22 Fighting Formidable Foes

E. H. Harriman has come to blows since then with J. J. Hill, J. P. Morgan, the First National Bank, the Rock Island crowd, Edwin Hawley, George J. Gould, Stuyvesant Fish, and almost everyone else with whom he has been in contact…. If his ambition crossed theirs, he forgot about theirs. If his mood prompted he did not hesitate to insult them—in fact he did not know he was doing it.

—Wall Street Journal, August 25, 1906

Sitting with a well-known financial writer in the dregs of a gray afternoon, indulging himself in a rare moment of introspection, Harriman toyed with a familiar question: was it his withering candor that made him so unpopular? Did he pay a steep price for his lack of tact? “I suppose people think so because I don’t truckle or toady to any of the big men,” he answered earnestly. “I don’t have to. Why should I?”¹

The writer choked back a laugh at the idea of Harriman truckling to “big men” like Morgan or Hill, but knew he was dead serious. Once, in his excitement, Harriman had given H. H. Rogers so violent a scolding that the bewildered Rogers backed him off only by crying, “Do you know whom you are talking to?”

“I never fight unless somebody fights me,” he continued. “As long as they pound I pound. But I’d rather be let alone. Let the other side go to work and succeed and prosper; so long as they leave me alone I’m satisfied. I drop all revenge. Often my associates have expressed their astonishment that I don’t follow up a fight after it’s stopped.” He paused as if to share that astonishment, then added, “I am not vindictive.”

These remarks drew cynical smiles in some quarters and outright guffaws in others. Like Jay Gould, Harriman had earned a reputation for prizing revenge as a beacon to guide his course. That this simplistic explanation made little or no sense did nothing to diminish its popularity. More to the point was his inability to leave alone anyone he thought posed the slightest threat to his own plans. Interference was to Harriman the most intolerable of crimes.

In the community of interest it was impossible for one man to move without jostling someone else. Every action posed a threat, immediate or potential, and therefore aroused suspicion. The most active of the players, Harriman was also the most suspicious of what others were doing. His hyper-kinetic engine bristled with ambition on offense and defiance on defense. The run at Northern Pacific had blended the two in brilliant fashion. On one hand, he acted to protect the Union Pacific from the threat posed by the Burlington in Hills hands; on the other, he seized an opportunity to upstage Hill in his own territory.

But the campaign had ultimately failed. The Burlington remained in Hills camp, and Harriman had yet to gain entry to Puget Sound. He also faced threats from Gould and the Atchison in the Southwest, as well as the erratic ambitions of the Rock Island crowd and the growing sense of isolation felt by the Northwestern and the Milwaukee. Peace was nowhere to be found west of Chicago.

The Northern Securities decision did not so much wreck the community of interest as drive the last decisive nail in its coffin. During the holding company’s short life the strategic situation deteriorated in every theater. Harriman and Hill continued to squabble in the Northwest, their quarrel exacerbated by the schemes of the other Iowa roads seeking an outlet to the sea. George Gould toiled fitfully at his grand design of a coast-to-coast line, while Edwin Hawley quietly put together a string of roads under his command. The Rock Island plunged into a policy of belligerent expansion, and the Atchison flexed the growing strength of its modernized system with an aggressive campaign for new business.

The vaunted personal associations among these leaders did little to resolve conflicts spawned by the merger mania of 1901-4. No one found a way to satisfy one road without irritating others; closer ties between two lines usually provoked countermoves by rivals left outside the alliance. Harriman found it difficult to formulate a decisive policy because he could not get at his foes without hurting his friends. After William Rockefeller emerged as the leading figure in the Milwaukee, Harriman bought stock in the road and in October 1902 gave it equal status with the Northwestern over the Union Pacific to the coast.* This quashed rumors that the Milwaukee was about to build its own line to the Northwest, but it also raised Stuyvesant Fish’s hackles that the Milwaukee got what he had long sought.²

