i'tiuning anb .Jabot. LIBRARY Universityof Illinois 'I'he building here shown as No. 2 Hanover Street was with others demolished in 1865, and the site is now occupied by a part of the Hankino- House of Messrs. Brown Bros. c% Co. YHAIMOD nAOHJIA.3 JAHTiOD glOXIJjI 3HT 10 aOAjl-HTHlS 3HT waM ,TaaaT2 aavowAH s .oM igvoncH s .oM ?.K nworia anari ghiblkid arlT ,j68i ni badeilocaab gisriio riiiv/ acw 199118 9fll \o liq B '{d bsiquoao won ai alia aril bnfi oiH nwoi9 ^ ^-^/nmim&m flfeenu Pitt* fotnhs Oireen ^nvlle, Jj^wtall |Ja!iirs of d^rcslf of lairfe Bnss, of ^oulh&otoit Jltttloai, , a I'Anglatsc O8I of "$iettwce of 3^tssi\ J&tratob*rr Jres * ^tttrf rise THE LAKK. FRONT IN Showing also the original Illinois Central Ter- minal Station at Chicago, as seen from corner of Michigan Avenue and Madison Street. od8i vii T'x;ofl' i l ajjftJ an sionilll Ifinigiio adi ozle gniwor)3 imoo moil naaa 8B ,oEDiriO JB noiiBlB [>nr, innivA fiKX>iHii TIME TABI,E!N U'.I.K No. 6, FOURTH DIVISION \ l i *ii * C J w i B - , 1 5 d The time table here shown took effect Sunday noon, September 23, 1855, and relates to move- ment of all trains between Amboy and Dunleith (now East Dubuque). vioiaiviCI HTHUOI ,d .oM a.iaAT 3MiT Joafte ilooJ nworla aiarl aldfiJ amiJ ariT -ovom ol aaJsIai bns ,gg3i ,f_s ladmalqaS ,noon fariB ijodrnA naawlad anisil HB lo Jnam S-4 "W f " S 3 ^ 2! W ' / i, 9 f - -3 & This pass was issued in 1857 to the Hon. Abraham Lincoln, at that time Attorney for the Company, and afterward President of the United States. The circles and stars indicate conductors' punch marks in original pass on each presentation of same. MA 1O .noH aril ol 7581 ni bausHr ar,w aafiq airl'l' rlJ 10^ x 911 " 10 - 1 ^^ om '- ir '^ is .nlooniJ baJrnU aril to Jnabi^ai'I biBv/iaJlu bne rtoriuq 'aioJoubnoo slBoibni aisia bne aatoiia 9fiT te (StortwU gall g IN response to aii invitation extended by the Illinois Central Railroad Company, there assembled in the parlors of the Auditorium Hotel, Chicago, on Satur- day evening, February the ninth, nineteen hundred and one, prominent men from all portions of the United States. Com- merce, Theology, Law, Science, Education, Transportation, Politics, Medicine, Manufacture all walks of life were repre- sented. The occasion was the Dinner given to the Directors and Officers of the Illinois Central Railroad Company on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Company. After a half hour of greeting and social intercourse, the guests were escorted to the Banquet Room, which was mag- nificently decorated with rare plants and flowers in great profusion. A carefully selected orchestra rendered appropriate music. The guests were assigned to seats at twenty-two tables, the arrangement of which, together with the names of the gentlemen who presided at each and assisted the host of the evening, may be observed from the following diagram : BALCONY FOR MUSIC. MR. W. K. ACKERMAN. REVO. DR. STIRE8. EX. GOV. HAMILTON Ex. Gov. ALTQELO. Anteroom. Entrance. Anteroom. The following is a complete list of the guests present: Speaker's Gable Mr. Stuyvesant Fish Mr. W. K. Ackerman Hon. John P. Altgeld Hon. John M. Hamilton Rev. E. M. Stires Table No. One A. W. Sullivan James W. Conchar William G. Dows F. B. Harriman O. O. Tolerton W. H. Torbert M. M. Walker John R. Webster Table No. Gtoo T. J. Hudson C. S. Clarke J. F. Buncombe C. F. Krebs F. W. Lane R. B. Starbuck G. M. Dugan Table No. Ghree B. F. Ayer James Fentress J. N. Jewett W. K. Murphy C. Menelas Dr. J. E. Owens W. R. Ward Geo. W. Wall Table No. Four J. C. Welling Chas. Counselman R. S. Charles Marvin Hughitt W. H. McDoel W. G. Purdy J. A. Spoor B. L. Winchell Table No. Five J. T. Harahan Charles T. Ballard H. G. Burt M. J. Carpenter Charles M. Heald W. B. Mallory W. G. Sykes B. Thomas Table No. Six J. M. Dickinson Augustus N. Eddy C. E. Harrington H. H. Kohlsaat Geo. R. Peck Willard A. Smith J. M. Whitman Otto Young Table No. SeVen Jerome Hill Edward Abend John S. Aisthorpe P. T. Chapman C. B. Cole L. Foote R. Iv. Saunders F.M.Youngblood Table No. Eight J. F. Wallace C. A. Beck L. Fargo R. W. Millsaps Edward Marrener W. A. Rankin Wm. Renshaw Table No. Nine L/. P. Morehouse C. H. Comstock C. N. Gilmore W. R. Head W. P. Johnson T. W. Place L. T. Moore F. Fairman Table No. Gen E. H. Harriman Robt. C. dowry S. M. Felton J. J. Mitchell Wm. Perm Nixon John R. Walsh Table No. Eleven John W. Doane E. E. Ayer J. C. Brown John J. Janes R. T. Lincoln Franklin MacVeagh James S. Pirtle A. A. Sprague Table No. EWelVe C. A. Peabody Charles M. Beach John A. Dillon James M. Edwards Charles Henrotin Henry W. Leman John B. Lord M. R. Spellman Table No. thirteen James D. W. Cutting Watson F. Blair W. M. Grinnell C. D. Hamill Le Roy Percy Thatcher N. Brown S. B. Raymond J. Henry Norton Table No. Fourteen W. G. Bruen John W. Carlin J. W. Higgins C. F. Parker D. W. Ross E. P. Skene E. F. Trabue J. F. Titus Table No. Fifteen A. H. Hanson F. H. Harwood S. G. Hatch Wm. A. Kellond C. A. Kniskern J. F. Merry J. A. Osborn George C. Power Table No. Sixteen M. C. Markham George W. Becker F. B. Bowes W. D. Hurlbut W. E. Keepers R. Kirkland W. M. Rhett W. H. V. Rosing Table No. Seventeen David Sloan O. M. Dunn W. J. Gillingham, Jr. L. L- Losey H. W. Parkhurst W. L. Tarbet H. U. Wallace Table No. Eighteen S. F. Andrews Dr. W. H. Allport C. C. Cameron John G. Drennan Hunter C. Leake Blewett Lee J. R. Peachy B. J. Stevens Table No. Nineteen D. S. Bailey Horace Baker J. C. Dailey A. J. Greif J. B. Kemp H. McCourt Table No. Twenty M. D. Royer C. H. Allison W. A. Eldredge J. G. Pratt W. S. Pinney W. E. Ruttan Table No. Twenty-one L. A. Harkness J. E. Buker Murray J. Brady S. Kennedy J. K. Lauder The Diviue blessing was invoked by Reverend Ernest M. Stires, the Rector of Grace Church, Chicago, in the following words : " Almighty God, give us grateful hearts for these and for all Thy blessings, through Christ, our Lord. Amen." At the conclusion of the dinner, Mr. Stuyvesant Fish, the President of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, said : Gentlemen : Appreciating that every one else has, as I have, a neatly type- written impromptu speech in his pocket, I will endeavor to be brief. The Company is now operating railroads in thirteen States. Knowing that no kind of property is equally subject to depredation or more in need of constant pro- tection from the constituted authorities than is that of the railways, we have not failed to invite the Governors of each of those thirteen States to be with us this evening. Unfortunately, this happens to be a busy season with them and none are present, although up to the last moment we had expected to have at least one of them, my friend, the Honorable Leslie M. Shaw, Governor of Iowa, with us. The following letters and telegrams were then read : STATE OF ILLINOIS, EXECUTIVE OFFICE, SPRINGFIELD, January 29, 1901. My Dear Mr. Fish. I regret exceedingly that it will be impossible for me to accept your invitation for dinner, at seven o'clock Saturday evening, February the ninth. A previous engagement only prevents me from being with you. Very truly yours, (Sd.) RICHARD YATES. Hon. Stuyvesant Fish, No. i Park Row, Chicago, 111. STATE OF MINNESOTA, EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, ST. PAUL, January 31, 1901. Mr. Stuyvesant Fish, Chicago, III. DEAR SIR Your kind invitation to be present at the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago, to meet the directors and officials of the Illinois Central Railway on the Fiftieth Anniversary of its incorporation, received. I would be greatly pleased to be with you upon that occasion, and surely will if my official duties will permit. I fear, however, that I may not be able to attend, but I will express the wish that your splendid road may prosper in the future as it has in the past, and that the coming fifty years may even surpass the period just closed. Please present my greetings to President Hughitt; I knew him in Rock Island when a boy, but do not know as he will remember me. Wishing you and your road the splendid success that it deserves, I remain, Yours sincerely, (Sd.) I. R. VAN SANT. EXECUTIVE CHAMBER, SOUTH DAKOTA, PlERRE, February 4, 1901. Governor Herreid presents his compliments to Mr. Fish and acknowledges his invitation to attend dinner on Saturday evening, February ninth, nineteen hundred and one, at the Auditorium Hotel, in Chicago, to meet the directors and officers of the Illinois Central Railway Company on the Fiftieth Anniver- sary of the incorporation of the Company, and regrets his inability to accept on account of important official duties. To Mr. Stuyvesant Fish, i Park Row, Chicago, 111. EXECUTIVE CHAMBER, STATE OF NEBRASKA, LINCOLN, February i, 1901. Mr. Stuyvesant Fish, No. i Park Row, Chicago, III. MY DEAR SIR The Governor directs me to acknowledge receipt of your invitation to meet the directors and officers of the Illinois Central Railway Com- pany, at the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago, on Saturday evening, February gth, and to say that the pressure of official business occasioned by the present session of the Legislature makes it impossible for him to accept the same. Very respectfully, (Sd.) H. C. LINDSAY, Secretary to the Governor. EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, INDIANAPOLIS, IND. PRIVATE SECRETARY'S ROOM. February i, 1901. DEAR SIR Governor Durbin presents his compliments, and directs me to express his sincere regret that, owing to pressing official duties incident to the biennial session of the Indiana General Assembly, he is compelled to deny himself the pleasure of accepting the courteous invitation to attend the dinner to the directors and officers of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, at the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago, on Saturday evening, February 9th ; otherwise he would gladly avail himself of the generous favor you have so graciously extended. Very truly, (Sd.) CHAS. E. WILSON, Secretary to the Governor. Mr. Stuyvesant Fish, President Illinois Central R. R., Chicago, 111. TELEGRAM. JEFFERSON CITY, Mo., February 5, 1901. Stuyvesant Fish, Esq. Regret that it is impossible to accept your invitation. (Sd.) A. M. DOCKERY, Governor of Missouri. STATE OF KENTUCKY, EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, FRANKFORT, February 2, 1901. Mr. Stuyvesant Fish, President Illinois Central Railroad Co., Chicago, III. DEAR SIR I have the honor to acknowledge your kind invitation to be present at a dinner to be given by you on February gth, and I wish to express to you my grateful appreciation of it. It would give me great pleasure to attend, but owing to my duties here it will be impossible for me to do so. Thanking you again, and with best wishes for your health and happiness, I am, Very truly yours, (Sd.) J. C. W. BECKHAM. TELEGRAM. NASHVILLE, TENN., February 5, 1901. Hon. Stuyvesant Fish, Chicago. I regret that official duties here in connection with the Legislature prevent my attendance at dinner on Fiftieth Anniversary of I. C., ninth inst., otherwise would gladly attend. (Sd.) BENTON McMiLLiN, Governor of Tennessee. TELEGRAM. MADISON, Wis., February 5, 1901. Stuyvesant Fish, President. Much regret that urgent official work incident to new administration and legislative session compels me to decline your kind invitation to Anniversary Dinner given on occasion of semi-centennial year of your Company's existence. (Sd.) ROBERT M. LAFOLLETT, Governor of Wisconsin. EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, STATE OF MISSISSIPPI, JACKSON, February 4, 1901. MY DEAR SIR I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your invitation to dinner at the Auditorium Hotel, Chicago, on the gth inst., in honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the great I. C. R. R. It is a source of genuine regret to me that imperative duties here forbid my absence from the State at that time, for I assure you it would give me great pleasure to meet in social intercourse the officers and directors of the Railroad Company that has done so much for the development and progress, not alone of the South, but of the whole country. Permit me to express through you to the directors the hope that the road will continue to prosper and grow in usefulness as the years go by, and that both it and its patrons will always bear in mind their mutual rights, interests and dependencies for the common good of both. With assurances of best wishes for yourself and associates, I have the honor to be Very respectfully, (Sd.) A. H. LONGING. Hon. Stuyvesant Fish, Chicago, 111. TELEGRAM. MONTGOMERY, ALA., February 5, 1901. Mr. Stuyvesant Fish. I regret exceedingly that on account of Legislature now in session, impossible to accept your kind invitation to Anniversary Dinner on ninth. (Sd.) WILLIAM J. SANFORD, Governor of Alabama. TELEGRAM. RUSTON, LA., February 5, 1901. Mr. Stuyvesant Fish, President. I regret that business engagements will prevent my attendance at the dinner. (Sd.) W. W. HEARD, Governor of Louisiana. We are, however, favored with the presence of two of the former Governors of Illinois, who are seated at my right, the Hon. John M. Hamilton and the Hon. John P. Altgeld, whom we are glad to welcome as having been, during their respective terms, ex-officio members of the Board of Directors of the Rail- road Company. Among the many other communications received, I will trouble you with but two, coming as they do from the Patriarch of American Railroad Companies, the Baltimore and Ohio, and from the Nestor of writers on railways, Mr. Henry V. Poor. Mr. Cowen telegraphs : BALTIMORE, MD., February 9, 1901. Siuyvesant Fish, Chicago, III. The oldest of American railroads sends greeting and congratulation to the Illinois Central Railway Company upon its Fiftieth Anniversary. The railroad advance and achievement of the past half century are almost beyond the power of words to describe, and in that advance and achievement no more solid and enduring results have been attained than those secured by the Illinois Central Railroad. We here take a pardonable pride in the success of the Company over which you so ably preside, because we cannot forget that several of the worthy men who in early days laid deep the foundations for that success came from the service of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The brilliant results of your own administration of the great property secured by wise and far-sighted manage- ment are seen not only in the financial gain to your corporation but in the enormous service rendered to the community, which are fortunate in being served by such a progressive railroad system. To you, your Directors and Officers, on this your Semi-Centennial , I send Good Cheer and God Bless You. JOHN K. COWEN, Prest. