He wanted more than wealth—he hungered for political and social honors which were never fully his. He had made a large contribution to the fund of $100,000 presented by the merchants of New York to General Grant, and in 1869, Grant appointed him secretary of the treasury. The senate refused to confirm the appointment, on the ground that the law excluded from that office anyone interested in the importation of merchandise. Grant sent to the senate a message recommending that this law be repealed, but the senate refused; and Stewart thereupon offered to place his business in the hands of trustees and devote its entire profits to charity during his term of office; but still the senate refused, and the nomination was withdrawn. It was a bitter blow to Stewart, nor was his fight for social prominence much more fortunate. As his last stake, as itwere, he began the erection of a great marble palace on Fifth Avenue, designed to cost a million and to be the finest private residence in the world, but he died before it was completed.
One of the great industries of the country is that of sugar refining, and it is inseparably connected with the name of Havemeyer, for to the Havemeyers is due its development and its formation into a so-called trust, which practically controls the market, and which has won great wealth for its organizers. The ancestor of the Havemeyers was a thrifty German who came to this country in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and, after engaging in various pursuits, opened a little sugar refinery in New York City, which soon brought him a comfortable income. There, in 1804, William Frederick Havemeyer was born, and after a careful education, entered the refinery, gained a thorough knowledge of the business and, in 1828 succeeded to it, having as a partner his cousin, Frederick Christian Havemeyer. These two men developed the business in a wonderful manner, installing new machinery, inventing new processes, which reduced the manufacturing cost, acquiring possession of other plants and securing government support in the shape of a protective tariff, which made a naturally profitable business doubly so, and netted its owners many millions.
William Frederick Havemeyer found time, in the intervals of running his business, to take a prominentpart in New York politics. He was mayor of the city from 1845 to 1851, and again in 1873, dying before the last term was finished.
As far as possible removed from Havemeyer's humdrum existence was that of Phineas Taylor Barnum, the greatest showman the world has ever seen, the originator of the great travelling circus, the exploiter of Tom Thumb and Jenny Lind, the owner of Jumbo, the most famous elephant that ever lived, whose name has passed into the English language as a synonym for bigness.
Barnum was born at Bethel, Connecticut, in 1810. His father was an inn-keeper and died when the boy was fifteen years old, leaving no property. He tried his hand at store-keeping, and failed; ran a newspaper, and was imprisoned for libel, and finally reached New York at about the end of his resources and looking around for something to do. That was in 1834, and by accident he hit upon his real vocation.
A man by the name of R. W. Lindsay was exhibiting through the country an old negro woman named Joice Heth, advertising her as being 161 years old, and as having been the nurse of George Washington. Barnum went to see her and found her an extraordinary-looking object. He has himself told how he was impressed by her.
"Joice Heth," he says, "was certainly a remarkable curiosity, and she looked as though she might have been far older than her age as advertised. She was apparently in good health and spirits, but fromage or disease, or both, was unable to change her position; she could move one arm at will, but her lower limbs could not be straightened; her left arm lay across her breast and she could not remove it; the fingers of her left hand were drawn down so as nearly to close it, and were fixed; the nails on that hand were almost four inches long and extended above her wrist; her head was covered with a thick bush of gray hair; but she was toothless and totally blind, and her eyes had sunk so deeply in the sockets as to have disappeared altogether. Nevertheless she was pert and sociable and would talk as long as people would converse with her. She was quite garrulous about 'dear little George,' at whose birth she declared she was present, having been at the time a slave of Elizabeth Atwood, a half-sister of Augustine Washington, the father of George Washington. As nurse, she put the first clothes on the infant, and she claimed to have raised him."
Barnum was so impressed by this extraordinary object, that he bought her for a thousand dollars, putting his last cent into the venture and borrowing what he lacked. He proceeded to advertise her with characteristic energy, and great crowds thronged to see her, so that his receipts sometimes ran as high as $1,500 a week. However, the old woman died within a year, and a post-mortem examination showed that she was really only about eighty years old.
But Barnum had found his vocation, that of showman, and after a few unsuccessful ventures, bought Scudder's American Museum, in New York City,and started out on a brilliant career. It is interesting to note that the museum which Barnum purchased consisted in part of the curios collected years before by Charles and Rembrandt Peale. Barnum added to it, was indefatigable in securing curiosities, really created the art of modern advertising, and it was his proudest boast that no one ever left the museum without having got his money's worth. He was one of the first to realize that the best possible advertisement is a pleased customer, and he tried honestly to keep his museum supplied with every novelty. The public soon came to appreciate this, and perhaps his greatest asset was public confidence in his promises. People came to believe that when Barnum advertised a thing, he really had it. But the most fortunate day in all his life was that November day of 1842, when he discovered at Bridgeport, Connecticut, the midget whose real name was Charles S. Stratton, but who was to become world-famous as General Tom Thumb.