The Atchison proved more difficult to subdue. As owner of the only unified line between Chicago and California, it made effective use of its shorter route and potential for faster schedules. Here was another vital reason for closer ties with the Iowa roads: the Union Pacific needed efficient connections with them to compete with the Atchison. Harriman also had to resolve the conflicts with the Atchison in Arizona and northern California (see Chapter 16). For months he insisted that the Atchison sell him the Phoenix & Eastern and stay out of the territory south of Phoenix. But Victor Morawetz adamantly refused to consider any settlement that did not also include the California dispute.³

Harriman had in mind relocating the Southern Pacific line between Lords-burg, New Mexico, and Yuma, Arizona, where the road crossed the Rocky Mountains. The best route lay along the Gila River, which was the only waterway on American soil that cut entirely through the mountains. Harriman wanted eventually to build his cutoff along this route but so far had done nothing. In December 1903 the crews building the Phoenix & Eastern reached the south bank of the Gila River west of Kelvin, then jumped the river and commenced surveying along the north bank toward a junction of the Gila and San Pedro Rivers. Without even filing location maps, the crews bridged the river and began construction work.⁴

The Atchisons move triggered a reprise of the fight for Meadow Valley Wash in Nevada. Harriman picked up the gauntlet by sending Epes Randolph, who had charge of Southern Pacific lines in Arizona and New Mexico, to lay track from Phoenix to Yuma and through Gila canyon to Lordsburg. Gila was a formidable box canyon eighteen miles long with walls that in some places towered a thousand feet above the river. Both companies slapped together location maps and rushed to file them, reaching the land office three hours apart on March 14, 1904. The two lines overlapped nearly everywhere, with Harriman’s Arizona Eastern situated fifteen or twenty feet higher in the canyon. Grading forces from both sides arrived and blasted rock onto each other’s line.

Journalists rushed to fill their columns with Bunyanesque accounts of a donnybrook that seemed a throwback to the golden age of railroading. Before much damage was done, however, the fight shifted to the drab battleground of the courtroom. Harrimans claim was upheld and appealed to the Supreme Court. While the lawyers traded volleys, Harriman revived the earlier scheme to buy Atchison stock. The object this time was not control but merely a voice on the board as leverage for a peaceful settlement. After he and his associates had acquired three hundred thousand shares of Atchison, Harriman demanded representation. Morawetz balked on the grounds that he thought it improper for directors of one road to sit on the board of another.⁵

Morawetz was playing a thin hand. The court fight had gone against him, and the Harriman group owned far too many shares to be ignored. Yet so anxious was Harriman to settle that he made the concession Morawetz wanted most. The result was a package compromise. Morawetz agreed to give Harriman two seats on the Atchison board provided the new directors were not Union Pacific officials. He also agreed to sell the Phoenix & Eastern to the Southern Pacific and to stay out of the disputed territory. In return, Harriman offered to put the competing northern California lines into a new company shared by the Atchison and Southern Pacific.

The deal enabled the two systems to live in harmony for many years despite occasional spats. It had taken Harrimans entire repertory of tactics. He had pushed hard, then shown restraint; overplayed his hand, then maneuvered carefully. He had responded to a threat with swift but measured strokes, then negotiated patiently for a settlement. Both sides could claim the outcome as a victory, yet in the long run it was Harriman who got his way. The Atchison was going to get into northern California anyway; Harriman got it there on terms acceptable to him and in a way that gave him a listening post on the board of the only rival he feared in the Southwest.⁶

In April 1904 Harriman accepted what was for him a rare assignment: an invitation to deliver a speech. The occasion was the World’s Fair in St. Louis honoring the Louisiana Purchase. Harriman had passed through the city early in April on one of his swings through the West. During his brief stop the fair officials asked him to return at the end of his trip and give the opening-day crowd a few words on behalf of the “Domestic Exhibitors.” Harriman agreed because it gave him a chance to expound on his favorite themes of progress and the large role played in it by the railroads. The timing could not have been better, coming only weeks after the Northern Securities decision.⁷

On April 30 Harriman’stepped before a throng of curious onlookers eager for a sighting of so rare a specimen. After singing a hymn to the glories of material progress, he launched into a theme that must have astonished some of his business foes. “We have here collected the product of our artistic, scientific, and industrial life,” he blared in his flat, colorless voice. What made it possible? The chief factor was “the co-operation of all our people. The first law of civilization is the co-operation of all individuals to improve the condition of life.”

