HUNTINGTON, COLLIS POTTER, has been associated with some of the most gigantic corporation enterprises which the nineteenth century has witnessed.  His was the mind to conceive, and his the profound abilities and tireless energy to execute, the stupendous project of a great trans-continental railroad to connect the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.  And when this notable enterprise had been brought to completion, perceiving that there was room for another and parallel line farther south, he at once undertook the construction of a second great trans-continental railroad and successfully consummated the project.  Again, he conceived and carried into execution the plan for the unification of the railroads west of the Mississippi River, in which he had become interested, into one grand system embracing 8,059 miles of track and known as the great Southern Pacific system.  This combines no less than twenty-three transportation corporations, bisecting the continent and ramifying throughout the Southwestern States, with terminii (sic) at seaports on

the Atlantic Coast, the Pacific Coast, and various points on the Gulf of Mexico.  The Mexican International Railroad, which runs from the border at Eagle Pass to Durango in the State of Durango, embraces about six hundred and seventy miles in the Republic of Mexico.  Apart from his railroad interests, he has developed almost 20,000 miles of steamship lines, including a mail service across the Pacific Ocean and plying between San Francisco and China and Japan.  He has been prominently identified with railroad building and the development of coal mines at Vancouver, British Columbia, and is President of the Guatemala Central Railraod, the model railroad of the Central American States.  With all the rest, at Newport News, Va., he is proprietor of a notable drydock and shipbuilding yard, built by himself, and the best-appointed in the United States.  Even in this age of enormous material achievements, such an array of huge enterprises, associated with a single name, compels astonishment.  And well they may, for when we call over the great railroad kings of America, living and dead, allowing the fullest weight to the achievements of each, we find no parallel to the career of Mr. Huntington.

Born in Harwinton, Litchfield County, Conn., October 22, 1821, he attended school until fourteen years of age and then obtained his freedom from his father agreeing to support himself.  The first year he made $7 a month or $84 in all.  This was not a great sum, but he saved it all.  At the end of two years, young Huntington came to New York City armed with commendations from business men.  On the strength of these, he bought goods on credit and sold them at a good profit.  During the next ten years, he traveled through the South and West doing a good business.  In partnership with his brother, he also opened a store at Oneonta, Otsego County, N.Y.  In 1848, upon the outbreak of the gold fever, they shipped a consignment of goods to California, Mr. C.P. Huntington following them in person.  He set out with $1,200 in cash, but being unexpectedly detained at the Isthmus of Panama, looked about him to see how he could utilize his capital with profit; and, by the time he reached California, he had increased it to $5,000.  He located at Sacramento at once and established a store under a tent.  In the spring of 1854, he went into partnership with Mark Hopkins and established the hardware firm of Huntington & Hopkins.  He studied the market and adopted the policy of buying in large quantities when the price was low.  In a few years, he and his partner had acquire large fortunes.

In 1860, Mr. Huntington conceived the bold project of the Central Pacific Railroad and enlisted six others with himself in a company, with capitalization of $8,500,000.  He went to Washington, and, as

the result of his prowess there, secured the Congressional Acts of 1862 and 1864, which afforded Goverment aid in lands and bonds.  Upon the achievement of this legislation, he telegraphed to his fellow capitalists:  "We have drawn the elephant; now let us see if we can harness him up."  In pursuance of this further task, he visited New York City and Boston seeking to interest capitalists and scored one of the most brilliant successes in promoting.  Of the original stockholders, three stood shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Huntington — Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, and Leland Stanford.  Prior to his efforts at Washington, these three had united with him in defraying the cost of a preliminary survey across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and they now joined with him in risking their private fortunes, agreeing to keep eight hundred men at work on the construction of the road for a year, and out of their private means building the required mileage, which enabled them to realize on the Government bonds.  Then came the rival enterprise, the Union Pacific, and the race in construction between this line, pushing west, and the Central Pacific, pushing east.  Mr. Huntington, as is well known, brought his road triumphantly through this crisis, completing the line, May 10, 1869.

He next projected the Southern Pacific, rapidly laying its tracks across Arizona and New Mexico, meeting Colonel Thomas Scott's western extension of his lines, but pushing on to San Antonio where he connected with lines of his own already acquired in anticipation — the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio, the Texas and New Orleans, the Louisiana Western, and Morgan's Louisiana and Texas Railroad and Steamship Company.  He thus had a tide-water outlet at New Orleans into the Gulf.  Later on, by building another series of roads east of the Mississippi, he joined the Chesapeake and Ohio to the Southern Pacific, and at last had an outlet upon the Atlantic seaboard as well, with a continuous railroad line, nearly 5,000 miles in length, from Portland, Ore., to Newport News, Va.

We thus have before us a mere bird's-eye view of these great achievements.  A large number of other enterprises which, though small by comparison, would loom up as notable projects in the lives of most men, we must pass over without mention.  Mr. Huntington is President of the Southern Pacific Company, Vice-President of the Central Pacific Railroad Company, President of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, President of the Guatemala Central Railroad Company, and execuive head of various others, while the list of important corporations of which he is a director would present a formidable array.

It has been a matter of pride with Mr. Huntington that through all these years of business risk and of stupendously costly operations not

a single railroad that he organized and built has ever defaulted a coupon.  In the formation of his great system it was of course inevitable that some old and bankrupt roads should come into his possession in order to form necessary links of the great chain; but all, or practicaly all, of these he brought up finally to a basis on which their bonds paid the interest regularly.  For sixty years Mr. Huntington's paper has been on the market — sixty years, including, in their stretch, the panics of '37, '57, '73, '84, and '93 — but in all that time not a single piece of it has gone to protest, and his personal indorsements have ever been the the heaviest stone in the foundations of his official as well as personal credit.