The story of Tom Thumb's success reads like a romance. He was quite young when Barnum got him, and the showman took great pains with his education and training, for he wanted the midget to appear a finished man of the world. He became a great public favorite, toured America and Europe, was introduced to kings and princes and made a great fortune for himself and his exhibitor. Barnum struck the apogee of his fortunes when he discovered another midget, Lavinia Warren, who achieved a success scarcely less than Tom Thumb's. Indeed, sheand the General fell in love with each other and were married at Grace Church, and as General and Mrs. Tom Thumb were perhaps the greatest drawing cards in the world. Another triumph of his career was his engagement of Jenny Lind for a series of one hundred concerts, at a salary of a thousand dollars a night, the receipts of the tour being over seven hundred thousand dollars.
Barnum had many ups and downs, which he met with an invincible optimism. His museum burned down and he rebuilt it, but it soon burned down again. It was then that the idea occurred to him to establish a travelling museum, exhibiting under a tent, and it was this idea which developed into "The Greatest Show on Earth." It really was the greatest and its owner never spared money in his endeavor to keep it so. Large-hearted, benevolent, a true entertainer, he will always occupy a bright place in the memory of the American public.
Perhaps no name in the history of America was ever more closely connected in the public mind with money-making for its own sake than that of Russell Sage. It will be surprising news to many, who knew him only as a money-lender on a large scale, that he started out on a public career, as alderman, county treasurer, and finally as member of congress for two terms, from 1853 to 1857. He was the first person to advocate, on the floor of congress, the purchase of Mount Vernon by the government. His career on Wall street began shortly after that, at first in asmall way; but before his death, he had developed into the greatest individual money-lender in the world.
That was his whole life. He took no part in any political or charitable movement; he had no interest in art, and he lived in the simplest manner. He used his wealth, not to procure enjoyment for himself or other people, but to procure more wealth. He was saving to the point of miserliness; he got the utmost he could out of his money; he never took a vacation—and dying, at the age of ninety, left a fortune of many millions. He had no children and the whole fortune went to his wife. She at once proceeded to bestow it in carefully-considered benevolences, so that the Sage millions are to benefit humanity, after all. In fact, it is doubtful if any other fortune, amassed by a single man, will, in the end, do so much good in the world as will this of Russell Sage, for Mrs. Sage is devoting it to what may be called scientific charity, which has for its object the universal betterment of mankind.
Mrs. Sage, who thus becomes one of the world's great philanthropists, was Margaret Olivia Slocum, of Syracuse, New York, and was married to Mr. Sage in 1869. She was of a family in only moderate circumstances, and was a school teacher previous to her marriage. The turn of the wheel made her the wealthiest woman in the world, and she proceeded without delay to the carrying out of the immense benevolent enterprises which she had doubtless long meditated.
The name of Cyrus West Field is so closely associated with his supreme achievement, the laying of the first Atlantic cable, that we are apt to forget that he was in the beginning a manufacturer and had amassed a considerable fortune before his attention was called to the possibility of linking Europe to America by a telegraph line laid on the bottom of the Atlantic. It was under A. T. Stewart that Field received his mercantile training, having gone to New York in 1834, at the age of fifteen, from his home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and entering Stewart's employ as a clerk.
He was an apt pupil, and before he was of age, owned an establishment of his own for the manufacture and sale of paper. In this business, in the course of a dozen years, he had amassed a fortune so considerable that he was able to retire from active charge of it, and to spend his time in travel. It was in 1853 that the project of carrying a telegraph line across the Atlantic ocean suggested itself to him during a conversation with his brother, who was interested in building a line across Newfoundland. The more he considered and investigated the project, the more feasible it seemed, and he proceeded to organize the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company, himself taking one fourth of the capital stock, and interesting such other capitalists as Peter Cooper, Moses Taylor, Chandler White and Marshall Roberts.
But the project which had appeared simple enough in theory and on paper, proved extremely difficult ofexecution. If Field could have foreseen the thirteen years of constant anxiety which awaited him, he would no doubt have hesitated to undertake it. It looked, at first, as though success would crown his efforts almost at the outset, for in 1858, the laying of a cable was completed, and for some days, messages were sent from one continent to the other. Then the signals began to grow fainter and fainter, until they became imperceptible, supposedly from the water of the ocean penetrating the cable covering.
At any rate, the work had to be done all over again, with little money on hand, and the coming of the Civil War helped to make further progress impossible. Field visited Europe more than twenty times in the effort to raise money for the enterprise and to keep it before the public, but it was not until 1865 that another effort to lay the cable could be made. The "Great Eastern," the largest ship in the world, was secured, and began paying out the cable; but twelve hundred miles from shore the cable parted and could not be regained, although every effort was made to grapple it. So the vessel had to put back to England, and Field was confronted with the heart-breaking task of raising even more money. He succeeded in doing so, and in 1866, another expedition started out with a new cable. This time, it met with no serious misadventure, and on July 27, telegraphic communication was re-established between England and America, and has never since been interrupted.
