The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1912-12-02
MELLEN AND THE G. T.
What New Haven President Has
Done in New England.

Done In New England.
Montreal, Dec. 2.-The Star says:
There's a good old story writes Her
bert Carey, of New York, of a negro
who entered an Office one summers
day, to see for the first time an cleo
tric fan in full action. He watched
it uneasily. BY and by he said tc
the chief clerk.
"'Scuse me, suhr; but eff yo' all
doan tex that squirrel outen that
cage, he Ew1n bust his heart"
C6nsidsr New England the squtrrSl
and Charles Sanger Mellen's various
lines OF transportation the cage. and
you have fair idea OF what ts go
ing on in the granite states. New
England has already worked up a
fair case OF palpitation-and Mr..
Mellen won't let it out. For the pur-
poses of this narrative, Attorney-Gen-
eral Wickersham may be billed as
old negro, who is watching the pro-
ceedings with an interest bordering
on alarm. Grand Jury proceedings
are threatened to examine into the
manner in which Mr. Mellen is keep
ing out of New England the competi-
ton threatened by the Grand Trunk
road. And Mr.. Mellen's temperature
remains about as usual--which is a
cellar below subnormal.
1t is sufficiently apparent that
when Mr.. ]. Pierpont Morgan called
Mellen to the presidency of the New
York, New Haven and Hartford rail-
road, he had a ready-made plan by
which he hoped to secure an actual
monopoly of the freight and passen-
ger traffic of the five New England
states. He picked Mellen, because
Mellen had come home with the
chestnGts before. He is not stock
market dabbler. He isn't rich. But
he is one of the great railroad oper-
ators of the United States that state
ment holding good in spite of the
New Ravens appalling list of acct
dents in the past few years. In ten
years Mellen has driven the Wander
bits out of New England, by forcing
them to agree to a practical partner
ship through a traffic agreement in
the Boston and Albany road. He has
seized every steamboat line that was
worth having and bankrupted the
others and grabbed all the trolleys.
He has secured control of all the
docks. and of every steam road ex-
cept one 1t looked as though he had
New England in a bundle and the
string tied.
To do this ne has fought almost
every man in New England he hasn't
hired. He has been in constant bot
| water in the legislature and courts.
He has closed some of New Eng
lands most prosperous ports, and
boosted committing rates, and init
mated that the bankers CT Boston
did a strictly retail business. NIer.
chants along his lines have been in
a continual ferment to the railway
commissions. The only weak spot
on his map was along the line of The
| Central Vermont, which pursued a
wandering course to New London. II
was under lease to the Grand Trunk
but until the city of Providence be
gan to moan in its sleep when II
dreamed of Mellen, the Canadian
road paid little attention to its pos.
session. Providence induced the
Grand Trunk to build a fourteen mile
branch from Palmer and tap that
rich territory. When the Grand
Trunk began to build Mellen began
to fight.
| He fought that fourteen-mile link
from the legislatures and the courts
and the banks and every other am.
bush more than ordinarily ferule
mind could find. A few months age
Il looked as though the Grand Trunk
would win 1t had expended mill
ions of dollars and had whipped Mel
len at every point of contract. The
unfortunate thing about Mellen is
that he doesn't stay whipped. The
department of justice now fears that
he has coaxed the Grand Trunk into
a Notwithstanding bag-and has
sewed that bag so tight that it is
law-proof. Mellen's bland readiness
to turn over his records to Mr.. Wick
ersham's examiners gives legs Il
this fear. The department of Justice
thinks it would take an autopsy tc
find the Grand Trunks cansry
Mellen's New England monopoly is
complete.
Mellen is a Massachusetts Yankee
of the old, cold blue blossomed sort
He was born in Lowell in 1851, and
at eighteen was a clerk in the Offices
of the Northern New Hampshire. He
is as social as vacuum bottle
now and then he has occasion to