culminating in the probable suicide of one of the vice-presidents of that company. The Chicago & Alton (in the management of which Mr. Harriman was prominent from 1899 to 1907, as President, Chairman of the Board, or Executive Committeeman), has never regained the prosperity it enjoyed before he and his associates acquired control. The Père Marquette has passed again into receiver’s hands. Long before Mr. Harriman’s death the Union Pacific had disposed of its Northern Pacific stock, because the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Northern Securities Company illegal, and dissolved the Northern Pacific-Great Northern merger. Three years after his death, the Supreme Court of the United States ordered the Union Pacific-Southern Pacific merger dissolved. By a strange irony, the law has permitted the Union Pacific to reap large profits from its illegal transactions in Northern Pacific and Southern Pacific stocks. But many other stocks held “as investments” have entailed large losses. Stocks in the Illinois Central and other companies which cost the Union Pacific $129,894,991.72, had on November 15, 1913, a market value of only $87,851,500; showing a shrinkage of $42,043,491.72 and the average income from them, while held, was only about 4.30 per cent. on their cost.
A BANKERS’ PARADISE
Kuhn, Loeb & Co. were the Union Pacific bankers. It was in pursuance of a promise which Mr. Jacob H. Schiff—the senior partner—had given, pending the reorganization, that Mr. Harriman first became a member of the Executive Committee in 1897. Thereafter combinations grew and crumbled, and there were vicissitudes in stock speculations. But the investment bankers prospered amazingly; and financial concentration proceeded without abatement. The bankers and their associates received the commissions paid for purchasing the stocks which the Supreme Court holds to have been acquired illegally—and have retained them.