That cable was the first of the hundreds whichnow encircle the globe. Congress presented the bold adventurer with a gold medal and the thanks of the nation; John Bright pronounced him "the Columbus of modern times, who, by his cable, has moored the New World alongside of the Old"; the Paris exposition of 1867 gave him the grand medal, the highest prize it had to bestow; and he received votes of thanks and medals and presents from all parts of the world.
In 1884, two other cables were laid across the Atlantic by John W. Mackay and James Gordon Bennett, whose private property they remained. Mackay had had an adventurous career, and was destined to be the founder of another of those great American fortunes which are the wonder and admiration of Europe. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1831, his father being another of those sturdy Scotch-Irish of whom we have already had occasion to speak. He was brought to New York at the age of nine; but his father died a short time thereafter and the boy was thrown practically upon his own resources.
When gold was discovered in California in 1849, Mackay joined the crowd that rushed to the new El Dorado, and for several years, he lived a typical miner's life, roughing it in the camps, but gaining little except a thorough knowledge of mining. In 1860, some guiding spirit led him eastward to Nevada; his fortunes there steadily improved, until he became one of the leading men in the settlement, and in 1872, he made one of the most famous and romantic discoveries in mining history, that of thefamous Comstock lode, on a ledge of rock high in the Sierras, under which Virginia City now nestles. So rich in silver was this great ledge of rock and its enormous production added so greatly to the world's supply of silver that the market price fell to a point where such countries as India and China, whose currency was on a silver basis, were seriously embarrassed to maintain values. From one mine alone over $150,000,000 was taken out. Mackay devoted himself personally to the superintendence of the mines, working in the lower levels with his men, who idolized him.
Let us turn for a moment to the career of another great fortune-builder, the man who was, perhaps, the greatest freebooter the American financial world ever saw, who made his money by destroying rather than building up, and whose wealth finally killed him—Jay Gould. Let us see if we can get some sort of idea of the personality of this extraordinary man.
Born in 1836, a farmer's boy, with only such education as he could pick up, he managed to find time to study surveying, and for two or three years was engaged in making surveys of various New York counties. While thus engaged, he fell in with a wealthy and eccentric individual named Zadock Pratt, who sent him to the western part of the state to select a site for a tannery. He was soon doing a large lumbering business, first with Pratt and then in his own name; but he sold out just before the panic of 1857, and soon after entered upon that careerof speculation in New York City which, in the end, made him the best-hated man in America.
Picture the man, small, only five feet six inches in height, with sallow skin and jet black whiskers, his eyes dark and piercing, his whole personality, as one observer put it, "reminiscent of the spider." His reputation was that of an unscrupulous and immoral rascal, who would not hesitate to sacrifice his best friends, if need be. His war against Cornelius Vanderbilt for control of the Erie was one of his typical operations—a war which, when he saw he was losing, he won by issuing $5,000,000 worth of fraudulent stock. There was never any question about the criminality of this proceeding, and Gould was forced to flee to New Jersey, where he spent millions in corrupting courts and legislatures—millions, not taken from his own pocket, but from the treasury of the Erie, of which he had control. He was ousted, at last, but not until he had added $62,000,000 to the indebtedness of the road, of which amount it was asserted Gould had pocketed $12,000,000.
The culminating feature of his career was his attempt to corner gold, which brought about the famous Black Friday panic of 1869. The scheme, one of the most daring ever attempted by any operator, came near success. Gould is said to have bribed the brother-in-law of President Grant and to have persuaded the President himself not to release any of the government supply of gold. He then succeeded in driving the price up to 162½, when suddenly thebubble burst. Gould, himself, had been warned and succeeded in getting away with his immense profits, covering himself at the expense of his associates, an act of treachery unprecedented even in the stock market.
These were only two of the remarkable operations which he engineered, and which need not be given in detail here. The net result was a fortune of some seventy million dollars, and a reputation for duplicity such as perhaps no man in America ever had before. It is only fair to Gould to say, however, that he accomplished merely what most stock gamblers would like to accomplish, if they could, and that outside of finance, he seems to have been an estimable man, faithful to his wife, devoted to his children, and passionately fond of flowers. He made no gifts of any consequence to charity during his life, nor did he make a single benevolent bequest in his will; but one of his children, Helen Miller Gould, has more than atoned for this by practically devoting her life and her fortune to charitable work. It is doubtful if there is a better-loved woman in America to-day than Helen Gould, who has shown so notably how a life may be consecrated to good works.
WANAMAKERWANAMAKER
The great marble palace which A. T. Stewart built on Broadway, in New York City, to house his business, and which was, at the time, the largest building in the world devoted to a retail business, is now occupied by another great merchant, who, starting from a beginning even smaller than Stewart's,has built up a business many times as great. John Wanamaker, whatever the growth of the country may be hereafter, will always remain one of America's most representative and most successful men of affairs—both representative and successful because his business has rested from the first on the principle of honest dealing, of making satisfied customers—in a word, upon the altogether modern principle of "your money back, if you want it."