Modern railroads had made possible the remarkable strides in material civilization on display at the fair. “Within the present generation,” Harriman reminded his listeners, “vast improvements have been made in railway transportation. It was impossible to supply the needs of our commerce by the railways originally constructed and operated. It became necessary to, not only reconstruct and re-equip these lines, but to bring them under uniform methods and management, all of which were possible only by the combination and unification of the original short lines of railway into systems each under one management of control, and this in turn was possible only by the combination of capital.”

Nowhere did Harriman produce a more succinct summary of what he had tried to accomplish. His speech was a paean not only to progress but indirectly to himself, Hill, and others like them who had ushered in the new era of railroading. Their foresight had created the vital arteries on which the nations swelling commerce moved, and for their pains they were being attacked from all sides. Harriman did not dwell on this latter theme; he conceded the need for regulation and urged government to cooperate rather than obstruct. “No one can escape this law of co-operation,” he warned. “Self-interest demands that we must observe its just limitations.”⁸

That Harriman would give a speech at all amazed many observers; that he would dwell at length on the theme of cooperation befuddled them. So little was actually known about Harriman’s views and so much was assumed about them from his actions that few knew what to make of it. Was this a sop to the growing specter of government encroachment? Did it mean the elusive Harriman had decided to become more of a public figure? Could it be that Harriman, like Hill and other enlightened rail leaders, finally grasped the importance of his role as industry spokesman in an era of turbulent change?

No immediate answers were forthcoming. If nothing else, the St. Louis speech revealed a fatal contradiction in Harriman. The man who praised cooperation so fervently had never learned how to cooperate except on his own terms. He could leave associates alone to do the things they did best, but in his own domain he insisted on things being done his way. He always thought he knew the best way, and he was right often enough to give the term “Harrimanize” a pungent meaning.

But there were too many major players to Harrimanize, including George Gould. That most amiable of socialites still baffled observers with his erratic course. In the East he continued to fight the Pennsylvania Railroad like an impetuous general hurling his best battalions to be shattered against an impregnable position. In the West he persisted in denying any connection with the Western Pacific with an ingenuousness that left Harriman’scratching his head. For two years after the road’s incorporation in February 1903 analysts mused over the question of why Gould was playing ostrich on the subject.⁹

In March 1904 Gould responded to fresh rumors of his involvement by telling a reporter flatly, “I have not put a dollar into the undertaking, nor have I any intention to do so. I am not interested in the Western Pacific directly or indirectly, nor are any of the officials of the several roads with which I am connected.” Six months later, amid rumors of growing tensions between Gould and Harriman, E. T. Jeffery and another man with ties to Gould joined the Western Pacific board. So did former Harriman ally Edwin Hawley. Still Gould played coy about his role, even after Jeffery was named vice-president of the Western Pacific in December 1904.¹⁰

Harriman watched this charade closely, not knowing whether to be angered or amused by Gould’s antics. On March 8, 1905, he and Schiff lingered after a meeting of the Western Union board to ask Gould directly about his role in the Western Pacific. Gould again denied any interest in the road but added lamely that at some future time he might get involved. If so, he assured Harriman, he did not think it proper to remain on the boards of the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific.¹¹

The next day Gould accepted reelection to the executive committee of the Union Pacific. If what he told Harriman and Schiff meant anything, this indicated that he was not involved in the Western Pacific despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Not until April 22, twenty-six months after the Western Pacific was chartered, did Gould admit publicly that he was behind the road. Then he waited three more days before notifying Harriman and resigning from the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific boards. Harriman promptly quit the Rio Grande and Rio Grande Western boards, leaving the community of interest in ashes.¹²

