were, as a whole, in a strong
position to meet the changed situation and, like the great Pennsylvania
property, they all passed through to the advent of the new industrial
era without the defaulting of a bond or the passing of a dividend. The
remarkable character of this achievement is evident in view of the fact
that in the period from 1893 to 1898 more than sixty-five per cent of
all the railroad mileage in the United States went into the hands of
receivers.

After the close of this era of panic, the Vanderbilt lines began
expanding again, though on a much smaller scale than in their more
active time. In 1898 William K. Vanderbilt, then president, made the
announcement that the New York Central had leased the Boston and Albany
Railroad, at that time a lucrative line running from Albany across
Massachusetts into Boston. This gave the system an entry into the New
England field, which it has continuously held since. A few years later
this New England interest was increased by the acquisition of the
Rutland Railroad in Vermont, thus making connection with the Ogdensburg
and Lake Champlain, a line running across the northern part of New York
State, which had also come under Vanderbilt control.

When business revived in the closing years of the nineteenth century,
the history of American railroads began a new chapter. Federal railroad
regulation, which started in a moderate way with the passage of the
Interstate Commerce Act in 1887, had steadily increased through the
years; the Sherman Anti-trust Act, passed in 1890, had been interpreted
broadly as affecting the railroads of the country as well as the
industrial and other combinations. These influences had thus greatly
curtailed the consolidation of competing lines which had gone on so
rapidly during the decades following the Civil War. Railroad managers
and financiers therefore began to face a very serious problem.
Competition of a more or less serious nature was still rampant, rates
were cut, and traffic was pretty freely diverted by dubious means.
Consequently many large railroad systems of heavy capitalization bid
fair to run into difficulties on the first serious falling off in
general business.

Great men are usually the products of their times and one of the men
developed by these times takes rank with the greatest railroad leaders
in history. Edward H. Harriman had risen in ten years from comparative
obscurity and was now the president of the Union Pacific Railr