John Wanamaker was born in Philadelphia in 1838, a poor boy with his way to make in the world. He received his education in the common schools, and at the age of fourteen, entered upon his business career as an errand boy in a book store. From that, he got a clerkship in a clothing store, and for some years acted as salesman, until he could save enough money to start a little store of his own. This he was able to do in 1861, in partnership with a man named Nathan Brown, and ten years later, he was sole owner of a prosperous and growing business. It was at about this time that an idea occurred to him which was destined to revolutionize the retail business of the larger cities of the country.
The idea was simply this: In the great cities, most shoppers have to travel a considerable distance to get to the business centre, and must there waste time and energy going from one store to another to make their purchases. Why not, then, combine all the representative retail businesses into one store, so that the shopper could make all purchases under a single roof, pay for them all at once, and have themall delivered at the same time? Moreover, why could not one great business be conducted more cheaply, and so undersell, the small ones, since a single executive staff would do for it, rent, delivery cost, and a hundred other fixed charges would be reduced, to say nothing of the advantages of large buying, and the advertising which every department would get from all the rest? The idea grew into a carefully-formulated plan, and 1876 saw the start of the great Wanamaker department store, perhaps the most famous retail business in the world.
Its tremendous success is an old story now, and it has found hundreds of imitators. Twenty years after the opening of the Philadelphia store, another was opened in New York in the old Stewart building, to which another building, four times as large, has recently been added. Wanamaker from the first firmly believed in P. T. Barnum's old adage that "A satisfied customer is the best advertisement," and he made every effort to see that none left the Wanamaker stores unsatisfied. He also made it a rule that no visitor to his store should ever be urged to buy anything; that every article of merchandise should be exactly as represented, and that any purchase might be returned and the purchase money would be refunded without question. As a result, Wanamaker got a reputation for fair dealing which proved his greatest asset.
One would think that the management of such a business would fully occupy any man, but Wanamaker found time for many public and benevolentinterests. He founded, in 1858, the Bethany Sunday School, which has grown into perhaps the largest in the world and of which he has always been superintendent; he has taken part in many movements for civic reform, and from 1889 to 1893 was postmaster general of the United States. He reorganized the service; set in motion the rural delivery system, the greatest single improvement in its service the department has ever made; and tried to secure a postal telegraph, a postal savings-bank, a parcels post and one-cent letter postage. He was the first official to regard the service as a business pure and simple, and if the reforms he suggested had been carried out, the United States postoffice would now be a model for the world.
The greatest banker and financier in America at the present day is undoubtedly J. Pierpont Morgan, who, however, is known not so well for the millions he has accumulated as for the other millions he has spent in collecting rare objects of art, until he has become the possessor of a collection surpassing any ever possessed by another private individual. That much of this will one day be bequeathed by its owner to the public there can be little doubt.
J. Pierpont Morgan is of a family of bankers. His father, Junius Spencer Morgan, was for many years a partner in the great London banking house of George Peabody & Co., and on the retirement of Mr. Peabody, succeeded him as the head of the business. There was never any doubt of the son's vocation.Born in 1837, and carefully educated, he entered the banking house of Duncan, Sherman & Co. at the age of twenty, and from that time, rose steadily, until he became the head of the greatest banking house in the country. He has been largely concerned in the reorganization of railways and the consolidation of industrial properties, and the magnitude of some of his operations is fairly astounding. During the Cleveland administration, he floated a national bond issue of $62,000,000; he marketed the securities of the United States Steel Corporation, with a capitalization of $1,100,000,000; he secured American subscriptions aggregating $50,000,000 for the British war loan of 1901; he controls over fifty thousand miles of railway, and his interests extend into practically every great financial enterprise in America. He has given large sums of money for public enterprises in New York City, among them a million and a half for a great lying-in hospital. He built the "Columbia," which twice defeated the "Shamrock" in the races for the America's cup, and he has made many valuable gifts to the various museums and libraries of New York City. The power he wields is enormous, but he wields it wisely and legitimately, winning the respect, as well as the admiration of men.
The greatest work of American men of affairs during the past half century has been the upbuilding and extension of the railroad system of the country. The railroad mileage of the United States at thepresent time is over three hundred and twenty-five thousand; the total cost of the railroad equipment of the country reaches fourteen billion dollars and the yearly earnings average over two and a half billions. They employ over a million and a half men, whose wages average three million dollars a day—and, it may be added, they kill or injure nearly ninety thousand. But that is a detail. With this vast development of the railroad business the names of some half dozen men are so closely connected that the great systems of the country are generally known as the Hill lines, the Harriman lines, the Vanderbilt lines, the Gould lines, and so on. Of these men we shall try to tell something briefly here.
We have already related how Cornelius Vanderbilt secured control of the New York Central and Hudson River roads, and added to these until he had secured an entrance into Chicago; and how his son, William Henry Vanderbilt, added to this system until it became, and still remains, one of the strongest in the country. We have told, too, of Jay Gould's ideas of railroad management, which seem to have been to get the most out of it for Jay Gould. But when Jay Gould died, he was caught, as it were, with thousands of miles of railroads on his hands. He left four sons, George Gould, Edwin Gould, Howard Gould and Frank Gould, of whom George is the only one that really counts. But he, with a real genius for railroad building, has developed the Gould lines into a great system stretching from Buffalo and Pittsburgh southwestward to Chicago, Omaha, KansasCity, Denver, Ogden, St. Louis, New Orleans, Galveston and away out to El Paso. These lines have played a most important part in the development of the great Southwest, and it is said that George Gould is already blazing a way to the Atlantic seaboard, as an outlet for the mighty freight traffic which his lines control.
