HUGE COMBINE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 27 September 1924, Page 9

HUGE COMBINE.

RAILWAY CONSOLIDATION IN

AMERICA

NEW YORK, Aug. 20. The biggest railway consolidation in the history of this country merely awaits the approval of the Goyernment to become an actuality and combine capital amounting to £300,000,000 and about 11,000 miles ofg railway track. This huge deal comprises the New York, Chicago, and St. Louis railway, known as the “Nickel Plate,” the Erie railway, Pere. Marquette, the Chesapeake and Ohio, a.nd the Hocking Valley. The combination, which is to be known as the New 'York, Chicago, and St. Louis system, outrivals anything done in the days of Harriman or Jay Gould, America’s pioneer railw.aymen, and elevates two young men, each under 45 years of age , Messrs Orris and Mantis Vanswerigen, of Cleveland, to a high position among the railway magnates of the United States, with the prospect, that,in a few years they will be in a leading position. The story of- the rise of the Vanswerigens is remarkable, because both began their business careers as barefooted newsboys in Geneva, near Cleveland. Neither had anything but a common school education. Their first advancement is due to sheer nerve and ability to obtain capital on, slight security. Their first big plunge was a development of a new residential section near Cleveland, and when the railway company refused to extend its lines to serve the new settlement the brothers raised sufficient money to build tracks, of their own. With the recent acquisition of the Pere •Marquette and Erie railways the Vanswerigens have, created a great railway system, stretching its network west to the Atlantic seaboard. Those who know the brothers best declare that they will not stop where they are, and will not rest content until they have satisfied the public desire to travel from New York to San Francisco without changing carriages. Many have failed in the ambition to establish terminals for one railway system f’-om the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts, but the Vanswerigens are confident that they will succeed.