Edward Henry Harriman

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Edward Harriman at the age of 30

Edward Henry Harriman (born February 20, 1848 in Hempstead , Nassau County , New York , †  September 9, 1909 in Orange County , New York) was an American railroad entrepreneur ( rail baron ).

Life

Harriman was born the son of an Anglican clergyman and grew up in poor conditions. He left school at 14 and took a job as an errand boy on Wall Street , New York City . A steep career followed. At the age of 22, Harriman became a member of the New York Stock Exchange . At the age of 33 he began successfully buying smaller, bankrupt railway companies and selling them again after they had been restructured .

Edward Henry Harriman

Harriman's big breakthrough came in 1897 when the bankruptcy proceedings on the Union Pacific Railroad were ended with the help of the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and he took control of the company. He determined the development of this leading railway company until his death in 1909. In 1901, Harriman took over the Southern Pacific Railroad as the successor to Charles M. Hays . At the time of his death, he also ruled Saint Joseph and Grand Island , Illinois Central , Central of Georgia , Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and Wells Fargo Express Company .

Harriman left his wife, Mary Williamson Averell, an inheritance of between $ 200 million and $ 600 million. Their son was W. Averell Harriman .

Harrimans Alaska Expedition 1899

After his doctor had urgently recommended a vacation to him, Edward Henry Harriman chartered the steamer “George W. Elder” in the summer of 1899 and invited about 30 scientists to a research trip to Alaska , the Harriman-Alaska Expedition , including some friends, like John Muir . He also paid the costs for this. 23 scientists undertook research in their fields such as B. Geologists, botanists, ornithologists, taxidermists (taxidermists), zoologists, surveyors, collected specimens and took photos. The Alaska expedition covered 9,000 miles and had 50 stops. She left Seattle on July 1 and returned on August 31, 1899. The results of the expedition were published in 12 volumes. They also named some geological locations such as B. the Harriman Fjord and Harriman Glacier in the Chugach mountain region .

The friendship with John Muir

In 1908 Muir visited Harriman in his country house "Pelican Bay" on Klamath Lake in Oregon . To encourage Muir to write books, Harriman instructed his private secretary to secretly follow Muir and put everything he said in shorthand. The resulting manuscript eventually became his book, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth . Hariman also helped fund Muir's world trips by giving him free passages on his shipping routes.

Press reviews

The contemporary German press saw Edward Henry Harriman as the prototype of the unscrupulous speculator in the capital market. In its obituary, the Catholic magazine Deutscher Hausschatz called him a man with a "gold hunger" who "destroyed numerous livelihoods in the wild stock market battle of 1901, but who himself snatched millions of dollars". President Theodore Roosevelt saw in Harriman "one of those great trust pests who are branded with criminality".

literature

  • Charles R. Geisst: The Last Partnerships: Inside the Great Wall Street Dynasties . McGraw Hill Professional, 2001, ISBN 978-0-07-136999-2 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  • George Kennan: EH Harriman, a biography . Vol. I, with Illustrations. Publisher: Houghton Mifflin company Boston, New York, Published 1922
  • George Kennan: EH Harriman, a biography Volume II
  • Otto H. Kahn: Edward Henry Harriman 1911, reprinted as The Last Figure of an Epoch: Edward Henry Harriman. In: Our Economic and Other Problems 1920
  • John Muir: Edward Henry Harriman (1911)
  • Balthasar Henry Meyer: A Hist. of the Northern Securities Case. Publisher University of Wisconsin 1906 Digital.
  • In the Matter of Consolidations and Combinations of Carriers. Interstate Commerce Commission Reports, XII 1908
  • Wm. Z. Ripley: Railroads: Finance and Organization. 1915
  • George Kennan: EH Harriman's Far Eastern Plans. Publisher: The Country Life Press, 1917 digital.
  • William J. Myles: Harriman Trails, A Guide and History. The New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, New York, NY, 1999.
  • Maury Klein : The Life and Legend of EH Harriman. 2000

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The books about the expedition in the Internet Archive
  2. ^ Dictionary of Alaska Place Names, page 15 by Donald J. Orth
  3. ^ German house treasure in words and pictures, Volume 36, Issue 2, 1910, obituary on p. 77, DNB signature DZb 35

Web links

Commons : Henry Harriman  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Harriman, Edward Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American railroad operator
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Hempstead , New York
DATE OF DEATH September 9, 1909
Place of death Orange County , New York