Benjamin Loder
Benjamin Loder (February 15, 1801 – October 7, 1876) was an American business man and president of the Erie Railroad from 1845 to 1853, who had made his fortune in New York as dry goods merchant. Biography. Loder was born at South Salem, New York February 15, 1801. He began life as a school teacher, and later engaged in the wholesale dry-goods trade in Cedar Street, New York City. Having accumulated a comfortable fortune, he had retired from active business life at the age of forty-three. The reputation he had made as a progressive and successful business  man led the struggling New York and Erie Railroad Company, at a crisis in its affairs, to solicit him to take hold of them, and endeavor to save the Company from ruin. He was elected president, August 14, 1845, succeeding Eleazar Lord, and remained at the head of the Company eight years. Loder retired from the presidency broken in health. A friend, knowing of his large subscription to the stock of the Company, asked him, soon after he had retired, if he lost his money. "No," said he, "I neither lost nor made any money while with the railroad." As  a matter of fact, the money President Loder received for his services, which were given night and day, barely reimbursed him for his expenses. In course of time, Loder's health was restored to somewhat of its old vigor, and he spent the closing days his life in Westchester County, New York. He died at Rye, October 7, 1876, aged seventy-five years. He was a modest, able, generous, and honest man. He was survived by two sons and five daughters. The older of the two sons died in 1890. Work. Erie and New York Railroad. Loder was a native  of Westchester County, N.Y. He had been for twenty years in the dry goods trade in New York, and had accumulated a fortune. It was said of him that he had never asked for bank accommodation in all his business career. According to a New York newspaper of that day: If "all classes of men" held that belief, events proved that they had held it wisely, for even the metaphor of his newspaper friend did not daunt him. The difficulties President Loder overcame during his struggle to complete the work he had engaged to complete were unprecedented in the history  of the railroad, shirking as he did no exercise of physical endurance, shrinking from no encounter with physical hardships, nor leaving untried any effort of his mind that mind that might sustain and hasten to completion the task he had in hand. Subscription for capital stock. Soon after Benjamin Loder was chosen president of Erie in 1845, he invited twenty-two of the richest men in New York City to meet him in conference at the New York Hotel. They met, and he at once declared to them that among them they must subscribe sufficient money to start up the  work on the railroad and keep it going, a sum which he placed at S3,ooo,ooo. To set an example to the others, he himself subscribed §250,000, his entire fortune. Stephen Whitney, the millionaire cotton-merchant, was one of the men present at the meeting. He pulled at Mr. Loder's coat-tail to attract his attention, and admonished him not to risk his all in the enterprise. "It will ruin you", the cautious cotton-merchant whispered in his ear. But President Loder shook his head, and refused to withdraw the subscription. Aroused by his confidence in the enterprise, the  twenty-two men there and then subscribed the required amount. President Loder's first act was to open books for subscriptions to §3,000,000 of the capital stock of the Company, September 2, 1845, at the office of the Company, 50 Wall street. The plan of subscription was the payment of §5 per share as soon as required by the Company after the entire amount had been subscribed, on condition that interest at six per cent, per annum be paid semi-annually on all the instalments from the date of the respective payments until a single track from the Hudson to  Lake Erie and the branch to Newburgh should be completed and in use; no instalment to be called in until 3O,O0O shares at $100 each were subscribed and accepted, nor any instalment to be more than $25 per share within a year after the $3,000,000 had been subscribed, nor more than §30 per share the second, nor more than $45 the third year; every subscriber to the stock, after paying $25 per share, and purchasing any bond or bonds issued under the act of May 14, 1845, to be entitled to exchange such bonds  into stock of the Company at par, to an amount equal to his subscription. Address to the public. President Loder issued an address to the public to accompany the plan for raising the necessary money. In this he made these interesting statements, published among other places in an 1845 edition of the "Railway Locomotives and Cars" journal: More precise, of the $3,000,000 required to be raised by subscription, more than one million of dollars have been pledged in large sums by a very few friends of the road, leaving less than two millions to be raised by additional subscriptions , to secure the full benefit of the recent act of the Legislature. For comparison, when the Erie came into existence a quarter of a century earlier, it had stated : " The whole work, on which about §5,000,000 has been expended, will be represented by stock and debts to the amount only of §1,350,000." In later days of Erie management this could well have been read thus: "The whole work, on which about §1,350,000 has been expended, will be represented by stocks and debts to the amount of §5,000,000." A genuine inclination on the part of capital to take hold in earnest  and push the New York and Erie Railroad to completion, now manifested itself. Individual members of the Board of Directors made committees of themselves to solicit subscriptions, and one of them, Director Sheldon, raised §100,000 among the grocers of New York in one day. By the beginning of October, 1845, the entire loan of §3,000,000 was subscribed, and Newburgh subscribed §100,000 toward the building of the Newburgh Branch. References. This article incorporates public domain material from Edward Harold Mott "Between the Ocean and the Lakes: The Story of Erie." Collins, 1899. p. 460-61; "; and other public domain material from  books and websites.