The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-05-31
FR0ST|NESS OF C. 5. MELLEN
 POINTED OUT President of New Haven Road Sized up as Business Man
 Without HumOr

The Washington Herald says of Charles S. Mellen:
 It wasn't Peary who experienced the greatest degree of cold that the human frame can stand. It.was that body of commuters on the New Haven road who faced President Charles Sanger Mellen and listened to him take them over the great ice. They danced into his presence warm-positively hot, in some instances-and if they touched each other on the way out they rang clear and bell-like, after the fashion of icicles on a frosty morning. In the meantime they had secured a fund of knowledge as to the manner in which President MeHen plans to manage his great railroad property that is apt to last them for quite while.
 It all depends on the angle of vision. Some folks hold that Mellen is colder than the cellar of a brewery on a hot day. Others insist that he is just a shirt sleeve railroader, who doesn't like to be bothered by people who do not know as much as he does about the game in which he is interested. No one, perhaps, will deny that he is one of the great railroad managers of the United States. He won that title some years ago, and no one has challenged 1t lately. He is frigidly impatient of interference-eyen Jim Hill couldn't give him orders-but he always de- livered the goods. And an impartial viewing of his railroading record will show that his services have been fully as valuable to the public as to his stockholders.
 Just now he is president of the New Haven road, and because he has tilted the committing rates the cost of a stack of white checks in the Ncommut- ing poker game, he is being actively disliked. When he took charge of that road a few years ago, however, the commuters were complaining that freight trains were given the right of way in prefernece to passengers, and that the directors considered the public a necessary but bOtherSOme item in their plan for the painless extraction of dividends. About the first thing that Mellen did was to spend money in sums the mere amount of which sounds like a delpsion of grandeur. He gobbled the Boston and Maine road and something like fifty other steam and trolley enterprises through New Eng land, forming what is referred to as a railroad trust, was roasted to a crisp by orators and editors; and about dou- bled the New. Haven's ability to serve it's patrons.
 He is a man of quick decision. Tn 1897 he was second vice-president of the New Haven, when his telephone bell rang. '.This is J. F. Morgan's of- flee" said a voice. sWill you go West and take charge of the Northern Paci- fic?"
 "Yes," said Mellen, closing his desk. He did not know what his salary was to be until he got his first check. But he had already organized his plans for making a railroad out of a grass grown right of way which was consid- cred the giant liability of the transpor- tation world. He did it in less than La 1,o 1I~ to take the New Haven out of the rut into which it had fallen. And in spite of the opportunities that he had to get rich-and in a legitimate way out of the progress of the North Pa cific, it is said that he is not rich man today. He hadstuck to his knit ting and let othersplay the dangerous game in the street.
 There is no frost on my office door, he once said, in letting it be known that he would personally inves- tigate every grievance of employees or patron which seemed to have merit behind it. But he doesn't permit any one to waste his time. Even now his workday is from g in the morning un- til he gets through at highland he doesn't look at the clock to determine when the end of the work has been reached. He has had few difficult ties with his workmen. He has been fair, IT not generous, With them: and they know that if he is forced to fight he will fight hard. That rounded jaw and steel gray eye is evidence enough of that characteristic.
 There is no need to carry him through the steps of his career. What he is he made himself, without a pull and with push. He began as clerk at eighteen on a perkwater road in New England, and served in some ca pacity in every department, after the old-fashioned way, until he knew his business. Born in Lowell, Mass, in 1851. he declared not long ago that he had never been tired in his life. He is serious as a bishop and earnest as an evangelist, and totally lacks a sense of humor. His one dissipation is to be found in his library