No man connected with railroad building in this country has had a more interesting or adventurous career than James J. Hill. Born on a little Canadian farm in 1838, descended from the hardy Scotch-Irish of whom we have spoken so often, his father died when he was fifteen years, and he was left to his own resources. He found work as a wood-chopper, and one day, while he was chopping down a tree a traveler stopped at the house to take dinner, hitching his horse to the gate. The boy noticed that it was tired and fagged and carried it a bucket of water. This attention pleased the traveler, and as he drove away, tossed the boy a Minnesota newspaper, remarking, "Go out there, young man. That country needs youngsters of your spirit."
The boy read the paper with its glowing accounts of the new country, and the next morning, walking to the tree he had been cutting he hit it one last lick for luck, and announced, "I've chopped my last tree." That tree, it is said, bears to-day a great placard with the words, "The last tree chopped by James J. Hill." Itwasthe last one, for a day or two later the boy started for St. Paul. He brought with him to the United States the lusty body, frugalinstincts and good principles of his Scotch-Irish ancestry, and, in addition to those, a self-confidence and sureness of judgment destined to take him far.
He got employment as a shipping clerk in a steamboat office in St. Paul, and so took his first lessons in transportation problems. Pretty soon he was agent for a steamboat line, then he established a fuel and transportation business on his own account and managed it so well that by 1873, he had accumulated a fortune of a hundred thousand dollars. There was in Minnesota at the time a little railroad called the St. Paul & Pacific. It started at St. Paul, but it stopped after it had got only a few hundred miles toward the Pacific. Hill decided to buy it. The price was half a million, so he tramped back to Canada and persuaded the bank of Montreal to let him have the $400,000 he needed. That was surely one of the most wonderful feats of a wonderful career. The directors of the bank were severely criticised; men laughed at his purchase, pointing out that the road had never paid, and prophesying that it never would pay.
Yet that Jim Crow road was the foundation of the Great Northern system, the Hill line, stretching across Dakota and Montana to Puget Sound. Every man who went into the enterprise with Hill now owns his stock in it as a free gift, for in the intervening years, the cost has been returned to him in the shape of dividends and bonuses. It has never failed to pay regular dividends, and has, perhaps, won public confidence more surely than any otherin the country. For James J. Hill has kept faith in the smallest detail with every man who ever entrusted a dollar to his hands. The loyalty of the employes of the Great Northern has passed into a proverb, "Once a Hill man, always a Hill man," and it is true. He knows his road as few other men do. Before he bought the St. Paul & Pacific, he traveled over the route in an ox-cart, studying not only the road, but the people along the way—there weren't many—and the resources of the country. Before he extended his line to the Pacific, he went the whole distance on foot and horseback.
People laughed at him when he announced that he was going to extend his line to the Pacific. No line had ever been built across the continent without a great subsidy from the government—to secure a subsidy was always the first step; besides, it was believed that the country through which the Great Northern was to extend would not even grow wheat, and the new road was promptly dubbed "Hill's Folly." But in 1893, his line reached the Pacific. A few years later, the owners of the great Northern Pacific were begging him to manage that road, too. For he had created business for his road—a great market in the Orient to fill his west-bound freight cars, and a great market in the eastern United States for Puget Sound lumber to fill his east-bound cars. For remember no railroad can make money unless, after it has hauled a loaded car from one end of the line to the other, it can find another load to put in that same car to haul back again. Hill supplied the businessand his story is the wonderful story of the development of the Great Northwest.
Which brings us to the Napoleon of the railroad world, E. H. Harriman. America has never seen another quite like him. When the panic of 1901 was at its height and the financial world seemed trembling in ruins about his head, he refused to break the corner, as he might have done, but sat watching the tape, cool, quiet and calculating, while men failed, banks tottered, and his own associates begged him to yield. For the ambition of this man knew no limitation. His kingdom must stretch from sea to sea and from the lakes to the gulf.
His kingdom lay to the south of Hill's, for he ruled the Union Pacific, and between the two men there was ceaseless war. Physically and mentally they were as far apart as two men could be. Hill is a large man, with massive head and brow, and his eyes are steady and cool and brown, his lips full and sensitive, his whole personality bespeaking force and decision. Quite different was Harriman; a small, ordinary looking man, with glasses and a scraggy mustache, giving the impression of nervous force rather than of power; an irritable man, easily angered; a fighter clear through, but fighting sometimes when peace were wiser—that was Harriman.
