Background

Alpheus was born on June 27, 1840 in Wilton, Maine, United States, the son of Daniel and Ursula Maria (Beede) Stickney, and a descendant of William Stickney who came to Boston in 1637 and two years later settled in Rowley, Massachussets.

Education

Educated in common schools and academies of Maine and New Hampshire until he was eighteen, he then began the study of law in the office of Josiah Crosby in Dexter, Maine. His preparation was somewhat delayed by school-teaching which he was obliged to undertake in order to earn money.

Career

In 1862 Stickney was admitted to the bar, and moved to Minnesota, where he practised law until 1869. Railroad building was just beginning in Minnesota and neighboring states, and in 1869 Stickney moved to St. Paul, gave up practice, and became connected with railroad enterprises.

His first great undertaking, in 1871, was the St. Paul, Stillwater & Taylor's Falls Railroad - later a part of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha system - which he served for several years as vice-president, general manager, and chief counsel.

In 1879 he became superintendent of construction of the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway, which subsequently became part of the Great Northern, and the following year was general superintendent of about 500 miles of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

In 1881 he organized and built the first section of the Wisconsin, Minnesota & Pacific Railroad, and in 1881-82 he was vice-president of the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway. When bankruptcy came in 1908 he was appointed receiver.

In 1909 he retired from active work. In his administration of the Chicago Great Western, Stickney endeavored to apply ideas both as to financing and operation which were novel in the United States. These he set forth in a book entitled The Railway Problem (1891).

Following the English practice, he endeavored to raise the money for financing the road from the stockholders, and to reorganize it without a funded debt. In this way the stock would represent a real investment and would have first claim on surplus earnings, instead of being junior to a heavy mortgage. This scheme, admirable as it would be in periods of depression when fixed charges become insupportable, met two difficulties: in the first place, investors did not buy the railway stock offered, and in the second place, the earning power of the road did not increase as rapidly as had been estimated.

The result was that the floating debt grew to unmanageable proportions, reaching $10, 653, 000 by January 1908, when the road was forced into the hands of a receiver. This experience seemed to show that the Stickney plan of a bankruptcy-proof railroad was not proof against insufficient earnings, and that the general creditors could put a road in the hands of a receiver as effectively as could the owners of defaulted bonds. In the actual operations of the Chicago Great Western Stickney applied methods that were in advance of his time.

Assuming that carefully analyzed statistics of past records could be made the basis for the formulation of definite policies, he worked out methods of operation and maintenance and applied them ruthlessly. It is difficult to reach a definite conclusion as to the efficacy of these methods, for the road was exposed to the severest competition, and its officials, apparently, did not always carry out the Stickney plans wholeheartedly. Stickney himself charged in 1909 that many of the railroads had resumed the practice of rebating under such subterfuges as that of allowing large claims for overcharges and damages presented by favored shippers.

The charges resulted in an investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission, before which Stickney laid a plan for revising the rate laws so as to make such practices impossible. This was set forth in a pamphlet entitled Railway Rates (1909).

Stickney died on August 9, 1916.

Achievements

• Alpheus Beede Stickney was the first who organized and began the construction of the Minnesota & Northwestern Railroad, serving as president until its union with the Chicago, St. Paul & Kansas City, and then as president of the consolidated road. This office he held until 1892, when he was elected chairman of the board of directors. In that capacity he reorganized the road as the Chicago Great Western Railway, of which he was president from 1894 to 1900 and chairman of the board of directors from 1892 to 1908. Stickney did much to develop the Northwest, encouraging settlers to come thither and persuading Eastern and European capitalists to make investments there. During his railroad career he acquired extensive outside interests, one of the chief of which was the St. Paul union stockyards and packing houses, which he built in 1882. The village of Stickney, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago just south of Berwyn and Cicero, is named in his honor.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The defects of the interstate commerce law. An address

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • The Railways And The People: An Address...

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • The defects of the interstate commerce law. An address

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Connections

He was twice married: first, in October 1864 to Kate W. H. Hall of Collinsville, Illinois; and second, in 1901, to May Crosby. By his first wife he had seven children.

Father:

Daniel Stickney

Mother:

Ursula Maria (Beede) Stickney

Wife:

May Crosby

Wife:

Kate W. H. Hall

References

• Granger Road A 20th Anniversary Pictorial Review of the Eastern Division, Chicago District of the Chicago Great Western Railway