Mr. E. H. Harriman, who died on Thursday week, was
for the last few years of his life perhaps the greatest financial power in the United States. His differences of opinion with Mr. Roosevelt took the form of a bitter enmity pursued in public, and it was significant that gossip used to speak as though his influence in public life was equal to the President's. Mr. Roosevelt frequently singled him out by name as the type of financial operator whose methods were entirely opposed to the public interests, as, for example, in the notorious Chicago and Alton Railroad " deal." Ten years ago this extraordinary man who dictated the policy of more miles of railway than exist in the United Kingdom, and whose wealth was probably beyond his own calculation, was still comparatively obscure. He began as a stockbroker's clerk at the age of fourteen, and devoted his entire mental and bodily energies to acquiring the position of predominance which he held latterly in the railway world. Some people say that he desired power rather than wealth; but whether that be so or not, his career was a singular example of the omission to enjoy all those graces and compensations in life which were potentially his. There seems to be no doubt that he killed himself with overwork.
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