bursement of money at Albany by the Company's representatives, is a particularly fitting closing to this record: "To say that no portion of this money was disbursed to individual members would be to attach undue credit to the conversational powers of the men having it in charge." 1879. In response to a memorial adopted by the New York Chamber of Commerce, February 6, 1879, and addressed to the Assembly of that State, charging that the managers of the railroads of the State, particularly those of the Erie and the New York Central, were abusing the trusts vested in them by unjust discriminations in rates, by subordinating the rights of stockholders to private interests which the privileges of their companies were employed to enhance, and by other acts inconsistent with the honest exercise of authority in the operation of the public highways, a special committee of five (increased to nine, March 12th), was appointed, on motion of Mr. Hepburn, February 28th, to investigate the charges. The committee consisted of A. B. Hepburn, H. L. Duguid, James Low, William L. Noyes, James W. Wadsworth, Charles S. Baker, James W. Husted, George L. Terry, and Thomas A. Grady. The committee began the taking of testimony at New York, June 12th. It held sessions also at Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, Ogdensburg, Utica, and Saratoga. The investigation was closed December 19th. March 26th, the Chamber of Commerce and Board of Trade and Transportation of New York submitted to the committee in detail the charge of maladministration against the railroad managers. This was in response to a letter sent by the committee to those bodies, and to different representative organizations throughout the State, requesting them to appear before the committee and prefer charges in order that it might determine therefrom what course to pursue. The charges of the New York bodies were generally accepted as covering the whole ground. The charges were read by Francis B. Thurber, and were signed by Jackson S. Schultz, Benjamin B. Sherman, Francis B. Thurber, Charles C. Dodge, Jacob Wendell, and Benjamin G. Arnold, as a committee. The charges were replied to by Hugh J. Jewett, President of the Erie, and William H. Vanderbilt, President of the New York Central, in a joint letter addressed to the investigating committee, reviewing the charges and taking general issue with them. Upon the issue thus formed the committee proceeded with the investigation. The New York commercial bodies prepared and supplied the evidence, and suggested the witnesses. Their counsel was Simon Sterne, of New York. The manufacturing and agricultural interests in the interior of the State were represented by J. H. Martindale, of Rochester. Ex-Judge William D. Shipman appeared for the Erie, and Chauncey M. Depew, Frank Loomis, and A. P. Laning for the New York Central. The entire answer of the railroad companies was submitted by George R. Blanchard, First VicePresident of the Erie, and this effort stands to-day as one of the clearest, most cogent, and thorough expositions of the transportation question and of the rights and moral powers of railroad corporations, from the corporation standpoint, in the entire literature of railroads. The witnesses examined by this committee formed an array of railroad and corporation magnates and celebrities never before summoned to give their testimony in the presence of any body or tribunal. The issues that brought the Erie's affairs particularly into the investigation called for the presence and testimony of President Jewett, First Vice-President Blanchard, S. L. M. Barlow, Chief Engineer Octave Chanute, Auditor Stephen Little, ex-Treasurer William Pitt Shearman, General Freight Agent Royal C. Vilas, Gen. A. S. Diven, Col. George T. Balch and Joseph W. Guppy, two old ex-employees of the Erie, both of whom had held close confidential relations with different managements. Collateral issues which involved the discrimination charge against the railroads were represented as witnesses by John D. Archbold, Jabez A. Boswick, and Henry H. Rogers, all Standard Oil Company magnates, and Josiah Lombard, of Lombard, Ayers & Co., oil refiners. William H. Vanderbilt, Webster Wagner, of the Wagner Palace Car Company; James H. Rutter, VicePresident of the Central; Alexander E. Orr, and Edwin D. Worcester, were other prominent witnesses. The testimony, arguments of counsel, and report of the committee fill five large volumes of the legislative records of New York State. The testimony of more than 100 persons was taken, that of Vice-President George W. Blanchard alone making 851 pages, and that of President Jewett 146 pages in the report. All of the