Once the news went public, Gould found ready underwriters for a $50 million bond issue and obtained a good route. Jeffery assumed the road’s presidency and oversaw the project. One analyst predicted that Gould would get support from large interests who cared little for him but found the Western Pacific “a useful club to hit Harriman with.” Beaming with confidence, Gould promised to build a first-class road in two years even though the first spade of earth had yet to be turned. “The Harriman monopoly west of the Great Divide,” chortled an analyst, “is to be broken.” There would be no stranglehold on all the lines reaching San Francisco, no Harriman “octopus” squeezing the West at will.¹³

In the euphoria surrounding the announcement, few observers paused long enough to see the absurdities in this thinking. Harriman knew the road Gould had undertaken was going to be fiendishly difficult and expensive. Once completed, how could it compete with the Harriman roads? At Salt Lake City the Western Pacific would connect with the Rio Grande, which had yet to be modernized. Beyond Denver it would use the Colorado division of the Missouri Pacific, which in 1905 still had light fifty-six-pound rail, dirt ballast, short passing tracks, and a host of other shortcomings.¹⁴

The same held true for much of the Gould system, which had become a dinosaur. In his scattershot way, Gould had neglected to bring his roads into the new century and had belatedly started to upgrade the parent road. He lacked an efficient organization, largely because he insisted on making all major decisions himself even though he was seldom well enough informed to do so. The capable managers he had gathered about him soon wore down from fighting caprice and indecision and broke with him. Jeffery alone remained, partly because Gould gave him a freer hand in the West and partly because, with so many defections, Gould depended on him more than ever for advice.¹⁵

By 1905 Goulds erratic behavior had also cost him most of his supporters on Wall Street, where he made the fatal error of antagonizing his friends in the syndicates that financed his eastern campaigns. The “Gould policy,” concluded one analyst, “has become so inscrutable to Wall Street, that members of the financial community refer nowadays to the Gould situation only in terms of bewilderment.” His response to these pressures in the summer of 1905 was typical: he sailed to Europe for a long vacation. One observer pinpointed the difference between Harriman and Gould: “The policies, ambitions, and apparent destinies of these two magnates are identical. Each is an autocrat. Each is impatient of advice, restraint and rivalry. Neither cares to share his power with his subordinate officers. Yet there is a very striking difference between the two Mr. Gould is swayed by incidental circumstances, while Mr. Harriman’s vocation in life is to triumph over incidental circumstances.”¹⁶

Harriman read Gould’s character well enough to exploit its flaws. Aware that the building of the Western Pacific would be a monumental task, Harriman did what he could to make it even more monumental. Since supplies for the work had to pass over his roads, he extracted high rates and imposed delays. He was also accused of luring laborers away from Gould’s line with promises of high wages only to set them adrift, but the charge was never proved. A fierce controversy over the issue of terminal space in Oakland did not get resolved until April 1907.¹⁷

By 1905 the elusive Edwin Hawley had joined Gould in the swelling ranks of Harriman’s enemies. Like Harriman, Hawley had blossomed in midlife as a financier. Having entered railroading as a traffic man, he became one of Huntington’s most trusted associates and helped negotiate the sale of the latter’s stock to Harriman. Hawley remained with the Southern Pacific less than two years before drifting into Wall Street, where his railroad knowledge served finance instead of traffic. A shrewd and clever speculator, he emerged by 1904 as a rail operator to be reckoned with, having acquired the Minneapolis & St. Louis, the Iowa Central, and a large interest in the Colorado & Southern. A bachelor living in a midtown apartment, Hawley had a natural poker face with pale, cameo features and lips that barely moved when he spoke.¹⁸

