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Quotes by John Moody

A minority investment, even though it be as low as ten or twenty per cent, usually constitutes a dominating influence if held by a single interest, for in most cases the majority of the shares will be owned in small blocks by thousands of investors who never combine for a definite, practical purpose.
– John Moody
After the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, the Legislature of New York directed a survey of a state road which was to be constructed at public expense through the southern tier of counties from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.
– John Moody
As a result of these new conditions, the States, cities, and towns were welded together, and population and prosperity increased rapidly in those inland sections which had formerly languished because they had no means of easy and rapid communication.
– John Moody
As late as 1842 a train was started only when sufficient traffic was waiting along the road to warrant the use of the engine.
– John Moody
As the contest proceeded, public interest increased and the entire country watched to see which company would win the big government subsidies through the mountains.
– John Moody
As we enter the Civil War period, we find the three important properties which were afterwards to make up the Vanderbilt system all developing rapidly and logically into the strategic relationship which would make ultimate consolidation inevitable.
– John Moody
Before the opening of the Civil War and until immediately after its end, the New York Central and the Erie systems were controlled by bitterly antagonistic interests.
– John Moody
Both freight and passenger charges, however, were still maintained at an unprofitable rate, and, after the death of John W. Garrett, the credit of the Baltimore and Ohio continued to decline.
– John Moody
But the great miracle of the nineteenth century-the building of a new nation... and diffusing among them the necessities and comforts of civilization to a greater extent than the world had ever known before is explained by the development of harvesting machinery and of the railroad.
– John Moody
But while at Pittsburgh the road had everything to favor it... in the great Eastern metropolis the Pennsylvania Railroad was at an obvious disadvantage, particularly as compared with the New York Central, which had its splendid terminal rights penetrating to the heart of the city.
– John Moody
By 1880 four different lines of railroad were running through to the Pacific States, and a fifth, the Denver and Rio Grande, had penetrated through the mountains of Colorado and across Utah to the Great Salt Lake.
– John Moody
By 1885 the Vanderbilt lines had grown in extent and importance far beyond any point of which the elder Vanderbilt had ever dreamed.
– John Moody
By this time Vanderbilt had achieved a great reputation as a man who created values, earned dividends, and invented wealth as if by magic; other railroad managers now began... ask him to do with them what he had done with the Harlem and the Hudson River.
– John Moody
Canals might indeed linger for a time as feeders... but every one now realized that the railroad was to be the great agency which would give plausibility to the industrial organization of the United States and develop its great territory.
– John Moody
Carrying out this policy of promoting harmony among competing lines, the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroad early in 1900 acquired a working control of the Reading Company, which in turn controlled the New Jersey Central and dominated the anthracite coal traffic.
– John Moody
Consequently many large railroad systems of heavy capitalization bid fair to run into difficulties on the first serious falling off in general business.
– John Moody
Even the New York Central system in 1866 was practically a single-track road; and the Commodore could not claim to any particular superiority over his neighbors and rivals in this particular.
– John Moody
Farmers, merchants, manufacturers, and the traveling public have all had their troubles with the transportation lines, and the difficulties to which these struggles have given rise have produced that problem which is even now apparently far from solution.
– John Moody
Federal railroad regulation... had steadily increased through the years; the Sherman Anti-trust Act, passed in 1890, had been interpreted broadly as affecting the railroads of the country as well as the industrial and other combinations.
– John Moody
For many years following 1851, Drew, who owned or controlled nearly one-half the stock of the Erie, appeared to think that his office of treasurer carried with it the right to manipulate the stock of the road at any time it might help his pocketbook to do so.
– John Moody
For under the Commodore's magic touch the Harlem Railroad for the first time in its long history began to pay dividends at a high rate, and in four years the earnings of the Hudson River property had nearly doubled.
– John Moody
From that date forward, the history of the Vanderbilt railroads has been closely identified with the House of Morgan. J.P. Morgan and his business associates became the company's financial agents, and thereafter all plans of expansion or consolidation were handled directly by them.
– John Moody
Grades have been eliminated everywhere and the whole route has been modernized and strengthened by the laying of one hundred to one hundred and fifty pound rails.
– John Moody
Great men are usually the products of their times and one of the men developed by these times takes rank with the greatest railroad leaders in history.