Erie dirty linen of years past was rewashed by the investigation, and it was shown that a large quantity of new had been added to the heap. The history of the most of it is virtually covered in the chapters in this book giving the story of Erie during those years. The committee's report, which was made January 22, 1880, sustained the charges of the commercial bodies, although Senator Grady submitted a minority report embodying the views of the railroad managers. The result of the investigation was the passing of a law regulating the voting of railroad shares by proxy, so that they must be proxies executed three months before an election; a law prohibiting discrimination in rates, and the law establishing the Board of Railroad Commissioners, and a law prescribing and regulating the form and substance of reports to be made by the companies to the State engineer, an important and timely enactment has resulted not only in the putting on record of railroad statistics invaluable, but in hedging railroad corporations about by many wise re strictions. Among the testimony in regard to the recent transactions of the Erie management that the Hepburn investigating committee brought out was that in relation to one of Mr. Jewett's first official acts after taking charge of the Company. October 1, 1874, so the testimony ran, the Erie became a party with the Standard Oil Company in hauling crude oil from the wells to the Cleveland refineries, 150 miles, and then carrying the refined oil from Cleveland to New York at the same rate crude oil was charged from the mouth of the wells—a voluntary haul of 300 miles for nothing. Previous to this, in 1872, during the Watson administration, the Erie had agreed to pay a rebate to the South Improvement Company, of which the Standard Oil Company was the successor, on all oil shipped, and if any competitor got the same rate, the same reduction was to be made on the net rate of the South Improvement Company, the rates being thus managed so that the rivals would be compelled to pay full rates, or always more than the South Improvement Company. August 1, 1875, the Erie agreed to let the Standard Oil Company have the lowest net rate to other parties, and to pay the Standard 10 per cent. rebate on all shipments. The Erie, in 1877, joined hands with the Standard Oil Company to fight the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and force it to close out the Empire Transportation Company, a rival to the Standard Oil Company as a shipper and refiner of oil. The fight lasted until October, when the Standard and its railroad allies won, the great oil company not only crushing its rival, but gaining control of the terminal facilities for oil at Philadelphia and Baltimore, and becoming dictator to the railroads. In 1879, to harass the Tidewater Pipe Line Company, another projected rival of the Standard, the Erie and the other railroads reduced the rates on oil as low as fifteen cents a barrel to the Standard, from the open rate of $1.15, and allowed a mileage that reduced the amount received by the railroads to ten cents a barrel. It was also elicited that Jay Gould made a twenty-year lease, February 1, 1870, with the National Stock Yard Company at Weehawken to handle all the live stock transported by the Company. Charles S. Robinson was president of the Stock Yard Company, and John H. Comer, Fisk's private secretary, was secretary. The same day Gould made an agreement that the Erie Railway Company would advance such money from time to time as the National Stock Yard Company might require for the purpose of completing and fitting its yards for use. Not more than $100,000 were to be advanced, for which the Railway Company accepted first mortgage bonds issued by the Stock Yard Company. This company also leased stock yards at Deposit, N. Y., and Buffalo. By an order of Judge Donahue, July 29, 1875, Receiver Jewett was permitted to cancel the contract with the National Stock Yard Company by purchasing all the outstanding stock held by Charles Robinson, at the rate of $50,000 worth of the first mortgage bonds of the Stock Yard Company for 3,623 shares, also buying 1,822 shares of the Stock Yard Company held by the widow of James Fisk, Jr., for $5,000 of the first mortgage bonds of that company. January 28, 1876, Receiver Jewett leased all the Company's stock yards and facilities to John R. McPherson, of New Jersey (United States Senator), who took charge of the unloading, care, and handling of the live stock transported by the Erie, which paid him yardage charges of forty-five cents per head for cattle, six cents for sheep, and eight for hogs, and from $45 to $50 per ton for hay, besides $1 per car for