Percival Farquhar

January 19, 1864 (age 89)

York, Pennsylvania, United States

Although he never practiced law or engineering, he found his training in these fields useful to his later career. He soon became an executive of the electric railways that George Harvey had built on Staten Island and on the Jersey shore. He speculated unsuccessfully on Wall Street during the depression years between 1893 and 1897, and represented Manhattan's "Hourglass District" in the state assembly in the early years of that decade. In 1898 he was one of the first American promoters to go to Havana, newly freed after the Spanish-American War. While there, together with Harvey and an engineer, Fred Stark Preston, Farquhar electrified the city's twenty-seven-mile system of horse cars, moving rapidly against a number of rivals to acquire the concession. Between 1903 and 1908, he helped banana baron Minor C. Keith obtain a concession from the Guatemalan dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera to complete a key railroad through Guatemala. He next went to Brazil, where between 1904 and 1907 he and Pearson founded the Rio de Janeiro Tramway, Light and Power Company. The new utility consolidated the inefficient tramways of the capital and expanded the tiny telephone company. Pearson also designed Brazil's first important hydroelectric plant. The company was backed by Canadian capital and, along with its sister utility in S030 Paulo, became Canada's largest foreign company. Between 1906 and 1912 Farquhar invested heavily in the vast, fever-ridden Amazon Basin. He acquired an Amazon navigation company and installed new boats, then built the $30 million port works at Belim, Par , raising the requisite money through the sale, in Paris, of securities in his giant holding company, the Brazil Railway. Farquhar also bought from a speculator the concession to build the "impossible" Madeira-Mamori Railway to carry rubber around nineteen falls and rapids in the world's largest tropical forest to the head of navigation on the Madeira River, where he founded the town of Porto Velho. This railway cost $30 million and some 3, 600 men died of fevers during its construction, but it failed to make money. Both the railroad and the port were completed in 1912, just as the boom in Amazon rubber was undercut by the availability of cheap, coolie-processed rubber from South Asia. Although Brazil benefited greatly from Farquhar's economic vision, his shareholders in London and Paris sustained heavy losses. During the same period Farquhar bought, consolidated, and extended the railways of southern Brazil. He used French capital to acquire other lines in Uruguay, northeastern Argentina, and landlocked, backward Paraguay, and he created a score of traffic-producing subsidiaries, including Brazil's largest sawmill, its first meat-packing plant, and what was briefly the world's largest cattle company. By 1912 he was the most powerful and feared foreigner in Brazil. Farquhar was not successful in an attempt to combine unconnected rail lines into a transcontinental rail system in the United States, and in 1910 he lost $9 million to "Wall Street wolves" opposing his project. The European depression of 1912-1913 weakened the Brazil Railway enterprises. Brazil owed Farquhar some $10 million for rail and port construction, and in July 1914 Farquhar sought to persuade European bankers and government leaders to lend Brazil $30 million, in part to pay for his construction. In 1919 the president of Brazil, Epiticio Pess"a, invited Farquhar to return to that country to attempt to develop the world's largest known reserve of hard hematite iron ore, located around Itabira, in Minas Gerais state. Brazil badly needed an export to replace Amazonian rubber, but the nationalistic governor of Minas Gerais opposed Farquhar's plan to create an $80 million project to convert the Rio Doce valley into the Ruhr of South America. He was Arthur Bernardes, who as president from 1922 to 1926 blocked Farquhar's concession in the national congress. The project was finally approved in 1930, when then-president Washington Luis Souza persuaded the congress and the ministry of transport to support it, but the Great Depression obviated Farquhar's chance to gain financing. The next president, Getilio Vargas, fearful of the power of the nationalistic army officers, who disapproved of foreign control of Brazilian iron ore and steel, again suspended the concession; the issue was finally resolved in 1942, when Brazil expropriated the Itabira works, with the backing of the British and American governments who wished to reward Vargas for joining the war on the Allied side. Farquhar received a modest payment, which he used to repay private loans for his ore railway surveys. The Brazilian government finally adopted his plan in the 1960's. Farquhar died in Manhattan following brain surgery for Parkinson's disease. After his death the Brazilian press lauded his pioneering efforts in transportation, utilities, rubber, cattle, steel, and iron ore exportation.

Percival Farquhar Edit Profile

entrepreneur

Background

He was born in York, Pennsylvania, the son of Arthur Briggs Farquhar, a farm-machinery manufacturer, and Elizabeth Jessop Farquhar.

Education

After attending a Presbyterian school in York, Farquhar entered Yale in 1881 to study mechanical engineering; he graduated in 1884, fifth in a class of forty-five.

He then studied law in New York City, passing the bar examination within a year.

Career

Although he never practiced law or engineering, he found his training in these fields useful to his later career. He soon became an executive of the electric railways that George Harvey had built on Staten Island and on the Jersey shore.

He speculated unsuccessfully on Wall Street during the depression years between 1893 and 1897, and represented Manhattan's "Hourglass District" in the state assembly in the early years of that decade. In 1898 he was one of the first American promoters to go to Havana, newly freed after the Spanish-American War.

While there, together with Harvey and an engineer, Fred Stark Preston, Farquhar electrified the city's twenty-seven-mile system of horse cars, moving rapidly against a number of rivals to acquire the concession.

