Читать книгу Quest Biographies Bundle — Books 26–30 - Wayne Larsen - Страница 5

Van Horne’s dream of becoming general superintendent of a railway came closer to being a reality when, on May 1, 1868, he was appointed head of the Chicago and Alton’s entire telegraph system, making him one of the railway’s two assistant supervisors. In this new role he came into frequent contact with the company’s leading officials, who were soon impressed by both his bearing and his force of character. Within a few months they offered him a position with even greater authority: superintendent of the railway’s new southern division. Van Horne promptly accepted. And so it was that, in 1869, he moved his entire family to Alton, Illinois. Like the modern-day diplomat’s or serviceman’s family that finds itself on the move every two or three years, the Van Hornes soon learned that they had to be prepared to pack and move on short notice.

The family was even larger now than in 1867, when it first came together in Bloomington. The following year William and Addie welcomed their first-born child, Adaline, whom they affectionately called Little Addie. In later years, this devoted daughter would grow to more than six feet in height and would resemble her father in girth. And, like him, she would develop an excellent head for business, a love of art, and a passion for collecting things. But she was only an infant when the family arrived in Alton, a hilly river town that sits on limestone bluffs overlooking the meandering Mississippi River, some twenty miles north of St. Louis, Missouri. When the Van Hornes moved there, the town had stately homes on lovely, wide, tree-shaded streets and was quickly attracting heavy industry, thanks to its excellent railway facilities and Mississippi River location.

Van Horne had already bought a ten-room brick house on a “pretty street” that enjoyed a spectacular view of the city and of the river for miles around. He wrote to Addie that it was a little larger than the family required, but he was sure it would please her. It certainly suited him because he was developing a taste for large residences. In fact, in later life he would confess that he liked his homes “fat and bulgy like [himself].”

Van Horne’s new responsibilities at the Chicago and Alton Railroad included the day-to-day movement of all passengers and freight over the southern division, the discipline and conduct of its employees, the hiring of agents, and the maintenance of the division’s structures and equipment. These duties presented a daunting challenge for a young man who had just turned twenty-six. He relished his new job, however, because not only did it broaden his railway experience, but it also placed him on the direct line of authority from Timothy Blackstone, a former railway engineer turned astute businessman who was now the company president. As an assistant superintendent, Van Horne reported to the superintendent, who, in turn, reported to Blackstone. Blackstone had been promoted to the presidency only three months after being appointed a director in 1864. At the time, the Chicago and Alton was in poor shape. But he used his managerial expertise to turn the railway’s fortunes around and pave the way for the Chicago and Alton to become one of the most profitable of American railways.

Closer to home, in Alton, Van Horne came under the close observation of John Mitchell, a prominent western railroading man and a director of the Chicago and Alton. Given Van Horne’s driving ambition and talents, he would have advanced rapidly up the railway hierarchy, but his progress was aided and abetted in no small part by the interest that Blackstone and Mitchell took in his career.

In 1870, impressed by Van Horne’s enthusiasm, industry, and administrative skills, the company promoted him to its headquarters in Chicago. There he became an assistant superintendent in charge of the movement of passengers and freight over the entire Chicago and Alton system. In this new position he would strive to beat all the competition by stressing efficiency and streamlining operations as much as possible.

Van Horne was no doubt delighted to be back in Chicago, a lake port with a population of some three hundred thousand people and railway links to both coasts. Situated at the mouth of the Chicago River at the southwest corner of Lake Michigan, it had grown from its humble beginnings in 1830 into a vital transshipment centre for grain, livestock, and lumber from the Midwest. When Van Horne returned to this vibrant, raw-boned city in 1870, it boasted factories, grain elevators, wholesale houses, the sprawling Union Stock Yards, and even a few private libraries and the Chicago Academy of Design. But Chicago, like so many other frontier towns, was also awash in gambling establishments, saloons, and houses of prostitution. And worse, it was crowded with wooden structures. Two-thirds of its buildings were made of wood, many of them cheaply constructed. The city’s wooden buildings, wooden sidewalks, wood-paved streets, and wooden bridges all created the ideal conditions for a major fire.

On the evening of October 8, 1871, following an exceptionally dry summer, a fire of unknown origin broke out in the city. It was contained, but the next night another fire erupted about a mile and a half southwest of the city centre. This conflagration was not contained, and it quickly spread to neighbouring buildings. Lashed by a strong southwest wind, it ripped through dry wooden shanties and then crossed the Chicago River to the city’s south side. From there, it tore like a tornado through the business district to the northeast, demolishing everything in its path.

