CHAPTER IX.

THE JUBILEE.

WHILST viewing the breadth and scope of the Company's

prosperity the Board was prompted to set before its stockholders a résumé of the Company's operations from the beginning of its existence, and the time selected to do so was the fiftieth anniversary of the signing the enactment which made possible the incorporation of the Company and the production of its bewildering achievements.

The Board determined that a proper celebration on April 13, 1896, should mark the event, and at its regular semi-monthly meeting on March 25, 1896, appointed a special committee to make the necessary arrangements. This committee was composed of Mr. N. Parker Shortridge as Chairman, Messrs. Fox, Welsh, Barnes and Patterson, together with President Roberts and Vice Presidents Thomson, Green and Pugh.

The day of jubilee arrived with a bright sun and clear sky to emphasize the importance of the occasion. The arrangements were complete.

The General Office building and the Academy of Music were magnificently decorated with plants and flowers in profusion. The beautiful effects of blended colors of rose and lily, carnation and palm, and fern, joined with climbing vine, and the thousand other combinations from Flora's storehouse made scenes of beauty rarely witnessed, and disclosed to the astonishment of the uninformed the poetic side of an otherwise very prosaic business life. Choice floral designs representative of the profession of the railroader and commemorative of the founding of the Company were placed here and there throughout the Board Room. The hallways leading to the various rooms in which the several events were to take place were lined with rare exotics and sweet scent was spread everywhere. It

was a gala day, and railroad official and invited guest brought enthusiasm to meet artistic display in greeting history as it unfolded its wonderful records of the Company's doings in connection with continental development during the period of a half century.

The Directors met in the President's Room at 11.45 A.M., and at 12 M. proceeded in a body to the Assembly Room on the fifth floor annex, which was already filled with the officials of the Operating Department, east and west of Pittsburgh and Erie, to the number of 250. Having entered the room, Mr. Charles E. Pugh, Third Vice President, called the meeting to order, and in a few wellchosen words, introduced Mr. George B. Roberts, the President of the Company. Mr. Roberts was received with the hearty and loyal greetings always accorded him by the employees of every grade. Addressing them, he said:

"Fellow-officers and fellow-employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company: This time marks the fiftieth mile-post not only in the lives of many of us who are here, but likewise in the life of your corporation. Its success up to the present time is, I firmly believe, wholly attributable to those whom I see around me, and to those who have not the privilege of being here to-day, as well as to the many who have preceded us, and to whom we can look back as of the same character as those around us, and who laid the foundation of the prosperity of this Company.

"It is wholly upon the character of its officers and employees that its future success must depend, and may we return thanks to an all-wise Providence who has permitted us to enjoy it thus far, and look forward to the hope that it may enjoy even greater prosperity hereafter.

"I am glad to have this opportunity to meet those whom I seldom have a chance to meet, and to add that my only regret is that I cannot welcome all the 100,000 employees in the service of the Company, both east and west of Pittsburgh, and to thank one and all of the officers of the Company charged with its management, to whom the shareholders are so much indebted for its success."

Those present then filed by, the President and the Board grasping each hand in congratulation. Mr. Roberts had a pleasant word for every one. He held firmly, even fondly, in his left hand a little

cloth bound volume which James Cullen, the oldest Supervisor in the Company's service, had presented him a few moments before. It was a well-preserved copy of the first book of rules and regulations of the Pennsylvania Railroad, together with a time-table issued in September, 1849, by Herman Haupt, then General Superintendent. President Roberts laid great store by this apparently simple souvenir, and said it was the only copy of the book that had ever come into his possession.

The President and Board withdrew as soon as the hand shaking was over, and the operating officers and guests proceeded to the dining room on the second floor, where they partook of luncheon.

The Board went immediately from the Assembly Room to the Board and President's rooms, where at I P.M. Mr. Roberts received large numbers of eminent men in all walks of life: Trade and commerce, theology and law, finance and science, education and transportation, statesmanship and medicine, architecture and manufacture, each and all sending their favored sons to commend the official representatives of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company for the important part that corporation had taken in the material advancement of city, State and nation in the last half of the Nineteenth Century. The East vied with the West, and the North struggled with the South in sending its most prominent men to be their representatives. New York, San Francisco, Chicago and St. Louis linked arms with Boston, New York, Baltimore and Washington, bowed and did their obeisance at the gates of Philadelphia. Judges of the Courts, United States Senators, Governors, Members of Congress, Mayors of cities, Presidents of Railroads, Bankers, Ship Builders, Representatives of Municipal Corporations, Iron Masters, Mechanics, Inventors, Importers, all signalized by their presence the unlimited importance of the occasion. Congratulations ruled the hour, and amidst the triumphs of Flora the assembled thousand partook of a sumptuous collation.

