Harriman, Edward Henry

Edward Henry (1848-1909), an American railroad magnate and multi-millionaire. He was the son of a poorly paid Episcopal rector, and was born in the parsonage at Hemsted, Long Island. He had a year or two of instruction in a parochial school. At sixteen he became an office boy in a brokerage house on Broadway; at eighteen he was a confidential clerk; at twenty-two he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange for $20,000. No one knows how he got the money, but he became one of the shrewdest buyers and sellers of railroad shares known on the New York Exchange. At twenty-five he married the daughter of a wealthy banker; at forty he was worth a million and was a leading spirit in the Illinois Central, bent not so much on money, it is said, as power in the railroad world. His plan of financiering was, in brief, to buy up a road cheap and then sell bonds for more than the road cost him. In this way, he not only acquired large holdings at no cost to himself, but made a profit besides.

At sixty Mr. Harriman's ambition was realized. He was the most powerful railroad man in the world. At sixty-one he died in a palatial residence of his own erection atop of a mountain of his own near Arden, in Orange County, New York. A trip to Europe and the best medical assistance in the world could not save him. At the time of his death, Mr. Harriman controlled nearly 75,000 miles of railway, enough to girdle the earth three times. These lines were

The stockholders in these systems were rated by the Journal of Commerce at 80,000 and the number of employes at 350,000. To indicate the power wielded by this railway president, it may be sufficient to state that the Harriman lines extended from New York via Buffalo, Pittsburg, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, and Salt Lake City to San Francisco; from New Orleans via E1 Paso, Los Angeles and San Francisco to Portland, and from Chicago to New Orleans. Other lines and branches brought Montreal, Quebec, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, St. Louis, Omaha, Galveston, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Minneapolis,--in short nearly every American city of commercial importance within his netway of rails. A line of Harriman steamers connected New York, Havana, New Orleans, and Galveston. Another line brought oriental freight to the San Francisco terminals.

Mr. Harriman's wealth was estimated at $100,000,000. His will is one of the shortest on record. Its contents conveyed property at the rate of a million dollars per word:

I, Edward H. Harriman, of Arden, in the state of New York, declare this is my last will and testament, that is to say: I give, devise, and bequeath all of my property, real and personal, of every kind and nature, to my wife, Mary W. Harriman, to be hers absolutely and forever, and I do hereby nominate and appoint the said Mary W. Harriman to be the executrix of this will. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and seal this 8th day of June, in the year 1903. EDWARD H. HARRIMAN.

Mr. Harriman's life was strenuous and was confined chiefly to railroad matters. One of the pleasant incidents in his life was the organization of what has been called the Harriman-Alaska Expedition. In 1899 he chartered a ship and organized an excursion party to visit Alaska. The party consisted of his own family, several invited guests, and about fifty representative gentlemen interested in science and art. Among the men of note were William Trelease of St. Louis; John Muir of California; John Burroughs of New York; and Messrs. Gannet, Merriam, Ridgway, Gilbert, and Colville from various departments at Washington. The fauna, flora, geology, and geography of the region were studied. Among the animals new to science were two foxes, five hares, and a number of marine forms. The experts united in getting out an illustrated report of the expedition. Mr. Harriman's name was bestowed on a fiord and a glacier. The comments made at the time of his death are interesting, as indicating the attitude of the American press toward predatory wealth.

There are countries where Mr. Harriman would never have been heard of, save as an unscrupulous gambler in stocks. But the American system of private ownership and operation of the highways of commerce made possible that extraordinary Harriman decade which has culminated so dramatically in his recent return from Europe to die, with the entire financial world feverishly awaiting the bulletins from the sick man's chamber. . . .

Down to the fiftieth year of Harriman's life, he was utterly enveloped in an atmosphere of the most sordid money-getting by the most unscrupulous methods that would endure the scrutiny of the criminal courts. It is absurd to suppose that the stream of ethical motive can rise higher than its source; and we must judge Mr. Harriman to have been guided throughout his business career by those motives of self-interest which have been universal in the business world. He was reared to the methods of tooth and claw, and none surpassed him in the genius for battle, as many who saw at close range the tremendous contest between the Hill and Harriman forces, in 1901, for the control of the Northern Pacific, when the stock of the road rose to $1,000 a share, will long remember. To an enemy or a competitor Mr. Harriman was as merciless as he was formidable, and they say he had no friends in the entire business community who could fan into life a spark of real affection for the man. The most powerful bankers and capitalists placed their hundreds of millions absolutely at his disposal, in order that he might finance his schemes and win his battles, because they had the utmost faith in his genius to make their investments yield solid profits. Napoleonic, one would say, was the man--that is, a perfect master of the conditions that he confronted, so long as he could deal with them in his own way. Unmoral he was, if not immoral, and the end was everything, the means nothing to his restless and boundless ambition for achievement and aggrandizement.

It may be suspected that in those last years he got glimpses of the American people that told him a new era was in the dawning. It will be an era in which men of his type will shrivel and disappear, since the public interest is in the future to dominate the field of natural monopoly rather than private gain.--Springfield Republican.

It is true to say of Edward Henry Harriman that with all faults and frailties, he was one of our greatest and most useful citizens. "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones"; but the evil which E. H. Harriman may have done in the course of his long fight to attain supremacy in the railroad field will not live for any long time, while the good is patent to all men in the great railroad system which he built up, and the great example which he set for other railroads to follow.

It is too early to discuss at length a career so complex and difficult, but it may at least be said that E. H. Harriman represented in his own person the most important movement for better methods in railroad management which the United States has seen.--Wall Street Journal.

A national and international figure of consequence, the peer of any man living in the game of railroad finance.--New York World.

The master builder of the century, the incarnation of material progress and material triumph.--New York American.

The most important figure in the American financial world.--New York Tribune.

The world's greatest railroad man.--New York Times.