track, a giant crushed by its
own weight, it had gone into a receivership in the panic of 1893. For
five years it stayed there, despite the utmost efforts of the giants of
finance to lift it out. Then Harriman got possession of it, and taking
an engine and a car, turned the train backward and, running in the day
time only, went over the road mile by mile. He decided that the road
must be made a good road, and he told his executive committee that he
needed for his immediate necessities one hundred millions of dollars!

Well, he got the money and he got good men and went to work. The result
was soon apparent. Earnings grew, business increased, and the company's
credit improved. Never before in the history of railroading had there
been such daring rebuilding. The line was levelled down to a maximum
grade of forty-one feet to a mile; two hundred and forty-seven feet were
scaled off the top of the Great Divide; millions of cubic yards of dirt
and stone were blasted out and moved; tunnels were drilled; and,
finally, when the Southern Pacific, too, was acquired, a trestle
twenty-three miles long was built across Great Salt Lake, through water
thirty feet deep, taking railroad trains farther from land than they had
ever yet been run, and shortening the road forty-four miles. And the
result? The gross earnings have risen to over $170,000,000 a year, and
$28,000,000 a year are distributed in dividends. Truly a transformation
from the old water-logged road which Harriman took over.

He had his reverses--he attempted to get hold of the Northern Pacific,
but it slipped through his fingers; the Burlington was cut out from
under his guns, and so was the Rock Island. James J. Hill outgeneraled
him more than once, and he was never able to "get back" at Hill
effectively.

With Harriman we shall close this chapter on men of affairs. Many others
might have been noted. In fact, none of the great industries of the
country has been built up except by inspired work. Armour and Cudahy and
Swift made the packing business; Marshall Field built up a business in
Chicago rivalling Wanamaker's; August Belmont, William C. Whitney, Levi
Leiter, Robert Goelet, Pierre Lorillard, and a hundred others, amassed
great fortunes. Yet there was nothing in their career different to
those of the men already considered in this chapter. They had a genius
for money-making. Each in some special field; but, beyond that, they did
few memorable things. And so we need