John Moody Quotes (89 Quotes)


    Having obtained control of the New York Central, the Hudson River, and the Harlem railroads, Commodore Vanderbilt now decided in the summer of 1867 to go after the Erie, of which Drew was nominally in possession, although no one knew when he owned a majority of the stock or when he was temporarily short of it.

    A minority investment, even though it be as low as ten or twenty per cent, usually constitutes a dominating influence if held by a single interest, for in most cases the majority of the shares will be owned in small blocks by thousands of investors who never combine for a definite, practical purpose.

    Railroads had been operating for many years in this country before it dawned upon the farmers that this great improvement, which many had hailed as his greatest friend, might be his greatest enemy.

    In 1831, steam locomotives were tested, and one of them, the York, was found capable of conveying fifteen tons at the rate of fifteen miles an hour on level portions of the road.

    Before the opening of the Civil War and until immediately after its end, the New York Central and the Erie systems were controlled by bitterly antagonistic interests.


    In the earlier days of railroading, and especially in the long period which came to an end with the death of Harriman, the typical railroad president was usually a man of great wealth who had secured his position by owning a large financial interest in the property.

    The entire period in the affairs of the Erie system from the ascendancy of Daniel Drew in 1851 to the end of the Civil War witnessed an endless succession of stock-market exploits both large and small.

    The ultimate plan, which proved too visionary, was to consolidate under one control a vast network of lines extending all over the continent.

    In the United States three new methods of transportation made their appearance at almost the same time - the steamboat, the canal boat, and the rail car.

    The early seventies were not a time of great prosperity in the newly opened West, and the farmers, looking about for the source of their discomforts, not unnaturally fixed upon the railroads.

    Under the Thomson management, which lasted until 1874, the record of the Pennsylvania Railroad was one of progress in every sense of the word.

    Many of the railroad evils were inherent in the situation; they were explained by the fact that both managers and public were dealing with a new agency whose laws they did not completely understand.

    Consequently many large railroad systems of heavy capitalization bid fair to run into difficulties on the first serious falling off in general business.

    When business revived in the closing years of the nineteenth century, the history of American railroads began a new chapter.

    One of the primary objects of Pennsylvania Railroad policy has been to keep pace with the growth of the country.

    But while at Pittsburgh the road had everything to favor it... in the great Eastern metropolis the Pennsylvania Railroad was at an obvious disadvantage, particularly as compared with the New York Central, which had its splendid terminal rights penetrating to the heart of the city.

    We've been after the vice president since Sunday, as everyone has, and our efforts paid off. I think he wanted to make sure he got a fair interview and a good interview -- good in the sense of thorough -- and Brit is sort of the pre-eminent journalist in Washington right now.

    Horses and mules, and even sail cars, made more rapid progress than did the earliest locomotive.

    The outstanding dramatic event in the story of the modern Northern Pacific was the famous corner which occurred in the spring of 1901 as a result of a contest between the Hill and the Harriman interests for the control of the property.

    Times were not the best, however, and, although much traffic was developed, the immense cost of the extensions heavily burdened the Baltimore and Ohio Company, while the panic of 1857 seriously embarrassed its credit.

    It's so easy to hide behind a letter, ... Teachers are busy, and we fully understand that. But this is a profession, and it's a profession that's built on connecting with your parents.

    When these facts became public, the capital stock of the Baltimore and Ohio, which for generations had been looked upon as one of the most secure of railroad investments, dropped to almost nothing, and the most strenuous financial efforts were required to keep the company out of bankruptcy.

    The close relationship between railroad expansion and the genera development and prosperity of the country is nowhere brought more distinctly into relief than in connection with the construction of the Pacific railroads.

    Yet, in 1850 nearly all the railroads in the United States lay east of the Mississippi River, and all of them, even when they were physically mere extensions of one another, were separately owned and separately managed.

