The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-27

known in New York and the financial world is that of B. F. Yoakum, the pre- siding genius of the Rock Island-Frlsco system. Less than q year ago he went to New York and hung out his shingle at T Broadway, and though he was the boss of the greatest total of railroad mileage in the world his name was not familiar to the newspaper reader of the east The famous Hartman system, con sistng of the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific, has IA. .496 miles of track age. The Rock land-Frisco system and other lines under B. r. Yoakum consist of 17,500 miles.
 Today, however, the name of E. F. Yoakum is one to conjure with in Wall street And he started Tn the railroad . business as a rodman and chain bearer. Undoubtedly MT. Yoakum Is the construc- tive and creative genius of the southwest just as James J. Hill has been the cor responding genius of the northwest. What Hill has done and is doing for the great wheat raising country traversed by the Great Northern railroad E. r. Yoakum has done, is doing and going to do still further 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 railroad; he built and is still building them through a sparsely inhabited coun- try and then inviting the settler to fol- low. 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, but what he is going to do in the comparatively near future Is nothing short of titanic. He has pinned his faith to two splendid dreams of engineering skill, which when completed and put in operation are bound to have an almost incalcuable effect upon not only the development of the entire trans 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 well. One of these is a great ship channel from Galveston 10 Houston, which will make of the Texas metropolis, now 70 miles from the coast, a seaboard city and port of entry for 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 com pletion, and meanwhile Yoakum is work ing equally fast in the construction of the three railroads which he is building into Galveston and Houston so as to De able to carry his share of the allen plo- neers who will soon begin to land at
 
 valleys of Texas that are now being pre- pared for them. The idea is to attract the industrious agricultural immigrant of south Europe-a type of immigrant ideally suited to the soil and the development of the natural resources of Texas-and to dl- vert the stream of immigration that is now pouring into the port of New York at the rate of more than 100000 a year
 What NJ. YosSum has already done need not be repeated for southern readers
 MT. Yoakum is a Texan-a Texan in spirit and appearance. He is big man, standing six feet one, and is broad shouldered approximately. His eyes are plue-ersv and eagle-like in their shrewJ- ness When on this side of the Misss sippi river he wears a plain black derby hat, but nobody on the other side ever saw him in aught but the great broad brlmmed soft black felt of Texas tradi- tion. He was born near Tehunaca. in Limestone county. &s years ago. the son of