unloading. The arrangement the Erie had with the Car Trust of New York was also gone into by this investigating committee. This Car Trust was formed in 1878. The parties to it were John Lowber Welsh, of Philadelphia; Homer Ramsdell, of Newburgh, N. Y.; John A. Hardenbergh and George R. Blanchard, of New York, and Clement R. Woodin, of Berwick, Pa., of the first part, and the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad Company of the second part. Welsh and Ramsdell were Directors in the latter company; Hardenbergh was its purchasing agent, and Blanchard was its first vicepresident. Woodin was a car-builder. The capital stock of the Car Trust was $3,000,000. Its purpose was the buying, selling, and leasing railroad cars, to be sold or leased to companies owning or operating railroads. The business of the Trust was to be conducted by trustees, who were Edwin D. Morgan and Alfred W. Morgan, of New York. The special business of the Trust seems to have been the leasing of cars to the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad Company, and had leased that Company 3,000 freight cars and 500 gondola_cars on August 1, 1879, for five years, the rent for them, which was to be 6 per cent. of the principal of all the shares of the Trust Company then outstanding, besides $69,730, was to be paid in quarterly payments. The Railroad Company was compelled by the lease to keep the cars in good repair, replace at its own cost all that were destroyed, and keep them branded, "Car Trust of New York," the Trust to be kept informed by annual statements of the condition of the cars. If the Company made default in payment of its rent, or any part of it, for thirty days after it was due, the Trust Company had power to remove the cars from the possession of the Railroad Company, the Company to haul them to any point on its line designated by the Trust as most convenient for its further disposal of them. The declared purpose of this Trust was to furnish needed rolling stock to the Erie, which the Company had not the means to purchase outright, and on terms easy and economical, but the conditions of the arrangement proved to be so much the contrary that in 1884, when the Jewett administration came to an end, the Erie was in default to the Trust Company $5,666,000, and the Company is to-day paying off that debt, which is for cars supplied to the Erie, some of them nearly a score of years ago, and which were long since worn out and discarded. 1829. FATHERS IN ERIE. WILLIAM C. REDFIELD, who first suggested and mapped out a route and advocated the building of a railroad through the country and over the very ground occupied by the Erie, was born March 26, 1786, at South Farms, Conn. He learned the trade of saddler and harness-maker, and was a born scientist. He announced his plan for a railroad in a pamphlet published in 1829. ("In Embryo," pages 4-5.) The bridge that carries the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad across the Mississippi River is located on the exact spot where he marked on his map that such a railroad bridge should be built. More than a quarter of a century passed before the railroad and bridge were built there, and Mr. Redfield was the guest of honor at the opening ceremonies, in 1854. He continued to agitate the subject of the railroad until the project at last interested others, and resulted in the charter, survey, and building of the Erie. William C. Redfield may then be justly called the "Father of Erie." He was the author of many scientific works, and received the honorary degree of A.M. from Yale College in 1839. He was the first president, in 1843, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He died at New York, February 12, 1857, aged 68. 1831. RICHARD P. MARVIN was the author of the first notice of application to the New York Legislature for a charter for a company to build a railroad from the Hudson River to Lake Erie over the route now covered by the Erie, which notice was adopted at a meeting called by him at Jamestown, N. Y., September 20, 1831. He was a conspicuous delegate to the convention at Owego, December 20, 1831, from the deliberations of which the New York and Erie Railroad resulted. (“Taking Form," pages 10-14.) Mr. Marvin was born at Fairfield, Herkimer County, N. Y., December 23, 1803. He taught school, and studied law, and was admitted to the bar in May, 1829. He settled at Jamestown, N. Y., the following June. He became eminent at the bar. In 1835 he was elected to the New York Assembly, where he was influential in Erie interests. In 1836 he was elected to Congress, and was reëlected in 1838. From 1847 until 1871 he was a Supreme Court Justice of the State