The Great Richmond Terminal: A Study in Businessmen and Business Strategy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS185 Charles E. Henry between 1869 and 1880. During this period Henry became Garfield's chief associate and contact in the Nineteenth District of Ohio and much of the rest of the state as well. The political relationship began when, in 1869, Henry wrote to Garfield requesting an appointment as a postal railway clerk. The request was granted and thus began a friendship and a bond which continued to grow until the time of Garfield's tragic death. Henry became Garfield's "alter-ego" in the Nineteenth District and provided him with much detailed information which he picked up through his travels around the state. At first Henry only supplied Garfield with such information when it was requested, but by the late Seventies he habitually offered unsolicited advice on almost all matters of importance, and it appears that Garfield usually heeded that advice. Henry seems to have been a very important factor in spearheading Garfield's abortive election to the Senate in 1880 and also in securing him the Presidential nomination. The development of Henry's importance is clearly mirrored in the letters. There is one major editing error in the book. Norris and Shaffer suggest that a letter (p. 173) from Henry to Garfield dated December 7, 1876 deals with the election of the Speaker of the House. Under the terms of the Compromise of 1877, the Southern Democrats were to support Garfield in the election, but they failed to uphold their bargain. This letter, however, could not refer to that agreement since its terms were not affirmed until early 1877 and the Speaker's election did not occur until October 15. The document probably refers to an endorsement of Garfield by the Republican caucus, but that is not made clear by the editors in their explanatory note. Such an error in no way detracts from the importance of this book. The Garfield-Henry correspondence was unavailable in 1931 when Robert G. Caldwell published his biography of Garfield (James A. GarfieM : Party Chieftain), and Charles H. Henry is not even mentioned in that volume. Thus Norris and Shaffer have performed a valuable service in adding to our perspective on Garfield in particular and Gilded Age politics in general. It is to be hoped that similar projects will be carried out for other political leaders of that era whenever the opportunity arises. Kenneth E. Hendrickson, Jr. Midwestern University The Great Richmond Terminal: A Study in Businessmen and Business Strategy. By Maury Klein. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia for the Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation, 1970. Pp. xiii, 323. $9.50.) To the uninitiated the title of this book is misleading, for "The Great Richmond Terminal" was not a railroad station but one of America's early holding companies. Created in 1880 by the Richmond & Danville Railroad to do what the Danville, by the terms of its charter, could not —lease or acquire the stock of non-connecting lines—the Richmond Terminal & Warehouse Company by 1886 owned the Danville. Two years later the Terminal gained stock control of two other major systems, the East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia Railroad and the Central Railroad & Banking Company of Georgia. Thus, at its zenith the Terminal nominally controlled more than 8500 miles of road. In practice separate boards of directors operated the three systems without regard for each other's interests. This distinctness ended in 1893-1894, when the foundering Terminal invited the House of Morgan to reorganize the company and its properties. The result was the Southern Railway Company, an operating company with a single board of directors. The Southern remains today the dominant railway system in the South. The focus of Maury Klein's study is the entrepreneurial behavior of the promoters, financiers, and managers of the Terminal and its railroads , both before and after those roads were identified with the holding company. In a perceptive first chapter Professor Klein follows Arthur M. Johnson and Barry E. Supple (Boston Capitalists and Western Railroads [1967]) in characterizing the activities of his entrepreneurs as developmental or opportunists, the first adjective indicating an interest in long-term investment, the second in short-term profits. Locally oriented, Klein's "developmental" generation held command until about 1880, when...