Iron Empires
Page 43
It was not a relaxing: See Corey, 152–53, for an account of the meeting on board.
“Mr. Roberts was not”: Satterlee, 224.
“That is not”: Ibid., 226.
an intricate sequence: Strouse, 249.
“solely on the spoken”: Ibid., 236.
“made it easy”: Ibid., 241.
“join in any”: New York Tribune, Dec. 16, 1888.
“the representatives of capital”: Hovey, 139.
“dreadfully sick”: Journal of Charles Francis Adams Jr., Dec. 23, 1888, collection of Massachusetts Historical Society. Satterlee places this meeting on December 21, but according to Adams it was a two-day meeting that began on Thursday, December 20.
“to cause the”: Hovey, 139–40.
“I object”: Ibid., 140.
“the old story”: Adams journal, December 23, 1888.
“but in so”: Ibid.
signed by twenty-two: Kolko, 59.
“When the party”: Commercial and Financial Chronicle, Jan. 12, 1889.
“barely enough time”: Kolko, 61.
“Think of it”: New York Tribune, Dec. 17, 1890.
“I have the utmost”: Ibid.
The “cordage trust”: Dewing, 23ff.
“Cordage has collapsed”: Commercial and Financial Chronicle, May 6, 1892.
In the panic year: Sobel, Panic, 258.
“Myself!”: Edwin Lefèvre, “Harriman,” American Magazine, June 1907.
“the court should”: Kennan, vol. 1, 101.
“Harriman always wanted”: Satterlee, 272.
* * *
11. Savior of the Union Pacific
* * *
“I was receiving”: Josephson, The Robber Barons, 311.
“a revival of the old”: Quoted in Commercial and Financial Chronicle, Nov. 15, 1890.
“Under his direction”: New York Times, Nov. 12, 1890.
“There is nothing strange”: New York World, Nov. 27, 1890.
“ejected by Jay Gould”: Charles Francis Adams, 198.
Adams had also spent: Kennan, vol. 1, 115.
But then opportunity: Trottman, n. 238.
Gould was flush: Grodinsky, Jay Gould, 577.
“had a talk”: New York Times, Sept. 27, 1891.
“After his death”: Grodinsky, Jay Gould, 593.
between November 1, 1895: Daggett, 239.
“Not . . . nearly as bad”: Commercial and Financial Chronicle, April 28, 1894.
“All, unfortunately, have had”: Davis, 230.
“a position which”: Schiff to R. L. Strauss, June 12, 1865, in Adler, Jacob H. Schiff: His Life and Letters, vol. 1, 4–5.
“He was a”: Adler, Life and Letters, vol. 2, 340.
“That’s Morgan’s affair”: Kennan, vol. 1, 119.
“He was so disgusted”: Ibid., 120.
“would have to paint”: Klein, The Life and Legend of E. H. Harriman, 110.
“It’s that little fellow”: Kennan, vol. 1, 123. The description of the subsequent encounter between Schiff and Harriman is based on ibid., 124ff.
“If you prove”: Ibid., 126.
“Mr. Harriman was a newcomer”: Kahn, 26.
“Ned Harriman!”: Ibid., 14.
“the greatest reservoir”: Burr, 121.
“a very prominent”: Ibid., 124.
* * *
12. The Reconstruction
* * *
“if he didn’t think”: Dodge, 75.
Shortly after taking office: Klein, The Life and Legend of E. H. Harriman, 110.
“the physical condition”: Kennan, vol. 1, 140.
“even by reputation”: W. H. Bancroft, “Impression of E. H. Harriman,” unpublished manuscript reproduced in part in Kennan, vol. 1, 141–42.
“It’s the size”: Kennan, vol. 1, 278.
“The depots were”: Park testimony, United States of America v. the Union Pacific Railroad Co., et al.(Washington, DC: GPO, 1909–10), vol. 9, 4280ff.
“All its feeders”: Ripley, 501.
“Never before has there been”: Commercial and Financial Chronicle, Sept. 16, 1893.
“If it was called”: Kennan, vol. 1, 145.
“the great tracts”: Ibid., 146.
“pretty wild talk”: Kahn, 32.
“he clearly discovered”: Ibid., 29.
“the chisel and the straightedge”: Quoted in Kennan, vol. 1, 156.
“We heard”: Quoted in ibid., 163.