Since leaving the Southern Pacific, Hawley had turned up on the opposite side of Harriman in several deals. Sometime around November 1903 he began buying Alton stock. Harriman made no secret of his willingness to sell the Alton; all his efforts to find a place for the road in his larger scheme of systems had failed. In the summer of 1904 Harriman returned from Europe to discover that Hawley and the Rock Island crowd owned 80 percent of the Alton’s common and 30 percent of its preferred stock. Some way had to be found to share power in the road. Although Harriman loathed arrangements of this kind, he agreed grudgingly to a novel plan by which the two groups were to divide the seats on the board, create a voting trust, and take turns managing the Alton for a year at a time. The result was an uneasy alliance between strange bedfellows over a road that was soon racked with controversy.¹⁹

There was trouble too on the Kansas City Southern, which Harriman had dominated through a voting trust since the spring of 1900. The trust was due to expire in February 1905, and there had been loud grumbling over Harriman’s management. Despite impassioned support from some local interests, Harriman had little desire for a fight over a property that had become marginal to his interests. He announced that he would not oppose a change in management and simply let the road go back to the Dutch holders, for whom Hawley acted as agent. If Harriman thought he was done with the Kansas City Southern, however, he was soon to discover that it was not done with him.²⁰

After Harriman uttered his widely quoted remark that the country was about to enter a period of competitive building, reporters scurried eagerly to Hill for a response. “That view of the situation has not presented itself to me,” he said with a broad smile. But months earlier Hill had begun organizing a project to build his own line to Portland along the north bank of the Columbia River. A few weeks after Harriman’s remark, the Milwaukee announced that its long-awaited extension to Puget Sound would be built, whereupon Harriman declared that his projected line to Seattle would go forward. Farther south, Gould’s Western Pacific lurched into action. The new age of competitive building had dawned.²¹

The Northern Securities decision had thrown the situation in the Northwest back to status quo ante bellum. In strategic terms Harriman controlled two key ports, San Francisco and Portland, while Hill had only Seattle. He wanted into Seattle and Hill into Portland, but the hard feelings between them made cooperation unlikely. Nor was the clash confined to the Northwest. Talk revived of Harriman buying into one or more of the other Iowa roads to counter Hill’s hold on the Burlington. While similar rumors had been floating around for years, Harriman now had the huge war chest received in the breakup of Northern Securities. The securities from the dissolution armed Harriman with more than $100 million for whatever purposes his fertile brain conceived.²²

Putting this huge sum in Harriman’s treasury was like handing a brilliant general several crack divisions of troops. He and his friends had already bought into the Atchison and had strengthened their ties with the Northwestern. Early in 1906 Harriman bought ten thousand shares of Milwaukee stock; later that year he sent an agent to scout the Rock Island and two other roads. The prospect emerged of a giant coalition embracing the Harriman roads, the Milwaukee, the Northwestern, and the Atchison poised against the Hill interests. “Who is going to stop E. H. Harriman?” cried one rail manager. “Somebody has got to or he will have every trunk line in the country.”²³

With friends like the Clarks, Harriman hardly needed enemies. The construction of the San Pedro road dragged out into a far more serpentine fight than that against Gould’s Western Pacific. The fault lay less with the senator, who like Harriman was far too preoccupied with other matters to oversee the work, than with his overweening brother, who shared the enormity of William’s vanity if not his ability. Ross Clark viewed the work as an opportunity to make the usual profits in the usual way. The ordeal that followed graphically illustrated the gulf between the old style of railroad construction and Harriman’s approach.

Harrimanizing the railroad interests: This cartoon depicts the growing public impression of Harriman as the czar of railroads. (Union Pacific Museum Collection)

Building a road through desert country was a logistical puzzle requiring careful preparations. The route had to offer both economical operation and permanence in the fickle desert environment. Under the Clark-Harriman agreement, the project was to be overseen by a committee of four: Ross Clark, San Pedro chief engineer H. Hawgood, W. H. Bancroft, and Southern Pacific chief engineer William Hood. Every decision, every contract let, and every piece of work done was supposed to go through this committee.²⁴