When this second fire began around nine o’clock on a Sunday night, Addie Van Horne was recovering from delivering their second child, William (Willie), born twenty-four hours earlier. Van Horne was at home, celebrating the arrival of a son and fretting about his wife’s condition, when he learned that the fire was rapidly approaching the Union Depot. Despite concerns about his family’s fate, he set off immediately to rescue what Chicago and Alton equipment he could.

After hurrying to the freight depot, located in Chicago’s West Division, Van Horne arranged with the few employees still around to clear the company’s sheds. Most of the rolling stock had already been removed for safety reasons, but he obtained a Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul shunting engine and several flat cars to transport any remaining freight that could be rescued.

He then circulated among the crowds of people on the Jackson Street Bridge, offering $5 an hour to any man who would help him to load freight onto the flat cars. Many accepted the offer, but before long they would leave the station to watch the fire’s progress. Between attempting to keep his recruits at work and rushing out to waylay more help, Van Horne was almost beside himself, but he eventually succeeded in moving the freight to a safe location five miles away. When he set out to pay the workers who had stayed on the job, he could not find them — they had evaporated, never to return for their money. Satisfied that there was nothing more he could do to protect the Chicago and Alton’s property, he finally set off for home.

To reach his house in Chicago’s South Division, Van Horne had to make his way through a city that appeared to be an inferno of blazing buildings and sidewalks. Smoke, sparks, and flying pieces of burnt lumber, shingles, and roofing were everywhere. So were fear-crazed humans and beasts. He navigated through throngs of people, their faces blackened and blood stained, all trying to escape with the few precious possessions they had managed to save. The streets were an obstacle course of squealing rats smoked from their holes and desperate horses stampeding through the city, most having broken away from their drivers or escaped from city stables. It was a trip he would never forget.

When he finally arrived home, Van Horne was blackened from head to foot, but safe. Addie and the rest of the family had also been spared. He immediately gathered up some bedding and clothes and, assisted by his mother, loaded them onto a grocer’s wagon he commandeered and dispatched it to the shivering refugees camped in a nearby park.

Soon after the Chicago fire, Van Horne accepted an offer from the Chicago and Alton to manage one of its smaller subsidiaries, the struggling St. Louis, Kansas City & Northern Railroad. He became superintendent of the five-hundred-and-eighty-one-mile-long road on July 15, 1872, at an annual salary of $5,000. At the young age of twenty-nine he had realized his dream of becoming a railway superintendent — perhaps the youngest railway superintendent in the world.

For the next two years, St. Louis, Missouri — Chicago’s archrival in the Midwest — became the family home. A cosmopolitan community and a commercial metropolis, St. Louis had been the leading city in the region before the Civil War. With the advent of hostilities and the cessation of Mississippi River traffic from the South, however, it lost ground to Chicago. By the time the Van Hornes took up residence in the summer of 1872, though, the city boasted a population of more than three hundred thousand and was expanding rapidly in all directions. It was also experiencing a golden age that would last until the turn of the century.

In what had become an established practice, Van Horne went ahead of the family to scout out a new home. He settled on an elegant new house in a “very good neighbourhood,” with ten rooms, two storeys, and a mansard roof. It was, he reported, “as good as any in the city.”

House hunting, of course, was only a diversion. Most of the time Van Horne was preoccupied with settling into his new job. He wrote to Addie, “I leave early tomorrow morning by special train for a trip over the line with the genl frt. agent, chief engineer & asst. genl supt. Mr. Blackstone will go part way with us & Mr. Mitchell will join us tomorrow somewhere on the line. My advent at the North Mo. office caused something of a sensation among the fossils. Everything promises well.” Evidently, the young superintendent’s innovative methods and no-nonsense approach to doing things were starting to make waves.

Later that summer Van Horne was the central figure in a little drama whose outcome would further embellish his growing reputation. He was on an inspection trip in the Midwest when four seedy-looking young men began slapping a small, petrified black child who had begun wailing in response to their loud, boisterous conversation. The terrified mother pleaded with them to stop, but to no avail. Van Horne, who had been watching the altercation with mounting fury, leapt out of his seat, grabbed one of the assailants by the collar, and pulled him into the aisle. “Leave that child alone,” he barked.

