Quotes
Federal railroad regulation... had steadily increased through the years; the Sherman Anti-trust Act, passed in 1890, had been interpreted broadly as affecting the railroads of the country as well as the industrial and other combinations.
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.
Even the New York Central system in 1866 was practically a single-track road; and the Commodore could not claim to any particular superiority over his neighbors and rivals in this particular.
Consequently many large railroad systems of heavy capitalization bid fair to run into difficulties on the first serious falling off in general business.
Carrying out this policy of promoting harmony among competing lines, the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroad early in 1900 acquired a working control of the Reading Company, which in turn controlled the New Jersey Central and dominated the anthracite coal traffic.
Canals might indeed linger for a time as feeders... but every one now realized that the railroad was to be the great agency which would give plausibility to the industrial organization of the United States and develop its great territory.
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.
By 1885 the Vanderbilt lines had grown in extent and importance far beyond any point of which the elder Vanderbilt had ever dreamed.
By 1880 four different lines of railroad were running through to the Pacific States, and a fifth, the Denver and Rio Grande, had penetrated through the mountains of Colorado and across Utah to the Great Salt Lake.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As we enter the Civil War period, we find the three important properties which were afterwards to make up the Vanderbilt system all developing rapidly and logically into the strategic relationship which would make ultimate consolidation inevitable.
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.
As late as 1842 a train was started only when sufficient traffic was waiting along the road to warrant the use of the engine.
As a result of these new conditions, the States, cities, and towns were welded together, and population and prosperity increased rapidly in those inland sections which had formerly languished because they had no means of easy and rapid communication.
After the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, the Legislature of New York directed a survey of a state road which was to be constructed at public expense through the southern tier of counties from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.
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.
Working on a film, you don't get time to develop rivalries, but the theatre is like a little village, and the differences between me, Lionel and Georgia grew.