Background
Robert Scott Lovett was born on June 22, 1860 on a farm near San Jacinto, Texas, United States. His father had been a fairly prosperous farmer but lost heavily in the Reconstruction period following the Civil War.
Robert Scott Lovett was born on June 22, 1860 on a farm near San Jacinto, Texas, United States. His father had been a fairly prosperous farmer but lost heavily in the Reconstruction period following the Civil War.
When Robert Lovett was fourteen years old his father offered him an opportunity to go to New Orleans to study medicine, but the boy had made up his mind to become a lawyer. Failing to secure parental approval of that course, Robert worked his own way through the Houston high school, later studied law in the office of Charles Stewart in Houston and was admitted to the Texas bar in 1882.
In 1882 Lovett started the practice of law in Cold Spring, Texas. Two years later he began to handle local cases for the Houston East & West Texas Railroad, a property affiliated with the Southern Pacific System. In 1889 he was appointed assistant general attorney of the Texas & Pacific Railroad, a Gould property, and in 1891 general attorney, but in 1892 he became a member of the firm of Baker, Botts, Baker & Lovett, who acted as counsel for the Southern Pacific when that property was acquired by Harriman after the death of Collis P. Huntington.
Specializing in the railroad work of the firm for the Southern Pacific, Lovett made a favorable impression on Harriman, who called him to New York in 1904 and made him general counsel for both the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific systems, then known as the Harriman Lines. When Harriman died in 1909 Lovett succeeded him as chairman of the executive committee and as president of the two great railroad systems. He held those positions until January 1913, when the close relations and common control of the Union Pacific-Southern Pacific systems were dissolved by decree of the United States Supreme Court holding that the combination was an unreasonable restraint of trade and therefore illegal under the Sherman antitrust law. Thereafter, until 1918, Lovett's activities were confined to the Union Pacific System as chairman of the executive committee of the board of directors.
During the First World War he took leave of absence from the Union Pacific to serve first from August 1917 to March 1918 as priorities commissioner of the War Industries Board, and second
from March to December 1918 as director of capital expenditures and member of the Advisory Committee on Purchases of the United States Railroad Administration. In January 1919 he returned to the Union Pacific System and acted as president of the Union Pacific Railroad until the end of that year, when he resumed the chairmanship of the system board. His service in that capacity was terminated by resignation in 1924, but he continued as a member of the board of directors of the Union Pacific until his death.
Having once served on the bench in Texas, he was generally known and addressed as Judge Lovett. In contrast to Harriman's policy of centralizing in himself the powers of supervision and control in detail, both in matters strictly local to each separate railroad and in those affecting the far-flung system as a whole, Lovett believed in decentralization and acted accordingly when he became the chief executive. In the president of each railroad he vested power to supervise and control all local departments and to decide promptly any local question that arose. Only in broad matters affecting the system as a whole were authority and jurisdiction vested in the chairman of the executive committee, the system directors of operation and traffic, and the system comptroller. This change in policy gave maximum play to the advantageous elements in large-scale organization, minimized the disadvantages of centralization of power, and did much to improve the relations between the individual railroads and the system as a whole with the general public.
Physically Lovett was a commanding figure. While somewhat austere in countenance and reserved in manner he had a kindly disposition and was courteous and considerate in dealing with associates and subordinates. Under stress he never lost his temper nor raised his voice.
On October 20, 1890, Lovett married Lavinia Abercrombie of Huntsville, Texas. One son, Robert Abercrombie, was born on September 14, 1895.