“All right, Capt’n,” sputtered the ruffian as he made his way back to his seat. By the time the train pulled into the station, however, this unsavoury character had regained his nerve, and he turned on Van Horne belligerently. His companions intervened and dragged him off the train just as the conductor suddenly appeared and warned Van Horne to duck down. “Don’t you know who these men are?” he whispered. “That’s Jessie and Frank James and the Young brothers. Stay where you are or they may decide to aim a shot or two at you as the train leaves.” Although somewhat shaken, Van Horne pretended that he had not just encountered the well-known American outlaw and that nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Once installed in his new job, Van Horne tried to make the railway’s equipment more efficient, to save money and to get the best performance out of his employees. He badgered the owners to purchase steel rails, which were far more durable and had a much higher load capacity than the standard iron ones. He also demanded that his employees adopt money-saving measures whenever possible and perform to the best of their ability. However, although he was a strict disciplinarian and a hard taskmaster, Van Horne was no bully. He never asked an employee to put in as many hours of service as he did himself. Moreover, he sympathized with the plight of those railroading men who had to spend long periods of time away from their families. To make them comfortable when they were on the road, he established clubs and reading rooms at divisional points. But he had no sympathy for a drunken employee. When this kind of misbehaviour occurred, he would “cuss out” the offender with great energy and effectiveness.

On one occasion he dismissed a St. Louis, Kansas City & Northern engineer for being drunk on the job, and immediately the Brotherhood of Engineers went on strike. When Van Horne hired an efficient substitute, the union labelled him a strikebreaker and a scab. Despite the uproar, Van Horne refused to discharge him or to reinstate his predecessor. He informed the union leaders bluntly, “The Chicago and Alton have had their nose brought down to the grindstone too often, and they are not going to do it this time if I can help it.”

In the long and bitter struggle that followed, the strikers often indulged in ruthless sabotage. Van Horne, who enjoyed a good fight, refused to back down. For weeks on end he worked inhuman hours, astounding staff by his ability to function with so little sleep. Fortunately, the strike ended in a complete victory for him and the company. Nevertheless, peace brought no slackening of discipline. “A railway,” he reminded the men, “was no reform school.”

On more than one occasion, Van Horne learned of employee misbehaviour by listening to the tapping of a telegraph machine when he was visiting a small station. He was able to decipher the incoming dots and dashes so accurately and administer punishment so swiftly that he earned a reputation for uncanny powers. Years later, when he stopped by the Canadian Pacific Railway’s New York telegraph office, he demonstrated these celebrated powers by deciphering an incoming communication that was addressed to him. “Here is your message,” said the clerk.

“Yes, and here is my answer,” Van Horne immediately replied. He had been composing his reply as the message came in.

At this stage in his life, Van Horne looked much as he would for the rest of his life. Although not handsome, he was a striking man with fine features and penetrating blue eyes. His nose was small and chiselled, and his short, immaculately trimmed beard suggested a rock-hard jaw beneath it. His hair had already receded back from his high forehead to the middle of his skull, and he would become completely bald in later years. A contemporary described Van Horne as “rather heavy set.” With the passage of time he would become decidedly corpulent, but never would his bulk suggest softness. Van Horne, no matter how old, would always radiate strength and power.

Despite his grave manner, Van Horne still retained an impish sense of humour and a love of pranks. When the family lived in Bloomington, he put his artistic talents to work transforming figures in one of his mother’s fashion journals into a collection of freaks. In St. Louis he took liberties with some of the artwork reproduced in copies of Harper’s Magazine that he intercepted before they reached the women at home. He once altered a series of portrait sketches of American authors by Canadian artist Wyatt Eaton in such a way that they appeared to be pictures of cowboys and Indians. The transformation was so convincing that his mother and mother-in-law were thoroughly deceived, protesting that it was scandalous that the editors had allowed esteemed writers such as Longfellow and Emerson to be ridiculed. Even Eaton was deceived when somebody showed him the distorted illustrations.

When the family was living in St. Louis, Addie came down with smallpox — then one of the most deadly and loathsome of diseases. In the nineteenth century it was customary to isolate smallpox patients in a “pesthouse,” but Van Horne would have none of that for his beloved wife. Putting an end to all discussion, he proceeded to care for her himself in the attic study where he kept his fossil collection. As long as the illness lasted, he whiled away his days in this sanctuary, devotedly nursing her and amusing himself with his fossils. When night came and she slept, he changed his clothing, thoroughly disinfected himself, and set off for his deserted office to attend to the day’s work. That done, he would return to the study in the early hours of the morning to snatch some sleep himself. It was a punishing regimen, but Van Horne had the satisfaction of seeing his wife make a splendid recovery with few, if any, disfiguring scars. Moreover, because of the precautions he adopted, nobody else in the house contracted this extremely contagious disease.

