Chapter 18
As soon as I had left New York and was on the ocean, the young and ambitious officers who were at the head of the operations of the railroad and disapproved of my method of dealing with the employees, discharged every member of the committee who had called upon me. Of course, this was immediately followed by a sympathetic outburst in their behalf, and the sympathizers were also discharged. Then the whole road was tied up by a universal strike. After millions had been lost in revenue by the railroad and in wages by the men, the strike was settled, as usual, by a compromise, but it gave to the Knights of Labor the control, except as to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. The early settlement of the strike was largely due to the loyalty and courage of the Brotherhood.
During my presidency I was much criticised by the public, but never by the directors of the company, because of my activities in politics and on the platform. For some time, when the duties of my office became most onerous, and I was in the habit of working all day and far into the night, I discovered that this concentrated attention to my railroad problems and intense and continuous application to their solution was not only impairing my efficiency but my health. As I was not a sport, and never had time for games or horses, I decided to try a theory, which was that one's daily duties occupied certain cells of the brain while the others remained idle; that the active cells became tired by overwork while others lost their power in a measure by idleness; that if, after a reasonable use of the working cells, you would engage in some other intellectual occupation, it would furnish as much relief or recreation as outdoor exercise of any kind. I had a natural facility for quick and easy preparation for public speaking, and so adopted that as my recreation. The result proved entirely successful.
After a hard day's work, on coming home late in the afternoon, I accustomed myself to take a short nap of about fifteen minutes. Then I would look over my tablets to see if any engagement was on to speak in the evening, and, if so, the preparation of the speech might be easy, or, if difficult, cause me to be late at dinner. These speeches were made several times a week, and mainly at banquets on closing of the sessions of conventions of trade organizations of the country. The reciprocal favors and friendship of these delegates transferred to the New York Central a large amount of competitive business.
While I was active in politics I issued strict orders that every employee should have the same liberty, and that any attempt on the part of their superior officers to influence or direct the political action of a subordinate would be cause for dismissal. This became so well known that the following incident, which was not uncommon, will show the result.
As I was taking the train the morning after having made a political speech at Utica, the yardmaster, an Irishman, greeted me very cordially and then said: "We were all up to hear ye last night, boss, but this year we are agin ye."
The position which this activity gave me in my own party, and the fact that, unlike most employers, I protected the employees in their liberty and political action, gave me immense help in protecting the company from raids and raiders.
We had a restaurant in the station at Utica which had deteriorated. The situation was called to my attention in order to have the evils corrected by the receipt of the following letter from an indignant passenger: "Dear Mr. President: You are the finest after-dinner speaker in the world. I would give a great deal to hear the speech you would make after you had dined in the restaurant in your station at Utica."
After thirteen years of service as president I was elected chairman of the board of directors. Mr. Samuel R. Callaway succeeded me as president, and on his resignation was succeeded by Mr. William H. Newman, and upon his resignation Mr. W. C. Brown became president. Following Mr. Brown, Mr. Alfred H. Smith was elected and is still in office. All these officers were able and did excellent service, but I want to pay special tribute to Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith is one of the ablest operating officers of his time. When the United States Government took over the railroads he was made regional director of the government for railroads in this territory. He received the highest commendation from the government and from the owners of the railroads for the admirable way in which he had maintained them and their efficiency during the government control.
On the surrender of the railroads by the government, Mr. Smith was welcomed back by his directors to the presidency of the New York Central. The splendid condition of the Central and its allied lines is largely due to him. During his service as regional director the difficult task of the presidency of the New York Central was very ably performed by Mr. William K. Vanderbilt, Jr. Though the youngest among the executive officers of the railroads of the country, he was at the same time one of the best.
Among the efficient officers who have served the New York Central during the time I have been with the company, I remember many on account of their worth and individuality. H. Walter Webb came into the railway service from an active business career. With rare intelligence and industry he rapidly rose in the organization and was a very capable and efficient officer. There was Theo. Voorhees, the general superintendent, an unusually young man for such a responsible position. He was a graduate of Troy Polytechnical School and a very able operating officer. Having gone directly from the college to a responsible position, he naturally did not understand or know how to handle men until after long experience. He showed that want of experience in a very drastic way in the strike of 1892 and its settlement. Being very arbitrary, he had his own standards. For instance, I was appealed to by many old brakemen and conductors whom he had discharged. I mention one particularly, who had been on the road for twenty-five years. Voorhees's answer to me was: "These old employees are devoted to Toucey, my predecessor, and for efficient work I must have loyalty to me."