of New York, and made a lasting reputation for judicial acumen and legal learning. He married, in September, 1834, Isabelle Newland, who bore PHILIP CHURCH drafted, and had it adopted at a meeting held at Angelica, N. Y., October 26th, the notice of application for a charter for a railroad through the Southern Tier counties of New York, from the Hudson to Lake Erie, which notice was the one adopted by the memorialists and petitioners for the charter. He was chairman of the convention at Owego, December 20, 1831. ("Taking Form," pages 10-14.) Philip Church was a gentleman of the old school, and belonged to the aristocracy, so far as any aristocracy existed in this country at that day. He was born at Boston, April 14, 1778. His father was an officer in the American Army in the war resulting in Independence. His mother was Angelica Schuyler, a daughter of Gen. Philip Schuyler of Albany. Gen. Alexander Hamilton married another daughter of General Schuyler, so that Philip Church was a grandson of Philip Schuyler, and a nephew of Alexander Hamilton. He was educated at Eton. In 1798, at the age of 20, he was appointed by Washington a Captain in the United States Infantry, and January 12, 1799, Gen. Alexander Hamilton made him his chief of staff. May 6, 1800, he became the owner of 100,000 acres of land in Allegany County, N. Y., through which the Genesee River flowed. He laid out a town which he named Angelica, for his mother, and became a resident there in 1805. A large portion of the tract was covered with pine forests of the finest quality, of little value for the want of a market. When railroads began to be talked, Mr. Church at once saw how important one would be to him if it could pass through his vast estate, and to the public at large in opening up that then isolated country, and as early as 1830 he began agitating the possibilities of such a railroad. He labored incessantly in its interest for many years, having been named in the charter as one of the incorporators of the New York and Erie Railroad Company. ("First Administration of Eleazar Lord," pages 21-22; "Administration of James Gore King," pages 34-35; "Fighting Its Way," pages 295-296; "The Building of It," pages 310-311.) February 8, 1807, he was appointed by Gov. Morgan Lewis first Judge of the Common Pleas for Allegany County, an office he held fourteen years. February 4, 1805, he was married to Anna Matilda, daughter of Gen. Walker Stewart, of Philadelphia, and took his bride to his home in the Genesee wilderness. They had nine children, of whom but two, Maj. Richard Church, of New York, and Mrs. Horwood, of London, survive. Judge Church died January 10, 1861. THE PRESIDENTS OF ERIE. 1833-1835; 1839-1841; 1844-1845. ELEAZAR LORD.-Eleazar Lord, A.M., LL.D., was born September 9, 1788, at Franklin, Conn. His early boyhood was spent among the quiet scenes of that even-tenored rural vicinage, where his elementary education was obtained in the district schools. At the age of sixteen, in 1804, he left home and began life as a clerk in a store at Norwich. In 1808 he returned home to prepare himself for college, under the direction of the Rev. Dr. Lee, of Lisbon, of whose church (Presbyterian) he became a member in 1809. After two years of preparatory study, he entered Andover Seminary, and remained there three and a half years. While there he became deeply interested in the subject of Foreign Missions, an interest that remained active with him all his life. He wrote the first pretentious work in the literature of that department of the church ever published in this country: History of the Principal Protestant Missions to the Heathen.” It was published in 1813 at Boston. "A In September, 1812, he was licensed to preach by the Haverhill Association at Salem, N. H. He had no regular charge, but preached acceptably at various places for a year. He entered Princeton College, where for some months he attended the lectures and recitations of that celebrated institution. A serious affection of the eyes compelled him to give up his cherished position in life to devote himself to secular concerns, the exactions of which would not demand the sacrifice of his sight. He engaged actively in commercial and financial affairs, and while giving to them necessarily a large part of his time, his inclinations for religious work and its advancement were not permitted to languish in the slightest degree. In 1815 he personally called a public meeting of the citizens of New York City to consider the subject of Sundayschools, then an untried branch of church work. He organized the New York Sunday-school Union Society, and became its corresponding secretary. He spent much time in