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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 20, 1912)
THE OMAHA SUNDAY BEE Head of the Rock Island System Henry U. Mudge Has Been a Practical Railroad Man All His Life H lENRY U. MUDGE, president of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad Com- a Tir pany, is one of .the best known and most conspicuous figures among practical railroad men in the country. For forty years, ever since he was 16 years old, he has been continuously in the employ of two railroads the Atchison and the Rock Island. There is no kink or wrinkle in the railroad business that he does not understand. He began as water boy on a construction job, and between this responsible task and that Of being president of one of the largest and most Impor tant and rrosperoua rail roads in the United States he has held down succes sively nearly every position that the profession of rail roading has ti offer. He has never had any help except his own applica tion, industry and a natural aptitude for this line of work. The railroad busi ness la second nature to him now, and he thinks in terms of ties and switches, box cars and compound locomo tive boilers. He is as straight and true as the steel rails of his own favor ite road. He runs his daily life on a schedule which makes no allowance for wrecks and collisions; he has never been sidetracked in his course, but has come undevlatingly forward, head-on, from his first boy ish adventure in the busi ness to his present com manding position. Mr. Mudge was born at Minden, Mich., June 9, 1856. His father was a Canadian farmer, who crossed over into Michigan and settled there with his family; he sent his children to school at Minden when ever he could spare them from the farm, but young Henry had ambitions, an J at the first opportunity he studied telegraphy, a science which was then In Its in fancy, and which attracted many young men because good operators were scarce and could command pretty fair pay. In 1873 he obtained em ployment on the Atchison, Topeka. & Santa Fe railroad as a teiegrapner; tney sta tioned him first at Sterling, Kan., and then moved him about to other places. His record was good and after a time the company put him on train service as brakeman; then he became In succession freight conduc tor, train dispatcher, roadmaster, trainmaster, division superintendent and finally, in 1893, he was made general superintendent of the road This office he held with marked suc cess for seven years until 1900, when he was made general manager of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe rail road; and it is not difficult to Im agine that this was a very happy mo ment in his life, for nothing does a man more good than to feel that he has earned the promotion he has got and got the promotion he has earned. From Atchison to Rock Island This was the last position he held with the Atchison road; he had be come known by that time to other roads, and in 1905, after some thirty two years of continuous and faithful service, he was offered the office of subsidiary roads, and is establishing it each year on a firmer and more profitable basis. One of the im provements recently introduced is a fine passenger train between Chicago and Los Angeles, which makes the run 1b a shorter time than any other road between those points, although the distance is greater. Another ex ceptionally fine passenger run is that between Omaha and Denver, which is being widely advertised and patron ized. Bringing to bear his remarkably clear and logical reasoning powers, Mr. Mudge sees in the state of Ne- 52SH5Z5ESESara5HSES2S2H5Sn5E52ffi5i S HENRY U. MUDGE, President of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway second vice president of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railroad, which he accepted, thus terminating his connection with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe. On January 1, 1910, he was elected president of the Rock Island road, an office which he still holds. He is applying his splendid training and thorough mastery of the railroad business to building up and strength ening this line, both main branch and braska a future bo far surpassing the present magnificent showing that he has taken a particular personal inter ets in providing terminal facilities and improvements in the city of Omaha in order to handle the busi ness of the Rock Island Railroad in a manner so thorough as to give this road many advantages over its com petitors. Within the next few months actual building operations will have been started for an enormous freight terminal in the city of Omr.-.a This road is the great ou.iet from Omaha and South Omaha to the southwest Kansas, Texas and Okla homa and its importance in this re spect will be enormously iacreased after the opening of the Panama Canal, for it runs straight down to Galveston and New Orleans, the prin cipal gulf ports, being little doubt that there will be a big increase of business as soon as Nebraska corn and beef can find their way by a short, easy and cheap route to Pacific ports. Progress and expansion has been the keynote of Mr. Mudge's adminis tration. That this policy has been a successful one is apparent to the most unen lightened layman. It is easily seen what rare fore thought has been exercised by Mr. Mudge and his as sistants in preparing to han dle a large proportion of the great bulk of these ship ments. It is but a few years since enormous terminals in New Orleans built by the Frisco System, which is closely al lied to the Rock Island, were completed, and it is quite within the range of proba bility that the great freight facilities of these roads in Omaha and New Orleans will be of assistance to each other. No railroad president has the material interest of Ne braska at heart more than Mr. Mudge. He is prepared to go to any reasonable length to Improve conditions and offer her people all the assistance that lies in his power. Mr. Mudge is an excellent speaker, and his great fa miliarity with all the phases of railroad life makes him much in demand on public occasions. One of hid speeches, delivered before the Commercial club of To peka, Kan., on April 11, 1911, entitled "Half Slave and Half Free," and dealing with rate regulation, has been widely copied and quoted. Speaking, near the close, of his own road, he says: "This company was the first to reach and bridge the Mississippi river. There was much opposition on the part of the river shipping inter ests, who sought to prevent. Abra ham Lincoln, at that time a Rock Island attorney, in his argument said: 'It is not at all improbable that the traffic crossing this bridge may, at some future time, be even greater than that passing up and down the river.' How correctly he prophesied you will see when I tell you that the average number of freight and pas senger cars now passing over this bridge is about 1,400 per day."