E. H. Harriman

Edward Henry Harriman ( born February 20, 1848 in Hempstead, Nassau County, New York, † September 9, 1909 in Orange County, New York) was an American railroad operator.

Life

Harriman was born the son of an Anglican clergyman and grew up in poverty. He left school at 14 and took a job as a runner on Wall Street in New York City on. There followed a successful career. With 22 years of Harriman was a member of the New York Stock Exchange. At the age of 33 he began successfully to buy smaller, bankrupt railroads and after their restoration to re-sell.

1897 succeeded Harriman was the big breakthrough when he could take over the control of the Union Pacific Railroad with the financial support of the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co.. He determined the development of this leading railway company until his death in 1909. In 1901 Harriman took over as successor to Charles M. Hays also the Southern Pacific Railroad. At the time of his death he had also mastered the Saint Joseph and Grand Iceland, the Illinois Central, the Central of Georgia, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and the Wells Fargo Express Company. Harriman left his wife Mary Williamson Averell an inheritance between 200 and 600 million dollars. Their son was W. Averell Harriman.

Edward Henry Harriman organized and financed an expedition in 1899 in the coastal waters of Alaska, the Harriman Alaska Expedition.

The German press saw Edward Henry Harriman as Prototpypen of unscrupulous speculators in the capital market. The Catholic magazine German Haus Schatz called him in her obituary for a man with " hunger for gold ", the " destroyed in the wild stock market battle of 1901 numerous existences, but even tore millions of dollars in itself." President Theodore Roosevelt saw in Harriman " one of those great Trust pests that are marked with the stigma of criminality ".