I reversed his order and told him I would begin to discharge, if necessary, the latest appointments, including himself, keeping the older men in the service who had proved their loyalty to the company by the performance of their duties.
Mr. Voorhees became afterwards vice-president and then president of the Philadelphia and Reading. With experience added to his splendid equipment and unusual ability he became one of the best executives in the country.
Mr. John M. Toucey, who had come up from the bottom to be general superintendent and general manager, was a hard student. His close contact with his fellow employees gave him wonderful control over men. He supplemented his practical experience by hard study and was very well educated. Though self-taught, he had no confidence in the graduates of the professional schools.
In selecting an assistant, one of them told me that Toucey subjected him to a rigid examination and then said: "What is your railroad career?"
"I began at the bottom," answered the assistant, "and have filled every office on my old road up to division superintendent, which I have held for so many years."
"That is very fine," said Toucey, "but are you a graduate of the Troy Technical School?"
"No, sir."
"Of the Stevens Tech.?"
"No, sir."
"Of Massachusetts Tech.?"
"No, sir."
"Then you are engaged," said Toucey.
Mr. Toucey was well up-to-date, and differed from a superintendent on another road in which I was a director. The suburban business of that line had increased very rapidly, but there were not enough trains or cars to accommodate the passengers. The overcrowding caused many serious discomforts. I had the superintendent called before the board of directors, and said to him: "Why don't you immediately put on more trains and cars?"
"Why, Mr. Depew," he answered, "what would be the use? They are settling so fast along the line that the people would fill them up and overcrowd them just as before."
I was going over the line on an important tour at one time with G. H. Burroughs, superintendent of the Western Division. We were on his pony engine, with seats at the front, alongside the boiler, so that we could look directly on the track. Burroughs sat on one side and I on the other. He kept on commenting aloud by way of dictating to his stenographer, who sat behind him, and praise and criticism followed rapidly. I heard him utter in his monotonous way: "Switch misplaced, we will all be in hell in a minute," and then a second afterwards continue: "We jumped the switch and are on the track again. Discharge that switchman."
Major Zenas Priest was for fifty years a division superintendent. It was a delightful experience to go with him over his division. He knew everybody along the line, was general confidant in their family troubles and arbiter in neighborhood disputes. He knew personally every employee and his characteristics and domestic situation. The wives were generally helping him to keep their husbands from making trouble. To show his control and efficiency, he was always predicting labor troubles and demonstrating that the reason they did not occur was because of the way in which he handled the situation.
Mr. C. M. Bissell was a very efficient superintendent, and for a long time in charge of the Harlem Railroad. He told me this incident. We decided to put in effect as a check upon the conductors a system by which a conductor, when a fare was paid on the train, must tear from a book a receipt which he gave to the passenger, and mark the amount on the stub from which the receipt was torn. Soon after a committee of conductors called upon Mr. Bissell and asked for an increase of pay. "Why," Bissell asked, "boys, why do you ask for that now?"
After a rather embarrassing pause the oldest conductor said: "Mr. Bissell, you have been a conductor yourself."
This half century and six years during which I have been in the service of the New York Central Railroad has been a time of unusual pleasure and remarkably free from friction or trouble. In this intimate association with the railroad managers of the United States I have found the choicest friendships and the most enduring. The railroad manager is rarely a large stockholder, but he is a most devoted and efficient officer of his company. He gives to its service, for the public, the employees, the investors, and the company, all that there is in him. In too many instances, because these officers do not get relief from their labor by variation of their work, they die exhausted before their time.
The story graphically told by one of the oldest and ablest of railroad men, Mr. Marvin Hughitt, for a long time president and now chairman of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, illustrates what the railroad does for the country. Twenty-five years ago the Northwestern extended its lines through Northern Iowa. Mr. Hughitt drove over the proposed extension on a buckboard. The country was sparsely settled because the farmers could not get their products to market, and the land was selling at six dollars per acre.
In a quarter of a century prosperous villages and cities had grown up along the line, and farms were selling at over three hundred dollars per acre. While this enormous profit from six dollars per acre to over three hundred has come to the settlers who held on to their farms because of the possibilities produced by the railroad, the people whose capital built the road must remain satisfied with a moderate return by way of dividend and interest, and without any enhancement of their capital, but those investors should be protected by the State and the people to whom their capital expenditures have been such an enormous benefit.