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co. Mr. Poor's letter begins as follows : BROOKLINE, MASS., February 7, 1901. MY DEAR MR. FISH Nothing could give me greater satisfaction than to be present at Chicago on " the Fiftieth Anniversary of the incorporation of the Illi- nois Central Railroad," the life of which covers a period in which a single agency, the railway, has, as it were, created a new world. For my absence I must plead age, and the season in which one should not venture far from his fireside. I will, however, be present on paper, giving a brief sketch of the progress of this great agency, the Central being a striking example, and of the mighty wonders it has achieved. I regret that on account of the length of the paper prepared by Mr. Poor, it is impossible to read it this evening. It contains a great deal of interesting and useful information, and it is my intention to print it and furnish a copy to any guest here this evening who may indicate his desire to have one. flSl) I wish it were in my power to make to you this evening a fitting address, suited to this occasion. Unfortunately, I lack the necessary gifts. With the aid of stenographers and typewriters, I have been able to write something which, craving your patience, I will now read : Fifty years have passed since the Act to Incorporate the Illinois Central Railroad Company was approved by Governor French, on the tenth of February, 1851. No Act of the Legislature of this State has proved so fruitful for good alike to the United States, the State of Illinois, and the City of Chicago. To the United States, in opening the then inaccessible interior of this State to settlement, in providing a ready market for the public lands at double the price at which they had been publicly offered for more than twenty years, and in furnishing, ten years later, the means for moving the western armies to the front, and supplying them, during the Civil War. To the State of Illinois, in realizing the long-cherished dream of a central railroad, for which the State had, years before, in vain bankrupted itself; in providing the means with which the defaulted debt, of some $16,000,000, which oppressed her people in 1851, was finally and honorably discharged with interest ; in making possible the cultivation of the Grand Prairie, and, in that way, enabling the State to take the high position in the national galaxy which it now holds. To Chicago, in stopping the encroachments of Lake Michigan, which, in the sixteen years from 1836 to 1852, had eaten into the heart of the city to a depth of some six hundred feet, until Michigan Avenue was fairly awash. Upon the dikes, piers and breakwaters with which the Railroad Company has for fifty years protected the City against the encroachments of Lake Michigan, the Company has spent from first to last $3,326,000. The fact that the total tax levied by the City of Chicago in the year 1851 was only $63,385, proves how incapable it then was of undertaking so gigantic a task. To the City, also, in making tributary to its commerce the prairies of this State and the fertile lands of the lower Mississippi Valley ; in giving it an outlet by rail to the Gulf of Mexico, and in making possible the success of the World's Fair in 1893, by furnishing a transportation then undreamt of and since elsewhere unequaled. Without insisting that the railroad was the sole cause of all this, it is beyond cavil that it was, in each case, the proximate and efficient cause. The Government lands might have been sold, but not at such prices, or so soon. The Civil War would have been carried to a successful issue, but not as and when it was. The State would, before this, have had a central railroad, but not the one it has, nor would the State debt have been paid thereby, if at all. The City's water front would have had a vastly different contour, and the trade of the central part of this State, and of those south of it, would have been con- trolled by the railroads leading directly to the Atlantic seaboard, and by the cities of St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Pittsburgh and Charleston, each of which, in 1850, largely exceeded Chicago in wealth and population. The presence here to-night of so many of our officers to whom, and to the men under them, the success of the transportation to the World's Fair was due, and the recent date of that success, preclude me from exploiting that subject. The grant by Congress, through the Act of September 20, 1850, to the States of Illinois, Mississippi and Alabama, of the alternate even-numbered sections of lands for the sole purpose of aiding in making a "National Highway" from the upper Mississippi at Dubuque, and the lakes at Chicago, to the Gulf of Mexico, although opposed and criticised at that time, is now, by all, recognized as a measure of wise statesmanship. That Act provided that the alternate, odd- numbered sections which were reserved to the Federal Government, should not be sold at less than double the price at which they had, for years, been on the market. Unfortunately, similar provisions were not made in all subsequent land grants in aid of railroads. Far from being a gift, or gratuity, by the Federal Government to those States, the grant proved the means, and the only possible means, of getting for those lands a money value, the reserved sections and other adjacent lands being speedily sold at advancing prices. Moreover, the Act of 1850 secured to the United States, for all time, concessions in respect to freights and fares over the railroad, which have yielded, and now yield annually, a large income on the then value of the lands granted, which had been one dollar and a quarter per acre. Mississippi and Alabama turned the lands granted to them over to a railroad company of their creation, absolutely and without reservation. But Illinois then, as ever, wisely mindful of her own interest, reserved to herself, for all time, seven per cent, of the gross receipts of her railroad in lieu of taxes. Some twenty years later the Constitutional Convention of 1870 clinched the matter by writing into the organic law the following separate section : " ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD. No contract, obligation or liability whatever, of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, to pay any money into the State treas- ury, nor any lien of the State upon, or right to tax property of said company in accordance with the provisions of the charter of said company, approved February zoth, in the year of our Lord 1851, shall ever be released, suspended, modified, altered, remitted, or in any manner diminished or impaired by legislative or other authority ; and all moneys derived from said company, after the payment of the State debt, shall be appropriated and set apart for the payment of the ordinary expenses of the State government, and for no other purposes whatever." The State was still burdened with a large debt, and well might it so safe- guard this source of revenue. From it there has already been received $18,802,- 971, of which $784,093 were paid last year. Capitalized at the average rate borne by all the bonds of the Railroad Company now outstanding, 3.735 per cent, per annum, this last payment gives $20,993,119 as the present value of the State's proprietary interest in the railroad. The annual income therefrom has more than doubled in the past fourteen years. It increased last year by more than one-eighth (12.65 per cent.). The City of Chicago pays rather more than one-third (in 1900, 34 i-io per cent.) of the total State tax. The direct money interest of this City in the rail- road is, therefore, obvious. Valuable as are the Company's lands and buildings in Chicago, which of its neighbors and competitors, may I ask, contributes yearly so much as $267,376 in taxes in Chicago? Which of them is taxed in like ratio to its gross receipts throughout the State? Let us now look back fifty years, to the date of the charter, and endeavor to realize the problem which confronted the twelve citizens of New York and Mas- sachusetts who, with the Governor of Illinois for the time being, ex-officio, were named therein as Directors, and in whom, as a Board, the Act to Incorporate the railroad company forever vested all the powers of the corporation. They undertook to build, through a trackless wilderness, utterly destitute of men and of material, 706 miles of railroad, and thereafter to maintain and operate it, at a time when no single company anywhere operated so long a line. At the end of the year 1850 there were, in the world, but 23,555 m iles of railway, all told. Even then the United States led all other countries, with 9,021 miles. Great Britain came next, with 6,620. Germany and France followed, with 3,640 and 1,890 miles respectively. Austria had 960 miles, and no other country had so many miles of railroad as they undertook to build in Illinois. The capital then invested in railways throughout the world was $2,325,000,000, and that in the United States $300,000,000. The cost in this country then averaged about $33,000 per mile. Our predecessors, therefore, undertook a work which might fairly have been expected to cost $23,298,000. They estimated its cost at $17,000,000, but were woefully wrong. Within ten years, and it took' that long to really build and equip the road, they spent $27,125,391 on construction account, and paid out for interest $4,996,214 over and above the net earnings, thus making the cost to that date $32,121,605. In 1850 the national debt of the United States was larger than it had been at any time within a generation, $63,452,774, and the true value of all the prop- erty, real and personal, in Illinois, was $156,265,006. What would we now think of undertaking a work costing one-half of the national debt, or one-fifth of the true, not the assessed, value of all the property in Illinois? In this country, as in others, there was, in 1851, no such thing as a railroad 700 miles in length operated by a single company. The New York Central & Hudson River Railroad Company did not come into being until 1869. The Hudson River Railroad was not opened for traffic from New York to East Albany, 140 miles, until October, 1851, while the 300 miles of line from Albany to Buffalo, which afterward became the New York Central Railroad, were then operated by half a dozen small, disassociated cor- porations, which were not consolidated until 1853. The Pennsylvania Railroad did not cross the summit of the Allegheny Mountains until December, 1852, and then only by using the State's Portage Railroad as a temporary makeshift. On January i, 1851, that company had in operation about 330 miles of railway. The Baltimore & Ohio, that patriarch of American railroads, had, in October, 1851, reached Cumberland, Md., which is on the Potomac River, 179 miles west from Baltimore, and was operating in all 217 miles of railroad. The Erie was the first to stretch its iron bands from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes. Its line from Piermont, on the Hudson River, to Dunkirk, on Lake Erie, was opened on May 14, 1851. The Superintendent of the Seventh Census of the United States, in a report dated December, 1852, described the Erie as " the longest continuous line of railroad in the world." He gave its length at 469 miles, although it is but 444 miles from Piermont to Dunkirk. In 1850, Illinois rejoiced at having in miles of railroad within her borders. Of her neighbors, Wisconsin, which had been admitted into the Union in 1847, had 20 miles, Indiana 228, and Kentucky 78, while in the whole territory to the west there was nowhere a mile of railroad. Iowa had been admitted as a State in 1845. Two-thirds of her area, an equal proportion of that of Wisconsin and half of Michigan were still in the hands of the Indians, who, with the buffalo and a few trappers and traders, occupied the whole of the country to the west, except- ing a small part of California and the settlements made by our good friends, the Mormons, in Utah. At that time Chicago had a population of 29,963. It then ranked twenty-fifth among the twenty-eight cities in the Union having a population of 25,000 or over. There are to-day 159 cities of that size in the country, and the Illinois Central directly reaches sixteen of them. But six of our cities then had a population of 100,000 or over New York, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Cincinnati. There are now thirty-eight such cities, of which six are directly served by the Illinois Central Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, Louisville, Omaha and Memphis. Fifty years ago Chicago had no connections by rail with the East, or, indeed, with anywhere. Its sole railroad was the Chicago & Galena Union, now the Chicago & Northwestern, which then ran to Elgin, 43 miles distant. The effect of opening the interior of the State to settlement and cultivation by building the railroad was immediate, and at that time universally recognized. In 1850, Illinois ranked among the thirty-one States as eleventh in population and seventeenth in wealth. Ten years later, in 1860, the State stood fourth alike as to population and wealth. No other has had a like experience. It is unnecessary to dwell further on the then known conditions of the tre- mendous problem which confronted Robert Schuyler, George Griswold, Gouverneur Morris, Jonathan Sturges, Thos. W. L/udlow, John F. A. Sanford, Henry Grinnell, Joseph W. Alsop, and Leroy M. Wiley, of New York, and Franklin Haven, Robert Rantoul, Jr., and David A. Neal, of Boston, who were the twelve Directors named in the Charter. All of these broad-minded, capable and public-spirited men have passed away ; but there are among us this evening several of those who were engaged in the early work of the Company, among them our former President, Mr. W. K. Ackerman, who was and is very familiar with the whole history of the Company, and from whom we shall hope to hear somewhat of the unforeseen difficulties which sprang up to harass and delay the work. Only two others of our Presidents survive, Mr. John N. A. Griswold, of New York, who resigned in 1855, and my immediate predecessor, Mr. James C. Clarke, of Mobile. Both are gentlemen of mature years, and, however much we may regret it, we could hardly expect either of them to leave home for so long a journey at this season. It may not be amiss to review the history of the railroad as a public carrier for hire. Looking over its whole experience of fifty years, and taking into account all the lines operated in this and other States, we find that the gross receipts from operation have amounted to $501,596,224. Although a large part of these receipts came from other sources than the charges made for transporta- tion, as, for instance, the rent paid from the very beginning by the Michigan Central Railroad Company for land and the use of