– John Moody
Having obtained control of the New York Central, the Hudson River, and the Harlem railroads, Commodore Vanderbilt now decided in the summer of 1867 to go after the Erie, of which Drew was nominally in possession, although no one knew when he owned a majority of the stock or when he was temporarily short of it.
– John Moody
Horses and mules, and even sail cars, made more rapid progress than did the earliest locomotive.
– John Moody
If we seek the real predecessor of the modern railroad track, we must go back three hundred years to the wooden rails on which were drawn the little cars used in English collieries to carry the coal from the mines to tidewater.
– John Moody
In 1831, steam locomotives were tested, and one of them, the York, was found capable of conveying fifteen tons at the rate of fifteen miles an hour on level portions of the road.
– John Moody
In 1862, when the charter was granted by the United States Government for the construction of a railroad from Omaha to the Pacific coast, the only States west of the Mississippi Valley in which any railroad construction of importance existed were Iowa and Missouri.
– John Moody
In 1871 the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad, which had been opened as early as 1852, came under the Pennsylvania control.
– John Moody
In 1906 the Pennsylvania began to dispose of the bulk of its holdings in competing properties, the most notable transactions being the sale of its entire interest in the Chesapeake and Ohio to independent interests and a substantial part of its Baltimore and Ohio holdings to the Union Pacific Railroad.
– John Moody
In 1919 the entire property, including controlled lines, embraced more than 13,000 miles of main track, besides about 5000 miles of extra tracks; over 200,000 freight cars are in use on the system, and every year upwards of 200,000,000 tons of freight are transported.
– John Moody
In fact there were railroads long before there were steam engines or locomotives.
– John Moody
In the decade before the Civil War various north and south lines of railway were projected and some of these were assisted by grants of land from the Federal Government.
– John Moody
In the earlier days of railroading, and especially in the long period which came to an end with the death of Harriman, the typical railroad president was usually a man of great wealth who had secured his position by owning a large financial interest in the property.
– John Moody
In the United States three new methods of transportation made their appearance at almost the same time-the steamboat, the canal boat, and the rail car.
– John Moody
In this wise the Commodore not only added millions to his already growing fortune but also made himself a power in the financial world.
– John Moody
It had opened up millions of acres to cultivation, given homesteads to millions of people, many of whom were immigrants from Europe, developed mineral lands of incalculable value, created several new great States, and made the American nation a unified whole.
– John Moody
It was a simple matter to find fault with the railroad; it has always been its fate to arouse the opposition of the farmers.
– John Moody
Many of the railroad evils were inherent in the situation; they were explained by the fact that both managers and public were dealing with a new agency whose laws they did not completely understand.
– John Moody
On July 18, 1858, the first through train passed over the entire line from Philadelphia via Mount Joy to Pittsburgh without transfer of passengers. At the same time the first smoking car ever attached to a passenger train was used, and sleeping cars also soon began to appear.
– John Moody
One of the primary objects of Pennsylvania Railroad policy has been to keep pace with the growth of the country.
– John Moody
People began to understand that with the acquisition of California the nation had obtained practically half a continent, of which the future possibilities were almost unlimited, so far as the development of natural resources and the genera production of wealth were concerned.
– John Moody
Perhaps more than any other one person, Cassatt foresaw the approach of the day when New York City as a commercial center would outstrip both in density of population and in amount of wealth all the other cities of the world.
– John Moody
Practically no railroad, even as late as the sixties, was wider than another. They were all single-tracked lines.
– John Moody
Railroads had been operating for many years in this country before it dawned upon the farmers that this great improvement, which many had hailed as his greatest friend, might be his greatest enemy.
– John Moody
Since the through line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh was opened, not a single year has passed without the payment of a dividend--a sixty-year record which can be duplicated by no other American railroad system.
– John Moody
The builders of the Santa Fe lines in the early days no doubt planned ultimately to penetrate to the Pacific coast, knowing that the real opportunity for the road lay in that direction.
– John Moody
The close relationship between railroad expansion and the genera development and prosperity of the country is nowhere brought more distinctly into relief than in connection with the construction of the Pacific railroads.
– John Moody
The construction of extensive railways, however, and particularly the consolidation of small, experimental lines into large systems, dates from the days of the discovery of gold in California.
– John Moody
The development of railroad properties under the Vanderbilt influence was not confined to the territory east of Chicago and the Mississippi Valley.