Ross Clark let it be known that he regarded the committee as a mere advisory body with the real power resting in his own hands, and he intended to let contracts for the entire road so that work could proceed everywhere at once. Bancroft was quick to confront Clark, who promised that no contracts would be let without the committee’s consent. Harriman reinforced this stand by insisting that no financial commitment be made without prior approval from his representatives. Despite his vow, Clark went off chasing contracts like a hound sniffing rabbits. He planned to use the Empire Construction Company for building the road. Through this time-honored device the builders could siphon off profits from the construction work long before the road opened.²⁵

The agreement gave Harriman a half interest in Empire, but unlike the Clarks, he was more interested in completing the road as quickly and efficiently as possible than in making money from the process. The old tricks held no charm for him because they slowed progress and hiked costs. But Harriman was in Europe when the dispute arose, forcing everyone to mark time until he returned. When another squabble arose over how construction accounts should be audited, however, Harriman made his views unmistakably clear before returning home. “I insist that we have control Auditor, San Pedro Company and all companies,” he cabled. “Permit nothing be done without.”²⁶

A flurry of telegrams flew between New York and Salt Lake City on these controversies, many of them in cipher code to conceal the contents from prying eyes. That Cornish, Hood, and Bancroft already had strong feelings about Ross Clark can be seen in the code name they assigned him: “Repulsive.” They stood firm until Clark relented and gave Harriman what he wanted. The construction company was discarded, all contracts were made directly with the San Pedro, and a capable auditor was chosen to oversee accounts.²⁷

Once the actual work began, Bancroft and Hood found fault with almost everything done by Clark and Hawgood. To get the best possible line, Hood sent his top engineer to examine all disputed points. His reports confirmed Hood’s belief that his line was shorter and more economical than the San Pedro’s, yet Hawgood clung to his own survey even though he did not visit the site or offer an argument in its favor. By fall Hood was discouraged enough to tell Bancroft, “I am convinced that the present organization of the [San Pedro] are not railroad builders.” Two weeks later he muttered that Clark’s crew, if left alone, would take ten years to complete the job. Cornish agreed that it would not suit Harriman “to have Mr. Clark dawdle along with the property as he has been doing.”²⁸

At the committee meetings Clark would agree pleasantly to everything and then go out and do something else. Hood thought one contractor did shoddy work, yet Clark promised him more work without telling Hood or Bancroft. As these squabbles increased, Hood began to suspect that something more was involved. In January 1904 he sent a young engineer named A. M. Bienenfeld to oversee the field work and report directly to Bancroft. Hood also let Hawgood know that Bienenfeld required more detailed reports than had yet been produced.²⁹

Harriman learned of this struggle when he asked for a progress report in March 1904. He got an earful from Hood and Bancroft. Grading contracts had been let with little regard for costs, reliability of the bidders, or the requirements given by Bancroft and Hood. Months had been wasted bickering over these contracts and over the defects in Hawgood’s route, which Hood considered a disaster. Hawgood had blocked Bienenfeld at every turn and even hired a stenographer to spy on him. Bancroft and Hood warned Harriman bluntly that nothing Clark or Hawgood said could be trusted without outside verification. “It is exceedingly difficult,” they concluded, “to do business where such complete lack of confidence exists as to the integrity of these parties.”³⁰

Bancroft sent the report to Cornish and suggested that it be shown to Harriman but not to Senator Clark. “It is very evident,” he added, “that these people do not want anybody only their own ‘gang’ connected with the construction of this line.” After pondering the report, Harriman decided to send an expurgated copy to Senator Clark, knowing that it would quickly find its way into Ross Clarks hands. A short time later Hood received an urgent call from Ross Clark to stop by the office. Clark complained that he felt mortified by the report, and he tried earnestly to convince Hood of his good faith. The impassive Hood remained polite but noncommittal.³¹