tracks in Chicago, other rents, trackage, telegraph receipts, et cetera, let us see how those receipts have been disposed of, and what return they have yielded upon the money invested. Of the gross receipts there have been paid as taxes $25,793,276; there have been disbursed on the railroad as expenses of operation $297,415,735, and for betterments paid for from current income, $13,318,493. The sums thus put back into circulation on and near the line, for taxes, labor and materials, aggre- gate $336,527,504, or more than two-thirds (67.09 per cent.) of all that the railroad has taken in. Of the remainder, fixed charges interest, rent and the like consumed two- thirds, or to be exact, $110,497,987. And there was left to the proprietors $54,570,733, which is less than one- ninth (10.88 per cent.) of the total gross receipts. Without wearying you with all the details, permit me to say that if this last sum of $54,570,733 had been received currently as needed, it would not have sufficed to pay a dividend of four per cent, per annum from year to year on the capital at the time actually paid in. But the receipts did not come in regularly as needed ; for many years the outgo in operating the railroad greatly exceeded the income therefrom. That the Company has paid larger dividends than four per cent, is true, but in the earlier years, from 1860 to 1870, that was due to the moneys received from the sale of its lands, which sales were made possible by the construction and continued operation of the railroad. In recent years a large part of the dividends has come from interest on invest- ments, and the Company still has a steady though small income from lands. The point which I wish to emphasize is that the income derived from the railroad as a public carrier does not now and has not yielded any fair return on the money actually invested in the capital stock. To which it should be added that far from there being any "water" in the capital of this Company, the $60,000,000 at which it stands and the bonded debt do not together represent, by many millions, the money which has actually been put into the property. The 600,000 shares of $100 each, into which the Company's capital is divided, stand registered in 7,120 different names. The great majority of the stockholders, 4,576 in all, are residents of the United States, and they own 365,070 shares, or more than three-fifths of the whole. Their average holdings are less than 80 shares apiece. Our British cousins have been forced by war, increased taxation and the high rates of interest prevailing abroad, to part with their good dividend-paying stocks to such an extent that their present holdings of our shares do not equal one-half of the amount now held in the United States. Among all the stockholders, at home and abroad, those whose individual holdings are less than 500 shares apiece own collectively more than one-half of the entire capital, while more than one-fifth of it is owned by the 5,729 holders of less than 100 shares apiece. Here in Illinois we have 900 stockholders, owning 40,414 shares, which at present prices represents an investment of over $5,250,000. In each of the other twelve States in which our trains run we have some stockholders, ranging from 194 in Iowa and 114 in Kentucky to 7 in Nebraska and 5 in Minnesota. Of those in the service of the Company, other than the Directors, 657 are among its proprietors, and they own 2,573 shares. This statement as to the wide distribution and the resident ownership of the shares is commended to the attention of those who yet may be inclined to inveigh against railroad corporations as owned by " multi-millionaires " and " aliens." Although the whole commerce of the Northwest was then carried by water, the value of all the cargoes floated ou Lake Michigan throughout the year 1850 was less than $25,000,000. There were carried, during the year ended June 30, 1900, on the Illinois Central Railroad and the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad, 18,110,322 tons of freight, for which service those companies received $25,876,084. A very care- ful computation recently made in detail, on a most conservative basis, shows that the value, at the point of shipment, of the various articles thus carried was $920,083,726. That is to say, the carrier's charge amounted to two and eight- tenths (2 8-10) per cent, of the value of the goods carried. A further calculation, made with equal care, shows that the fact of transpor- tation, on our own lines alone, gave to the several articles carried an added value of $226,272,923, of which the carrier's charge consumed eleven and four- tenths (n 4-10) per cent. This is far from being "all that the traffic will bear." These figures are commended to the attention of the gentlemen in the traffic department who are with us this evening. While we are met to-night to commemorate the events of fifty years ago, and to bear homage to the courage and public spirit of the original incorporators of this Company, whose success marked the beginning of the development of our western country through liberal grants of public lands for railway purposes, I must call to your attention two events which occurred a century ago, and which have exercised a determining influence upon the development of railroads in this and other countries. It was in 1801 that the Surrey Iron Railway, the first of its kind which had been sanctioned by the British Parliament, was opened from Wandsworth to Croyden, near London. True, the road was operated by horses, and it was a small affair, but it was the first to which special legislative sanction was given. It was also just a hundred years ago that John Marshall began his long service as Chief Justice of the United States. But for the rendering, by him and his associates, in the Supreme Court, of decisions in the Dartmouth College case and other kindred cases upholding the inviolability of corporate charters, it would have been impossible to have secured the capital needed for any one, not to say all, of our early railroads. In a long service it has been my privilege to meet many of the early officers of the Company, and to know intimately all of the former Presidents except the first two. While entertaining for each and all of them a very high personal and official regard, and appreciating to the full their labors and sacrifices in the Company's behalf, I cannot close without recalling to all the older men here present the familiar name of the late Mr. William H. Osborn, which for more than a quarter of a century stood for that of Illinois Central Railroad Company. Without previous experience in the management of railways, Mr. Osborn came into the service in 1854 as a Director and as Vice-President in the great crisis in the Company's history, while the railroad was as yet but partly built and millions of capital were yet to be raised. In 1855 he was elected President. To him more than to any one man there is due alike the completion of the road and the establishment of the Company's credit at home and abroad, on a basis which few, if any others, have equaled and none have excelled. [Pro- longed applause.] Mr. President and Gentlemen : You made a reference in your speech, a very slight one, to the men to whom the great success of the Illinois Central Railroad Company is due, and that is to the rank and file, and there was no response made to that. The men that stand in that hold that lever on that engine, the man that throws a shovelful of coal into that engine every two minutes as that engine works over the road, is the man that is responsible for the success of the Illinois Central Railroad to-day. [Applause.] The men that work on the track are the men that are responsible and the men who should have the credit for the success that the Illinois Central Railroad has had to-day. Those men are not represented among the people that are here to-night, but there is no representative, there is no man connected with the Illinois Central Railroad here to-day, from the smallest official up to the very top, but what will give due credit to the men that are not represented here to-day, but should have due credit for the success that the Illinois Central Railroad has had. It stands pre-eminently at the top of the list of railroads to-day and it has been successful in every way, and it is the lower grades that have brought success to those superior grades ; and to those men, as well as to the President and the Vice-President and the officers under them, should be given credit for the success of the Illinois Central to-day. [Applause.] MR. FISH : Gentlemen, I would like to call upon our Vice-President, Mr. John C. Welling, for a few remarks. [Applause.] IHr. Welling Mr. President and Gentlemen : It would be impossible for me to make a speech, but I will try to say a few words. I have spent twenty-six happy, busy years in the Illinois Central service, have served under four Presidents, and have been associated with some of the strongest and best men I have ever known. I am glad so many of our officers and employes are here. We all rank alike to-night, and we rejoice together over the Company's prosperity. As some indication that the "Old Reliable" has treated its employes well, I hold in my hand a list of one hundred and sixty-five, who had, on February i, 1891, been for thirty-five years or more, continuously in the service of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, or on railroads operated by it. Number of Years of Number of Years of Number of Years of Men Service Men Service Men Service 25 35 9 40 10 45 24 36 8 41 7 46 16 37 10 42 7 47 16 38 8 43 4 48 6 39 13 44 _2 49 165 Men from each department are represented on this list, and a number of them are here to-night. I have some notes covering interesting facts and figures, but the ground has been, or will be, covered by others. I will, therefore, not take up time which belongs to the able speakers who will follow. [Applause.] MR. FISH : Gentlemen, permit me to point out one fact about the statement just made by Mr. Welling, that as the Company still lacks one day of having been incorporated for fifty years, it is impossible for any one to have served continuously for that term, and yet Mr. Welling did show that at least two had served for forty-nine full years. [Laughter.] With your permission we would like to hear from Mr. J. T. Harahan, the Second Vice-President. [Applause.] Mr. President and Gentlemen : I certainly am very glad to be here on this occasion, and to meet not only with our friends, but also with a large number of our men who have helped, as Mr. Heald has said, to make the Illinois Cen- tral what it is to-day. Mr. Fish has said that he is not an orator. I do not think there are very many of us who will agree with him as to that. I am not an orator, but we have several that you will hear from this evening, and I will just say a few words. [A voice, "Impromptu?"] It is all written down so that I know what I am going to say. The President of this Company, Mr. Fish, has given you in a general way a brief history of the Company. The growth and achievements of the Illinois Central during the past fifty years have been so wonderful that it is difficult to give a comprehensive idea of them in the short time I intend to take up. The wisdom of the originators of the enterprise was demonstrated long ago, and the possibilities of the Illinois Central in the future are so great that they must cause even the most pessi- mistic to become enthusiastic. From a line of 706 miles in 1856, it has grown to a system of 5,300 miles in 1900. From 38,464,814 passengers carried one mile in 1859, the number has increased to 305,643,549 in 1900. From 51,650,364 tons of freight handled one mile in 1859, the tonnage increased to 3,425,794,698 in 1900. The first surveying party was put in the field May 21, 1851, and the loca- tion was completed in the latter part of December of the same year. Grades and alignment had been secured so that four hundred and thirty-two miles of road had grades of less than twenty feet and only seven miles had the maximum grade of forty-two feet per mile. Six hundred and thirty miles were on tangents, and less than six miles had curves of more than three degrees. The main line between Cairo and La Salle a distance of three hundred and eight miles was completed January 8, 1855. The road from La Salle to Dunleith a distance of one hundred and forty-seven miles was completed June n, 1855, and opened for business that day ; but the entire line, consisting of seven hundred and five miles, including what was known as the Chicago branch, reaching from Centralia to Chicago, was not completed until September 27, 1856. The line was laid with iron rail of an excellent quality, weighing sixty-five pounds to the yard. It was brought in sailing vessels to New York and then sent by Erie Canal to Buffalo, and thence by lake and rail to Chicago. I under- stand this was the heaviest rail used in this country in those days. The present standard steel rail of the Company weighs eighty-five to one hundred pounds per yard. In 1852 the Company contracted with Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor, loco- motive builders, Paterson, N. J., for some engines, the first of which were received in September, 1852. From 1852 to 1861 the Company received from Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor one hundred and nine engines, varying in. size from twelve and one-half inch by twenty-two to sixteen inch by twenty-two inch cylinders, and from twenty to thirty-one tons in weight. All of these were of the eight-wheel type. The first lot of engines proved too light for economical use. Colonel Mason, then General Superintendent, soon discovered this, and, on appealing to the Board of Directors for larger engines, he was advised that he could not have heavier engines, as they would wear out the rails too rapidly. They, however, afterwards consented to the purchase of heavier power. The original engine, No. i, was built in September, 1852. It was an eight- wheel type, with cylinders thirteen and one-third by twenty-two inches, had four drivers with diameter of five feet, weighed twenty-six tons, and had hauling capacity of eleven hundred and eighty-five tons on a level grade. Our largest engine, No. 640, was built in September, 1899, forty-seven years later. It is a twelve-wheel type, with cylinders twenty-three by thirty inches, eight drivers fifty-six inches in diameter, weighs one hundred and eleven tons, and has a haul- ing capacity of eight thousand four hundred and sixty-five tons on a level grade. Our present engines in passenger service have increased proportionately, and have attained a speed of eighty-four miles per hour. The first formal contract for cars was made in May, 1853, although a few had been delivered before on a