Harriman was born at Hempstead, Long Island, the son of a clergyman with a large family and a small income. The boy was renowned chiefly for his daily fights and for his aversion to study. At theage of fourteen, he was put to work in a broker's office in Wall street, at eighteen he had a partnership, at twenty-two he bought a seat on the stock exchange, and pretty soon entered the railroad field by getting control of the Illinois Central. He at once inaugurated a new policy. Before that time, the prevailing idea of railroad management was to run a road as cheaply as possible and pay big dividends. Harriman's idea was that the biggest dividends would be secured in the end by making a good road, and he proceeded to carry the idea out by putting his road in the very pink of condition. And it paid.
That was the beginning. His great coup was the rebuilding of the Union Pacific. A railroad with 7,500 miles of track, a giant crushed by its own weight, it had gone into a receivership in the panic of 1893. For five years it stayed there, despite the utmost efforts of the giants of finance to lift it out. Then Harriman got possession of it, and taking an engine and a car, turned the train backward and, running in the day time only, went over the road mile by mile. He decided that the road must be made a good road, and he told his executive committee that he needed for his immediate necessities one hundred millions of dollars!
Well, he got the money and he got good men and went to work. The result was soon apparent. Earnings grew, business increased, and the company's credit improved. Never before in the history of railroading had there been such daring rebuilding. Theline was levelled down to a maximum grade of forty-one feet to a mile; two hundred and forty-seven feet were scaled off the top of the Great Divide; millions of cubic yards of dirt and stone were blasted out and moved; tunnels were drilled; and, finally, when the Southern Pacific, too, was acquired, a trestle twenty-three miles long was built across Great Salt Lake, through water thirty feet deep, taking railroad trains farther from land than they had ever yet been run, and shortening the road forty-four miles. And the result? The gross earnings have risen to over $170,000,000 a year, and $28,000,000 a year are distributed in dividends. Truly a transformation from the old water-logged road which Harriman took over.
He had his reverses—he attempted to get hold of the Northern Pacific, but it slipped through his fingers; the Burlington was cut out from under his guns, and so was the Rock Island. James J. Hill outgeneraled him more than once, and he was never able to "get back" at Hill effectively.
With Harriman we shall close this chapter on men of affairs. Many others might have been noted. In fact, none of the great industries of the country has been built up except by inspired work. Armour and Cudahy and Swift made the packing business; Marshall Field built up a business in Chicago rivalling Wanamaker's; August Belmont, William C. Whitney, Levi Leiter, Robert Goelet, Pierre Lorillard, and a hundred others, amassed great fortunes. Yet there was nothing in their career different to thoseof the men already considered in this chapter. They had a genius for money-making. Each in some special field; but, beyond that, they did few memorable things. And so we need not pause longer over them here, except to remark, that it is, in the main, to such men as these, that America owes her great material prosperity.
Morris, Robert.Born at Liverpool, England, January 20, 1734; came to America, 1747, and settled at Philadelphia; delegate to Continental Congress, 1775-78; gave his credit to assist in financing Revolution and elected superintendent of finance, 1781; organized Bank of North America, 1781; member of Constitutional Convention, 1787; United States senator, 1789-95; died in debtor's prison at Philadelphia, May 8, 1806.
Astor, John Jacob.Born at Waldorf, Germany, July 17, 1763; came to America, 1783, and settled at New York City; founded Astoria, at mouth of Columbia River, 1811; died at New York City, March 29, 1848.
Vanderbilt, Cornelius.Born near Stapleton, Staten Island, New York, May 27, 1794; became chief owner Harlem railroad, 1863, and of Hudson River and New York Central roads soon afterwards; died at New York City, January 4, 1877.
Stewart, Alexander Turney.Born near Belfast, Ireland, October 12, 1803; came to America, 1823, and established drygoods business at New York City; died there April 10, 1876.
Barnum, Phineas Taylor.Born at Bethel, Connecticut, July 5, 1810; opened Barnum's Museum in New York City, 1841; managed Jenny Lind's concert tour, 1850-51; established "Greatest Show on Earth," 1871; died at Bridgeport, Connecticut, April 7, 1891.
Sage, Russell.Born in Oneida County, New York, August 4, 1816; member of Congress, 1853-57; established himself as broker and money-lender in New York City, 1863; died there, July 22, 1906.
Field, Cyrus West.Born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, November 30, 1819; in paper business in New York, 1840-53, retiring with a fortune; organized New York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph Company, 1854; Atlantic Telegraph Company, 1856; laid Atlantic cable, 1866; first message over it, July 29; died at New York City, July 12, 1892.
Mackay, John William.Born at Dublin, Ireland, November 28, 1831; came with parents to America, 1840; went to California, 1850; discovered Bonanza mines, 1872; died, July 20, 1902.
Gould, Jay.Born at Roxbury, New York, May 27, 1836; established himself as broker in New York City, 1859; notorious for manipulations of various railroad and other securities, and for "Black Friday"; died at New York City, December 2, 1892.