– John Moody
The early seventies were not a time of great prosperity in the newly opened West, and the farmers, looking about for the source of their discomforts, not unnaturally fixed upon the railroads.
– John Moody
The entire period in the affairs of the Erie system from the ascendancy of Daniel Drew in 1851 to the end of the Civil War witnessed an endless succession of stock-market exploits both large and small.
– John Moody
The Erie Railroad control was always nominally for sale, and, as the annual election approached, a majority of stockholders stood ready to sell their votes to the highest bidder.
– John Moody
The Erie Railroad system was foreshadowed in the time of Queen Anne, when the Colony of New York appropriated the sum of five hundred dollars to John Smith and other persons for the purpose of constructing a public road connecting the port of New York with the West in the vicinity of the Great Lakes.
– John Moody
The financial condition of the Erie at this time manifested the beginning of that general policy of improvidence and recklessness which afterward, for nearly a generation and a half, made the company a speculative football in some of the most disreputable games of Wall Street stock-jobbers.
– John Moody
The financial history of the Baltimore and Ohio since the close of the nineteenth century is interesting chiefly in connection with changes in the control of the property.
– John Moody
The Flying Dutchman, one of the cars devised to furnish motive power, provided for the horse or mule a treadmill which would revolve the wheels and make the distance of twelve miles in about an hour and a quarter.
– John Moody
The history of the Erie Railroad ever since 1901 has been a record of progress.
– John Moody
The idea of connecting the waters of the Chesapeake with those of the Ohio had been broached by George Washington before the Revolution, and he had also prophesied the union of the Hudson and Lake Erie by canal.
– John Moody
The market was buoyant; speculation was rampant; and the outside public, the delight and prey of Wall Street gamblers, were as usual drawn in by the fascination of acquiring wealth without labor.
– John Moody
The name of Alexander J. Cassatt will always be linked with the comprehensive terminal developments in the region of New York City which were begun almost immediately on his accession to the presidency and which were carried forward on bold and far-reaching lines.
– John Moody
The nation did not begin to realize the extraordinary possibilities of the vast Western territory until its attention was thus suddenly and definitely concentrated on the Pacific by the annual addition of over fifty million dollars to the circulating medium.
– John Moody
The old saying that capital is the most timid thing in the world and does not like pioneering is strongly emphasized by such instances as this, and no doubt in 1864 the enormous grants of free land made by Congress did not appear especially attractive to the man who had money to invest.
– John Moody
The opening of the Erie Canal to New York in 1825 stimulated other cities on the Atlantic seaboard to put themselves into closer commercial touch with the West.
– John Moody
The outbreak of the Civil War delayed the undertaking of the Atchison-Topeka line, and nothing more was done until 1868.
– John Moody
The outstanding dramatic event in the story of the modern Northern Pacific was the famous corner which occurred in the spring of 1901 as a result of a contest between the Hill and the Harriman interests for the control of the property.
– John Moody
The panic of 1837 interfered with the work, but in 1838 the state Legislature came forward with a construction loan of three million dollars, and the first section of line, extending from Piermont on the Hudson to Goshen, was put into operation in September, 1841.
– John Moody
The panic of 1837, the contest of the United States Bank with President Jackson, its defeat, and its subsequent failure as a state bank, the consequent distress in local financial circles--all conspired to shift the monetary center of the country to New York.
– John Moody
The Pennsylvania still continued to forge ahead... to about 1889, when the trunk lines were aggressively carrying on that policy of cutthroat competition between Chicago and the Atlantic seaboard which resulted in so severely weakening the credit and position of properties like the Baltimore and Ohio and the Erie.
– John Moody
The Pennsylvania was the first American railroad to lay steel rails and the first to lay Bessemer rails; it was the first to put the steel fire-box under the locomotive boiler; it was the first to use the air brake and the block signal system; it was the first to use in its shops the overhead crane.
– John Moody
The period of six years following the consolidation of 1853 was one of great prosperity for the New York Central system, and, notwithstanding the setbacks to business caused by the panic of 1857, large dividends were continuously paid on the capita stock.
– John Moody
The public conviction that a railroad linking the West and the East was an absolute necessity became so pronounced after the gold discoveries of '49 that Congress passed an act in 1853 providing for a survey of several lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
– John Moody
The railroad is sprung from the application of two fundamental ideas - one the use of a mechanical means of developing speed, the other the use of a smooth running surface to diminish friction.
