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cific ahead of its transcontinental rivals, at any cost. Up to the north of him sits James J. Hill, the gray old master of the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern, and the only railroad man, up to the present time, who has successfully met and defeated Harriman in a great fight for a big stake. It is against Hill and the Hill domination of the Northwest that Harriman's present strategy seems chiefly directed, though, out of the struggle between the two Titans

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is certain to come cheaper, faster and better transportation for both passengers and freight across the continent.

If the Harriman innovation is as successful as his engineers predict, it is certain that other railroads running over the mountains will be forced to follow his example. Already many roads have adopted electricity as a motive power on their city terminals and on short branches, running through thickly populated sections. In mountainous regions

A READY-MADE MOUNTAIN RESERVOIR.

the arguments for the substitution of electricity for steam are quite as strong, for, in climbing steep grades, a large amount of the steam power must be wasted in hauling up the fuel necessary for its production. With electricity, on the other hand, almost unlimited power is available at all points on the line. Furthermore, there is small chance of a train drawn by an electric engine "sticking" on an especially sharp grade, for the temporary "overload capacity" of the

motor can always be called on to meet a sudden emergency.

Harriman is today the greatest single figure in the railroad world and one of the most interestingbecause the most mysterious-men in the public eye. A slight, short little man, with sloping shoulders and a heavy, drooping black moustache, he is the undisputed master of more miles of railroad than were ever before under individual control. It is said that Harriman, personally, does not own more

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PARTY OF ENGINEERS RESTING

than one per cent of the stock of the railroad systems over which he exercises a despotic rule. But he is, none the less, an enormously rich man, who controls, at the same time, the almost unlimited capital of a coterie of magnates whose identity has never been positively settled, though it has been often stated that Harriman is really the railroad manager of Standard Oil investments in railroad properties.

Born in an obscure Long Island village, the son of a poor clergyman, Ed

ward H. Harriman is entirely a Wall street product. As soon as he was old enough to go to work he went into the office of a Wall street broker and he has lived his whole adult life in the atmosphere of the street. At a comparatively early age he was able, with the help of influential family connections, to establish a brokerage business of his own. But not until he had spent more than a quarter of a century in business was he known at all outside of a very narrow circle. In manner he is gruff and abrupt, and in disposition dictatorial and overbearing. At directors' meetings of the many corporations which he dominates, he lets the others do the talking. When he has heard enough, he takes the floor himself and dictates exactly what shall be done. It is said he is intolerant of the slightest opposition and has more than once left the room in a fury, when a fellow director ventured to oppose him.

But, though Harriman is typically a Wall street man he differs from his fellows in that he evidently believes in building his railroads on the most substantial and permanent basis possible. His policy of looking far into the future has made tremendous demands upon the skill and ingenuity of the engineering corps of his great railroad systems, embracing nearly 29,000 miles of road.

And the wonder-working engineer has rarely done anything more picturesque and dramatic than is here contemplated, in forcing the great mountain peaks, which stand like barriers across the path of a railroad, to actually furnish the power which shall pull loaded freight trains up and over their snowy summits.

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Ship Canal Across Cape Cod

By Livingston Wright

APE COD is to be cast
adrift. The great boot of
sand is to be cut off from
the mainland of Massa-
chusetts by a ship canal,

which will reduce the coast-wise distance from New York to Boston by more than 200 miles. It will also make it unnecessary for Yankee mariners longer to dare the grisly perils of Great Hound, Stone Horse and the other wicked reefs and shoals which, in stormy weather, make the passage round Cape Cod a fearsome business, even for the most hardy.

With characteristic New England prudence and forethought, the matter of digging a canal across Cape Cod was hotly debated for a trifle over two hundred years before, in November last, a responsible and financially strong company was formed to do the work. On December 1, the charter authorizing the digging of the canal was signed by Gov. Curtis Guild, and the actual work of digging the big ditch will begin in the early spring. It furnishes one more proof of the fact that the country is entering a new era of canal-building and water-transportation. The Cape Cod canal-though its

builders are not of Hibernian ancestry-will not be dug across Cape Cod at all. Rather, taking advantage of certain rivers and bays, it will make an island of all the State lying east of Boston, commencing at Fall River on the south and running up to connect with a stream running south from Quincy on the north.

In previous years-and in previous centuries, for that matter-canals have been planned to cut across the Cape at various points. The favorite plan has been to dig the ditch from Sandwich, lying on the ankle of the boot at the north, to Buzzard's Bay, on the south, a distance of only nine miles. But that route, in the minds of present day capitalists, offers no such advantages as those presented by the much longer course now decided on.

It was not long ago that there gathered at Brockton, the little shoe city, sixteen miles south of Boston, some seventy-two business men of Weymouth, Holbrook, Brockton, West Bridgewater, Fall River and Taunton, and organized, with a $15,000,000 capitalization, the New York, Brockton and Boston Canal and Transportation Company. portation Company. Prominent among

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