verbal order to the American Car Company, whose works, located at Twenty-seventh Street, near the lake shore, in Chicago, were afterwards purchased by the Illinois Central Railroad Company, and were used for many years as their principal car shops, both for repairs and con- struction. The contract was for fifty eight-wheel freight cars per month for a period of twelve months, commencing May i, 1853, to be house or box cars, and flat or platform cars, the number of each to be designated by Colonel Mason. The trucks of these cars were to have India-rubber springs. This same con- tract also covered the construction of fifty passenger cars, "to be equal in every respect to the very best New England passenger cars ;" also such number of baggage cars, not to exceed twenty, as Colonel Mason might order. I think we have a great many to-day that will outrank any I have seen in New England of late years. When the Company came into possession of its own car works at Chicago, it was able to supply most of the cars needed for its line. The railroad company commenced building its own locomotives in Chicago at Weldon shops, Fourteenth Street, in 1862, and the first engine built was known as No. 44. I think Mr. Marvin Hughitt will remember that. MR. HUGHITT : I remember it very well. MR. HARAHAN: The original shops at Weldon were frame buildings for repair work and completed in 1853. The shops were enlarged and rebuilt" in stone in 1855, and these were burned in 1860 and rebuilt with the old walls and abandoned in 1893, at the time the present Burnside shops were completed. I suppose when those shops were built in 1853 and rebuilt in 1855, they were about as fine shops as there were, at least in the Western, if not in the Eastern States. The Burnside shops are located about twelve miles from Central Station, on a tract containing one hundred and sixty acres. The locomotive shops were erected in 1892 and 1893, the car shops in 1895. There are employed at these shops 2,248 men, exclusive of engineers and firemen. The capacity of the works is twenty-seven engines per month for thorough and general repairs, in addition to light and running repairs to engines and work for other departments. The car shops have a capacity for giving general repairs and painting to sixty passenger cars, the construction of one hundred and thirty new freight cars, and the repairing of three thousand freight cars per month. It is considered one of the best equipped plants in the United States. In addition to the shops at Burnside, the Company has ten smaller shops at points where they are most needed. When the road was completed in 1856, the Company owned 100 passenger cars and 1,590 freight cars. December 31, 1900, it owned 801 passenger cars and 41,136 freight cars. The total number of men employed in the machinery department, including engineers and firemen, is 10,051, which is a greater number than was employed in all departments of the railroad in 1881. Notwithstanding this fact, the Company cannot longer manufacture new locomotives, because all of the men and tools are employed in repairing the engines now owned. There are now in service on the entire system 1,008 engines. A comparison of box cars shows that those first constructed had a capacity of ten tons, while a great number now in use have a capacity of forty tons. The original coal cars had a capacity of ten tons, and the Company is now using a great many coal cars of fifty tons capacity. To show how early the people commenced to call for luxury in traveling, I will state that in 1858 two of the passenger cars were converted into sleeping cars, " to be used on night trains between Chicago and Cairo." There were afterwards constructed at the Company's car shops fifteen additional sleeping cars, making seventeen in all; but in 1878 the Company abandoned the plan of running its own sleeping cars, and made a contract with the Pullman Palace Car Company for the conduct of the entire sleeping car business on the road. There are now eighty Pullman sleeping cars in use on the system. I am advised by the Pullman Company that the first regularly built Pullman sleeper was run between Chicago and Springfield on the Chicago and Alton, in April, 1865, but that old coaches remodeled or furnished with crude sleeping accommodations had been run as sleepers at various times from 1859 to 1863. It appears, therefore, that the Illinois Central was the first road to furnish sleeping car accommodations for its patrons. This I did not know before I commenced to look it up. As late as 1863 the fastest passenger train between Chicago and Cairo a distance of three hundred and sixty-five miles made the run in eighteen hours and thirty minutes, or twenty miles per hour. The fastest freight train made the run between the same points in forty hours, or at the rate of about nine miles per hour. Our fastest passenger train is now scheduled between the same points in nine hours and thirty minutes, or at the rate of about thirty- nine miles per hour, and our fastest freight train is now scheduled between the same points in twenty hours, thirty-five minutes, or at the rate of about eighteen miles per hour. We have a number of passenger trains scheduled long dis- tances at forty-eight and one-half miles per hour, no allowance being made for time consumed in stops, and have freight trains scheduled long distances at twenty-six miles per hour. We have two passenger trains which make the run from Chicago to New Orleans, through Memphis, nine hundred and twenty- three miles, with a great many stops, in twenty-five hours and five minutes. So far as our train service is concerned, the most remarkable development has been in connection with our suburban service at Chicago. The first subur- ban train was run out of Chicago on June i, 1856, under an arrangement made between Captain George B. McClellan, Vice-President, afterwards General McClellan, of the Army of the Potomac, and Mr. Paul Cornell, of Hyde Park. It ran to a point just south of Hyde Park, near where the Company kept its wood-pile, the distance being eight and one-half miles from the city. Mr. John H. Done, then Superintendent, manifested great interest in the town of Hyde Park, and induced the Board of Directors to pass a resolution authorizing him to construct a large number of brick dwelling houses at Hyde Park for the use of the officers and employes of the road. Before this plan could be carried into effect, Mr. Done lost his life by an accident. The man- agement of the road was placed in Mr. Done's hands the early part of 1856. He designed and partly carried into execution various plans by which the traffic derived from sources hitherto undeveloped was to be brought to the aid of its revenues, when his premature death, which occurred in July of the same year, deprived the Company of his services. The total receipts from these trains for the year 1857 was but $1,089.50; there were but three trains a day run in each direction, which number was gradually increased. Up to 1864 the running of these trains had proved such a loss to the Company that it gave public notice that they would be discontinued, but this notice was afterwards withdrawn and the trains were continued, but it is doubtful whether there was any profit in running them for many years after say up to 1875. Strange to say, there was existing at this time in the minds of the officers of the Company a strong prejudice against the running of these trains. In 1879, or thereafter, lighter cars, weighing about fourteen tons each, were introduced. The first ten of these were built at the Company's car shops at Twenty-seventh Street, and a large number thereafter were built at the Pullman Works. After this time, the cars being so comfortable and convenient, and the number of trains increasing, there was a very large increase of population all along the route, the value of the property appreciated immensely, large factories sprang up on the south end, notably the Pullman Works, for which ground was broken May 26, 1880, the South Chicago Rolling Mills (now the Illinois Steel Works at South Chicago), and numerous others, and the business became more profitable to the Company. Two special tracks were then put in for the exclusive use of these suburban trains. On January i, 1901, there were one hundred and nineteen suburban trains run daily in each direction, employing two hundred and sixty-three men. For the year ended June 30, 1900, 10,856,364 passengers were carried. During the World's Columbian Exposition, which remained open from May i, 1893, to October 31, 1893, 29,538,435 passengers were carried on the suburban trains without the loss of a single life. At the close of the World's Fair and the discontinuance of its now cele- brated World's Fair express trains, the Company inaugurated its express subur- ban service which is distinct from the local suburban service the two easterly tracks being used for the express service and the two westerly tracks for the local trains. The express trains make the run from Hyde Park ( Fifty-third Street ) to Van Buren Street a distance of six miles in nine minutes, being the fastest suburban service in the world for the distance. From an examination of the assessed valuation in 1899 of property in the counties in Illinois traversed by the Illinois Central as compared with 1850, I find an increase of one thousand five hundred and seventy-one per cent., the total assessed valuation in 1850 being $34,186,755, as against $572,284,599 in 1899. The assessed valuation of the counties in Illinois not touched by the Illinois Central only increased three hundred and forty-six per cent, during the same period. These figures speak for themselves. During the same period the population of the counties through which the Illinois Central runs increased from 241,000 to 2,812,334, or one thousand and sixty-four per cent. In 1875, the first year in which we have any record of the actual number of persons in the employ of the Company, there were 4,510; in 1890, 13,812; and in 1900, 36,260. The President and directors have been very liberal in authorizing expendi- tures for the maintenance and improvement of the property, and the correctness of their foresight has been demonstrated by the increased earning capacity of the line. The Company has always been fortunate in having officers who have taken a deep interest in its welfare and who have at all times devoted their whole energy and ability to the promotion of its interests and the comfort and accommodation of its patrons. Much of its success has also been due to the high character of its employes, who have taken more than usual interest in its affairs and cordially co-operated with the officers and directors in their efforts to give good service to its patrons and to improve the property. MR. FISH : Gentlemen, Mr. Harahan's reference to Mr. Done causes me to revert to what Mr. Heald said a few moments ago. In 1871 I was a clerk in the New York office. I had come out of college without the slightest knowledge of bookkeeping, but managed to learn the art somehow. One of the first entries that I remember making was apropos of this same Mr. Done, the old superintendent of the Company, who was killed in 1856, or rather, of the liqui- dation of his estate. I found in 1871 that, for the fifteen years since his death, this Company had been acting as trustee for his wife and children, and I made in 1871 the entries turning over to Mrs. Done and her children his property, which the Company had safeguarded for all those years. It is no new thing for this Company to look after its old men. I would like to call upon our General Counsel, Mr. B. F. Ayer, with whom I have been associated, lo ! these many years. Mr. Ayer and I have long been the oldest directors of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, and have served the Company in that capacity ever since the spring of 1877. [Applause.] Mr. President: Personally, I would prefer to take no part in the speech- making. I respond to your call, therefore, with some reluctance. We have heard from the principal executive officers of the railroad company a great variety of interesting facts relating to the growth and expansion of the Illinois Central system. What I shall have to say will be of a more general character, and will relate to topics, suggested by the marvelous history of rail- way development, with which most railway officials are more or less familiar. The most striking thing, perhaps, in the history of that development is the fact that the whole railway system of the world is the growth substantially of the last seventy-five years. The entire process of evolution has taken place during the lifetime of persons now living. The first railway opened for public use, for the conveyance of passengers and merchandise, was the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in England. The road was about fifty miles long and was completed in 1829. An important accessory to the roadbed and rails was a locomotive engine constructed or designed by Stephenson for hauling the trains. Experiments had been made four or five years earlier, and tramways of rude construction had been long used in the mineral districts of England for the conveyance of coal in wagons, hauled for short distances by animal power upon wooden rails, from the mines to tide-water; but it was not until the open- ing of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, in 1829, ^ na ^ ^ e public became conscious of the fact that a complete revolution was about to occur in the methods of inland transportation. Knowledge of the new invention soon reached the United States, and as early as 1830 or 1831 three or four short pieces of railroad had been constructed here and were in actual use one from Baltimore in the direction of Washington ; a longer one in South Carolina, starting from Charleston; a third in the State of New York, from Albany to Schenectady; and a fourth in Massachusetts, from the Quincy granite quarries to Boston. One of the first difficulties encountered in the construction of railroads in this country was a legal one. In England the authority to construct and operate a railway was acquired from Parliament, and the power of Parliament was supreme. But here the objection was raised that the State Legislature had no power to clothe a railroad company, which was a private corporation, with authority to take land without the consent of the owner. This was a constitu- tional objection, and, if sustained, would have been a very serious obstruction to railroad enterprises, and might in some cases have proved insurmountable. But the public demand for railroads was irresistible ; and the conclusion was reached by the courts that although the corporation itself was private, yet the railroad to be built by the corporation was intended for the benefit