Between 1903 and 1908, he helped banana baron Minor C. Keith obtain a concession from the Guatemalan dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera to complete a key railroad through Guatemala. He next went to Brazil, where between 1904 and 1907 he and Pearson founded the Rio de Janeiro Tramway, Light and Power Company. The new utility consolidated the inefficient tramways of the capital and expanded the tiny telephone company.

Pearson also designed Brazil's first important hydroelectric plant. The company was backed by Canadian capital and, along with its sister utility in S030 Paulo, became Canada's largest foreign company.

Between 1906 and 1912 Farquhar invested heavily in the vast, fever-ridden Amazon Basin. He acquired an Amazon navigation company and installed new boats, then built the $30 million port works at Belim, Par , raising the requisite money through the sale, in Paris, of securities in his giant holding company, the Brazil Railway. Farquhar also bought from a speculator the concession to build the "impossible" Madeira-Mamori Railway to carry rubber around nineteen falls and rapids in the world's largest tropical forest to the head of navigation on the Madeira River, where he founded the town of Porto Velho.

This railway cost $30 million and some 3, 600 men died of fevers during its construction, but it failed to make money. Both the railroad and the port were completed in 1912, just as the boom in Amazon rubber was undercut by the availability of cheap, coolie-processed rubber from South Asia. Although Brazil benefited greatly from Farquhar's economic vision, his shareholders in London and Paris sustained heavy losses.

During the same period Farquhar bought, consolidated, and extended the railways of southern Brazil. He used French capital to acquire other lines in Uruguay, northeastern Argentina, and landlocked, backward Paraguay, and he created a score of traffic-producing subsidiaries, including Brazil's largest sawmill, its first meat-packing plant, and what was briefly the world's largest cattle company.

By 1912 he was the most powerful and feared foreigner in Brazil. Farquhar was not successful in an attempt to combine unconnected rail lines into a transcontinental rail system in the United States, and in 1910 he lost $9 million to "Wall Street wolves" opposing his project.

The European depression of 1912-1913 weakened the Brazil Railway enterprises. Brazil owed Farquhar some $10 million for rail and port construction, and in July 1914 Farquhar sought to persuade European bankers and government leaders to lend Brazil $30 million, in part to pay for his construction.

In 1919 the president of Brazil, Epiticio Pess"a, invited Farquhar to return to that country to attempt to develop the world's largest known reserve of hard hematite iron ore, located around Itabira, in Minas Gerais state. Brazil badly needed an export to replace Amazonian rubber, but the nationalistic governor of Minas Gerais opposed Farquhar's plan to create an $80 million project to convert the Rio Doce valley into the Ruhr of South America.

He was Arthur Bernardes, who as president from 1922 to 1926 blocked Farquhar's concession in the national congress. The project was finally approved in 1930, when then-president Washington Luis Souza persuaded the congress and the ministry of transport to support it, but the Great Depression obviated Farquhar's chance to gain financing.

The next president, Getilio Vargas, fearful of the power of the nationalistic army officers, who disapproved of foreign control of Brazilian iron ore and steel, again suspended the concession; the issue was finally resolved in 1942, when Brazil expropriated the Itabira works, with the backing of the British and American governments who wished to reward Vargas for joining the war on the Allied side. Farquhar received a modest payment, which he used to repay private loans for his ore railway surveys.

The Brazilian government finally adopted his plan in the 1960's.

Farquhar died in Manhattan following brain surgery for Parkinson's disease. After his death the Brazilian press lauded his pioneering efforts in transportation, utilities, rubber, cattle, steel, and iron ore exportation.

Achievements

During the United States military government of Cuba, from 1899 to 1902, Farquhar also helped Sir William Van Horne, former president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, build the important Cuba Railroad which traversed half the length of the island to link Santa Clara and Santiago. He was vice-president of the Atlantic Coast Electric Railway and the Staten Island Railway, which controlled rail services in New York. He was also partner and director of the "Compañía de Electricidad de Cuba" and partner and vice-president of the Guatemala Railway. He developed businesses in Cuba and Central America. He owned railways and mines in Russia and dealt personally with Lenin. In 1911, Farquhar purchased from the firm Prado, Chaves & Cia control over the Companhia Balneária de Santo Amaro, founded in 1892 which under the direction of Councillor Antonio Prado had been created to organize a tourist beach resort in the place that is today the center of Guarujá. Farquhar's new business was called Companhia Guarujá.

Works

South America and Investments South America and Investments

book
- South America and Investments
  (Vol 203, Pages 10 It is the reproduction of the old book ...)

Religion

Both his parents were Quakers, and although he did not attend Friends Meetings, their beliefs influenced him throughout his life.

Views

Percival Farquhar believed that no country in the world could become developed without good hotels and fine cuisine.

Membership

He was a member of the New York State Assembly in 1891, 1892 (both New York Co. , 3rd D. ) and 1893 (New York Co. , 11th D. ).

Personality

By 1912 he was the most powerful and feared foreigner in Brazil.

Connections

The outbreak of World War I caused Farquhar's South American empire to collapse into receivership, and he moved to New York, where he married Cathya Popescu, the daughter of a Romanian army officer, in 1918. They had three sons.

Father:: Arthur Briggs Farquhar
Wife:: Cathya Popescu

Main Photo