CHAPTER LXV.EDWARD H. HARRIMAN.
Edward H. Harriman was born on Long Island in 1848. His father was a clergyman, and the family in poor circumstances. At the age of fourteen he left school, and began his business career in a Wall Street house. Of an aggressive and masterful character, with a great capacity for hard work and the ability to master every detail, he rapidly forged ahead. At eighteen he became partner in a brokerage house; at twenty-two bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1883 he was chosen a director of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, and four years later, when he became its vice president, he retired from the brokerage business, having amassed what was then considered a comfortable fortune. For a time, while President Fish was abroad, Mr. Harriman was acting president of the Illinois Central, and promptly put into execution his idea that the way to make a road pay was to put it in the best of physical condition, and thus attract traffic by the ability to handle it, rather than by cutting rates. This policy afterwards brought the Union Pacific up from a financial and physical wreck in 1893 to the most aggressive and progressive railroad corporation of the day, operating, together with the Southern Pacific, over 15,000 miles of road, besides controlling the Illinois Central, Chicago & Alton, and St. Joseph & Grand Island Railroad companies and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and owning large interests in the Baltimore & Ohio, New York Central, Atchison, Chicago & Northwestern, and Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul roads. Mr. Harriman and his associates were defeated in an attempt to obtaincontrol of the Northern Pacific in 1901, but the Union Pacific system benefited by this defeat, it is estimated, by about $60,000,000. The purchase of Northern Pacific in the open market forced the price of its stock up to $1,000 per share on May 9, 1901, causing the memorable panic of that date.