XIX. RECOLLECTIONS FROM ABROAD
I know of nothing more delightful for a well-read American than to visit the scenes in Great Britain with which he has become familiar in his reading. No matter how rapidly he may travel, if he goes over the places made memorable by Sir Walter Scott in the "Waverley Novels," and in his poems, he will have had impressions, thrills, and educational results which will be a pleasure for the rest of his life. The same is true of an ardent admirer of Dickens or of Thackeray, in following the footsteps of their heroes and heroines. I gained a liberal education and lived over again the reading and studies of a lifetime in my visits to England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. I also had much the same experience of vivifying and spiritualizing my library in France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, and Holland.
London is always most hospitable and socially the most delightful of cities. While Mr. Gladstone was prime minister and more in the eyes of the world than any statesman of any country, a dinner was given to him with the special object of having me meet him. The ladies and gentlemen at the dinner were all people of note. Among them were two American bishops. The arrangement made by the host and hostess was that when the ladies left the dining-room I should take the place made vacant alongside Mr. Gladstone, but one of the American bishops, who in his younger days was a famous athlete, made a flying leap for that chair and no sooner landed than he at once proposed to Mr. Gladstone this startling question: "As the bishop of the old Catholic Church in Germany does not recognize the authority of the pope, how can he receive absolution?"--and some other abstruse theological questions. This at once aroused Mr. Gladstone, who, when once started, was stopped with difficulty, and there was no pause until the host announced that the gentlemen should join the ladies. I made it a point at the next dinner given for me to meet Mr. Gladstone that there should be no American bishops present.
At another time, upon arriving at my hotel in London from New York, I found a note from Lord Rosebery saying that Mr. Gladstone was dining with Lady Rosebery and himself that evening, and there would be no other guests, and inviting me to come. I arrived early and found Mr. Gladstone already there. While the custom in London society then was for the guests to be late, Mr. Gladstone was always from fifteen minutes to half an hour in advance of the time set by his invitation. He greeted me with great cordiality, and at once what were known as the Gladstone tentacles were fastened on me for information. It was a peculiarity with the grand old man that he extracted from a stranger practically all the man knew, and the information was immediately assimilated in his wonderful mind. He became undoubtedly the best-informed man on more subjects than anybody in the world.
Mr. Gladstone said to me: "It has been raining here for forty days. What is the average rainfall in the United States and in New York?" If there was any subject about which I knew less than another, it was the meteorological conditions in America. He then continued with great glee: "Our friend, Lord Rosebery, has everything and knows everything, so it is almost impossible to find for him something new. Great books are common, but I have succeeded in my explorations among antiquarian shops in discovering the most idiotic book that ever was written. It was by an old lord mayor of London, who filled a volume with his experiences in an excursion on the Thames, which is the daily experience of every Englishman." To the disappointment of Mr. Gladstone, Lord Rosebery also had that book. The evening was a memorable one for me.
After a most charming time and dinner, while Lord Rosebery went off to meet an engagement to speak at a meeting of colonial representatives, Lady Rosebery took Mr. Gladstone and myself to the opera at Covent Garden. There was a critical debate on in the House of Commons, and the whips were running in to inform him of the progress of the battle and to get instructions from the great leader.
During the entr'actes Mr. Gladstone most interestingly talked of his sixty years' experience of the opera. He knew all the great operas of that period, and criticised with wonderful skill the composers and their characteristics. He gave a word picture of all the great artists who had appeared on the English stage and the merits and demerits of each. A stranger listening to him would have said that a veteran musical critic, who had devoted his life to that and nothing else, was reminiscing. He said that thirty years before the manager of Covent Garden had raised the pitch, that this had become so difficult that most of the artists, to reach it, used the tremolo, and that the tremolo had taken away from him the exquisite pleasure which he formerly had in listening to an opera.
Mr. Gladstone was at that time the unquestionable master of the House of Commons and its foremost orator. I unfortunately never heard him at his best, but whether the question was of greater or lesser importance, the appearance of Mr. Gladstone at once lifted it above ordinary discussion to high debate.
Mr. Gladstone asked many questions about large fortunes in the United States, was curious about the methods of their accumulation, and whether they survived in succeeding generations. He wanted to know all about the reputed richest man among them. I told him I did not know the amount of his wealth, but that it was at least one hundred millions of dollars.
"How invested?" he asked.
I answered: "All in fluid securities which could be turned into cash in a short time."
He became excited at that and said: "Such a man is dangerous not only to his own country but to the world. With that amount of ready money he could upset the exchanges and paralyze the borrowing power of nations."
"But," I said, "you have enormous fortunes," and mentioned the Duke of Westminster.
"I know every pound of Westminster's wealth," he said. "It is in lands which he cannot sell, and burdened with settlements of generations and obligations which cannot be avoided."