“The mention of goats”: United States of America v. the Union Pacific Railroad Co., et al., vol. 9, 4284–85.
“The contractors uncovered”: Spearman, 65.
“ejecting men”: Kennan, vol. 1, 158.
the tunnel completed: Railroad Gazette, Dec. 6, 1901.
record time: See Kennan, vol. 1, 167.
“East or West”: Ibid., 166–67.
“had long been a Mecca”: William Park, “Recollections of E.H. Harriman in Connection with the Union Pacific,” unpublished manuscript reproduced in part in Kennan, vol. 1, 171ff.
They would be immortalized: The film is best regarded as a pastiche of fact and fantasy. It is true that the Union Pacific suffered from a surfeit of robberies and that Harriman established a private constabulary. The ultimate fate of the two outlaws, as the film implies, was never fully established, and sightings of one or the other were reported throughout North and South America for years.
“The expense was”: Park quoted in Kennan, vol. 1, 173–74.
“on all of the American”: United States of America v. the Union Pacific Railroad Co., et al., vol. 2, 781.
During Harriman’s first: Kennan, vol. 1, 160.
“Fortune favored”: Ripley, 502.
“the most discussed”: E. G.Campbell, 233.
“archaic, extravagant”: US House, Report of the Committee to Investigate the Concentration of Control of Money and Credit, Feb. 23, 1913, 148. (Hereafter, Pujo Report.) The Pujo Committee was a precursor to the better-known Pecora Investigation of Wall Street, launched by the US Senate during the Great Depression; by then the Morgan in the hot seat was J. Pierpont “Jack” Morgan Jr.
“They say it is the most”: Railway World, Mar. 21, 1896, quoted in E. G. Campbell, 321.
Morgan’s typical fee: E. G. Campbell, 323.
“it is in the railroad”: Moody, The Truth About Trusts, 492.
It was no longer possible: See E. G. Campbell, 327–28.
“Five years ago”: Charles A. Prouty, “National Regulation of Railways,” American Economic Association, Dec. 26–29, 1902, in ibid., 334.
* * *
13. “A Pig-Headed Affair”
* * *
“all-pervading air”: Richard T.Ely, “Pullman: A Social Study,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, February 1885, 457.
“a pampered millionaire”: Cobb, 125.
“Last summer”: Carwardine, 77–78.
“The Social Palace”: “The Social Palace at Guise,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, April 1872.
“The Pullman car”: Carwardine, 15.
“As seen from the railway”: Ibid., 16.
make do on as little: United States Strike Commission, Report on the Chicago Strike of June–July, 1894 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1895), xxxiv. (Hereafter, Strike Report.)
twelve thousand: Carwardine, 23.
library enrolled only: Strike Report, xxi.
“from which all”: Carwardine, 19.
“No private individual”: Ely, 460.
“the corporation trims”: Peter Quinion of the Pittsburgh Times, quoted in Carwardine, 24.
The company employed: Strike Report, xxii.
“This is a corporation”: Carwardine, 24–25.
“each new superior”: Ely, 463–64.
The job of porter: Kelly, 99–100.
“a manifestly inadequate”: Strike Report, 580.
“a most unfortunate thing”: Ibid., 579.
“because they only got”: Ibid., 426.
From July 1893: Ibid., xx
i.
“There may have lived”: Darrow, 68.
“we concluded that”: Strike Report, 129.
“The great trouble”: Quoted in Eggert, 214.
“Today there is”: The article was entered into the record of the strike commission by Debs; Strike Report, 132.
“all grades”: Strike Report, xxxviii.
On June 15: Kelly, 102. Kelly and others, including the US Strike Commission, report Curtiss’s last name as “Curtis,” but Carwardine, who reprinted her letter in his published account of the strike, has it as “Curtiss.”
Cleveland himself: For the railroad connections of the Cleveland cabinet, see Eggert, 137–38.
“legal time bomb”: Eggert, 151.
On June 27: Ginger, 122.
The Chicago Tribune: Ibid., 126.
“aid in the repression”: Milchrist to Olney, June 30, 1894. The source of this and all other communications among Olney, Milchrist, Walker, and Arnold referred to in this section is the appendix to the Annual Report of the Attorney-General of the United States for the Year 1896 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1896), 55–102.
“Probably every man”: Strike Report, 228.