Wanamaker, John.Born at Philadelphia, July 11, 1838; established clothing house of Wanamaker & Brown, 1861; established department store in Philadelphia, 1876, and in New York City, 1896; Postmaster-General, 1889-93; founded Bethany Sunday School, 1858; president Philadelphia Y. M. C. A., 1870-83.
Morgan, John Pierpont.Born at Hartford, Connecticut, April 17, 1837; entered banking business, 1857, and developed present firm of J. P. Morgan & Co., largest private bankers of the United States.
Hill, James J.Born near Guelph, Ontario, September 16, 1838; removed to Minnesota, 1856; entered transportation business; general manager St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Ry. Co., 1879-82; president since 1883; built Great Northern, with steamship connection with Japan and China, 1883-93; president of Great Northern system since 1893.
Harriman, Edward Henry.Born at Hempstead, Long Island; entered Wall Street as clerk at age of fourteen; entered New York Stock Exchange eight years later; was president and chairman of the board of directors of the Union Pacific, Oregon Short Line, Southern Pacific, Texas & New Orleans, and many other great railway systems; died near New York City, September 9, 1909.
It is a curious fact that the men to whom the world owes most generally get the least reward. The genius in art or letters is seldom recognized as such until long after he himself has passed away—his life is usually embittered by derision or neglect. But, in the history of civilization, the lot of no man has been harder or more thankless than that of the inventor. Poverty and want have always been his portion, and even after he had won his triumph, had compelled public recognition of some great invention, it was usually some one else who won the reward.
America has been especially strong in the field of invention. Indeed, practically all the great labor-saving devices of the past century and more have originated here. "Yankee ingenuity" has passed into a proverb, and a true one, for the country which has produced the steamboat, the cotton gin, the sewing machine, the electric telegraph, the phonograph, the telephone, the typewriter, the reaper and binder, to mention only a few of the achievements of American inventors, may surely claim first place in this respect among the nations of the world. There are few stories more inspiring than that of American invention,and as benefactors to their race, the long line of American inventors may rightly rank before even the great philanthropists whose careers are outlined elsewhere in this volume. Indeed, if we judge greatness by the benefits which a man confers upon mankind, such men as Whitney and Howe and Morse and Bell and Edison far surpass most of the great characters of history.
First of the line is Benjamin Franklin, whose many-sided genius gives him a unique place in American history. His career has been considered in the chapter dealing with our statesmen, but let us pause for a moment here to speak of his inventions. One of them, the Franklin stove, is still in use in hundreds of old houses, and as an economizer of fuel has never been surpassed; another was the lightning-rod. He introduced the basket willow, the water-tight compartment for ships, the culture of silk, the use of white clothing in hot weather, and the use of oil to quiet a tempest-tossed sea. From none of his inventions did he seek to get any return. The Governor of Pennsylvania offered to give him a monopoly of the sale of the Franklin stove for a period of years, but he declined it, saying, "That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad to serve others by any invention of ours"—a principle characteristic of Franklin's whole philosophy of life.
After Franklin, came Robert Fulton, the first man successfully to apply the power of the steam-engine to the propulsion of boats. Everyone has heard thestory of how, years before, the youthful James Watt first got his idea of the power of steam by noticing how it rattled the lid on his mother's boiling teakettle. From that came the stationary engine, and from that the engine as applied to the locomotive. It remained for Fulton to apply it to water navigation.
Born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, of Irish parents, in poor circumstances, the boy received only the rudiments of an education, but developed a surprising talent for painting, so that, when he was seventeen, he removed to Philadelphia and set up there as an artist, painting portraits and landscapes. He remained there for some years, and finally, having made enough money to purchase a small farm for his mother, sailed for London, where he introduced himself to that amiable patron of all American painters, Benjamin West. West, who was at that time at the height of his fame, received Fulton with great kindness, and made a place in his house for him, where he remained for several years.
Those years were not devoted exclusively to painting, for Fulton had developed an interest in mechanics, secured a patent for an improvement in canal locks, invented a "plunging" boat, a kind of submarine, a machine for spinning flax, one for making ropes, one for sawing marble, and many others of minor importance. Finally abandoning art altogether, he went to Paris, where he spent seven years with the family of Joel Barlow, conducting with him a number of experiments; one series of which has developed into the modern submarine torpedo. Hesucceeded in interesting the French government in his submarine experiments and constructed a boat equipped with a small engine, with which, in the harbor of Brest, he seems actually to have made some progress under water, remaining under on one occasion for more than four hours. But the French government finally withdrew its support, and finding the British government also indifferent, Fulton sailed for New York in December, 1806.
Here, he succeeded in interesting the United States government, which granted him $5,000 to continue his submarine experiments, but interest in them soon waned, and Fulton turned his whole attention to the subject of steam navigation. He had been experimenting in this direction for a number of years, and, in conjunction with Chancellor Livingston, of New Jersey, had secured from the legislature of New York the exclusive right and privilege of navigating all kinds of boats which might be propelled by the force of fire or steam on all the waters within the territory of New York for a period of twenty years, provided he would, by the end of 1807, produce a boat that would attain a speed of four miles an hour. Fulton went to work at once, the experiments being paid for by Livingston, and after various calculations, discarded the use of paddles or oars, of ducks' feet which open as they are pushed out and close as they are drawn in, and also the idea of forcing water out of the stern of the vessel. He finally decided on the paddle-wheel, and, in August, 1807, the first American steamboat appeared on the EastRiver. A great concourse witnessed the first trial, incredulous at first, but converted into enthusiastic believers before the boat had gone a quarter of a mile.