Harriman’s warning shot led Clark and Hawgood to change their course but not their ways. Within weeks a showdown arose when one of the contractors, thwarted by Bienenfeld’s rigorous screening of work, threatened suit. Clark and Hawgood supported his complaint; Bancroft and Hood rejected it as a scam concocted in league with Clark and Hawgood. Under the agreement, any such deadlock was referred to Harriman and Senator Clark, a prospect Hood relished. “I for my part am willing to say, and even desirous to say,” he growled, “that Mr. Hawgood is both incompetent and dishonest.”³²

Before this happened, however, Hawgood threw down the gauntlet by firing Bienenfeld. Hood was furious, especially when he learned that Hawgood’s intended replacement was a man who had been involved in an earlier rake-off scheme. He and Bancroft refused to accept the move or the other man. “What they know,” muttered Hood, “is that the contract will be strictly carried out under Bienenfeld and no thieving allowed and they want a man who will be flexible.” Ross Clark insisted that his decision was final; privately he told Hood that to back down would humiliate him. Hood snapped that his decision too was final, humiliation notwithstanding.³³

Informed of this latest episode, Harriman’shook his head in disgust. His first impulse was to fire off a telegram ordering Ross Clark to reinstate Bienenfeld, but Cornish persuaded him to let Bancroft and Hood handle it with the assurance of support from New York. Two days later, however, Harriman told Cornish to insist on Bienenfeld’s retention and ignore Ross Clark’s wounded feelings. Senator Clark was abroad and could be reached only by cable, but Harriman had lost all patience with the delays and chicanery.³⁴

Early in May the construction committee thrashed out the dispute in four days of tense meetings. The testimony of several witnesses revealed that none of the contractors had any complaints about Bienenfeld other than that he held them strictly to terms and protected the company’s interests like a hawk. The letters complaining about Bienenfeld had been written on the contractor’s stationery by an employee using the firm’s name without the contractor’s knowledge. After hearing the contractors praise Bienenfeld, Bancroft and Hood demanded that he be reinstated, that the stenographer-spy be fired at once, and that copies of any order from Hawgood directing Bienenfeld to interpret contracts differently be sent to Bancroft and Hood.³⁵

When Clark balked, Bancroft played the card Harriman had put in his hands for just such an occasion. Although Harriman owned half the San Pedro’s stock, he had not yet asked for seats on its board. Unless these demands were met, Bancroft said stiffly, he would ask for positions on the board. Clark and Hawgood blanched at the threat. If Harriman’s men went on the board, they would take an active role in the construction from the San Pedro side as well. Apart from replacing Hawgood as chief engineer, their peering over Clark’s shoulder would shatter his image as the man in charge. Clark whined again about being humiliated. You have only yourself to blame, Bancroft growled before breezing out the door. At the next day’s meeting Clark caved in to all the demands.

“When we came to leave Mr. Clark was very cordial,” Bancroft snickered, “… and was overjoyed to think that I had come down to Los Angeles to see them.” Clashes with the San Pedro men diminished sharply after this showdown. With only minor scrapes the road marched to completion in April 1905, giving Harriman a direct route to what later became the major traffic outlet on the West Coast. To observers the line across the desert wastes was a marvel of engineering and bold anticipation of traffic to come. To insiders it had been a grinding struggle between the old railroading and the new.

The fight showed Harriman at his best. He put the burden on his most capable officers, gave them marching orders and solid support, and let them fight the battle in their own way. By relying on men he trusted, he got the results he wanted despite all the delays and friction. Once the road was completed, Senator Clark proved an amenable partner until 1921, when he sold his half interest to the Union Pacific.

Although no one could have realized it at the time, the prize was well worth fighting for. In Harriman’s lifetime the Los Angeles & Salt Lake barely had time to demonstrate its potential, but its traffic grew along with the West. During World War II the Los Angeles & Salt Lake emerged as the most heavily traveled of all transcontinental routes, and the oil beneath land owned by it provided the Union Pacific with a steady flow of income for decades.

* This arrangement applied only to freight operations. The Northwestern remained the sole line whose passenger cars ran to the coast in Union Pacific trains.