“The trouble at Chicago”: Speech at Cooper Union, New York City, Oct. 27, 1896, in Altgeld, 656.
“I realized my anomalous”: Darrow, 58.
“I did not regard”: Ibid., 61.
“If there are still”: Ibid., 47.
unanimous Supreme Court: The decision is In re Debs, 158 US 564 (1895).
“The A.R.U. was destroyed”: Darrow, 48.
“the strike never”: Chandler, The Railroads, 131.
only his arrest: Debs’s testimony is in Strike Report, 143. Debs recalled that his arrest took place on July 7, but that is contradicted by other evidence, including a communication from Arnold to Olney on July 10 stating that the arrest had taken place that day. A communication from Walker to Olney on July 9 indicates plainly that the indictments allowing for the arrest had not yet been handed up.
He recounted: Kelly, 221–22.
“We have been brought”: Eggert, 172.
Wages fell: For an outline of the decline of labor power in the years after Pullman, see Dubofsky and Dulles, 169.
“It would be impossible”: Ibid., 567.
* * *
14. The Empire Builder
* * *
“unassuming, matter-of-fact”: Merriam’s unpublished “Reflections and Impressions of E. H. Harriman” is reproduced in Kennan, vol. 1, 186ff.
“had a grand time”: Satterlee, 332.
“had not added”: Statement by J. H. McClement, cited in Kennan, “The Chicago & Alton Case: A Misunderstood Transaction,” North American Review 203, no. 722 (January 1916), 36.
“you and Mr. Harriman”: Schiff to Hill, Sept. 25, 1899, in Adler, Jacob H. Schiff: His Life and Letters, vol. 1, 145.
“a summer cruise”: Burroughs, Muir, and Grinnell, xxi. The quote is from Harriman’s preface.
His youngest son: Harriman, 3.
Clinton Hart Merriam: Wilfred H. Osgood, “Biographical Memoir of Clinton Hart Merriam,” National Academy of Sciences, 1944.
“a man of means”: Merriam, “Reflections,” in Kennan, vol. 1, 186.
“He thought there”: Ibid.
“unwilling to accept”: Muir, 8.
“Pray for me”: Worster, 359.
“no more distinguished”: Kennan, vol. 1, 187.
“abloom with wild”: Ibid., 193.
“of the blessed ministry”: Muir, 35.
“I soon saw”: Ibid., 10.
“fairy tale”: Merriam, “Reflections,” in Kennan, vol. 1, 197–98.
“Oh, that was under”: See Alton A. Lindsey, “The Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899,” BioScience, June 1978. Averell Harriman’s recollection appears in his introduction to the article.
“never before seen”: New York Times, July 29, 1899.
“an entire success”: New York Times and New York Tribune, July 31, 1899.
“resembled a floating”: Los Angeles Times, Aug. 1, 1899.
“the glaciers”: Ibid.
“virtual breach of trust”: Kennan, vol. 1, 219.
“Not so fast”: Kahn, 16.
“I sometimes have wondered”: Stilwell, 24.
set his strategy: For details of the acquisition transactions, see Kennan, vol. 1, 234ff.
“the Union Pacific purchased”: Ibid., 235.
“we would be getting rid”: United States of America v. the Union Pacific Railroad Co., et al., vol. 10, 4731.
“lacked an extensive system”: Trottman, 283.
“Mr. Harriman may”: Interstate Commerce Commission, In the Matter of Consolidations and Combinations of Carriers, Report No. 943, July 11, 1907, in Decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission of the United States, November 1906 to December 1907, vol. 12 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1908).
“a master stroke”: Dodge, 76.
“Some people also say”: Kennedy to Hill, Feb. 6, 1901, cited in Klein, The Life and Legend of E. H. Harriman, 219.
“We have bought”: Kennan, vol. 1, 241.
“called for blue-prints”: Ibid., 244.
ninety feet: See Ibid., 246.
“hammered to the bottom”: Oscar King Davis, “The Lucin Cut-Off,” Century Illustrated Monthly, Jan. 1906, 461.
“The day on”: Ibid., 467.
* * *
15. The Quest for the Burlington
* * *
On October 3: Klein, The Life and Legend of E. H. Harriman, 149.
“a railroad from Nowhere”: Smalley, 204.
In 1875 the road: Daggett, 270.
