An Address by Daniel Willard, President of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, Before the Boston Chamber of Commerce, June 12, 1913: Outlining ... the Eastern Railroads to the Interstate Comme
(Excerpt from An Address by Daniel Willard, President of t...)
Excerpt from An Address by Daniel Willard, President of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, Before the Boston Chamber of Commerce, June 12, 1913: Outlining the Position of the Railroads in the Matter of Application by the Eastern Railroads to the Interstate Commerce Commission for a General Increase of Five Per Cent in Freight Rates
First of all, the rates wluch were ln effect in 1910 have not in the aggregate been malntained - that is to say, while eertam 1ne1eases have been made durmg that period, decreases have also come about The net result has been, for example, a reduction m the earnmgs of the Baltimme S: Olno Company on the freight busmesshandled by that company m October, 1912, of more than when compared W1th what they would have been 1n October, 1909 In other words, If the same rates.
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Statement of Mr. Daniel Willard, President, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, Before the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce: February 18, 1919 (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Statement of Mr. Daniel Willard, President, ...)
Excerpt from Statement of Mr. Daniel Willard, President, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, Before the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce: February 18, 1919
This action by the Executive Officers was promptly confirmed. By the Boards of Directors of practically all the steam railroad companies in the United States.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Daniel Willard was an American railroad executive.
Background
Daniel Willard was born on January 28, 1861 in North Hartland, Vt. , one of three children and the only son of Mary Anna (Daniels) and Daniel Spaulding Willard, and a descendant of Simon Willard, 1605-1676, one of the founders of Concord, Massachussets When the boy was five, his mother died, and for a short while he lived with his grandparents. His father (who later remarried and had several sons by his second wife) was a farmer, and Daniel, though never a robust youth, soon learned the chores that were part of running a 250-acre farm.
Education
He received his early education at local country schools. While still in school he was superintendent of the Sunday school of the local Methodist church, of which his father was a member, and he taught briefly in the Hartland Hill district school. Following his graduation in 1878 from the Windsor (Vt. ) high school, he hoped to enter nearby Dartmouth College, but because his father could not afford to send him there, he enrolled instead at the Massachusetts State Agricultural College in Amherst, which then offered New Englanders free tuition. Forced to withdraw from college a few months later by eye trouble, later diagnosed as astigmatism, he returned home.
He received honorary degrees from thirteen universities and colleges, but the honor he cherished most was the newly created "degree, " Doctor of the Humanities, awarded him in January 1930 by the combined labor organizations of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.
Career
Willard had little enthusiasm for a farmer's life, and he was fascinated by the Vermont Central Railroad, which cut across the family acres. When in 1879 a friend offered him a job on a Vermont Central section gang at a dollar a day, he eagerly accepted. Shortly afterward he became a fireman on the Connecticut and Passumpsic Railroad, and before he was twenty he was promoted to locomotive engineer. Moving west to Indiana in 1883 for higher wages, Willard became an engineer on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway. A business depression in the spring of 1884 brought temporary unemployment, but he soon found work as a brakeman on a construction train of the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Railway (Soo Line), which was then building a new road in northern Wisconsin. He remained with the Soo for the next fourteen years, during which time he steadily advanced in position, serving as conductor, operator, agent, fireman, engineer, roundhouse foreman, trainmaster, assistant superintendent, and division superintendent. He gained invaluable experience in railway operation and management, and was soon helping prepare specifications and memoranda for the purchase of new equipment. When Frederick D. Underwood, the Soo's general manager, was appointed general manager and vice-president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1899, he took Willard with him as assistant general manager. Given direct supervision over major purchases on the road, Willard acquired an intimate knowledge of its personnel and physical character. In 1901, when Underwood became president of the Erie Railroad, Willard declined an offer to succeed him as general manager of the Baltimore & Ohio and instead accepted the position of first vice-president and general manager of