    Both freight and passenger charges, however, were still maintained at an unprofitable rate, and, after the death of John W. Garrett, the credit of the Baltimore and Ohio continued to decline.

    The Erie Railroad control was always nominally for sale, and, as the annual election approached, a majority of stockholders stood ready to sell their votes to the highest bidder.

    The States which form the northern border of the United States westward from the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast include an area several times larger than France and could contain ten Englands and still have room to spare.

    In 1906 the Pennsylvania began to dispose of the bulk of its holdings in competing properties, the most notable transactions being the sale of its entire interest in the Chesapeake and Ohio to independent interests and a substantial part of its Baltimore and Ohio holdings to the Union Pacific Railroad.

    In this wise the Commodore not only added millions to his already growing fortune but also made himself a power in the financial world.

    The builders of the Santa Fe lines in the early days no doubt planned ultimately to penetrate to the Pacific coast, knowing that the real opportunity for the road lay in that direction.

    The public conviction that a railroad linking the West and the East was an absolute necessity became so pronounced after the gold discoveries of '49 that Congress passed an act in 1853 providing for a survey of several lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

    The financial history of the Baltimore and Ohio since the close of the nineteenth century is interesting chiefly in connection with changes in the control of the property.

    Great men are usually the products of their times and one of the men developed by these times takes rank with the greatest railroad leaders in history.

    As the contest proceeded, public interest increased and the entire country watched to see which company would win the big government subsidies through the mountains.

    This growing sentiment finally persuaded the Legislature to charter in April, 1832, the New York and Erie Railroad Company, and to give it authority to construct a line and to regulate its own charges for transportation.

    It was a simple matter to find fault with the railroad it has always been its fate to arouse the opposition of the farmers.

    The financial condition of the Erie at this time manifested the beginning of that general policy of improvidence and recklessness which afterward, for nearly a generation and a half, made the company a speculative football in some of the most disreputable games of Wall Street stock-jobbers.

    By this time Vanderbilt had achieved a great reputation as a man who created values, earned dividends, and invented wealth as if by magic other railroad managers now began... ask him to do with them what he had done with the Harlem and the Hudson River.

    But the great miracle of the nineteenth century-the building of a new nation... and diffusing among them the necessities and comforts of civilization to a greater extent than the world had ever known before is explained by the development of harvesting machinery and of the railroad.

    By 1885 the Vanderbilt lines had grown in extent and importance far beyond any point of which the elder Vanderbilt had ever dreamed.

    The upshot of the matter was that Morgan devised a plan for the sale of a large amount of Vanderbilt's stock holdings through private sale in England, and in such a way that the knowledge of such sale would not become public in America.

    The development of railroad properties under the Vanderbilt influence was not confined to the territory east of Chicago and the Mississippi Valley.

    The old saying that capital is the most timid thing in the world and does not like pioneering is strongly emphasized by such instances as this, and no doubt in 1864 the enormous grants of free land made by Congress did not appear especially attractive to the man who had money to invest.

    It popped out of the ground because of the water pressure.

    On July 18, 1858, the first through train passed over the entire line from Philadelphia via Mount Joy to Pittsburgh without transfer of passengers. At the same time the first smoking car ever attached to a passenger train was used, and sleeping cars also soon began to appear.

    The panic of 1837, the contest of the United States Bank with President Jackson, its defeat, and its subsequent failure as a state bank, the consequent distress in local financial circles--all conspired to shift the monetary center of the country to New York.

    With the reorganization of 1898 finished, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad entered a new period in its history.

    As late as 1842 a train was started only when sufficient traffic was waiting along the road to warrant the use of the engine.

    People began to understand that with the acquisition of California the nation had obtained practically half a continent, of which the future possibilities were almost unlimited, so far as the development of natural resources and the genera production of wealth were concerned.

    Farmers, merchants, manufacturers, and the traveling public have all had their troubles with the transportation lines, and the difficulties to which these struggles have given rise have produced that problem which is even now apparently far from solution.


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