The copper era., 1909-09-16
Hartman, the Great Railroad Masnate

uoI tliiloty tuS ViCot hoiIiOou HoSuotCs
 Edward Henry Hartman, who will
 go down in history as one of the most
 spectacular financial geniuses, most
 daring stock spectators and great
 est railroad magnates of his time,
 was born at Hampstead, Long Island,
 February 9, 1848, the son of the Rev.
 Orlando Hartman, Jr., Rector of an Episcopal church in that town, found-
 ed in TOP. The early life ot the fp-
 ture man of millions was one of great poverty. His father was a cultured
 but poor man; his mother came from
 an old and aristocratic but equally
 impecunious family of New Bruns-
 wick, N. J. The Rev. Orlando Harri- man, Jr., had large family, consist [ ing of four boys and two girls and
 his income was altogether inadequrte
 to feed, clothe and educate his child
 ren.
 In 1855, when Hartman was but
 six years old, the family moved to
 Jersey City. The head of the family
 had no regular charge, but helped
 out wherever he could. On May g, 1859, the Rev. Orlando Hartman, Jr.,
 was made rector of St. Johns at
 West Hoboken, with a salary of S200 year. He remained in charge of the parish seven and half years, until November 1866. At that time his salary was S374 in arrears, which
 was compromised at S25O, payable in six months, with interest. But little is known of E. H. Harriman's life during these years of poverty. The family lived in a small house on the meadows and it required no end of ingenuity and economy to make both ends meet.
 Hartman began his career as clerk in a brokers office on Wall Street. He showed no unusual ability and for many years gave no promise of his later brilliant development. Socially he was at that time described as a social young man, always full of fun. He was noted, however, for mind of his own. What he wanted he gen orally obtained, but the desires and ambitions were, at that time, at least, neither very sweeping nor par ticuIarly important.
 How he obtained his start and the | funds which enabled him to buy a | seat on the New York Stock Ex- change, has never been clearly ex- plained. The most widely accepted | explanation, however, was to the ef- feet that during the famous ''gold | corner" engineered by Gould, Fisk, Timber and others Edward H. Harri- man plunged with all his own money and some borrowed from his brother Orlando and cleared enough to buy for himself in August, 1870, seat on the New York Stock Exchange.
 For number of years the broker firm of E. H. Hartman & Go. did thriving business on Wall Street, speculating with it's own funds and executing commissions for the Van derbilts and other wealthy clients. It was not until 1883 that E. H. Har- riman came actively into the rail- road field. At that time he had be- come known as capitalist, one of the few who had gathered together a great fortune in the ten troubled years between 1870 and 1880. He was credited with having in his strong box a fair list of stocks he had picked up at extremely low prices during the various panics. Along in 1883 he was elected direct or of the Illinois Central railroad. He was at that time working in close friendship with Stuyvesant Fish, who was elected second vice-president in the same year. MT. Fish had also been a member of the stock exchange from 1877 to 1879, and the two young men went into the Illinois Central to work along together. In 1887 MT Hartman became vice-president and MT. Fish was elected president. MT. Hartman was then about forty years old. Whether Hartman entered the railroad field in accordance. with an already matured plan of his or whether his accidental acquaintance with rdllroad matters suggested to him the enormous possibilities of ac- quiring the control of large railroad systems, is not definitely known. At all events MT. Harriman's entry into the directorate of the Illinois Cen tral railroad marked the beginning of his career as a manipulator of railroad stocks and reorgauizer of railroad systems which, in the course of ten or fifteen years made him one of the greatest railroad kings ever known in the United States and placed him in control of more than 54 ,000 miles of water transportation lines and of railroad lines of an esti mated length of nearly 27,OO0 miles.
 During the panic preceding the