the Erie. Three years later, when James J. Hill, who had a substantial interest in the Erie, acquired the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, he asked Willard to become the road's operating vice-president. Willard, distrustful of Hill and desirous of remaining with Underwood, was finally persuaded to accept when the salary was raised to $50, 000 a year. Over the next six years, by purchasing new locomotives and by improving the track, he brought the Burlington to a high level of operating excellence. A former member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, he also helped improve the morale of company personnel by substituting a demerit system for the previous practice of suspension as a means of enforcing work discipline. Willard returned to the Baltimore & Ohio in 1910 as president, turning down Hill's counter-offer of the presidency of the Burlington. The Baltimore & Ohio was a historic line with a good reputation, but after coming under the administrative control of its chief competitor, the Pennsylvania Railroad, it had suffered from a decade of neglect and was in poor physical shape. Willard carried out an ambitious rebuilding program, spending tens of millons of dollars for new locomotives and cars, improved bridges and track facilities, and a general upgrading of the entire physical plant. He was adept in his negotiations with Wall Street bankers, and during his first year raised more than $60, 000, 000 in investment capital. A major portion of his time was spent personally inspecting the line. Quick to appreciate new opportunities, he not only weathered the Ohio River flood of 1913, which washed out embankments, bridges, and large sections of track, but turned the situation to advantage by improving the northerly Pittsburgh line, which had been least affected by the disaster, and making it into the main line between Baltimore and Chicago. Willard fully cooperated with the federal government in its defense preparations for World War I. He was a member and chairman of the advisory commission of the Council of National Defense, and in 1917 was instrumental in avoiding a nationwide railroad strike over the issue of the eight-hour day and the delayed implementation of the Adamson Act. When the United States entered the war, he played a major role in the creation of the Railroad War Board, and later for a brief period was chairman of the important War Industries Board. After the war Willard was active in industry-wide efforts to ease the return of the railroads to private management, and at the same time was active in the leadership of both the American Railway Association and the Association of Railway Executives. In the 1920's, largely because of Willard's earlier investment in plant, the Baltimore & Ohio enjoyed a major increase in traffic and revenues. During these years he continued to make improvements, especially in the area of passenger service. He introduced the first mechanically air-conditioned passenger equipment, and also took an early interest in both lightweight streamlined equipment and Diesel-electric locomotives. But with the onset of the depression at the end of the decade, his program of expansion came to an end, and the Baltimore & Ohio, like all American railroads, underwent a period of retrenchment. In 1932 Willard almost single-handedly obtained from the nation's railroad unions an agreement to reduce all wages by 10 percent. As the depression continued, he had his own salary reduced from $150, 000 to $60, 000 a year. His successful efforts at economy clearly saved the Baltimore & Ohio from receivership. From his seventieth birthday onward, Willard repeatedly offered his resignation to the board of directors, but it was not accepted until June 1, 1941, when he was elected chairman of the board, a position he retained until his death. Few railroad executives had better working relationships with both management and labor. Having risen through the ranks from a common laborer on a section gang, Willard was always sympathetic to the grievances of the worker. At the same time he retained a reserve and natural dignity, and though he rarely gave a direct order, his subordinates realized that he expected his suggestions to be carried out. His passion for exact and factual information helped give substance to the cool-headed persuasiveness which served him so well in business negotiations. Active in civic affairs in the city of Baltimore, he was a member (1914 - 42) and president (1926 - 41) of the board of trustees of Johns Hopkins University. He was a Republican in politics and a Unitarian in religion. After a prolonged illness, Willard died of heart disease at the age of eighty-one in the Union Memorial Hospital, Baltimore. He was buried in the family plot at Hartland, Vt.
Awarded gold medal, National Institute Social Sciences, 1939. Director American Arbitration Association, Municipal Art Society (Baltimore). Member Council on Foreign Relations, Phi Sigma Kappa Fraternity.
Awarded gold medal, National Institute Social Sciences, 1939. Director American Arbitration Association, Municipal Art Society (Baltimore). Member Council on Foreign Relations, Phi Sigma Kappa Fraternity.