organizing Sunday-schools, and in editing and superintending the publication of Sunday-school literature. In 1816 he was a member of the convention in New York City that organized the American Bible Society. In March, 1817, his eyes again warning him, he spent nearly a year and a half travelling in Europe. While abroad he met and established cordial relations with all the prominent reformers of the day, philanthropical, evangelical, and political, among them Wilberforce, Canning, Rowland Hill, Chalmers, Macaulay the elder, Sir Thomas Baring, and hosts of others. He returned to New York in 1818. He was instrumental, in 1826, in the formation of the American Home Mission Society, of which he was the first correspónding secretary. He wrote the first annual report of this society. In 1819 Mr. Lord was selected by the leading merchants of New York City to go to Washington in their interest as an advocate for the adoption by Congress of a protective tariff, which, they held, would be for the general good of the country. The measures he prepared were passed in 1820, but the business men of the East insisted that the tariff was not yet protective enough, and in 1823-4 Mr. Lord was sent to Washington to advocate still further tariff revision. His views were opposed by Clay, Calhoun, and all the Southern and some of the Western statesmen. His arguments were such, however, that Clay finally acquiesced in them, and used them in his subsequent speeches in and out of Congress, whence came his fame as the "Father of the American System." In 1821 Eleazar Lord obtained the charter for and organized the Manhattan Fire Insurance Company of New York, of which he was president twelve years. During the management of Mr. Lord the Manhattan Company paid annually dividends of nine per cent. Early in 1827 Dartmouth College and Williams College each conferred the degree of Master of Arts on Eleazar Lord. In that year the banking system then in operation in New York State had shown its utter inefficiency by the deplorable condition into which the banks had fallen, and Mr. Lord turned his attention toward placing it on a sounder basis. In 1828-29 he wrote and published a book entitled, "Credit, Currency and Banking," in which he recommended a system that he claimed would remedy the defects of the one prevailing. His recommendations became the foundation of what was known as the Free Banking System, and from 1838 until it was replaced by the national banking law, it remained in force in New York State, and was adopted by others. When, during the emergency that came with the Civil War, the Committee on Ways and Means in Congress was devising a method to best sustain the finances of the country, Mr. Lord was summoned by it to give the benefit of his knowledge of and experience in practical finance. In response, he formulated the plan, and made the original draft of the bill authorizing its adoption, on which the present national banking system was established. Eleazar Lord was one of the originators of the New York and Erie Railroad Company, and was elected its first president August 9, 1833. His plan for the construction of the road through the Susquehanna Valley, and the work he did under that plan, may well be wondered at now, as it was then, but that his motives were honest, sincere, and intended for the promotion of the best interests of the Company and the hastening of the enterprise to successful issue, not one of his most bitter detractors, if any are living to-day, would undertake to deny. His insistence on the six-foot gauge was also an unfortunate error in judgment. In spite of these, however, the fact remains that Eleazar Lord tided the New York and Erie Railroad Company over some of its darkest days. ("Administrations of Eleazar Lord-First, Second, and Third "-pages 20-31, 48-51, and 74-85.) Mr. Lord's busiest years were doubtless those of the Erie Railroad period, yet from 1831 to 1844 he wrote and published five books on scientific and religious subjects, besides numerous papers for magazines on similar subjects. From that time until 1866 he added to his literary work many volumes, having for their subjects finance, general and doctrinal theology, history and science, besides innumerable reviews for magazines and periodicals. During the same time he was in constant correspondence with most of the leading men in this and foreign countries. In 1866 the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by the University of New York. In 1855 he published his "Historical Review of the New York and Erie Railroad." Mr. Lord married, July 12, 1824, Elizabeth Pierson, only daughter of Hon. Jeremiah H. Pierson, of Ramapo, N. Y. She died May 3, 1833. December 31, 1835, he married Ruth Thompson, daughter of Deacon Eben Thompson, of East Windsor, Conn. Seven children were born to him by his first wife. None survive but Sarah Pierson Lord Whiton, wife of W. H. Whiton, Esq. This daughter and her husband Occupy the Lord homestead at Piermont-on-the-Hudson, where Eleazar Lord died, June 3, 1871, aged 83 years. The portrait of Mr. Lord which accompanies this sketch was taken from a miniature likeness painted on ivory when he was 36 years old, and which was a gift from him to his betrothed, in 1824. 