After two years of his resourceful and energetic management, Van Horne decided to leave the St. Louis, Kansas City & Northern Railroad. On June 28, 1874, he told Addie that he intended to submit his resignation the following day. “The bitter feeling towards the Chicago & Alton & everyone who was ever connected with it is the principal cause,” he wrote. “This together with the ill feeling of those interested in this company who are also interested in some of the ‘side shows’ — branch lines etc and whose toes have been trodden on has made my position since the election very unpleasant.” Soon after he penned this letter, the company’s board of directors met and unanimously recorded “their high appreciation of his faithful and industrious administration of the duties of his office.” They then authorized the president to grant him a month’s salary as severance pay.

For the first time in over fifteen years Van Horne was unemployed. The hard-driving, thirty-one-year-old executive found the transition difficult, and he sunk into a bout of self-questioning and despondency. That summer, while his wife and children were visiting Bloomington and Joliet, Van Horne found the family home in St. Louis so desolate and cheerless that he wrote to Addie: “Whatever misfortunes may come in a business way I cannot be unhappy while my dear treasures are left to me. You cannot imagine how lonely I feel without you here. Sometimes I feel as if I could fly to you.” The once confident railway official even began to question whether his future lay in railroading.

At that point John Mitchell came to the rescue. As a director of the Chicago and Alton, he had become aware of a small, financially weak railway that a man with Van Horne’s expertise might be able to save — the Southern Minnesota Railroad. This unfinished railway ran from the Wisconsin-Minnesota boundary opposite La Crosse, Wisconsin, westward through one hundred and sixty-seven miles of sparsely settled southern Minnesota to Winnebago City. When Mitchell learned that the Southern Minnesota was in receivership, he persuaded its New York bondholders that Van Horne was just the person to build up the line and transform it into a profitable enterprise. He then persuaded Van Horne to leave St. Louis and become general manager of the Southern Minnesota, whose offices were located in La Crosse, a Mississippi River town that owed much of its prosperity to the lumber industry.

When Van Horne took over the management of the railway on October 1, 1874, he faced an intimidating challenge: to increase the company’s earnings so it could meet its expenses and interest charges and, at the same time, pay off its old debts and free the railway’s right-of-way of the claims against it. He had to meet this challenge at a time of crippling depression in the country, brought on by the 1873 failure of banker Jay Cooke.

With his characteristic gusto, Van Horne set out to turn around the fortunes of the railway. It took him about three years to accomplish this goal — years of frustration, setbacks, and triumph. He recorded the highlights of these years in large letter books which reveal the vital role that correspondence played in the years before the telephone linked major centres. When not on the road, Van Horne often wrote letters every day to his reporting superior, Cornelius Gold, the head of the Southern Minnesota’s executive committee and later the railway’s president. When major developments were breaking, he often dispatched two letters a day to this New York–based official. And, in addition to this correspondence, Van Horne would fire off missives to other railroading officials and colleagues, always in his own handwriting.

The first change Van Horne made at the Southern Minnesota was to replace some of the key staff with men who had worked with him before. Next he introduced stringent economies and settled all the outstanding claims for the right of way by dealing directly with the owners. By August 1876, less than two years after he became manager, he was able to predict a surplus for the coming three months that would make a “big hole” in the claims against the railway. Looking to the future, Van Horne had new snow fences built along the track and improved the railway’s rolling stock and roadbed. The following year he spent lavishly on repairs to the track, bridges, and roadbed and in the construction of new buildings. And he accomplished all these improvements despite periodic rate wars that were designed to grab business from competing divisions of rival railways.

Wheat was the principal commodity carried by the railway, so Van Horne offered inducements for the erection of flour mills and suitable grain elevators along the line. In order to restrain competition and to further increase the Southern Minnesota’s earnings, he arranged with rival lines to divide either the traffic or the earnings realized from the traffic of the participating railways.

