ltimore and Ohio,
the New York Central, and other eastern properties. The fact was that
Harriman had plans in view for acquiring actual control of the New York
Central for the Union Pacific and thus, with the Illinois Central, of
creating a continuous transcontinental line from ocean to ocean.

In the past decade few unusual or startling events have marked the
history of the Vanderbilt lines. The Vanderbilt family no longer
possesses a majority interest in the stock, or anything which approaches
it, and the New York Central system and its subsidiaries have come to be
known more and more as Morgan properties. The system has grown up with
the country. Many of its former controlled roads have now been merged
into the main corporation and many new lines have been added to it.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of new capital have been spent on
the main lines and terminals since 1900. In 1919 the entire property,
including controlled lines, embraced more than 13,000 miles of main
track, besides about 5000 miles of extra tracks; over 200,000 freight
cars are in use on the system, and every year upwards of 200,000,000
tons of freight are transported. The gross annual revenues of the
entire system now aggregate more than $400,000,000, while the total
capitalization in stocks and bonds exceeds a billion dollars. It is
indeed a far cry from that day in August, 1831, when the De Witt
Clinton locomotive made its trial trip over the primitive rails of the
seventeen-mile Mohawk and Hudson road--a far cry even from that other
day, thirty-eight years later, when the sagacious Commodore startled the
financial world by his New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, with
a capital of ninety million dollars.

CHAPTER III. THE GREAT PENNSYLVANIA SYSTEM

In the early forties the commercial importance of Philadelphia was
menaced from two directions. A steadily increasing volume of trade was
passing through the Erie Canal from the Central West to the northern
seaboard, while traffic over the new Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
promised a great commercial future to the rival city of Baltimore. With
commendable enterprise the Baltimore and Ohio Company was even then
reaching out for connections with Pittsburgh in the hope of diverting
western trade from eastern Pennsylvania. Moreover the financial prestige
of Philadelphia had suffered from recent events. The panic of 1837, the
contest of the United States Bank with President Jackson, its defeat,