and accommodation of the public. The land required for the railroad was, therefore, required for public use; and all the land owner could insist upon was the payment of "due compensation." In several of the States, turnpike companies had been chartered by the Legis- lature long before railroads were thought of, and power had been conferred upon those corporations to condemn land needed for the construction of their roads. This legislation had always been sustained, and there was thought to be no difference in principle between the two cases. It is true that in the case of the turnpike the public made use of the road with their own vehicles, but it was also the understanding at first that railroads might be used in the same way. In England an act, passed as late as 1842, provided in detail for such use, and many of the early charters granted to railroad companies in this country contained legislative expressions embodying the same idea. The charter of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, granted in 1851, contains rudimentary provisions, if I may so call them, of the same character. This difficulty having been surmounted, a question was raised before long in several of the new States as to the power of the Legislature to confer upon counties, cities and towns authority to assist in the construction of railways by subscribing for stock and issuing bonds to pay for it. The power was gener- ally sustained by the courts in States where there was no express constitutional inhibition, and the result was that in the eager desire to get the benefit of railroad accommodation, debts were incurred by municipalities which it was found inconvenient to pay, and in some cases the State courts reversed their previous rulings to help the people out of their difficulties. But the Federal courts did not take kindly to these decisions, and in most cases the debts incurred had to be paid or compromised. The railroad fever raged as violently in Illinois between 1830 and 1838 as in any other part of the country. In 1835 an< ^ I 836 twenty railroad companies were incorporated in this State, and as many more in 1837. All but one or two of these enterprises were afterwards abandoned. Illinois was then a new State, with a comparatively small population and inconsiderable wealth. In 1849, for the first time, a general railroad incorporation law was passed, but it conferred no power upon companies organized under it to condemn land, until the Legislature should determine that the construction of the road pro- posed to be built would be of sufficient public utility to justify the taking of private property for that purpose by the exercise of the power of eminent domain. It was not until 1872 that the power was conferred upon every rail- way company organized under the general law to condemn without restraint any land needed for the construction of the road described in its articles. In 1850, as it appears, there were only in miles of completed railway in this State, consisting of a section of the Northern Cross Railroad, as it was called, about 58 miles long, extending from Meridosia to Springfield; a section of the Chicago and Galena Union Railroad, now part of the Northwestern system, about 43 miles long, extending from Chicago to Elgin; and a road from Aurora to Geneva, along Fox River, about 10 miles long. It was at this time that the land grant was made by Congress to the State of Illinois, in aid of the construction of the Illinois Central road. The road was to be 705^ miles long. The territory it was to traverse was sparsely settled, and much of it wholly unoccupied. As stated by Mr. Ackerman, the country along the Chicago Branch, so-called, for 130 miles south of Chicago, was an almost unbroken prairie, containing scarcely any settlement. The population of the State in 1850 was about 850,000, and the inhabitants of Chicago numbered not far from 28,000. The road was completed throughout its entire length in September, 1856, although parts of the line had been opened for traffic two or three years earlier the section from Kensington to Chicago as early as May, 1852, which enabled the Michigan Central trains to reach Chicago at that time from the East. Since 1856 the Illinois Central lines have been greatly extended. Numerous channels of communication have been opened up by it and other railway corpora- tions, to furnish the means of commercial intercourse between this great city and the vast interior stretching from here to the North, the South, and the West. These railways are the real causes of our great commercial prosperity. They have been of incalculable advantage to all the main centers of trade, and at the same time a benefit and a blessing to every part of the country they penetrate. MR. FISH : We have here to-night one of the three former Presidents of the Company who are yet living among us, Mr. W. K. Ackerman. He was con- nected with the Company in its earliest days and remained in its service for some thirty-two years, and under him I had the pleasure of serving a good long apprenticeship. I would like very much to hear from Mr. Ackerman. [Ap- plause.] flCkCrttiatl Mr. President and Fellow-Craftsmen : If I had known when T accepted the invitation to this sumptuous banquet that I would be called upon to make the proverbial few remarks, I think that I should have become suddenly ill, and therefore obliged to decline, but the invitation came first and the intimation as to the "few remarks" came later. Some years ago I attempted to write an " Historical Sketch of the Illinois Central Railroad." There were 1,000 copies of that work printed, and after being extensively advertised they were left with my publisher for sale. After several weeks had elapsed, I called upon him to inquire how the work was taking and to ask him for an account of sales, and he told me there had been two copies disposed of. He said that " some fellow out in Iowa," who had heard of it, had written for a copy, and that a man "down in the Illinois Central office " had come in personally and bought and paid for a copy. He asked me if I wanted a settlement. I said, " Oh, no ; we will give it another chance." Finding that my work was so thoroughly unappreciated, and deter- mined that the book should be read, I withdrew the entire edition and distrib- uted them free over the Illinois Central road. [Laughter.] Not many of my friends acknowledged the receipt of it, and from the great difficulty experienced in obtaining a copy of it at this late day, I fear that many of those who received it mistook it for an advertisement of Illinois Central lands, or some- thing of that kind, and threw it into the waste-paper basket. It has become a rare work, though it was never well done. [Laughter.] I might say that I am prepared with an impromptu speech also, and I might also say right here that a good deal of what has been said here to-night was taken from my speech, so it will not be necessary for me to repeat it. Notwithstanding all my difficulty in getting off that historical sketch, I, noth- ing daunted, was determined to write a second edition, and wishing to enrich it with biographical references, I wrote to the President in New York and asked him to send me his biography. Did he send it? He did not, but wrote in reply as follows : " I would prefer to have you wait and write my obituary." [Laughter.] I hope that it will not be necessary to do that very soon, but if it should be, and that sad duty should devolve upon me, I promise him now to give him a first-class notice. In the work to which I have alluded I told of the incorporators and early directors of this Company, of the trials that they encountered, and how nobly they fulfilled their task, and how others were benefited by their labors. I will not attempt to repeat it now. Now, if such a labored effort as I have referred to was so thoroughly unap- preciated, I ask myself, What is there I can say to-night that will interest these gentlemen with full stomachs ? And yet, regarding a work, " the whole of which I saw, a part of which I was," I may be permitted to briefly refer to that Company whose fiftieth anniversary we are here to-night to celebrate. A critic has said that " a typewritten speech is fatal to oratory." I will add that oratory is fatal to good railroad management, for the railroad manager who talks too much, even at the dinner-table, is apt to lose valuable time, and some I know of have lost their jobs by indulging in this kind of amusement. I have been very much interested in listening to the able address of the Vice-President, which contains valuable statistics. I do not know exactly where Mr. Harahan obtained these, but I have an indistinct recollection of loaning my manuscript to a certain gentleman in the Illinois Central office, and I think I recognize some of the statements made. It is very amusing to look back over the history of the State of Illinois and to read the account of the first attempts at railroad building. I pass by the various efforts made between the years 1831 and 1835, all of which came to nought. On the 1 6th of January, 1836, the Legislature of the State of Illinois, sitting in the old State House at Vandalia, passed an act incorporating ''''The Illinois Central Railroad Company." (Mark the definite article.) The act provided that the directors should have power to fix the rates of transportation, but if the road should, after completion, be able to pay 12 per cent, dividends, these rates might be reduced by the Legislature. It provided, also, that no other railroad should be built within ten miles of this Central Railroad for fifty years. This was a very wise provision, and should have been carried out in later legislation. The road was to be commenced in five years and completed within twenty years. The State reserved the right to purchase the road after twenty-five years, by paying to the directors the amount expended in making the road, and if it had not earned 12 per cent., the State was to make this up in settling with the Company, so that the shareholders were practically guaranteed 12 per cent, dividends on their investment. I need not tell you that this option was never exercised by the State, for no work was ever done upon the road. Then in 1838 the State, under its famous Internal Improvement Act, passed the year before, attempted to build 457 miles of a Central road, and appropriated $3,500,000 for this purpose. The engineer appointed to oversee the work gave it as his solemn opinion in his preliminary report to the Fund Commissioners, that the plan of making an embankment on which to place the ties and rails was entirely unnecessary in fact, a sheer waste of money, and that he could save that expense by building the road flat on the prairies. He thought that rails weighing twenty-two pounds to the yard would be about right. The State spent $506,000, and then becoming tired and its money giving out, stopped the work. In 1843 a new private corporation, known as the Great Western Railroad, procured a charter and took up the work, but, becoming discouraged, surrendered its charter. In 1849, when this latter company learned that there was to be a land grant made to any company that would build the road, they obtained a renewal of their charter, known as the Holbrook charter, which two years later was surren- dered to the State for a consideration, in order to leave the field clear for the present Company. Here, then, we see that four different attempts had been made to build a Central Railroad when the present corporation took hold. History repeats itself, and the comic history of the Illinois Central Railroad continued. Uncle Sam had several millions of acres of wild lands lying idle in Illinois, and he said to the State of Illinois, "I will donate you 2,500,000 acres of these, which you can in turn give to any corporation that will be willing and foolish enough to build you a railroad." After he had disposed of this " generous gift," he immediately doubled the price of his remaining lands, sold them out, went \ out of business in the State, and moved west to repeat the operation. In 1851 several influential and benevolent old gentlemen living in Boston and New York, who were wholly unacquainted with western ways, heard this little trick of Uncle Sam's spoken of as a " magnificent gift." They sent Mr. James Rantoul, Jr., to the farmer Legislature of Illinois, then sitting at Spring- field, with a memorial for a charter. Judging impartially, and by the light of what followed, I think he bought a gold brick, but this was not discovered until it was too late. The good farmers went to their homes elated, and the incorpo- rators sat down to figure up their profits. Their estimates, both as to the cost of the work and the probable receipts from its operation, proved no less deceptive than were those of their predeces- sors. They intended to pay cash for everything, and their cash gave out. They calculated that the road could be built in three years ; it took five years to build it. They estimated that the cost of the road would be fifteen million dollars ; it has cost nearer fifty million dollars. They purchased engines weighing fifty-seven thousand pounds ; they are now building them weighing two hundred and twenty-one thousand pounds. They provided cars carrying ten tons ; to-day they have them with a capacity of forty and even fifty tons. They thought that when the road was fully completed and open for business that 1,690 cars and 90 engines would supply the necessary complement of rolling stock. The Company employs at this time 41,937 cars and 1,008 engines. They anticipated a rapid sale and speedy settlement of the lands ; disap- pointed in this, they were also disappointed in the revenue of the road. The productive capacity of the lands was not overestimated, but the producers did not arrive on time. The good reputation of the State as a debt creator and its bad reputation as a debt payer had a paralyzing influence outside of the State, and deterred many from settling within her borders. They calculated that the settlers would use coal, and they burned corn for fuel. The region that was to be " dotted with flourishing farms and covered with, an enterprising and industrious population," was too long held by an enterprising population of prairie wolves, who worked by day and howled a protest against any other settlements by night. Before six years had elapsed, but after they had completed their task, they discovered that they had been buncoed ( I use a Western term in describing Western events ) , and were placed in the hands of assignees. They detected too late " errors of fact and errors of imagination." Men of less courage and less conscience would have given up the enterprise at this juncture, but they got their property back again by putting in more money, and they