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Show THE LATE EBWARD H. HARRIMAN. ft (By C. C. GOODWIN.) ' IT IS difficult as yet to form a proper estimate of the late E. H. Harriman. Perhaps it never will be formed, because what he did was but preparatory work. What the end he was struggling strug-gling to reach may have been can only be conjectured. con-jectured. But in doing what he did in his brief career he developed certain elements of mind which may be considered. He saw at a fiance what Mr. Huntington and his associates, what the owners and managers of tho Union Pacific never saw, though they built the first through conti nental road. They built the road, and then for thirty years ran it to sell the lands the government govern-ment had given them, and to draw from patrons "all that the traffic would bear," and up to a few years ago treated the road, and so proclaimed it, merely as a bridge, holding that their chief reliance reli-ance was upon the through business, and determined deter-mined that the original debt and interest; upon it they would not pay, but would rather give up the wreck which they left than to pay the debt, though from it they had all reaped vast fortunes. They seemed to have no comprehension of the empire that was within their grasp. Rather, Mr. Huntington went east and expended vast sums in building the Chesapeake & Ohio road. It is safe to say that had Mr. Harriman been in his place he would have built the road out to Portland, east, another road southeast from Puget Sound, another from Los Angeles, northeast, and that all four roads would have connected some where in this interior. It is safe to think that, because, coming upon the scene just as those other railroad veterans were letting go; he grasped the possibilities presented, and without quibbling about prices bought the Short Line, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific, and at once began to practically reconstruct them. And he never deviated devi-ated from his purpose for a moment. He never discounted dis-counted native land for a moment. The Lucin cut-off had been talked about for thirty years. He built it, thereby cutting off forty-four miles of track, and obliterating the grades and curves, which had been a mighty expense, and had caused constant delays for more than thirty years. In his combinations and in the sagacity be displayed dis-played reducing those combinations to a reality, he makes one think, involuntarily, of Napoleon's masterpiece for crushing Austria and Russia by a single blow at Austerlitz. He ordered four distinct armies, which were widely separated, to rendezvous ren-dezvous near where the battle was to be fought, by or before a certain day. He knew his captains, Soult, Lannes, Bernadette,, Murot, Noy and tho others, oth-ers, and was sure there would be not failure. They were there. Fifty-four thousand one day, seventy-five seventy-five thousand the next, and eighty-five thousand thou-sand two days later and when Napoleon struck the allies, they and the world for the first time comprehended what the mighty Corsican had intended. But how well Mr. Harriman had matured his plans shows from the fact that though it was years ago when he bought those iintus and began to reconstruct and re-equip them, the work has gone steadily on without default. His. power of commanding money for any purpose pur-pose desired has been a growing mystery from the first. How he could have so anchored himself him-self at .the beginning, and maintained himself amid all the opposition that has been arrayed against him, has been the wonderment of financiers. .All the time he moved calmly and confidently before men, and even when the hand of death was upon him, he maintained his cheerfulness. Nothing so majestic and extraordinary as his career during the past twelve years has ever been seen in any country, though, as we said above, it was preliminary prelimin-ary constructive work. His business, whon he died, was like the palace he was building on the Hudson r but half completed. Could he have worked out his plans to complete fulfillment, we fancy he would have been looked upon as the foremost i industrial king of this or any other age. ' ;. Many things distinguish the late Mr. Harriman from every other railroad force of our day. He never wrecked a road, as did Tilden and Gould; he never secured control of one that he did not at once begin to make it better and more productive. ' I He realized from the start that trade and commerce com-merce are tho messengers of tho world's business; busi-ness; hence his insistence from the beginning that the great burden-bearers of commerce on land , should, so far as possible, avoid curves and grades, - both of which waste power and time, and machinery machin-ery and fuel, and add to the expense of operation. opera-tion. Wjhen it came to cost he always coupled with it, not the saving of this year or next, but for all lime. For example: Wliat win ue the saving made by the Lucin Cut-off, or the cutting " down of grades and eliminating curves between Laramie and Cheyenne, in fifty years? Another thought with him was that as time Is a mighty r factor in the modern world's business and as I safety is the first essential, every Improvement jr he made had behind it the intention to reduce j lime and increase the safety of crews auu pas- sengers. A double track from Ogden to Omaha must have been a perpetual thought In his mind, and, save for tho crash and depression two years " ago, we are confident that his thought would have materialized before he died. More clearly than any other railroad chief, j save perhaps J. J. Hill, he took in the possibilities possibili-ties of this great west; its food-producing capacity, -its climate, Its mines, Its future. So he stopped j the Colorado in its overflow, so he extended the road down the west coast of Mexico to make that l marvelous country, In a measure, tributary to his southern continental road; so he bought him a i summer home at a point near where the Cascades clasp hands with old Siskiyou, and the Klamath J makes a water power sufficient to turn a world. What he did he did gallantly. When a link I was needed in h's system, he bought it, if he could, and never quibbled about tho price. It was 1 not what it would pay this year or next, but g what its possession would be as a link In his , plans. He intended to make Salt Lake one of his 1 central stations, and so bought the control of the J local light and Btreet car corporation here, and 1 at oncn began to modernize and perfect its work- ing forces. He was the embodiment of progress, but at every .step ho managed to do something that gave more men employment and expedited the business j of all men who leaned upon him for transporta- i tion in order to carry out their plans. Arid 'what ho dirt was all within .velve years. Could be i havo been given twelve more years of health ' what would he not have done? 1 |