1835-1839. JAMES GORE KING.-James Gore King was born in New York City on May 8, 1791. He was the third son of the distinguished statesman, Rufus King, and of Mary Alsop, daughter of John Alsop, one of the most eminent of early New York.citizens. As a child he spent several years in England, his father being Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to the Court of St. James. He returned to this country in 1803, entered Harvard College, from which he was graduated in 1810. He studied law and was admitted to the bar, but in 1815 abandoned that profession to enter into the more congenial pursuits of mercantile life. In 1815 he established a commission house in New York City, and in 1818 removed to Liverpool, where he remained. in business until 1824, when he returned to New York. Upon the recommendation of John Jacob Astor, he was offered a partnership in the then great banking house of Prime, Ward & Sands, of New York. Of this house and its successor, Prime, Ward & King, he remained a leading member until 1847, when he withdrew and established the firm of James G. King & Sons. It was while in the enjoyment of the great prestige he had won as a member of the first-mentioned house that he was selected in 1835 as President of the New York and Erie Railroad Company. The story of the difficulties he encountered and bravely endeavored to overcome in the advancement of the great undertaking of that Company is told with much detail in the historic chapters of this volume, but it may be mentioned here that the first ground for the Erie Railroad was broken by him November 6, 1835, at Deposit, N. Y.; that he raised the first money to pay contractors for work on the road; that he was instrumental in negotiating the first State stock of the Company, through Prime, Ward & King, so that much-needed money could be obtained without delay; that he began the first work on the road at the eastern end, at Piermont, in 1838; and that he only ceased his efforts to forward the interests of the struggling company, after a few years' term of office, when he found that it was impossible to secure the cooperation of New York capitalists in the great enterprise that meant so much to their welfare and the welfare of the metropolis, and that influences in the Legislature, and within the Company itself, were opposing his plans. ("Administration of James Gore King," pp. 32-47.) James Gore King's great financial genius, and the influences he wielded as an individual in the financial world, are best testified to by his record during the disastrous crisis of 1837. Through his efforts the Bank of England consented to advance a large amount of specie to enable the resumption of specie payments in this country, and to restore financial strength and confidence to it. This Mr. King did by his own personal power, winning over to his opinion and wishes the governor of that conservative and powerful institution. Mr. King resigned as President of the New York and Erie Railroad Company in 1839. In 1848 he was elected a representative to the Thirty-first Congress from New Jersey, he being then a resident of that State, living at a beautiful country seat on Weehawken Heights. In 1817 Mr. King was one of the reorganizers of the New York Chamber of Commerce, and was ever afterward one of its most conspicuous and influential members. In 1841 he was elected vicepresident of that institution. In 1845 he was chosen president unanimously. He resigned in 1847 to go abroad. The next spring, on his return, he was reëlected president, Moses H. Grinnell withdrawing in his favor. Mr. King married, February 4, 1813, Sarah, daughter of Archibald Gracie, a distinguished New York merchant of that day. He died October 4, 1853, only a short time after the railroad he had spent so much of his time to carry to a successful issue against overpowering odds, was completed. His portrait, painted at the order of the Chamber of Commerce, by Thomas P. Rossiter, hangs on the walls of the chamber, among the portraits of the other distinguished members of that body who were in their day potent in the affairs of the commercial world. |