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While De Sapio is making the proper maneuvers in public—keeping Harriman alive as a candidate, but not pushing him too far out—Averell Harriman will be working intensely toward the goal in his own way. At whatever game he is playing —polo, croquet, iskiing, bridge, railroading, diplomacy, politics—he has a consuming urge to keep working, driving, doing. One reason for that urge may well be the fact that, if he had been inclined to loaf, he would not have had to turn a hand throughout his life. His father gave him many of the rewards men work for. But, as Averell Harriman's career shows, his father did not give him everything.
"The Little Giant." E. H. (for Edward Henry) Harriman, the son of an impecunious Episcopal clergyman, went to work at 14 as a $5-a-week pad-shover (messenger-clerk) in Wall Street. A brilliant lad with a phenomenal memory, he studied the market, watched the rich and great of the Street in their buying. Soon he began to buy and win. At 18 he was a junior partner in an uncle's firm; in 1870, when he was 22, he had his own firm and a seat on the Exchange. Eventually, he became the "Little Giant" of Wall Street, one of the most successful and powerful financiers in U.S. history.
E. H. Harriman's fateful association with railroading began in 1879, when he married Mary Averell, daughter of the president of the Ogdensburg & Lake Champlain Railroad. The bride's father provided a special train with the name "E. H. Harriman" painted on the locomotive. E. H. became a director of the road the next year. By the time he died, in 1909, he was the dominant figure in 75,000 miles of railroads worth $5 billion; he controlled Wells-Fargo Express Co.; he was president of 16 corporations and a guiding genius of 27 others.
While he had great financial success, E. H. Harriman was not received into the highest social and political circles of his time. Theodore Roosevelt included Harri man among his "malefactors of great wealth." Such criticism hurt E. H. Harri man. He wanted to be accepted. In Vienna he once plaintively deplored the fact that he had not been received by Emperor Franz Joseph. Said he: "I am in a position to realize the magnitude of this monarch's task ... I feel sorry that arrangements have not been made to allow my being presented to the Emperor, whom I dare hope might have been interested to meet a man who had had some experience in controlling men and affairs, though of course in quite another sphere."
When E. H. Harriman died, he left a will of just 99 words, bequeathing his entire fortune to his wife. From Financial Genius Harriman, who was never accused of sentimentality, this was the highest form of compliment. It was deserved. Taking over the fortune at 58, to become the world's richest woman, Mrs. Harriman entered a special line in her biography in Who's Who in America: "Sole heir upon death of husband to estate appraised at about $100,000,000, of which is mgr."