Sublime

On November 19, 1933, the AAA announced that the Fourteenth Congressional District of Texas had the best loan-repayment record of any of the nation’s 435 congressional districts. And in 1934, the district received the type of “consideration” Johnson had had in mind; it was the first congressional district to have every one of its crop-reduction loa

The only reason we would go into a new sector is if we felt it was being badly run by other people. The reason we went into trains was that the government were running trains. British Rail had dilapidated trains, miserable service, and we felt we could go in, get fantastic new rail stock, motivate the staff, and we could make a big difference. I th

The problem with the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy lay in the fact that it was so alluring that it naturally attracted other well-heeled suitors. Indeed, at this very moment it attracted the man who was about to become Jim Hill’s archrival, Edward H. Harriman, of whom it was once said that he feared neither God nor J. P. Morgan.

More important, Tarbell did not understand that the great Gould–Vanderbilt–Scott trunk line battles were never primarily about oil; they were about dominating the grain traffic routes to Chicago and the Midwest. In the early days especially, oil freight was hardly more than ballast for the much bigger business of grain shipping.

Whether Flagler believed his own rhetoric is debatable. By 1904 the Florida East Coast Railway had yet to turn a significant profit on any of its operations, with losses running anywhere from $100,000 to $400,000 in a given year. His string of hotels showed erratic returns, just about breaking even at best.

“The goal is not to have the longest train, but to arrive at the station first using the least fuel.”

As the new railroad, destined to become one of the world’s greatest, took shape during the next several months, the rising dominance of James J. Hill became readily apparent.