“Oh, no. That wears off. I’ve been watching his mind work. It’s a marvellous piece of mechanism.” He went on with his work. “I know at last what he’s doing,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
“He’s developing a plan of reorganization.”
That was true. I had known it for some time. He accumulated his data by day in the office and worked it up by night in his room at home. He showed it to me as it progressed. There was a good deal of writing in it. The facts required interpretation. He was awkward at writing and I helped him with it, phrasing his ideas. The financial exposition was one part only. There was then the physical aspect of the property to be dealt with. When it came to that he spent six weeks out on the road. Three days after he set out on this errand we began to receive messages by telegraph from our operating officials, traffic managers, agents and division superintendents, to this effect:
“Who is Henry M. Galt?”
At Valentine’s direction I answered all of them, saying: “Treat Henry M. Galt with every courtesy.”
He went over every mile of the right of way, inspected every shop and yard, talked with the agents and work masters and finally scandalized the department of traffic by going through all the contracts in force with large shippers. He studied traffic conditions throughout the territory, had a look at competing lines and conferred with bankers, merchants and chamber of commerce presidents about improving the Great Midwestern’s service.
He returned with a mass of material which we worked on every night feverishly, for he was beginning to be very impatient. The physical aspect of the property having been treated from an original point of view, there followed an illuminating discussion of business policy. Good will had been leaving the Great Midwestern, owing to the unaccommodating nature of its service. This fact he emphasized brutally and then outlined the means whereby the road’s former prestige might be regained.
Never had a railroad been so intelligently surveyed before. The work as it lay finished one midnight on Galt’s table represented an incredible amount of labor. More than that, it represented creative imagination in three areas,—finance, physical development and business policy. The financial thesis was that the Great Midwestern should be reorganized without assessing the stockholders in the usual way. All that was necessary was to sell them new securities on the basis of dormant assets. This was a new idea.