– John Moody
The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion as was the ship.
– John Moody
The railroad, they said, was a natural monopoly; no private citizen could hope ever to own one; it was thus a kind of monster which, if encouraged, would override all popular rights.
– John Moody
The remarkable character of this achievement is evident in view of the fact that in the period from 1893 to 1898 more than sixty-five per cent of all the railroad mileage in the United States went into the hands of receivers.
– John Moody
The roads that now make up the New York Central were built piecemeal from 1831 to 1853; and the organization of this company in the latter year, to consolidate eleven independent roads extending from Albany to Buffalo, finally put an end to the long debate between canals and railroads.
– John Moody
The Santa Fe Route, or the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, which has in modern times developed into one of the largest and most profitable railroad systems in this country, was projected long before the idea of a transcontinental line to the Pacific coast had taken full possession of men's minds.
– John Moody
The States which form the northern border of the United States westward from the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast include an area several times larger than France and could contain ten Englands and still have room to spare.
– John Moody
The subsequent history of the Vanderbilt lines is chiefly a story of business expansion and growth. From 1885 to 1893, the great panic year, the New York Central each year added to its mileage, either by merger of smaller lines or by construction.
– John Moody
The ultimate plan, which proved too visionary, was to consolidate under one control a vast network of lines extending all over the continent.
– John Moody
The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad.
– John Moody
The upshot of the matter was that Morgan devised a plan for the sale of a large amount of Vanderbilt's stock holdings through private sale in England, and in such a way that the knowledge of such sale would not become public in America.
– John Moody
The Vanderbilt family no longer possesses a majority interest in the stock, or anything which approaches it, and the New York Central system and its subsidiaries have come to be known more and more as Morgan properties.
– John Moody
This growing sentiment finally persuaded the Legislature to charter in April, 1832, the New York and Erie Railroad Company, and to give it authority to construct a line and to regulate its own charges for transportation.
– John Moody
Through the winter of 1868 the work continued on the Union Pacific with unabated energy, and freezing weather caught the builders at the base of the Wasatch Mountains; but blizzards could not stop them.
– John Moody
Times were not the best, however, and, although much traffic was developed, the immense cost of the extensions heavily burdened the Baltimore and Ohio Company, while the panic of 1857 seriously embarrassed its credit.
– John Moody
To this end, the Pennsylvania Railroad was incorporated on April 13, 1846, with a franchise permitting the construction of a railroad across the State from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh.
– John Moody
Under the Thomson management, which lasted until 1874, the record of the Pennsylvania Railroad was one of progress in every sense of the word.
– John Moody
When business revived in the closing years of the nineteenth century, the history of American railroads began a new chapter.
– John Moody
When the scheme for the construction of a railroad from Baltimore to the waters of the Ohio River first began to take form, the United States had barely emerged from the Revolutionary period.
– John Moody
When these facts became public, the capital stock of the Baltimore and Ohio, which for generations had been looked upon as one of the most secure of railroad investments, dropped to almost nothing, and the most strenuous financial efforts were required to keep the company out of bankruptcy.
– John Moody
Where mountains were climbed thirty years ago, one will now find them bored by tunnels; where sharp curves were necessary before straight trackage only will be encountered today.
– John Moody
While for many years after the death of the Commodore the Vanderbilt family remained in direct financial and operating control of the New York Central... yet the brains and resources of the Vanderbilt's were not alone responsible for the brilliant career of the system down to recent times.
– John Moody
While no one railroad can completely duplicate another line, two or more may compete at particular points.
– John Moody
While the New York Central was in an ideal position for handling all traffic destined for the New England States, the Pennsylvania could control practically none of this business, as its terminals were on the wrong side of the Hudson and necessitated... the much more expensive handling of freight.
– John Moody
With the reorganization of 1898 finished, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad entered a new period in its history.
– John Moody
Yet the enthusiasts for railroads could not be discouraged, and presently the whole population divided into two camps, the friends of the canal, and the friends of the iron highway.
– John Moody
Yet the railroad speedily demonstrated its practical value; many of the first lines were extremely profitable, and the hostility with which they had been first received soon changed to an enthusiasm which was just as unreasoning.
– John Moody