Charles Tyson Yerkes

Charles Tyson Yerkes (1904)

Charles Tyson Yerkes (born June 25, 1837 in Philadelphia , † December 29, 1905 in New York City ) was an American financier who played a crucial role in the construction of mass transportation in Chicago and London . He also financed the construction of the Yerkes Observatory at the University of Chicago .

Philadelphia

Yerkes' mother died of puerperal fever when he was five, and soon afterwards his father was cast out by the Quakers for marrying a non-Quaker woman. After graduating from Central High School in Philadelphia, Yerkes began his professional career at the age of 17 as an employee of a grain trading company. In 1859, at the age of 22, he set up his own trading company and joined the Philadelphia Stock Exchange . In 1865, he expanded into banking, specializing in the sale of municipal, state, and government bonds. He built up a far-reaching network of relationships and was about to rise to the highest social circles in the city.

When Yerkes was serving as agent for the Philadelphia City Treasury, he had used city funds to conduct risky stock speculation. The money was lost when the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 sparked a nationwide financial panic. Yerkes went bankrupt , was unable to repay the money lost and was sentenced to 33 months in prison. In order to get out of prison as quickly as possible, Yerkes tried to blackmail two influential politicians from Pennsylvania , which initially failed. Soon after, however, compromising information leaked to the public and politicians like Ulysses S. Grant feared the revelations would affect their chances in the upcoming elections. It was promised that Yerkes would be pardoned if he withdrew his allegations. Yerkes agreed and was released after seven months in prison. Over the next ten years he made every effort to restore his previous financial and personal position, which he succeeded.

Chicago

In 1881 Yerkes traveled to Fargo , Dakota Territory , to get a divorce after 22 years of marriage. In the same year he took the 24-year-old Mary Adelaide Moore as his wife and moved to Chicago . There he founded a cattle and grain trading company, but was soon involved in the city's local public transport. In 1886 he took over the North Chicago City Railway with other partners and after a short time he controlled most of the trams in the northern and western parts of the city. However, he missed his goal of building a tram monopoly, as the Chicago City Railway remained independent in the south of the city.

Yerkes was heavily attacked by the press. The criticism was not unjustified: Yerkes turned against legal regulations intended to support commuters. He bribed members of parliament, blackmailed them or even used specially hired women (“professional vamps”) to seduce them. In addition, he launched windy stocks and bonds that made him substantial profits. Yerkes' reputation grew so bad that his commercial projects were jeopardized.

To improve his image, he had several bridges under the Chicago River renovated and built two bridges over the river. In addition, he donated large sums of money for scientific purposes. In 1892 he assisted William Rainey Harper , director of the University of Chicago , in building a biological research laboratory. In the same year Harper and the astronomer George Ellery Hale persuaded him to build an observatory with what was then the largest telescope in the world. However, Yerkes felt that he was being cheated because he had believed that he was only financing the telescope - and not the construction of an entire observatory. However, after Hale started a press campaign in which he celebrated him as a generous sponsor and benefactor, Yerkes did not want to back down and secured funding. The Yerkes Observatory was officially inaugurated on October 21, 1897. Yerke's financial generosity only temporarily calmed public opinion, probably helped by the fact that the Chicago Times was edited by his chief political opponent, Carter Harrison Sr.

In 1895, Yerkes launched a political campaign aimed at extending the life of the tram concessions. He tried to get John Peter Altgeld , the governor of Illinois , on his side with a large bribe, but Altgeld refused and spoke out against the bill. Yerkes campaigned again in 1897, and the Illinois legislature passed a law that allowed city authorities to extend the terms of concessions. The Chicago city council, usually on the side of Yerkes, opposed him and decided not to apply the law. In 1899, Yerkes sold the majority of its Chicago transit stock and moved to New York .

London

In August 1900, Yerkes decided to move to London and take part in the expansion of the London Underground , after he had visited one of the planned routes and had surveys carried out on the highest point of Hampstead Heath . In 1901 he founded the Underground Electric Railways Company of London , took over the financially troubled Metropolitan District Railway and acquired the concessions for the not yet built Baker Street & Waterloo Railway , Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway and Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton Railway . As in North America, Yerkes used complex financing methods to raise the funds needed to build the new lines and electrify the existing lines. Yerkes was able to successfully prevent similar ambitions from John Pierpont Morgan .

In late 1905, he died in New York at the age of 68 of kidney disease. None of the projects in London were completed at the time of his death. But the construction work was already well advanced and the first sections of the route could be opened in the following year.

Yerkes' time in prison and his later financial success processed the writer Theodore Dreiser in his novels The Financier , The Titan and The Stoic , in which Yerkes is embodied by the fictional character "Frank Cowperwood". The Yerkes crater on the moon is named after Charles Tyson Yerkes .

literature

• John Franch: Robber Baron - The Life of Charles Tyson Yerkes . University of Illinois Press, 2006. ISBN 0252030990