Charles Melville Hays

**Charles Melville Hays** (May 16th, 1856 - April 15th, 1912) was a First Class Passenger of the RMS *Titanic*. He died in the sinking.

## Biography

Mr Charles Melville was born at Rock Island, Illinois, USA, on 16 May 1856. He was educated at the public schools of Rock Island, and went to work for the Atlantic and Pacific Railway when he was 17. At 22 he was appointed secretary to the Manager of the Missouri Pacific Railway.

He married Clara Jennings Gregg in St. Louis Mo, 13 October 1881, and they had four daughters.

## Railway Career

In 1873, at the age of 17, he began his career in the railroad business working for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad in St. Louis. Hays was Secretary to the General Manager of the Missouri Pacific Railroad from 1877 to 1884. Beginning in 1884 he held the same position with the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway until 1886 when he became that company's General Manager. He became Vice-President of the Wasbash Railroad in 1889 and remained as such until 1896 when he became General Manager of the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) of Canada.

In 1901, Hays left GTR to serve as the President of the Southern Pacific Railway Company but returned to the company in January 1902 as Vice-President and General Manager. In October 1909, he was appointed president of GTR, which also gave him control of its subsidiary railroad and steamship companies. These included the Central Vermont Railway, the Grand Trunk Western Railway, the Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railway, the Detroit and Toledo Shoreline Railroad, the Toledo, Saginaw and Muskegon Railway, the Southern New England Railway Company, the Canadian Express Company, and several others. In addition, he was sought after to help manage several philanthropies. He was Governor of the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, Montreal General Hospital and McGill University. He received the Order of the Rising Sun, third class, from the Emperor of Japan in 1907 for assistance he gave the Imperial Government Railways.

When Hays became General Manager of GTR in 1896, it was near bankruptcy and under-performing its rival, the Canadian Pacific Railway(CPR). On the advice of American financier J. Pierpont Morgan, the GTR board selected Hays as General Manager to bring more aggressive, "American" business practices to the company. He reorganized the management of the company and successfully negotiated running rights with CPR. He also brought more efficiency to the handling of accounts, built new track and ordered more powerful locomotives. These changes produced an era of greater success for the railroad.

#### Transcontinental Railway

At this time in Canadian history the western prairies were being rapidly settled. Hays wanted to capitalize on the trend by constructing a transcontinental railroad within the borders of Canada to run 3,600 miles from Moncton, New Brunswick, to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. In 1900 he introduced a proposal to extend the lines of the Grand Trunk Western, an American subsidiary, from Chicago to Winnipeg "and thence to the Pacific." However, he was turned down by the railroad's directors in London. Later that year, Hays left GTR to work for Southern Pacific but a change in ownership there lead to his resignation. He returned to the GTR to find that the president, Sir Charles Rivers Wilson had convinced the Board of Directors to pursue the transcontinental railway. Meanwhile the government, under Sir Wilfrid Laurier, had also decided to back the project. Plans to construct the transcontinental line were announced on November 24, 1902.

Hays' plan involved the creation of a subsidiary line from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert, with the government building the line from New Brunswick to Winnipeg. The cabinet became weary of Hays' demands for subsidies, but after negotiations between the government and Hays, aided by the railroad's president Rivers Wilson, the National Transcontinental Railway Act was passed in 1903. It enabled the incorporation of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTP). The government's portion of the line would be called the National Transcontinental Railway (NTR).

There were problems with some of Hays' policies regarding the GTP. Firstly, he had planned to buy out the Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) but the company resisted and instead provided competition. Secondly, Hays lacked support from the Board of Directors in London. He wanted to link the GTR with the GTP but the board would not back this plan. He thus proceeded on his own authority, making commitments that would ultimately ruin both the GTP and the GTR. Thirdly, Hays faced opposition to his choice of Prince Rupert, on Kaien Island, B.C., for the western terminal, because there was not much traffic there. Hays preferred the location as he felt that it would provide a shorter route for transshipment to destinations in Asia.

Hays made the construction of the mainline his priority, failing to develop feeder lines. CNoR and CPR joined forces to gain control of the prairie traffic. As a result of the competition between the three railroads, Canada ended up with three transcontinental railways instead of one. This was to result in the GTP being starved of traffic; even though it was arguably the best of the three, it ultimately failed to attract enough freight to make it profitable.

After construction on the GTP began in 1905, Hays started the Grand Trunk Pacific Development Company in order to purchase thousands of acres of land on which he established town sites along the route of the railway, including Melville, Saskatchewan, which was named after him. Hays' vision went beyond the building of the railway. He also had plans for a fleet of ocean liners and a string of resort hotels across the Rocky Mountains. He hired the famed architect Francis Rattenbury from CPR to design a grand hotel, the Château Prince Rupert, at the westernmost stop on the railway. In 1909, only 3000 people lived in Prince Rupert, but anticipation of the railroad caused it to grow rapidly in spite of the rapidly rising cost of property and the muddy environs. The city was incorporated in 1910.

After Rivers Wilson retired as the railroad's president in 1909, Hays was appointed to fill the position. By 1910, Grand Trunk union workers were demanding wages on par with those of railroad workers in the United States. A strike put a stop to construction. Hays finally gave into the workers' demands, but failed to re-hire 250 previously fired strikers despite promising to do so. He also denied workers their pensions, causing one member of Parliament to describe him as "heartless, cruel, and tyrannical".

By 1912, the cost of constructing the railway was increasing, with rising wages and price increases on materials, while the government refused to allow a rate increase. Another reason for the mounting costs was Hays' insistence on "building to the very highest standards". Meanwhile CNoR and CPR monopolized the traffic in the west. In addition, Grand Trunk, which would be leasing the NTR from the government, was responsible for paying back the construction cost of that line. Hays began to fear insolvency.

## ***Titanic***

In his business dealings Hays had had discussions with the White Star Line about speeding travelers from Europe to the Orient using White Star ships and his transcontinental railroad. As a result, J. Bruce Ismay invited Hays and his entourage as guests aboard *Titanic*. They paid £93 10s to cover incidental expenses, traveled on ticket number 12749, and occupied four cabins: B-69-71-73 and B-24. (Mr and Mrs Hays in B-69, Thornton and Orian Davidson in B-71, their maid Miss Perreault in B-73 and Hays secretary, Vivian Payne, in B-24).

One hour before the disaster, Hays relaxed with Colonel Archibald Gracie and Captain Edward Crosby in the First Class Smoke Room and they talked about the technological advances in transportation. At one point, he made a prophetic remark on the evening of the disaster; Hays conceded that while *Titanic* was a superlative vessel, he expressed concern that "the trend to playing fast and loose with larger and larger ships will end in tragedy." Twenty minutes later, *Titanic* struck the iceberg. Hays helped the women in his party into one of the ship's 20 lifeboats, but he, his son-in-law and secretary remained and perished when the ship sank. 1,500 other passengers and crew also died in the sinking of the *Titanic*.

Hays never believed the ship would sink quickly. As he put his wife and daughter into lifeboat 3, and assured them *Titanic* would stay "afloat for at least 10 hours." Captain Edward Crosby must have told him that prior.

Hays drowned in the disaster, but the *Minia* recovered his body on April 26th. "It was no trouble to identify him as he had a lot of papers on him and a watch with his name on it," sailor Francis Dyke wrote to his mother.

His coffin was brought back to Montreal for burial aboard his private railway car, Canada. The car is still preserved and on display at the Canadian Railway Museum near Delson, Quebec.

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Unlike claimed, Charles Hays was not related to Margaret Bechstein Hays at all. They did not know each other.