In the summer of 1876, however, the Southern Minnesota faced a natural calamity of nature’s making — a plague of Rocky Mountain locusts (commonly known as grasshoppers) that wreaked havoc in northern Minnesota before moving into the southern part of the state. As the insects moved from east to west, they dropped periodically to the surrounding fields to lay their eggs and munch their way through huge swaths of wheat and other grains. Van Horne knew that depleted wheat crops spelled smaller freight loads for the railway, and that deposited eggs would invariably hatch the following spring to unleash new destruction. While farm families offered up public prayers for the banishment of this “terrible engine of destruction,” Van Horne used his ingenuity to devise an effective “hopperdozer” to destroy the pests. This invention — a piece of sheet iron or stretched canvas thickly smeared with tar — was dragged through an infected field by a horse. When the disturbed grasshoppers flew upwards from the ground, they become entangled in the tar. Farmers eagerly adopted Van Horne’s invention, the state supplied free tar, and the Southern Minnesota cooperated by carrying both the iron and the tar free of charge. Soon Van Horne had the satisfaction of seeing huge heaps of dead hoppers dotting the prairie.

The general manager knew that good staff morale was essential to efficiency and productivity, and he did everything he could to foster it. He believed that tasty, well-prepared food was a powerful inducement to performance on the job, and he made it clear that no eating house along the line would be patronized unless it provided the best possible meals. Frequently he carried out taste tests himself when he was on the road, telegraphing an order to the next eating stop for two dinners — and then devouring them both. If his appetite was prodigious, so was his energy. A glutton for work, Van Horne toiled away in his office from nine-thirty or ten in the morning until eleven or twelve at night, taking time off only for dinner.

As part of a program to involve every employee in the Southern Minnesota’s regeneration, he introduced contests in many areas of the railway’s operations, from track repairing to engine driving. He gave a prize, along with a personal letter from him, to every man who did the best work at the least cost. The Southern Minnesota’s auditor recalled that “Van Horne created on that old Minnesota Road an esprit de corps rarely equalled…. We had to look twice at every cent. But we all enjoyed working on that road. Van Horne was full of ways to get around difficulties, and as full of ideas for improving every branch of the work.”

After three full years with the Southern Minnesota, Van Horne was shocked when Peter Myers, his highly respected vice-president, threatened to resign because of inadequate pay. Van Horne immediately resolved to make more money available for salary increases by taking a cut in his own pay. As he wrote to Myers, “I have thought it all over and made up my mind to reduce my own salary materially on January 1st [1878] no matter what action the board takes in regard to the others.”

Van Horne’s efforts to rehabilitate the line soon began to pay off. Gross earnings for the first year of his management were the highest in the railway’s history. Moreover, operating expenses had slid from 72 to 56 percent of earnings, and there was a respectable sum in the railway’s coffers.

Van Horne also mounted a tireless campaign to have the Southern Minnesota extend its line westward, believing that strategic expansion was essential if his railway was to keep ahead of its competitors. The executive committee’s failure to act swiftly on the matter was a source of great frustration to him, especially after he realized that a “good class” of settlers were pouring into the country west of the Southern Minnesota and that, if his company did not push a line through to this part of the state, another railway would. Still, he was not prepared to see an extension built on just any terms. If it could not be constructed with lightly bonded debt and aid voted by the towns it would serve, he preferred not to build it at all. His strenuous lobbying finally persuaded the powers-that-be to extend the line westward by means of a separate company organized for this purpose. Van Horne was appointed vice-president of the Southern Minnesota Extension Company, and his friend and occasional business associate, Jason Easton, president.

Construction of the new line began in February 1878, after extensive surveys had been carried out. Van Horne scrutinized every aspect of the work closely, even the locating and naming of stations. Whenever a Native association still persisted, he incorporated it in that name. One such place was Pipestone, where Native Americans, observing an ancient custom, still assembled once a year to collect red stone for making peace pipes.

The building of the extension involved Van Horne in much more than construction matters. He also had to organize a company to build it, chase funds, and lobby for a charter and for the transfer of the railway’s lapsed land grant to the new company. It would have been much easier to hire a lawyer or a legislator to act as a lobbyist for the company, but, to save money, Van Horne took on all these tasks himself. Immersing himself in railway law and sharpening his powers of persuasion, he plunged into what had previously been a completely foreign world to him — state politics. When legislation of interest to the Southern Minnesota Railroad was debated in the Minnesota legislature, he made frequent trips to the state capital, St. Paul. There, in the state legislature’s smoke-filled committee rooms and crowded corridors, he sought out key politicians and attempted to enlighten them about the Minnesota’s needs and aspirations. The first round of lobbying took place in 1876 and involved an extension of the company’s lapsed land grant. He got what he wanted. Another round of strenuous politicking began in the early months of 1878. This time Van Horne lobbied vigorously to have the Minnesota legislature turn over the railway’s land grant to the newly formed extension company. The ensuing struggle, waged against a background of competing railway interests, soon developed into open warfare. Eventually, however, after much arm-twisting by Van Horne, the Minnesota bill was passed.

