The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1907-04-08
YOAKUM NOW THE
RAILROAD MAGNATE
Frisco-Rock Islands Head a
Great Figure
HIS WONDERFUL CAREER
Benjamin Franklin Yoakum Directs
More Miles of Railroad Than Any
other Man in the World-Ro-
mantle Rise.
From the New York Herald.


his days wage upon a primitive bit of
steel track stretching between two pioneer
Texas towns, to the management today
of the greatest aggregate railroad mile
age under any single control in the United
States or any other country-such has
been the phenomenal career of a man who
now looms large upon the horizon Of the
great world of railroad and financial
enterprise.
Quite unheralded this man has recently
come to New York, where his name is
modestly lettered in the corridor directory
in the skyscraper at No. Il Broadway
B. r. Yoakum.
1t is a name not familiar to the news
paper reader of the east. Though he man
ages more railroad mileage than Mr.. Hill,
Mr.. Hartman or Mr.. Gould, his name
thus far has been unheard of outside of
his own vast domain, his very existence
unguessed save by that little coterie or
wizards who sit within the holy of holes
of Wall street. The famous Hartman
system, consisting of the Union Pacific
and the Southern Pacific, has a. 1876 miles
of trackage. The Rock Island-Frisco sys-
consist of 1850 miles.
In Wall street, however, . the name of
b. f. Yoakum Is one to conjure with. His
stupendous projects are of absorbing con-
Germ, and if one crosses the Mississippi
and journeys through Missouri, or Arkan-
sas, or Colorado, or Texas. or the new
state of Oklahoma, he will find that that
name is an open sesame to the door of
every farm house. of every rude settlers
log cabin or sod hut He will find, too,
to his great and ever increasing wonder.
ment, that he cannot traverse a square
mile of this vast territory that he does
not either see or hear or otherwise be-
come impressed with the name and fame
of Yoakum.
For b. f. Yoakum is the constructive
and creative genius of the southwest just
as James ]. Hill has been the correspond
ing genius of the northwest. What Hill
has done and is doing for the great wheat
raising country traversed by the Great
Northern railroad, b. T.. Yoakum has
done, Is doing and going to do still fur
Their for that rich, virgin and almost
illimitable territory webbed by the Rock
Island Frisco system. Like Hill, Yoakum
did not wait for the settler to come to
inhabit his empire before he built his rail-
roads: he built and is still building them
through a sparsely inhabited country and
then invited the settler to follow. Yoakum,
not the settler, is the pioneer of the
southwest.
What Yoakum has accomplished against
terrible odds in the way of pioneer rail-
road building Is gigantic and will be
briefly outlined further on, but what he
is going to do in the comparatively near
future is nothing short of titanic. In
deed, one may with properiety character
lie his latest projects, which are now
well under way, as truly Promethean.
Prometheus it was who gave to man the
gift of fire; Yoakum 1t is who is giving to
the illmitable expanse off western and
southwestern prairie not only great
transportation system, but the precious
boon of artestian water, thus turning
vast areas heretofore commonplace in ag-
ricultural significance into territory as
rich and fertile as that of the Nile.
Prometheus with his hand turned the
course of the mighty rivers and remod-
elled at will the seacoast of the earth.
That is what Yoakum Is doing with the
gulf coast of Texas and with the rivers
which flow above ground and with the
mighty streams which flow in subterrane
an caverns six hundred feet beneath the
earths surface.
To drop the terms of mythology, B. f.
Yoakum has pinned his faith to two spen-
did dreams of engineering skill, which
when completed and put in operation are
bound to have an almost incalculabe eff
feet upon not only the development of
the entire Mississippi country from
Canada to Mexico and from the gulf to
the Pacific, but upon the whole trade and
commerce of the United States as we'll.
One of these Is a great ship channel from
Galveston to Houston, which will make of
the Texas metropolis, now fifty miles
from the cosat, a seaboard city and a
port of entry for a large percentage of
the immigrant laden ships that at present
are landing their passengers at the port
of New York. This great undertaking is
now well under way and is being rapidly
pushed to completion, and meanwhile
Yoakum is working equally fast in the
construction of the three railroads which
he is building into Galveston and Hous-
ton so as to be able to carry his share
of the alien pioneers who will soon begin
to land at these ports far into the fertile
plains and valleys of Texas that are now
being prepared for them. The idea is to
attract the Industrious agricultural immi-
grant of South Europe-a type of immi-
grant ideally suited to the soil and the
development of the natural resources of
Texas-and to divert the stream of mmi-
grafton that is now pouring into the port
of New York at the rate of more than a
million a year.
Under the present conditions our imml-
grafton system is based on an economic
waste. The immigrant who would take
up agriculture-and the vast percentage
comes to this country with that hope
finds himself landed in New York, with
little or no money with which to take
him out into the unsettled west For
the great majority there Is nothing to do
but stay here or drift to the equally
crowded neghboring cities. Their land
ing direct at a gulf port In comparatively
close proximity to lands which they can
either homestead or buy very cheaply
not only would be a great economic saw
ing to the immigrants themselves but
1t would go far toward solving what is
more and more becoming a most serious
social and economic problem. Incidental
ly, too. 1t is going to help sustain
Yoalxum prophecy that 100000 people
will come to Texas within ten years and
there secure a prosperity unobtainable
anywhere else in the United States.
OF all Mr. Yoakum's plans for the build
ing up of the empire of the southwest the
one nearest his heart-the one which
makes the greatest appeal to his imag-
nation-is his proposed reclamation of the
Valley of the Rio Grande by means of
irrigation
This territory. extending about 100 miles
from the tip end of Texas northward
along the gulf coast, and about an equal
distance along the Rio Grande and now
organized into the counties of Hdalgo
anu Cameron, was until short time ago
the home of the cattle barons, who craft
lily spoke of 1t as fit only for cattle graz
ing. Notwithstanding the fact that the
soil runs from forty to seventy feet deep
and is as rich as that of the Nile II
had until few years ago been impossible
to utilize 1t for agricultural purposes, for
ha hat hoa Hal