“positively repugnant”: Villard, vol. 1, 7.
“As a stock-waterer”: Clews , Twenty-Eight Years, 211.
“showing immense”: Ibid., 213.
“There is probably”: Ibid., 214.
“I hate all white people”: There is some confusion about the date of Sitting Bull’s speech. Among others, Dee Brown, in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, 494, places it at the “last spike” ceremony on September 8. Contemporary accounts of that event do not mention Sitting Bull and identify Evarts as the main speaker; nor is Grant mentioned among the attendees (see New York Times, Sept. 9, 1883). Villard, in his own memoirs (vol. 2, 311), is among the sources who more credibly place it at the Bismarck cornerstone laying, which occurred on September 5, though Villard makes no mention of the discrepancy between Sitting Bull’s speech and the prepared text.
“I cannot quite”: Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railroad Strategy, 206.
“a princely edifice”: Villard, vol. 2, 316.
“He was hailed”: Ibid., 324.
“would again mean”: Ibid., 365.
“a ghastly sarcasm”: New York Times, Aug. 17, 1893.
James J. Hill was the epitome: Details of Hill’s early life are from Pyle, vol. 1, 3ff, and Albro Martin, 7ff.
a rail connection: Albro Martin, 33.
Hill was on hand: Ibid., 45–46.
In return for: Ibid., 131.
But Hill was confident: SeeHill, letter to Great Northern stockholders, July 1, 1912, in Bruchey, 1.
“What we want”: Albro Martin, 366.
“threw lines across”: Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railroad Strategy, 292.
“But it had no terrors”: Pyle, vol. 1, 334.
“Mr. Hill is a law”: Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railroad Strategy, 293.
“There can be”: Overton, 247.
“has not been run”: Hill to Mount Stephen, Oct. 20 and 25, 1894, in Albro Martin, 442.
Hill’s elite lawyers: Ibid., 446.
“London memorandum”: Ibid., 453.
“form a permanent”: Ibid.
Invited to dine: Birmingham, 192.
“Only I give”: Ibid.
agreement had been reached: The arrangement was outlined in Schiff to Hill, Feb. 9, 1897, in Adler, Jacob H. Schiff: His Life and Letters, vol. 1, 88–89.
“Nothing was said”: Albro Mart
in, 484.
offered to award: Pyle, vol. 2, 42.
“Mr. Harriman has been”: Schiff to Hill, Sept. 25, 1899, in Adler, Jacob H. Schiff: His Life and Letters, vol. 1, 89–90.
Harriman himself never: See Klein, The Life and Legend of E. H. Harriman, 158.
By July 25: Kennan, vol. 1, 291. See also Overton, 249–50.
“found themselves up”: Pyle, vol. 2, 139.
The best three: See Ibid., 113.
“Hill did not”: Morgan testimony, United States of America v. Northern Securities Co. et al., vol. 1, 328.
“The Burlington lets us”: Ibid., 120.
“Wall Street would soon”: Overton, 252.
“neither directly nor indirectly”: Schiff to Morgan, May 16, 1901, in Adler, Jacob H. Schiff: His Life and Letters, vol. 1, 102–7.
“I accepted”: Ibid.
Baker’s own recollection: Paine, 201ff.
“replied with platitudes”: Schiff to Morgan, May 16, 1901, in Adler, Jacob H. Schiff: His Life and Letters, vol. 1, 102–7.
“Very well”: Kennan, vol. 1, 296.
“a hostile act”: Satterlee, 354.
“particularly . . . a constant”: Schiff to Morgan, May 16, 1901.
* * *
16. Peacock Alley
* * *
“To belong to”: Baruch, 135.
“On an afternoon”: Ibid. 136.
“What became of it?”: New York Daily Tribune, Mar. 19, 1902.
“the assumption that”: Noyes, The Market Place, 195.
“were typically”: Grant, 39.
“At the beginning”: E. G.Campbell, 331–32.
“have been exorbitant”: “Resolutions of the Second National Agricultural Congress,” in Chandler, The Railroads, 188.
“The revival”: Schiff to Fleming, Sept. 1, 1897, in Adler, Jacob H. Schiff: His Life and Letters, vol. 1, 32.
“the bull market incarnate”: James Grant, 56.
“All she has”: New York Sun, May 2, 1901.
“As speculators”: Clews, Twenty-Eight Years, 437.