or their successors have been putting in more money ever since; but no money invested in the enterprise since has been without a com- pensating feature. Who has been benefited ? Certainly not the shareholders, for they could have invested their money at double the rates they have received. The reply is found in part in a comparison of the conditions existing in 1851 with those of 1901 : The State debt of $16,627,509.91 has been wiped out. The population of 850,000 in 1851 increased to 4,821,550 in 1900. The assessed value of property increased from $106,000,000 in 1851 to The miles of railroad increased from in miles in 1851 to 10,989 miles at the end of 1900. And the incorporators of the railroad and their successors, through the application of commercial integrity, good business judgment in adversity, indomitable energy and perseverance under difficulties, and above all, in acknowl- edging fully their obligations to the State of Illinois, have " delivered the mes- sage to Garcia," and that message reads BEHOLD YOUR ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD! and voices ( of the farmer legislators ) from the grave seem to respond, "We did not believe that you could do it." [ Applause.] MR. FISH : Gentlemen, I apologize to you for the length of my own speech, and for the time that the Illinois Central Railroad has taken up, and I know it will be a pleasure to you to hear from some one, who, though connected in a high, honorable and important position with the Company many years ago, is no longer, and has not been for many years, connected with the Company, but represents the " Pioneer " Company, which ran an engine of that name out of this city when it was the only locomotive in Chicago. I would like to call upon Mr. Marvin Hughitt, the President of the Chicago and North- Western Railway Company. Mr. President and Gentlemen : I am sure, Mr. President, that you will bear me witness that I did not expect to be called upon to speak here to-night. Having no impromptu speech in my pocket, and bearing in mind that Mr. Ackerman has said that oratory is not a proper endowment or acquirement of a railway executive, I am very reluctant even to attempt to address you. How- ever, Mr. President, let me in unadorned language assure you and the officers and directors of the Illinois Central Railroad Company that I am deeply impressed by the statements I have heard here to-night. It is the privilege. of the young to see visions, to magnify the developments of the future, to be oversanguine ; yet I believe I can truthfully say that not one of us gathered together here to-night could have looked forward thirty years ago with any confidence to the present achievements of this Company. The statistics given by Mr. Harahan appeal, I think, even with greater force to those having technical knowledge of railroad affairs than to financiers and merchants. The carrying capacity of railway equipment and all the appoint- ments we call railway facilities have grown so marvelously in these thirty years just past that it is difficult to grasp the full meaning of the change, but, Mr. President, as an ex-employe, I share in the splendid success of the Illinois Central Railroad with you, with your directors, with your investors, and with your old employes. I expected that yoiir President, Mr. Fish, would mention the fact that this road was originally intended as a line I think it was so stated in the charter extending from Dunleith to Mobile. A line south of the Ohio River was thus a part of the original scheme, but there is no need of dwelling upon that, for your Company built the line that has been described. The value of the cheap and rapid facilities of communication it afforded cannot easily be over- estimated. Is there a city or an acre of land in this great commonwealth that has not been benefited by this great system of transportation ? But I may say that the City of Chicago, which has profited most, has never done anything for this or any other railway that ever crossed its boundaries it has never contributed one dollar while other cities have assumed heavy burdens for the purpose of building up systems of transportation. I do not, however, say this by the way of complaint. As Mr. Ackerman has said, the National Govern- ment endowed this railroad with a land grant. But it immediately recovered the value of the lands it donated by obtaining double the original price from the purchasers of the alternate sections it retained. So the Government, too, although a liberal giver, was a gainer by its generosity. It did not have long to wait for the return of the bread it cast upon the waters. Mr. President, you referred to the part that this railroad played in saving the Union. It was not only my duty, but also my privilege, to be stationed at Centralia, Illinois, during the war as Master of Transportation on the 112 miles of road between that point and Cairo. It was a thoroughfare for the armies, regiments of splendid men going south, funeral trains of our heroic dead going north. The service performed was constant and arduous, and when we consider the present equipment of transportation as compared with that date, to which Mr. Harahan has already referred in detail, we well may wonder how it was all accomplished. In view of the great service rendered by this Company in the movement of troops and munitions of war, I think you will be astonished when I tell you that the right of the Company to receive compensation for this invaluable service was challenged, and only after long and strenuous contention were its claims recognized, and then only after appeal to the great President, whose name is only to be uttered in silence the immortal Lincoln. The roster of your Company contains many illustrious names may I men- tion among them McClellan, Banks and Burnside. But I am taking too much of your time, and I shall no longer take advantage of your forbearance. Let me say, however, before sitting down, that I am happy to be with you, and I hope you will not deny me, although I have for some time been separated from you, the supreme privilege of sharing in the joy of your grand achievements, of your hard and justly won triumphs in the field of railway development. How intimately it is united with the very life of the people and the progress of the nation, none know better than the rank and file who constitute the work- ing force of American Railway Systems. MR. FISH : On behalf of the Company, I want to thank Mr. Hughitt for the kind and indulgent words which he has said, and I know every man in the service of the Company feels that way towards Mr. Hughitt. [Applause.] Having reached so far west as the star of empire ever westward wends its way, I would like to now call on my friend, Mr. E. H. Harriman, of the Union Pacific and of various other railroads. [Applause.] n?l*t barriltliUl Gentlemen : I know how difficult it is to make an extemporaneous address without careful preparation, and as I have had so little to do for the past two or three weeks I have been preparing mine. [Laughter.] As in the case of the other speakers, I shall have to refer to my notes [drew note from his pocket]. About ten minutes before Mr. Fish began to talk, I received the following penciled note from him : " Won't you make a few remarks ? There are many here who would like to hear something from you." This is the first written invitation to make a speech which I remember ever having received, and, as it will probably be the last one, I intend to treasure it. You have heard a great deal about the corporation and railroad itself. I should like to say a few words about the officers, because I believe the success of the Company is chiefly due to their intelligent management. As has been stated, Mr. Fish was made a Director in 1877, and it was shortly after that I became interested in the Company. He was a young man, and it was my faith in him which led me to become so interested and I have never regretted it. I do not agree with the statements of the officers which would seem to make it appear that the stockholders had suffered. Their figures show the great benefits which have accrued to the State and to the territory served by the rail- road, and the large amounts of money which have been expended thereon. If, however, you will take a look at the prospectuses showing the financial standing of the Illinois Central, which these same gentlemen carefully prepared and sent out at the times when they wanted to borrow money or sell securities in order to provide the means for these important improvements and to acquire the different properties, you will read a very different tale. I think the stockholders have fared very well and can expect to fare better. I don't want you gentle- men to dispose of your shares because of what you have heard here to-night. I say keep them, they are good. The Illinois Central of to-day is a very different road from what it was when Mr. Fish became its President in May, 1887. Its grandfathers, of whom you have been hearing from Mr. Fish and who had been caring for the road, had become first conservative and then restrictive, and apparently did not care to do anything more; but finally the young men came in and things began to change. The Company at that time had something less than two thousand miles of road, with twenty-nine millions or thirty-one millions of capital stock, I have for- gotten which. Since then over one hundred and fifty millions of money have been raised on an improved basis of credit, resting, to be sure, on that estab- lished by the founders of the Company as referred to by Mr. Fish, but this result has been achieved largely through his courage and sagacity and that of his subordinate officers. There have been added to the lines since that time something like three thousand miles, and I think less than two hundred miles of this is new construction ; they having taken over existing properties tributary to the main line. All this shows that the Illinois Central, under its present administration, has been conservative but not restrictive, and has added vastly to the value of the property from which the State of Illinois receives so large an income. Had it not been for such intelligent action, this State would have probably been receiving less than one-half of what it is now getting. I should like to say a word about the long-time bonds of the Company to which Mr. Fish has referred. He did not believe in the method of making the bonds run longer than the succeeding generation. The first Illinois Central bonds, issued since he came into the Company, are due in 1951, and all the obligations fall due between that year and 1953. To most of us fifty years does not seem a very long time now. There may be a child born to-night or possibly to-morrow upon whom may devolve the duty of remodeling the finances of the Company. If so, I can only express the hope that it will have the financial ability of our present President. At the maturity of these bonds there will probably be one hundred and fifty million people in this country. There- fore, I say again that the Illinois Central stock will grow in value as the years go on and population increases in the rich country served by it. Now, gentlemen, in closing, and as an employe of the Illinois Central Rail- road Company it is the only corporation from which I have ever drawn a salary, and I am happy to be included as one of its employes I would ask you to rise and drink to the continued success of the Illinois Central and to the health and prosperity of its President and his subordinate officers. [Mr. Harriman's toast was drunk standing and greeted with applause.] MR. FISH : I want to thank Mr. Harriman for what he has said, and no man who has been laboring with him as I have now for almost a quarter of a century, can fail to feel the value of all that he has said about the personal element; for although we keep that in the background, we cannot help feeling it in our hearts from day to day. The measure of success which has been achieved by the Company in the last twenty years, with regard to its finances, is due to no man more than to the Chairman of our Finance Committee, Mr. Harriman. [Applause.] In seasons of adversity and of trial and I tell you, gentlemen, that with successful railroad corporations as with unsuccessful ones, " life is not all cakes and ale ;" there are times, and Mr. Harriman and I have gone through a good many of them, which try and bring out character. While we would be happy to have that prosperity which he promises, and which I believe is before us, I yet hope that we may have the adversity as well, because I am certain that adversity is necessary to the development of character. We cannot, in easy times, build up strong men in this railroad business or any other. Without contests we cannot have victory or the joy of success. I did not mean to be led into a speech, but some things that Mr. Harriman said, and that he understands and that I understand, appealed to me personally very strongly. We have heard so much from railroad men this evening that I would like to call upon one of the merchants of Chicago to address us to-night, and if our friend Mr. Franklin MacVeagh would say a few words we would all be very much obliged. [Applause.] Mr. Chairman : I am sorry that effort of yours to get " a rise," in calling upon Mr. Harriman and suggesting the West, did not bring out any informa- tion about what might be coming in the way of further railroad combinations. MR. FISH : Didn't he speak about fifty years hence ? MR. MAcVEAGH: He did not say anything about those things which are revolving in his head, and which might be of some use to these investors around these tables. We have, unfortunately, got into the region of the men without written speeches. You have exhausted your supply, apparently, Mr. Chairman, of those elaborate speeches, and you have now nothing better to offer than the impromptu remarks of such as myself. I haven't anything, not even a written invitation from the Chairman, to warrant you in listening to me a moment. I cannot help wondering what those thirteen Governors would have done if they had been here. [ Laughter.] There is about that, however, this. Of course, we are all very sorry that those Governors are not here, but we must be struck by their self-denial [ laughter] ; and then it is reassuring to anybody who has any doubts about the future of republican government to see such devotion as theirs that they cannot give up one night even to festivity. It is a great promise of the future of our country. I cannot, however, representing my merchant friends here, refuse to say a word. It would be a great self-denial to not take the opportunity to say a word in acknowledgment of the great success, the great position of the Illinois Cen- tral Railroad Company. It comes