ess that astounded New York. This
single exploit pictures the man. Everything that Whitney did and was
his house, his financial transactions, his Wall Street speculations, the
rewards which he gave his friends assumed heroic proportions. But these
things all demanded money. The dilapidated horse railways of New York
offered him his most convenient opportunity for amassing it.

But Whitney had not proceeded far when he came face to face with a quiet
and energetic young man who had already made considerable progress in
the New York transit field. This was a Virginian of South Irish descent
who had started life as a humble broker's clerk twelve or fourteen years
before. His name was Thomas Fortune Ryan. Few men have wielded greater
power in American finance, but in 1884 Ryan was merely a ruddy-faced,
cleancut, and clean-living Irishman of thirty-three, who could be
depended on to execute quickly and faithfully orders on the New
York Stock Exchange--even though they were small ones--and who, in
unostentatious fashion, had already acquired much influence in Tammany
Hall. With his six feet of stature, his extremely slender figure, his
long legs, his long arms, his raiment--which always represented the
height of fashion and tended slightly toward the flashy--Ryan made a
conspicuous figure wherever he went. He was born in 1851, on a small
farm in Nelson County, Virginia. The Civil War, which broke out when
Ryan was a boy of ten, destroyed the family fortune and in 1868, when
seventeen, he began life as a dry-goods clerk in Baltimore, fulfilling
the tradition of the successful country boy in the large city by
marrying his employer's daughter. When his father-in-law failed, in
1870, Ryan came to New York, went to work in a broker's office, and
succeeded so well that, in a few years, he was able to purchase a seat
on the Stock Exchange. He was sufficiently skillful as a broker to
number Jay Gould among his customers and to inspire a prophecy by
William C. Whitney that, if he retained his health, he would become one
of the richest men in the country. Afterwards, when he knew him more
intimately, Whitney elaborated this estimate by saying that Ryan was
"the most adroit, suave, and noiseless man he had ever known." Ryan had
two compelling traits that soon won for him these influential admirers.
First of all was his marvelous industry. His genius was not spasmodic.
He worked steadily, regularly, never losing a moment, never getting
ex