At 2.30 P.M. the Board left the General Office for the Academy of Music, and entering the Locust street stage door proceeded to the Green Room. The Academy began to fill up with the shareholders, officials, employees and invited guests, whilst the orchestra of sixty pieces, under the leadership of Charles M. Schmitz, dis

coursed some more than ordinarily fine selections of music. The ability and perfection of performance as displayed by the orchestra on this occasion has never been excelled at the Academy.

At 3 o'clock, as the orchestra struck up the Grand March, President Roberts, linking arms with Governor Hastings and followed by the Board and other officials, moved from the rear to the front of the stage, a salvo of unequalled applause almost overwhelming them. Upon the subsidence of the applause Mr. Roberts and followers were seated. To his right were Governor Hastings, Mayor Warwick, City Solicitor of Pittsburgh Clarence Burleigh, Joseph H. Choate, of New York, Frederick Fraley, LL.D., Vice Presidents Frank Thomson, John P. Green and Charles E. Pugh, of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and Vice Presidents, James McCrea, J. Twing Brooks, J. E. Davidson and Joseph Wood, of the Pennsylvania Company; on his left were Directors Alexander M. Fox, Alexander Biddle, N. Parker Shortridge, Henry D. Welsh, William L. Elkins, Clement A. Griscom, Benjamin B. Comegys, Amos R. Little, William H. Barnes, George Wood and C. Stuart Patterson. Mr. A. J. Cassatt, the one other Director to complete the Board, was absent in Europe.

Quiet having been secured, Mr. Roberts arose and delivered the opening address. His tones were clear and distinct, and as he stood there he seemed to symbolize in his manner, bearing and speech the power, strength and integrity of the Company, and to express in his personality the half century of progress that was being celebrated. His speech was listened to throughout with intense earnestness by the assemblage. He said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, officers and fellow-employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company:

"We are this day to manifest the fact, and to give expression to it, that the corporation in which you are so largely interested is about passing the fiftieth mile-post in the life of its organization. In no better way can we judge of what we can do in the future than to take a retrospective view of what has taken place in the past. Those who are not willing to be guided by that which they have had an opportunity of seeing will seldom make a success of doing

and managing that which comes to them in the future. Therefore, without taking much of your time, I will briefly go over what has happened in the progress of your corporation since its first organization, April 13, 1846, until the present time. There are many, no doubt, here present, who are to-day officers or employees in the Company, in addition to those who are shareholders in it and form the Company, who were present at that day. They have lived with it; they have grown up with it, and to their untiring watchfulness has come to you what measure of prosperity you have. It is not from those whom you see around us, your Directors, your trustees, and the heads of the various departments, but it is to the rank and file; to the entire one hundred thousand men who are in your employ, and who so faithfully look after your interests, that whatever measure of prosperity you enjoy this day is to be attributed. They are not slaves, giving to you the measure of their labor by what you pay them; but they give to you all that is within them, no matter what their recompense may be. To the esprit de corps that is to be found in your employees and officers, if you will spare me in including myself in the list, is to be attributed what you have here for cause of congratulation. To look back upon the annals of this corporation is the best way, probably, to judge, not only of what has taken place in its progress, but largely of what has taken place in the progress of not only your State, but your nation. It measures the period of time which has been so fertile in everything that has promoted the growth, prosperity, and the comfort of those who now have the opportunity of enjoyment.

"When your corporation was organized in 1846, it had to spend the first few years of its life in starting out and gathering to it that measure of confidence which has never been taken away from it from that day to this, which enabled it to consummate in the year 1852 a final line of transportation in connection with the State Works between our own City of Philadelphia and the City of Pittsburgh, the Western metropolis of our State. At that time-1852 ---when it was first opened as a transportation line, it consisted of 224 miles of railroad, with a capital and debt of about $12,000,000. The first year of its operation it carried not over 70,000 tons of freight, and transported about 500,000 passengers. From that day