ilroad.
Harriman had already largely added to the Union Pacific's holdings in
the Illinois Central. Jointly with the Lake Shore of the Vanderbilt
system, the Baltimore and Ohio had, as already described, acquired a
dominating interest in the Reading Company, including all the latter
company's interests and affiliations as well as its entry into the New
York district through control of the Central Railroad of New Jersey.
Harriman, therefore, by a single stroke, now found himself in practical
possession of a coast-to-coast system of railroads extending all the way
from New York to San Francisco, Portland, and Los Angeles, and passing
through all the important cities of the country. The Illinois Central
system, operating nearly five thousand miles of road southward from
Chicago to New Orleans, passing through St. Louis, with an arm reaching
out to Sioux City on the west and a network of branches covering the
Middle States, had thus become the great link welding together the
eastern and western Harriman systems.

Later the Union Pacific acquired large interests in other properties and
purchased substantial amounts of stock in the Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe, the New York Central, the St. Paul, and the Chicago and North
Western railroads. It also acquired a dominating interest in the Chicago
and Alton property, operating from Chicago to St. Louis, with Western
branches. In the panic period of 1907, Harriman personally purchased
from Charles W. Morse, who had acquired the property from Morgan a short
time before, the entire capital stock of the Central of Georgia Railway,
which he later turned over to the Illinois Central. The Central of
Georgia lines connect at several points with the Illinois Central and
have given the system various outlets on the South Atlantic seaboard.

Harriman died in September of 1909, and with his death the wizard touch
was clearly gone. What would have been the later history of the Union
Pacific had he lived can be only conjectured. The new management, with
Judge Robert S. Lovett at its head, continued the broad and efficient
operation which had characterized Mr. Harriman's regime, but it soon
abandoned the policy of further growth and expansion. This alteration in
policy, however, was perhaps more the result of changing conditions than
of relinquishment of Harriman's aims. Many new laws for the regulation
of the railways had been passed, and in 1906 the powers of the
Interstate Commerce Commiss