"How about the Rothschilds?" I asked.
"Their fortunes," he answered, "are divided among the firms in London, Paris, Vienna, and Frankfort, and it would be impossible for them to be combined and used to unsettle the markets of the world. But Mr. ---- could do this and prevent governments from meeting their obligations."
Mr. Gladstone had no hostility to great fortunes, however large, unless so invested as to be immediately available by a single man for speculation. But fortunes larger than that of one hundred millions have since been acquired, and their management is so conservative that they are brakes and safeguards against unreasoning panics. The majority of them have been used for public benefit. The most conspicuous instances are the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment, and the Frick Creation.
Henry Labouchere told me a delightful story of Mr. Gladstone's first meeting with Robert T. Lincoln, when he arrived in London as American minister. Mr. Lincoln became in a short time after his arrival one of the most popular of the distinguished list of American representatives to Great Britain. He was especially noted for the charm of his conversation. Labouchere said that Mr. Gladstone told him that he was very anxious to meet Mr. Lincoln, both because he was the new minister from the United States and because of his great father, President Lincoln. Labouchere arranged for a dinner at his house, which was an hour in the country from Mr. Gladstone's city residence. Mrs. Gladstone made Mr. Labouchere promise, as a condition for permitting her husband to go, that Mr. Gladstone should be back inside of his home at ten o'clock.
The dinner had no sooner started than some question arose which not only interested but excited Mr. Gladstone. He at once entered upon an eloquent monologue on the subject. There was no possibility of interruption by any one, and Mr. Lincoln had no chance whatever to interpose a remark. When the clock was nearing eleven Labouchere interrupted this torrent of talk by saying: "Mr. Gladstone, it is now eleven; it is an hour's ride to London, and I promised Mrs. Gladstone to have you back at ten." When they were seated in the carriage Labouchere said to Mr. Gladstone: "Well, you have passed an evening with Mr. Lincoln; what do you think of him?" He replied: "Mr. Lincoln is a charming personality, but he does not seem to have much conversation."
Among the very able men whom I met in London was Joseph Chamberlain. When I first met him he was one of Mr. Gladstone's trusted lieutenants. He was a capital speaker, a close and incisive debater, and a shrewd politician. When he broke with Mr. Gladstone, he retained his hold on his constituency and continued to be a leader in the opposite party.
Mr. Chamberlain told me that in a critical debate in the House of Commons, when the government was in danger, Mr. Gladstone, who alone could save the situation, suddenly disappeared. Every known resort of his was searched to find him. Mr. Chamberlain, recollecting Mr. Gladstone's interest in a certain subject, drove to the house of the lady whose authority on that subject Mr. Gladstone highly respected. He found him submitting to the lady for her criticism and correction some of Watts's hymns, which he had translated into Italian.
The British Government sent Mr. Chamberlain to America, and he had many public receptions given him by our mercantile and other bodies. On account of his separating from Mr. Gladstone on Home Rule, he met with a great deal of hostility here from the Irish. I was present at a public dinner where the interruptions and hostile demonstrations were very pronounced. But Mr. Chamberlain won his audience by his skill and fighting qualities.
I gave him a dinner at my house and had a number of representative men to meet him. He made the occasion exceedingly interesting by presenting views of domestic conditions in England and international ones with this country, which were quite new to us.
Mr. Chamberlain was a guest on the Teutonic at the famous review of the British navy celebrating Queen Victoria's jubilee, where I had the pleasure of again meeting him. He had recently married Miss Endicott, the charming daughter of our secretary of war, and everybody appreciated that it was a British statesman's honeymoon.
He gave me a dinner in London, at which were present a large company, and two subjects came under very acute discussion. There had been a recent marriage in high English society, where there were wonderful pedigree and relationships on both sides, but no money. It finally developed, however, that under family settlements the young couple might have fifteen hundred pounds a year, or seven thousand five hundred dollars. The decision was unanimous that they could get along very well and maintain their position on this sum and be able to reciprocate reasonably the attentions they would receive. Nothing could better illustrate the terrific increase in the cost of living than the contrast between then and now.
Some one of the guests at the dinner said that the Americans by the introduction of slang were ruining the English language. Mr. James Russell Lowell had come evidently prepared for this controversy. He said that American slang was the common language of that part of England from which the Pilgrims sailed, and that it had been preserved in certain parts of the United States, notably northern New England. He then produced an old book, a sort of dictionary of that period, and proved his case. It was a surprise to everybody to know that American slang was really classic English, and still spoken in the remoter parts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, though no longer in use in England.