very close to us of Illinois. It is a part of our State, almost a part of our politics ; and we have not only every reason to be proud of it, but we have every inclination to be proud. It is the organi- zation which bears our name, bears the name of our State ; and it has a record and standing which, I am happy to say, is being shared by so many of the great railroad corporations now, that of standing not simply for the stockholders but for the people ; recognizing its duty and obligation to the people whom it serves, and then being for its stockholders and not for its officers. It is a very short time since it was not unusual for railroad properties to be managed quite as much for the officers as for anybody else under the sun. This railroad company is run and managed first for the people, first doing its duty as a public servant, and then giving whatever rewards there are to the people who hold its shares. Of course, this corporation, like the other corporations that Mr. Hughitt speaks of, has received no benefits directly from the municipality ; but, after all, there is a mutuality between the railroads that lead out of Chicago and lead into Chicago and Chicago. If the railroads have done so much for Chicago, and they have done untold things for it, after all they did not come here wholly to do us good. [ Laughter.] They came here because it was a good place to come to. It was not necessary for the municipality of Chicago to furnish money to build these rail- roads ; and the municipalities of this country which have furnished money to build railroads are the municipalities whose localities did not in the first instance irresistibly invite the railroads. And yet I have no doubt that all of the railroads leading out of Chicago are glad they are here, glad their terminals are here and there is a good deal of competition for the terminals here ; and any railroad that is dissatisfied with its Chicago terminals can apply to Mr. Harriman and get rid of them. [ Laughter.] Now, this institution of dinners by the Illinois Central Railroad and its President is a very wise and healthful thing, and I wonder that they have not thought of it a long time ago. We would have given up our Lake Front to them a great deal more cheerfully if they had given us dinners [laughter], and we would not, in order to hold onto the lake front north of the river, have shifted them off to the water front down at New Orleans. Although their good services and their good qualities are unquestioned, they do have a voracity for water fronts. After they had exhausted all of our South Side water front, as I say, we were successful in shifting them off onto the Ohio River at Cairo and the Mississippi at New Orleans. How much of those two great arteries is left, I do not know. [ Laughter.] Now, I would like to say just one word in conclusion. I would like to make an announcement. I am not a director of the Illinois Central Railroad Com- pany, nor an officer, and I have not communicated with the officers or directors on the subject, and I do not know that they know exactly that they are going to do what I am prepared to announce as their settled policy ; but this fiftieth anniversary is a very marked occasion in the life of this Company, and they are going to emphasize it and accent it. In the first place, they are going to take the west part of Park Row here, buy it up and tear down those old build- ings ; and if they are not ready to elaborate and complete their great station along this property, why, they are going to put a nice fence around the vacant land, put some shrubbery and flowers in it, and make it a very pleasant and agreeable picture to the eye of the people, quite in harmony with the pretty park north of Park Row. That is one of the things that this great corporation is going to do to mark the beginning of its second half-century. [Laughter.] The other thing, which is a good deal greater thing still, that they are going to do, and in which they are going to be again leaders of the railroads of Chicago, as they were when they put in their elevated tracks, when they put in their splendid suburban system they are actually going to set the pace for the railroads of this city by some device of their own, which I do not yet penetrate, the secret of which I have not yet penetrated, but by some device or other of theirs they are going to set the example to the railroads of this city of making no smoke whatever. I do not know how I could accent my remarks better than leaving them exactly there. You may wonder how I know so much about this, but that is my secret. [ Laughter and applause.] MR. FISH : As to what Mr. MacVeagh said about the park, I do not wonder that the City of Chicago, having got one park from the Illinois Central, wants another. However, if the city will furnish the land, we will furnish the grass. [Laughter.] But on the other proposition, about smoke, as Mr. MacVeagh said finally, we will leave it there. He did not say where. If we are never here- after to make smoke in Chicago, he will have to have the railroad at about. Kankakee. I don't know how far the city limits extend southward, but they go down that way somewhere. If the railroad is not to make smoke, it cannot burn Illinois coal, of which it is by far the largest consumer of any in the State. Now, gentlemen, if you want to burn in this city anthracite coal, at $7.50 a ton, of course, go ahead and burn it. At the rates of freight which you pay us, we cannot afford to do so. But if you merchants of Chicago will pay us sufficient rates, we will burn anthracite, or we will burn pure white African diamonds. It doesn't make a particle of difference to us what kind of carbon we burn. We will burn any kind you please, provided you give us our price for burning the kind which you desire. MR. MACVEAGH : I said I did not know how you were going to do it. MR. FISH : Oh, we will do it. We are like the courtier who, on being bidden by the Queen of France to do something, replied: "Your Majesty, if it is possible, it is done. If it is impossible, I will do it." It is getting late and well on toward midnight, and there is one gentleman here whom I promised solemnly, as a condition of his coming, that I would not call upon him ; and, therefore, having regard to the high credit of the Company, which has been handled by my predecessors through this half-century, I am going to break that promise by calling upon Mr. George R. Peck. Mr. Peck can say some words, as the General Counsel of the Milwaukee & St. Paul Road, and as having tramped all over the Southern States on foot, from Atlanta to Washington, by way of Savannah. He can say something about a north and south route, if he will. [Applause.] PCCk Mr. President and Gentlemen : I believe this is the first instance in the history of the Illinois Central Railroad Company where it has deliberately violated its troth, its promise. [Laughter.] It is something, however, to acknowledge it in advance. MR. FISH: The Company is innocent. I alone am guilty. MR. PECK : I forgive you if the audience will forgive me, which I fear they will not. I ought not to say a word, and I would not if it would not seem churlish on such an occasion not to acknowledge the hospitality of Mr. President Fish, and to mention the great pleasure that I have had to-night in being present. I always knew the Illinois Central Railroad Company was a great, a very great institution. I am more than ever convinced of it to-night, when I see around this pleasant board this distinguished audience. It must be a pleasant thing for you, Mr. President, aside from your official position, to see here around you the representatives of all these great railway companies, which, under the Inter-State Commerce Act, are compelled to be your rivals and competitors whether they want to be or not [laughter] ; and their presence here is an acknowledgment that in the Illinois Central Railroad Company they have found a foeman worthy of their steel in more senses than one, perhaps. [ Laughter.] Here is Mr. Marvin Hughitt, by common consent of Chicago railroad presi- dents the Dean of the faculty, a man looked up to by all. Here are presidents, I was going to say, to burn, so many railroad presidents here [laughter] Mr. President McDoel, Mr. President Ben Thomas, Mr. President Burt, Mr. President Purdy, and other present presidents, too numerous to mention, but whom I should be glad to mention if I could see them all. I am sure, Mr. President You understand we all understand, whether you do or not that this meeting here now is not simply a response to your invitation, but it is a spontaneous tribute to you, and to the great Company over which you preside. [Applause.] I forgot, because my eyesight is not so good as it used to be, to mention in my list of presidents a gentleman who should be a president, and will be, I trust, some time, but is now Vice-President of the Western Union Telegraph Company, the right hand and ally of every railroad, Col. Robert C. Clowry. [Applause.] And so we are here enjoying your hospitality and enjoying these reminiscences that we have listened to. I could give you some if I were not too modest, but I will venture just a word or two about my first relations to the great Illinois Central Railroad Company. Many years ago, how many I do not dare say, indeed, I do not know, but it was a good while ago, I felt called upon to leave my boyhood home in Wisconsin to go down to the Southern Confederacy and put down what in those days we were pleased to term a rebellion, and it turned out that it was, quite a one. [Laughter.] We went out, the first time I was ever out of the State of Wisconsin after I went there as a boy, the first time I had gone twenty miles from my father's farm. I was put into a car in a train, carried from Racine, where we came to, to Freeport, and there we were quickly I thought rather too quickly unloaded and put onto an Illinois Central train. MR. FISH : Box cars ? MR. PECK : No, sir, not box cars. They were not first-class cars and surely they were not Pullman cars. We did not have Pullman cars in those days, and soldiers did not ask for them; but we left Freeport one morning pretty nearly a thousand strong a good deal stronger than we were when we came back and we started for Cairo over the Illinois Central Railroad, traveling on passes, of course [ laughter ] passes that afterwards came home to the Illinois Central and, I suppose, will be found in the auditor's department, or the Treasury in Washington, and we went south over the prairie. It was not, perhaps, at that time the smoothest road that ever was known. [Laughter.] It was compara- tively level but it went this way [indicating], and one of the men in my company said to me, " We are going at least sixty miles an hour." I said, " You are mistaken. You don't know what you are talking about." He said, " I don't mean sixty miles an hour right straight ahead. I mean twenty miles straight ahead and forty miles up and down." [Laughter.] That was the Illinois Central Railroad of 1861, but it was a great railroad, and it seemed to me, as we were shooting south straight into the eye of the Southern Confeder- acy, that that was the fastest train I ever rode on. Finally we reached Cairo, said good-bye to the Illinois Central for a while, and the other adventures I need not mention. They were the adventures that all soldiers had in those days. Now, gentlemen, that is a lesson. The Illinois Central Railroad was one of the great factors of the United States in that great struggle. More than the Appian Way was in the time of Rome, the Illinois Central was the highway over which the armies of the Union went in the performance of their duty. Let me give you a little sequel. We were enemies in those days, North and South. We did not like each other at all. We called each other names. We called them rebels, but I, for one, always thought that it was rather a good thing for us to remember that if they were rebels they were our rebels, they were United States rebels. [Applause.] Two years ago I managed to get a little vacation from the arduous duties that every railroad lawyer has to perform, and has to perform more than ever now to dodge so that we will know just who we are working for [laughter] but two years ago I managed to get permission from my superiors to have a little respite for a week or two, and to take my children south. But how should I go south ? Undoubtedly, by the Illinois Central Railroad ; and so I was fixed out with the necessary accommodations, my children and I got into the car, and we shot south again, and I wish you could understand the difference in the feel- ings I had on this latter trip from those that I had the first time I went over the Illinois Central. [Laughter.] Well, we went down there, reached New Orleans in due time, went to the St. Charles Hotel, and I had hardly reached there before a card came in from Mr. Hunter C. Leake. He is here to-night, I am glad to say, and he is going to dine with me to-morrow. He came in and said, " I am the General Agent of the Illinois Central Railroad Company in New Orleans, and I have come here to ask you if there is anything I can do to make your stay in New Orleans pleasant." He also said that he had heard from Mr. Fish, and while we were there the courtesies of the Illinois Central were extended to us in every possible way, and not only that, but from the people, from the citizens, from the bar, the lawyers, and everybody I met, we received the kindest treatment, part of this same great policy that the Illinois Central Railroad Company has pursued for thirty-five years and more and that is the sermon on this text of North and South. I have thought, and I have said sometimes, that among all the agencies that have worked to bring North and South together, there is not one in the United States that has been so potent as the Illinois Central Railroad. [Ap- plause.] My friend, Mr. Harahan, may very well speak, as he has, of figures, and my friend, Mr. Harriman pretty near the same name, but not quite may very well give his figures, and the other figures that have been given here, and the figures that are published in the financial papers and in the daily papers all along. They show that the Illinois Central Railroad Company is a business corporation, doing its work for its stockholders and for the public. But, beyond all that, gentlemen, and it seems to me it is wise for us to remember it, the Illinois Central Railroad Company and all other commercial agencies which are bringing the North and South together, letting them look into each other's eyes, letting them understand each other, are after all more influential than all the talk of politicians from one year's end to another. [Applause.] And so, Mr. President, knowing as well as I do how much you have labored to bring the