it right.”
The railway that Van Horne rejoined was a prosperous, efficient company that hauled more coal into Chicago than any other railway. It was also a prime mover of corn, wheat, and livestock from its Kansas City terminal. But to achieve and maintain this position it waged a ceaseless war with other railways for traffic, particularly after the depression of the mid-1870s resulted in decreased freight. With his combative temperament, high energy, and willingness to experiment with new methods, Van Horne was ideally suited to this type of competition. He plunged joyously into the struggle, waging such a successful battle for business that he attracted the attention of the heads of other more important railways.
To attract passengers, Van Horne naturally thought of food — as he had done earlier in his career to keep workers happy. Departing from common practice, he arranged for the railway to own and operate its own dining cars, rather than use those supplied by the celebrated Pullman Car Company. Once the cars arrived, he instructed the Chicago and Alton staff to serve more generous portions than the Pullman people did. Car construction was another interest of Van Horne’s. On his frequent visits to the company’s car shops, Van Horne often passed on new ideas to the designers and builders. If they could not readily grasp what he had in mind, he illustrated his concepts with sketches. When new mail cars were required, he dispatched the Chicago and Alton’s master car builder to Washington to learn from the general superintendent of the United States mail service how best to equip a mail car. In this area, as in all departments, he revealed an obsession with detail and quality. He was lavish in his praise of good work, but he could also be scathing in his denunciation of inferior results and performance. Confronted by a poor performance, he would go to considerable lengths to see that his staff measured up to his expectations.
Although the young dynamo appeared virtually invincible to his fellow railroaders, he was not always successful. On one high-profile occasion involving the travel plans of Rutherford B. Hayes, the U.S. president, he was soundly beaten by a rival railway. After winding up a tour of the West in 1878, Hayes decided that he would travel from Kansas City to his hometown — Fremont, Ohio — via Illinois. His staff asked the Chicago and Alton to furnish a special train for the journey, and the company was only too happy to oblige. It entrusted the arrangements to Van Horne, who quickly assembled the finest cars he could lay his hands on and engaged a renowned Chicago restaurant to provide the meals. To all appearances everything was in order when Van Horne and his New York stockbroker friend George B. Hopkins left Chicago for Kansas City, where the president and his party were to board the train. At about five o’clock the following morning, as this train stood in the Kansas City terminal yards, Van Horne rose, dressed, and went outside for a stroll. Passing the telegraph office, he heard telegraph keys tapping out his name. Intrigued, he stopped to listen. The deciphered message revealed that a rival railway official had surreptitiously arranged for one of his own trains to take the president’s party across Illinois. The elated sender, delirious with joy at his success, closed his message with the words, “Van Horne will be as mad as hell.”
Van Horne was indeed furious. Nevertheless, there was nothing he could do except watch President Hayes arrive at Kansas City and leave for Fremont on the rival railway’s train. Stung to the quick and mortified beyond belief, he returned to the Chicago and Alton’s train. But he did not lose his cool in front of his friend. In a remarkable demonstration of self-control, he merely mentioned the rival railway’s coup as they as made their lonely way back from Kansas City to Chicago. But then he spotted his chance to get his own back. Crowds of people had assembled at small western stations to cheer the president on his way. So he persuaded Hopkins, who had worn a formal frock coat for this splendid occasion, to pretend that he was President Hayes and to wave to the eager onlookers — We must not disappoint the loyal citizens, Van Horne argued. As the handsome, suitably attired Hopkins stood on the train’s rear platform and graciously greeted the waiting throngs of people, they were just as impressed by him as they would have been by the president himself. Between these appearances, Van Horne and his friend enjoyed the abundance of fine food at their disposal. They sat down to a sumptuous dinner, with twenty-five waiters in attendance and a chef and five assistants to supply their every whim!
The climax came when the Chicago and Alton special train met up with its rival at an Illinois junction. There, Van Horne encountered General William Tecumseh Sherman, the commanding general of the U.S. Army. Sherman, who was travelling with the president’s entourage, entered Van Horne’s car to beg for a Scotch and soda, complaining that he had been travelling with the teetotalling president for four days without so much as one drink. Once satisfied, he invited Van Horne to go with him to meet Hayes, but the still aggrieved Van Horne declined. Finally, Sherman made his way back to his train, only to return with the president, who said how much he regretted the mix-up. News of the incident circulated widely in railroading circles, where rival railroaders crowed over the humbling of the hitherto invincible Van Horne. Before long, however, Van Horne regarded it all as a great joke — and dined out on the story countless times.
Although his new position at the Chicago and Alton was demanding, Van Horne still found time to add more specimens to his fossil collection. His passion for fossils had become widely known, and all along the railway lines the men kept an eye out for finds that might interest him. He also devoted leisure hours to another favourite pursuit — gardening. He had taken up this hobby at La Crosse, determined to produce larger and more luxurious flowers than his neighbours. In his quest for the perfect bloom, Van Horne dug his own beds, studied fertilizers, carefully tended each and every plant himself, and walked long distances on the Bluffs to obtain leaf mould for his roses. In Chicago he cultivated tulips and hyacinths in the attic and cellars of the family’s large brick home at 48 Park Avenue.
This spacious, rambling house may have been to Van Horne’s liking, but it did not please Addie. She was dismayed by the profusion of halls and predicted that their new home would be difficult to keep clean. “I wish I were back in our house [in La Crosse] a thousand times,” she wrote plaintively to her sister-in-law Mary in October 1878. This second Chicago interlude would be a trying one for Addie in other ways as well. She was still mourning her son Willie and enduring the long bout of ill health that followed his death. Chicago’s changeable climate, with its abundance of cool, windy weather, was another irritant, as were her husband’s many absences from home.
Most of Van Horne’s time away from Chicago was taken up with visits to La Crosse, where, in his continuing role as president of the Southern Minnesota, he oversaw the completion of the railway’s extension. He also had private business to conduct because he had invested in a few properties there, including a farm. Although he was still in his thirties, he was already taking the first steps towards becoming a financier.
Van Horne had been managing the Chicago and Alton for only one year when he accepted an offer to be general superintendent of still another railway — the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad, a rapidly expanding company with extensive mileage in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Missouri. His remarkable success in resurrecting the Southern Minnesota and the tenacity and resourcefulness with which he had waged the Chicago and Alton’s ferocious battles for traffic had caught the attention of the Milwaukee management. Van Horne’s particular type of genius, they were convinced, was just what was needed to consolidate the numerous railways that the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul was acquiring and to blend them into a harmonious, effective system. Accordingly, the railway offered him the title of general superintendent, but intended to give him all the duties and powers of a general manager. His new appointment was to begin on January 1, 1880.
Van Horne accepted the plum appointment because of the big salary he was offered — it was “a question of dollars and future,” he explained. He still felt a sense of loyalty to the Southern Minnesota Railroad and would have turned down the offer had he believed the company was in danger. But he knew that it was now under capable management and in respectable shape. And as the Chicago and Alton Railroad was flourishing, he had no qualms about leaving it.
New Year’s Day dawned with the family still in Chicago and Van Horne in Milwaukee,
