Collis P. Huntington.
One of the financiers who may be seen daily entering the palatial Mills Building in Broad street, New York, is a tall, well-built man, with a full beard tinged with gray, a square, resolute jaw, and keen bluish-gray eyes. Though now in his 66th year, his step is light and quick, betokening good habits in his youth and due care of himself in his later years. He is one of the best known of American financial chieftains. It is Collis P. Huntington. He is a born leader of men. As a boy of 15 he came to New York, with scarcely a penny. Now he is worth thirty million dollars. He was born October 22d, 1821, at Harwinton, in Litchfield county, Connecticut. He numbers among his ancestors Samuel Huntington, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who was also President of the Continental Congress and Governor and Chief Justice of Connecticut; and also Bishop F. D. Huntington and the artist Daniel Huntington. C. P. Huntington’s father was a farmer and small manufacturer, in his fourteenth year Huntington left school and asked his father to give him his time on condition that he should support himself. He came to New York in the following year, 1836, and bought a small bill of goods, a neighbor of his father’s becoming his surety. At that early age he showed the same shrewdness in business, the same energy and resolution in carrying through his projects as he did in later life. At twenty-three he settled at Oneonta, Otsego county, New York, as a general merchant. In 1844 he married a Connecticut girl, who proved a valuable helpmeet in days when it was never supposed he would ever attain any particular financial distinction. In March, 1849, he sailed for San Francisco, going by way of the Isthmus, and following a consignment of goods which he had made in the previous year. He was now in his 28th year, and a future full of marvellous success awaited him. This was not immediately apparent, however. Business success is not usually attained without long and persistent efforts, and in spite of repeated discouragements. He found San Francisco at that time a resort merely for the idle and the reckless. It did not prove at this particular juncture a satisfactory field for his business; his funds ran low, and he determined to go to Sacramento. He earned his passage money thither on a schooner, by helping to load her for a dollar an hour. In Sacramento he started in business, after a time, with a small tent as a store, and a limited supply of general merchandise as his stock in trade; he worked hard; he labored early and late. Here he met Mark Hopkins, and they formed a business co-partnership, which proved so successful that by 1856 the firm was known as one of the wealthiest on the Pacific slope. California, however, was isolated. It was a long trip over the plains by wagon trains to the nearest point of commercial importance east of the Rocky Mountains, and the ocean voyage by way of the Isthmus of Panama was long and slow. A railroad to the East was imperatively needed, in order to develop the enormous resources of the broad territory lying west of that natural barrier known as the Rocky Mountains. But how to bring it about was the question. Few were daring enough to seriously grapple with the problem. It was in the store of Huntington & Hopkins that the project was first considered with a resolute purpose to push it through. The Civil War, however, broke out just then, and the first gun fired on Fort Sumter seemed like the knell of this great project. Collis P. Huntington was undaunted. “I will,” he says, “be one of the eight or ten, if Hopkins agrees, to bear the expense of a careful and thorough survey.” The result was that seven gentlemen agreed to defray the expense of such a survey. Two subsequently ceased to give their aid. The remaining five organized the Central Pacific Railroad Company. Mr. Huntington at once went to Washington to secure Government aid in constructing the first trans-continental railway. He was successful. When the Pacific Railroad bill was passed he telegraphed to his partners with characteristic humor and terseness: “We have drawn the elephant.” He at once came to New York to form a syndicate to take the bonds. Many at such a time would have gone to speculators begging for aid and pledging his bonds for railroad material with which to commence the great line. He did nothing of the kind. The French saying, “Toujours de l’audace,” seemed to be his maxim. He was always bold. He coolly announced that he would not dispose of his bonds except for cash, and, strange as it may have seemed, he capped the climax by refusing to sell any at all unless $1,500,000 worth were taken. He was again successful, but the purchaser required more security. Thereupon Mr. Huntington made himself and his firm responsible for the whole amount. It was thus on the pledge of the private fortunes of Mr. Huntington and his partner that the first fifty miles of the road were built. After a time, however, funds ran low; it seemed inevitable that the number of laborers should be reduced. Certainly more means were necessary. At that time the Government held the first mortgage on the road, and no Government subsidy bonds were obtainable until a section of fifty miles of the road had been completed. Huntington and Hopkins stepped into the breach, and agreed to keep five hundred men at work for a year at their private expense, and three other gentlemen agreed to furnish three hundred men for the same length of time. This resolution ended their troubles; the road was built through to a connection with the Atlantic seaboard, and trans-continental transportation became a fact and no longer a dream. Mr. Huntington came to New York again, and here he now resides in a fine mansion on Park avenue. He is still a hard worker, but after business hours he dismisses as far as possible the cares of his financial functions. Among the railroad systems controlled and operated by him and his associates, the executive conduct of which is largely directed by himself, are the Central Pacific, the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Trans-Mississippi roads, and the Southern Pacific, making a total of nearly eight thousand miles of line. He is also heavily interested in roads in Mexico and Central America and steamship lines plying to the Chesapeake Bay, to Brazil, China and Japan and other parts of the world. Directly or indirectly he has thirty thousand men under him. In business he is an autocrat; his manner is quick and decisive; he is direct in his speech, and expresses himself with force when he says anything. He also knows when silence is golden. He is a good story teller, and has a large fund of anecdotes; he has original wit, a store of quaint, homely sayings, which are often singularly apt. Sitting in his office chair, with a black skull cap, which he usually wears in business hours, pushed back on his head, he has an open, jolly, unassuming look, and the stranger would hardly take him for one of the uncrowned financial kings of this country. He is one of the few men in this country who have shown themselves more than a match for Jay Gould.
Leland Stanford.