different States through which your line extends, into a more harmonious and better understanding of each other, I am glad to say what I have said upon that subject. You have here several gentlemen from the South who, I suppose, did not always agree with me on these questions. You had Judge James Fentress, who was, until recently, the General Solicitor of your Company, and also Mr. J. M. Dickinson, your new General Solicitor, both of whom are Southern men. You have pursued the wise policy of understanding that a railroad which runs through Northern States and Southern States is not to belong to any one State, but to all of them, and to labor, as you have labored, and as I know you have, to make them understand that they are all citizens of one common country. [Applause.] It is not North, it is not South; it is the United States, and Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana are as much parts of this Union to-day as Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa, and these other great States through which your line extends. [Applause.] And so let me close I did not intend to say anything let me close by proposing this : Here's to the New South ; here's to the New North ; together they make a new and more glorious Union. [Applause.] MR. FISH : Gentlemen, it is getting very late, and having violated one promise with such success, and having brought out a reference to our General Solicitor, I want to tell you how much I feel that our former General Solicitor, Judge Fentress, who had the opposite notions to those that the last speaker has announced with regard to the late unpleasantness, is not with us this evening on account of illness. I first met Judge Fentress in 1877. I we ^ remember one of the things he told me, as to his experience in the Con- federate Army: Having gone into the war as an officer, he resigned his commission and turned around the next day and enlisted as a private, and served in that capacity, in order to encourage enlistment. He also told me that from the close of the war he instructed his family that those things should not be discussed before the rising generation, from the point of bitterness and feeling; they should be treated as historical subjects, and I know they have been ever since so treated by him and his family. Now, as I say, having violated one promise successfully, I am going to violate another, and will, therefore, call upon our new General Solicitor, Mr. J. M. Dickinson, who is also from Tennessee, if he will make a few remarks from the other point of view, which is just as dear to us, meaning thereby every man in this room. [Applause.] DiCkitlSOn Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : I suppose that when a man acknowledges his offense, that very fact ought to carry with it a condonation of it. The President made me a solemn promise, but from what I have heard recently about the gentleman's agreements among the presidents, and the facility with which they have been broken, I do not think that we can rely very much upon the promises made by the presidents of railroad companies. [Laughter.] MR. FISH: We are like the popes, we absolve ourselves. [Laughter.] JUDGE DICKINSON : It has been a great pleasure to me to be present upon this occasion. I, unfortunately, have not been like those among you who have been identified with the development of this Company and who have contrib- uted to its greatness, who have followed it from its inception along through the growing years until it has attained that reputation among railroad com- panies which it now enjoys. I feel that I am a mere appendage to a successful operation which had already been achieved before I became identified with it. As I understand, the legal department of a railroad company is a sort of a tail to the kite that gives it direction, and I feel that I am the last appendage to the tail of this kite that has been attached to it in order to keep it out of trouble. My own connection with the Illinois Central Railroad Company does not date back but a little more than a year. I fully reciprocate the sentiments that have been expressed by Mr. Peck to-night, and I can give, probably, no illustration that would be more striking of the restored unanimity of America's sons than the action of the Tennessee troops in the late struggle in which the North and the South have become identi- fied. In the recent war in the Philippines, when the Tennessee troops had been loaded upon the transport and their eyes had been directed home after arduous struggles and great suffering, word came that a battle was going on, and they demanded that the transport should be landed and went ashore and took a con- spicuous part in the battle which then transpired. [Applause.] In the Spanish- American war the South enthusiastically responded, and what had been the Southern Confederacy was represented, not merely by Generals Lee and Wheeler, but by the sons of Cheatam, Hood, Kirby Smith and thousands of other Confederate soldiers. Mr. Chairman, I have not, as those who have been previously invited to address this meeting, come prepared with an impromptu speech, carefully reduced to typewritten proportions. So I am in the position of the Methodist preacher who said he would open his month and rely upon God to fill it. That reminds me of another preacher, that is, an old negro preacher, who, when he arose to address his congregation, said : " Brethren, I will now address you upon three points. Under the first point I will discuss those things that I know nothing about ; under the second point I will discuss those things that you know nothing about ; and under the third point I will discuss those things that nobody but God Almighty knows anything about." [Laughter.] Now, as to the first point, and that is those things that I know nothing about. Looking at my watch, gentlemen, I am admonished that it is twenty minutes past twelve, and if I fully treated this subject, it would be morning before I exhausted it; and if I went into this discussion, I would probably find myself in that irredeemable position that was described by a distinguished Tennesseean, the Honorable Meredith P. Gentry, when the great contest arose upon the Know- Nothing question, which was so bitterly antagonized by Andrew Johnson, in Tennessee, and by Henry A. Wise, in Virginia. Meredith P. Gentry and Andiow Johnson met in public debate in Williamson County, Tennessee, and Johnson pressed the point on the question of Know-Nothingism mercilessly, while Gentry undertook to lead the discussion upon questions of tariff and matters of general public interest. That night when Mr. Gentry went to his home, Parson Brownlow, of whom you gentlemen probably have heard, went to Gentry's house and disconsolately discussed the situation, and after they had canvassed it pro and con in every way, the time came for retiring, and they had family prayers. They got down upon their knees. Brownlow prayed for all sorts and conditions of men, and finally, after he had prayed for the sailor and the soldier and the wayfarer, and those in poverty and those in distress, he said : " Oh, Lord, we pray Thee to enter into that wicked and unregenerate heart of Andrew Johnson, and cleanse and purify it." Gentry jumped up from his knees and said : " Brownlow, for God's sake, stop. If that prayer is answered, the plan of salvation will be exhausted, and all the rest of us will be damned." [Laughter.] And if I should undertake, gentlemen, to exploit to you all of the subjects of which I am ignorant, my offense would be so great that if I should be pardoned you would all be in the same deplorable condition that Mr. Gentry put Mr. Johnson in, and so I had better close. [Applause.] MR. FISH : We have one of the counsel of the Company here from the South, from whom I would like to hear, if you will pardon us for a few minutes, and that is Mr. Leroy Percy, of Greenville, if he would be kind enough to address us. Mr. President and Gentlemen : Mr. President, if corroboratiou is needed of Judge Dickinson's statement that you violated a solemn agreement in calling upon him, I can readily furnish it; but I felt certain that if not restrained by your plighted word, so far as I was concerned, you would be deterred by the principle of self-preservation, for I warrant you that while I suffer I shall not be without company, and all shall be fellow-sufferers. Mr. President, it is quite difficult to determine what to address an audience of this kind on ; we are furnished with no subject ; we are not like a minister given a text to be disregarded, and it is a matter of surmise and conjecture where one will " land." If information on some of the current topics of the day, such as the independence of Cuba, the disposition that should be made of the Philippine Islands, whether the Constitution follows the flag in dealing with our Porto Rican possessions, imperialism, trusts and combines, the ship subsidy question, or even the currency question, Mr. Bryan and free silver, or on any other of those simple questions which are prone to agitate and disturb the minds of our statesmen, was desired, I could easily furnish it and deliver an address replete with valuable suggestions, but those subjects we laymen care to hear nothing on ; we need no information on them ; we all know how they should be solved ; we only need to have the deciding vote, which none of us have, and the proper solution would naturally and inevitably result. Outside of these simple things, I am only a specialist on the Yazoo-Delta, from which I come, and I might tell you something about that, but the hour is too late and the subject is too great ; there is too much that would be left untold ; the possibilities are too illimitable for any discourse compressed within reasonable limits to give faint conception of them, and I can but feel, Mr. President, in looking around at this audience and recalling the varied amount of instruction that they have had in the very short time that we have been assembled here, in thinking of the pleasure enjoyed in meeting here and in hearing the ideas expressed as they have been expressed by the gentlemen who have been kind enough to address us, that for me to take up any part of your time at this late hour of the evening with desultory remarks, would be unkind to them and unfair to myself. But, Mr. President, at the close of the evening I cannot for- bear expressing my appreciation and enjoyment, and I know that I voice the feelings of all of your guests, of the royal entertainment, the wit, good cheer and good fellowship that you have provided for us, and to which you have so largely contributed yourself. MR. FISH: As the Reverend Dr. Stires was kind enough to say Grace for us at the beginning, we will now call on him to close with a few words in the way of a benediction. Dr. StircS Mr. President and Gentlemen : It is difficult to understand why the distinc- tion of being your chaplain to-night should have been given to me, unless it be for the fact that I am a sort of a division superintendent on a railroad line myself; what might be called an elevated road, I presume. [Laughter.] But perhaps the President of your road, who has knowledge of many kinds, may have discovered that the semi-centennial of my parish is almost coincident with the semi-centennial of the Illinois Central Railroad ; for in this city, in May, 1851, Grace Church was organized, and it will celebrate its semi-centennial in the coming May. I am, therefore, sympathetic with semi-centennials, and per- haps that is the reason why this distinguished honor has been given me. It would not be fair at this late hour to say anything else, except to extend most hearty congratulations to you all upon what has been achieved, and to express a most thorough certainty in the future increased usefulness and extensiveness of your great system. It is past twelve o'clock, and Sunday is beginning. You have heard, perhaps, of how a son-in-law, who had suffered, wrote a testimonial to a patent medicine doctor, which read something like this : " Dear Doctor I write to you with a grateful heart. My mother-in-law was at death's door; one bottle of your wonderful remedy pulled her through." [Laughter.] As a clergyman, as the hour reached twelve, I began to get a little nervous, and the last few speeches have pulled us through into Sunday. Consequently, it would be wicked for me to prolong this delightful evening. Therefore I thank you for permitting me to close with a most hearty congratulation, and with a very sincere benediction upon this road. We seldom realize how much it has done to make this city great, and when at home, within a hundred feet of the Illinois Central Railroad, my wife bemoans the fact that our curtains have to be laundered so often, and rails against the black smoke from the locomotives, and says, " Isn't it a shame ? '' I say, " It is hard on the curtains, but when you get rid of that great railroad on the Lake Front, and the smoke from all these factories, you simply get rid of Chicago. We would not be here, if it were not for all the things that are represented by this smoke." Where there is so much smoke there is fire ; there is life ; there is success. And so, if it be necessary, I am not sure that it is, we will stand the smoke a while longer, we will even bless it for the progress it represents, the achievements in which such a splendid part has been taken by the men and the railroad whom all have been glad to honor to-night. Hfcfcenfca. The Board of Directors of the Illinois Central Railroad Company at their regular monthly meeting, held January i6th, 1900, unanimously adopted the following resolution: Resolved, That there shall be given, as a souvenir, to every person in the employ of the Company during the month of February, 1901, who shall have served continuously for one year or more, a bronze medal of the design submitted, bearing on the reverse the name of the recipient and the number of full years in which he shall have served the Com- pany continuously. The design of the medal is shown below : OBVERSE REVERSE These medals were made by Messrs. Tiffany & Co., of New York, and dis- tributed during the months of March, April and May, 1901, as follows : To Directors 13 To General Officers and their clerks 59 Law Department 18 Treasury Department 27 Accounting Department 190 Transportation Department 5)7^2 Road Department 3)435 Machinery Department 5>6n Traffic Department 324 Miscellaneous 108 Total, 15,567 CENTRAL STATION, CHICACTO fc.. Ground first broken June 4, 1892. Opened to public April 17, 1893 D ,woiTAT8 laift bnuoiO IhqA oildoq oJ Hill EH! Ill ASH LIGHT PHOTOGRAPH Taken on the occasion of td Fiftieth Anniversary Dinner HIAJIOOTOHl THOlJ to noiaeoDO aril no rilsilli'-l PROM THE PRESS OP ROGERS AND SMITH Co. 327 - 329 DEARBORN STREET :: CHICAGO vr - * *