Sublime

While sales and leasing of these lands abutting his right-of-way were a windfall, Flagler was always on the lookout for properties that might be developed as resorts, thereby creating an incentive for passengers to ride each new leg of his line. He took to riding his own railroad incognito, the better to scout out likely targets for acquisition wit

Stephens was the president of the railroad, which was a wholly American-owned stock company with its main office in the old Tontine Building on Wall Street. The capitalization was a million dollars.

During his second year in the House, he wrote—himself, with no staff assistance—a bill embodying the old People’s Party dream of intensified government regulation of railroads, by giving the government authority over the issuance of new securities by the railroads. Happening, by chance, to see the bill, Louis D. Brandeis, then one of President Wils

I never had much respect for Tom Scott’s ability to accomplish any great undertaking. He can give everybody a Pass, and get them to say he is a “big Injun” and good fellow—but he is not the man to lay down a Hundred or Two Hundred Thousand Dollars Cash, to carry a scheme of his own. . . . [Gould is] the reverse of Scott; he is a one man power; cons

Gould did not think like most railroad men. Like Carnegie and Rockefeller, he regarded pools as refuges for the weak, although useful for masking predatory intentions. The solution for the fragmented state of the railroads was to consolidate, not to negotiate elaborate paper compacts. Roads that were willing to join his network would find him a fai

At Roosevelt’s direction, legislation had been drafted giving the federal government authority to regulate the issuance of securities for the protection of those who bought them. Rayburn, who had seen so many financially unsophisticated farmers invest the little spare cash they had been able to scrape together in worthless stocks or bonds, had foug