She was christened the "Clermont," and soon afterwards made a trip up the Hudson to Albany, to the astonishment of the people living along the banks of that mighty river. The distance of 150 miles, against the current of the river, was covered in thirty-two hours, and there could no longer be any question of Fulton's success. A regular schedule between Albany and New York was established, and the "Clermont" began that great river traffic now carried on by the most palatial river steamers in the world.
After that, it was merely a question of development. More boats were built, improvements were made, and every year witnessed an increase of speed and efficiency. In 1814, in the midst of the second war with England, Fulton built the first steam ship-of-war the world had ever seen, designed for the defense of New York harbor. This ancestor of the modern "Dreadnought" was named "Fulton the First" in honor of her designer. She indirectly caused his death, for, exposing himself for several hours of a bitter winter day, in supervising some changes on her, he developed pneumonia and died a few days later. Could he re-visit the world to-day and see the wonderful and mighty ships which have grown out of his idea, he would no doubt be as astonished as were the people along the Hudson on that fall day in 1807 when they saw the "Clermont"making her way up the stream against wind and tide.
The same year that Robert Fulton was born, another inventive genius first saw the light in the little town of Westborough, Massachusetts. His name was Eli Whitney, and the work he was to do revolutionized the industrial development of the South, paid off its debts, and trebled the value of its lands. It did something else, too, which was to fasten upon the South the system of negro slavery, resulting in the Civil War. But though he added hundreds of millions of dollars to the wealth of his country, his own reward was neglect, indifference, countless lawsuits and endless vexation of body and spirit.
Whitney's father ran a little wood-working shop where he made wheels and chairs, and there the boy spent every possible hour. At the age of twelve, he made himself a violin, and his progress was so steady, that by the time he was sixteen, he had greatly enlarged the business and had gained the reputation of being the best mechanic in all the country round. He soon discovered the value of education, and managed to prepare himself for Yale College, which he entered in 1789, at the age of twenty-four—an age at which most men had long since graduated and settled in life. But Whitney persevered, graduating in 1792, and almost immediately securing a position as private tutor in a Georgia family, which was to change the whole course of his life.
Until he reached the South, he had never seen raw cotton, only a little of which, indeed, had been raisedin the United States. It had not been profitable because of the difficulty of picking out the green cottonseed. To separate one pound of the staple from the seed was a day's work, so that cotton was considered rather as a curiosity than as a profitable crop. Whitney was impressed by the possibilities of cotton culture, could this obstacle be overcome, and devoted his spare time to the construction of the machine upon which his fame rests. At last it was done, and did its work so perfectly that there could be no question of its success. Experiments showed that with it, one man, with the aid of two-horse power, could clean five thousand pounds of cotton a day!
A patent was at once applied for and every effort made to keep the invention a secret until a patent had been secured. But knowledge of it swept through the state, and great crowds of people came to see the machine. Whitney refused to show it, and after much excitement, a mob one night broke into the building where it was, and carried it away. Others were at once made, using it as a model, and by the time Whitney had secured his patent, they were in successful operation in many parts of the state.
That was the beginning of Whitney's trials. He had not enough money to produce machines rapidly enough to meet the tremendous demand for them, and various rivals sprang up, some of them even claiming the honor of the invention. Other gins were put on the market, differing from Whitney's only in some unimportant detail, and plainly an infringement of his patent; but he had not the meansto prosecute their manufacturers. The result was, that after two years of disheartening struggle, Whitney was reduced to bankruptcy.
The attitude of the South toward him caused him especial distress. "I have invented a machine," he wrote, "from which the citizens of the South have already realized immense profits, which is worth to them millions, and from which they must continue to derive the most important profits, and in return to be treated as a felon, a swindler, and a villain, has stung me to the very soul. And when I consider that this cruel persecution is inflicted by the very persons who are enjoying these great benefits, and expressly for the purpose of preventing my ever deriving the least advantage from my labors, the acuteness of my feelings is altogether inexpressible."
Finally, the states of North and South Carolina voted him a royalty upon all the machines in use, and this enabled him to pay his debts; but Whitney at last abandoned hope of ever receiving from his invention the returns he had hoped for, and, turning his attention to other business, received, in 1798, a contract from the United States government for 10,000 stand of arms. Eight years were consumed in filling this contract. A contract for 30,000 stand followed, and so many improvements in design and process of manufacture were made by Whitney that no other manufacturer could compete with him.
The result of all this was that Whitney was enabled to end his life in comparative independence. His last days were his happiest, and he found inthe care and affection of a loving family some consolation for the injustice and ingratitude which he had suffered.