”: Richardson, Garnered Sheaves, 288.
* * *
3. Pierpont Morgan’s Grand Tour
* * *
the escapade: Chernow, 20–21, and Sinclair, 16–17.
“from farmers, merchants”: Chandler, The Visible Hand, 90.
By 1865: See Strouse, 131.
helping to manage: Ibid., 135.
“Such comfortable rooms”: These and other quotations from Fanny Morgan’s journals are drawn directly from the journal books held in the collection of the Morgan Library in New York.
“into the hot sun”: Humason, 40.
“It was necessary”: Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, “A Few Hints on the California Journey,” Scribner’s Monthly, May 1873.
by some reckonings: Mormon scholarship differs on how to define “wife”; some of Young’s marital relationships were designated “for eternity,” others only for life, and not all Young’s marriages involved conjugal relations or even cohabitation. The figure used here treats all such “sealings” as marriages.
“two rusty streaks”: The phrase was coined by Charles Francis Adams to describe what would be left of the Union Pacific if speculators and looters had their way with the road. See Trottman, n. 274.
“a difficult and sequestered”: Charles Francis Adams and Henry Adams, Chapters of Erie, 138–39.
“carrying things”: Strouse, 136.
“losing their power”: Ibid.
“entirely and absolutely”: Satterlee, 138.
“where he was not averse”: Josephson , The Robber Barons, 153. See also Charles Francis Adams and Henry Adams, Chapters of Erie, 153.
“A more unwieldy”: Charles Francis Adams and Henry Adams, Chapters of Erie, 163.
“heartily sick of running”: New York Times, Sept. 8, 1869.
“knocked off his feet”: Satterlee, 142.
family legend: See Chernow, 31. Chernow attributes the yarn to Herbert Satterlee, Morgan’s son-in-law, but Satterlee’s published version of the confrontation merely places Pierpont at the head of the stairs with Ramsey, and states only that “something happened very quickly.” (Satterlee, 142.)
“arrayed in his”: New York Times, Sept. 8, 1869.
“a ruthless destroyer”: Satterlee, 133.
* * *
4. The King of Frauds
* * *
THE KING OF FRAUDS: New York Sun, Sept. 4, 1872. Capitalization as in original.
“A new piece”: C. F. Adams Jr., “Railroad Inflation,” North American Review 108, no. 222 (January 1869), 147.
“Did this road”: United States Congress, House, Select Committee on Credit Mobilier and Union Pacific Railroad, and Jeremiah M. Wilson, Report of the Select Committee of the House of Representatives, Appointed Under the Resolution of January 6, to Make Inquiry in Relation to the Affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad, the Credit Mobilier of America, and Other Matters Specified in Said Resolution and in Other Resolutions Referred to Said Committee (Washington, DC: GPO, 1873), 167. (Hereafter, Wilson Report.)
“Mr. Blaine”: New York Sun, Sept. 10, 1872.
“the most malignant”: New York Times, Sept. 16, 1872.
“the most dramatic”: Ibid., Feb. 2, 1885.
on February 18: All quotations come from United States Congress, House, Select Committee on Alleged Credit Mobilier Bribery, Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the Alleged Credit Mobilier Bribery, Made to the House of Representatives, February 18, 1873 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1873). (Hereafter, Poland Report.)
“There is n
o”: Poland Report, 46.
“Those of us”: Ibid., 16.
“not subject to”: Ibid., viii.
“forbidden by the letter”: Ibid., xiii.
“contempt and disgrace”: Ibid., xiv.
“when it was worth”: Ibid., xviii.
“manifest injustice”: New York Sun, Feb. 22, 1873.
“shed tears”: Ibid., Feb. 26, 1873.
“It’s like the man”: Bain, 700.
“(Stifled, O days!”: Whitman, Complete Poems, 604.
“become an established”: Trottman, 78.
“This country is”: Poland Report, x.
“Instead of gaining”: Daggett, 224.
“The ‘Credit Mobilier’”: Union Pacific Railroad Company, Report of the Government Directors of the Union Pacific Railroad Company for the Year 1874.
On the day: Trottman, 54.
If not for: Wilson Report, 396.
“is now helpless”: Ibid., xxii.
* * *
5. The Northern Pacific Panic
* * *
“numerous, powerful, and entirely savage”: “Memorial of Asa Whitney: praying a grant of public land to enable him to construct a railroad from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean; Feb. 24, 1846,” S. Doc. No. 161, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., 1846, p. 8.
“People’s Pacific Railway”: See Smalley, 97ff.
having failed miserably: Smalley, 129.
Eleutheros Cooke: Oberholtzer, vol. 1, 7.
“Old Ogontz”: Cooke memoirs, cited in ibid., 10.
“with an absolutely”: Ibid., 89.
“Most of the members”: Congressional Globe, Dec. 10, 1860, 42.
“It is regarded”: Oberholtzer, vol. 1, 111.
“filled full”: Ibid., 233.
Iron Empires Page 41