The San Francisco call., 1908-10-18

dozen utilitarian rooms on the second
floor of the company's freight station
building in the Chicago yards. In two
of these rooms, with a window outlook
upon tangle of switching tracks with
their shifting panorama of cars and
locomotives, Ford set up his standard as
chief executive of the three annexed
roads, becoming, in the eyes of three
separate republics of minor officials and
employees, the arbiter of destiny.
Naturally, the announcement that
their railroads had been swallowed
whole by the Pacific Southwestern had
fallen as a thunderclap upon the rank
and file of the three local companies
and since, in railway practice, change
of owners usually carries with it a
sweeping change in department heads,
the service was instantly demoralized.
During the first few hours of Ford s
administration, therefore, the wires
were buzzing with hasty designations;
and those whose courage was not
whetted to the quitting point took a
loose hold upon their duties and waited
to see what would happen Under
such chaotic conditions Ford took his
seat in the mean little Office over the
freight station, and flung himself ar
IDENTIFY into the task of bringing order
out of the sudden confusion. Effect
structionists on the board it was critic
ally necessary that there be immediate
and cheering news from the front
1t was in the preliminary wrestle
with disintegration that the young en-
gineer's gift of insight and his faculty
of handling men as men stood him in
good stead. He was fresh from his
trip over the new extension, on which
he had met and shrewdly appraised the
With the human field thus mentally
mapped and cross sectioned he was en-
abled to make swift and sure selections.
cutting out the dead timber remorse-
lessly. encouraging the doubtful, re-
assuring the timid, asserting and COM
bining and ordering until, at the close
of the second day of fierce toll he was
ready to make his first report to Adair.
Track connections at junction points COM
pleted today. General and division operating
and traffic departments in the saddle and ef-
fectiyely organized. With proper cooperation on
gin to move eastward tomorrow. Can get no
satisfactory replies from North. Have him dis
ciplined from your end. Answer. FORD.
To this telegram there was a prompt
and voluminous reply from the seat Of
war in the east. In a free fight on the
stock exchange, a battle royal gen.
eraled by Brewster and Magnus In
which every inch of ground had been
sharply contested by brokers buying UP
p. S-W. in the interest of principals
unnamed, a majority of the Southwest
ern stock-safe but exceedingly narrow
had been secured by the reconstruc-
tionists.
In accordance with Ford's sugges-
tion, North had been called DOWN by
WIRE and Ford was instructed to re-
port instantly any failure of effort on
the part of the Denver headquarters to
set the grain trains in motion.
Otherwise, and from the New York
point of view. the situation remained
most hopeful. The fight in the street
had unified the factions in the board
of directors, and even the timid ones
were beginning to clamor for an ad-
vance into the territory of the enemy
Ford read Adair's letter length and
most unbusinesslike telegram with
the zest Of the fine wine of triumph
cago outlet fairly open and in working
order, and huge tributary grain crop
to be moved, 1T should be only a mat
ter of days until the depressed Pacific
Southwestern stock would begin to
climb toward the bonding figure.
This was the first triumphant
conclusion, butt afterward came re-
action and a Oppressive doubt.
Would the stock go up? Or would
the enemy devise some assault
that would keep it down in spite of the
money earning, dividend promising
facts? Upon the expected rise hung
the fate of Ford's cherished ambition
the building of the western extension.
Without a dividend paying Chicago
Denver main line there could be no