During these visits to the Minnesota state capital, Van Horne was forced to hobnob with a variety of lobbyists and other prominent railwaymen of the West. Some of them later described him as a “man of commanding intellect and energy, who knew what he knew for certain,” but who could combine persuasion with diplomacy and tact. However, despite his many political successes, Van Horne was not enamoured of the game of politics. To the end of his life he disliked both politics and the men who practised it.

Attracting settlers was another challenge Van Horne faced. He was shrewd enough to realize that settlers cultivating the soil and creating traffic for the railway were far more important to the long-term interests of the company than the dollars earned from land sales. Consequently, he assigned top priority to attracting good settlers, or, as he phrased it, the “good class of people” then being settled on the Minnesota prairie by the noted prelate John Ireland, coadjutor bishop of St. Paul. Van Horne had been greatly impressed by the idealistic bishop — the founder of a colonization bureau that was busily establishing rural villages and farming communities.

When hordes of settlers and land-hunters began to arrive in the southwestern part of Minnesota, Van Horne fought hard to have his railway reduce the steep prices it was charging for its lands. “It is humiliating, to say the least,” he wrote to Cornelius Gold, “to see hundreds of settlers going west every day and be unable to stop one in a thousand of them.” To attract settlers he devised a scheme in which they received credits for breaking and seeding their land within a specified period of time. Credits acquired in this way could be applied to the first payment due on a piece of land. The scheme proved to be such a powerful sales tool that land sales along the extension multiplied rapidly. Before long, all these new settlements were generating traffic for the Southern Minnesota.

By the spring and summer of 1878, Van Horne was preoccupied with plans for his future. Recognized as one of the ablest railway operators in the country — in the words of one railroading man as “bigger than his job” — it is not surprising that other railways were competing for his talents. In early 1878, for example, the Chicago and Alton Railroad tried to lure him away from the Southern Minnesota, and the latter strove valiantly to keep him. As he tried to evaluate the merits of the rival proposals, Van Horne was plunged into agonies of indecision and fretting.

As usual, when weighing questions of importance he turned for comfort and advice to Addie. In March he told her that it would be in his best interest to accept the Chicago and Alton offer, yet his present employer had proposed that he become both general manager and president and accept a boost in salary. Addie sympathized with his predicament, but, ultimately, she said, Van Horne alone could make the decision. He resolved his quandary by agreeing to stay on as general manager with the Southern Minnesota and to take on the additional office of president later in the year.

There was also the question of Addie’s health. She had been failing for a year or more, no doubt because of the loss of their beloved son, Willie, who died at five years of age (the cause of death is not known). The sudden death of this “bright and lovely little sunbeam” on May 17, 1876, was a terrible blow for both parents, even after the arrival of a second son, Richard Benedict (Bennie), the following May. Van Horne was convinced that his wife’s deteriorating health would improve only if the family moved to a better climate. And so, when he received an invitation to become general manager of the Chicago and Alton, he accepted the offer. The family, except for his sister Mary, who remained at teachers’ college in La Crosse, prepared to move to Chicago. Van Horne did not sever his connection with the Minnesota railway entirely, however, as he kept on as president and as a director. This arrangement allowed him to continue directing the progress of the extension, which eventually terminated in Flandreau, North Dakota.

Bennie Van Horne, Van Horne’s only surviving son. Although very gifted, he failed to realize his potential and to live up to his father’s demanding expectations.

Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, E000945218.

Van Horne’s years with the Southern Minnesota Railroad gave him the varied experience and the connections he needed to advance his career to the highest levels. Through Peter Myers and Jason Easton he had learned a great deal about railway financing, and in building the extension he had broadened his knowledge not only of construction but also of lobbying and politics. At the same time he had rescued an obscure railway from bankruptcy and transformed it into a paying property. As a result of this major achievement, and his earlier turnaround of the St. Louis, Kansas City & Northern Railroad, he now enjoyed an excellent reputation among his railroading colleagues. It was a reputation to be proud of — and one that stood him in good stead when he took on the new challenges that awaited him.