(2 of 7)
Young claims that his battle cry that "A hog can cross the country without changing trains—but you can't!" had forced the railroads to start the first through transcontinental service. He had sounded off about a lot of things that people had been putting up with and not liking—the block-selling of Pullman space (by which big companies often tied up space they did not use), old-fashioned sleeping cars ("rolling tenements"). He had pulled his roads out of the venerable Association of American Railroads ("that broken-down lobby") and this month will set up his own railroad association.
By these defiant trumpet blasts he had established himself firmly as the champion of the people against what he loved to call the "banker-dominated railroads." The Department of Justice, blessing his efforts, had asked the Supreme Court to take away the Pullman Co. from 35 railroads which wanted to operate it, and turn it over to Bob Young.
Help for Alleghany. Popular champion that he was, Bob Young also had his hands on a greater potential monopoly than any other railroader. He got his hands on it when he bought control of Alleghany Corp. in 1937. This fantastic financial Humpty Dumpty, put together by Cleveland's famed Van Sweringen brothers, O.P. and M.J., was one of the worst examples of giddy railroad financing of the '20s. After it crashed in 1932, no one thought it could ever be put together again.
But Bob Young, then an obscure Wall Street millionaire with a sharp eye for bargains, thought the potential whole was worth the pieces. For $4,000,000 cash which he and some friends put up, he bought control of Alleghany Corp. from George A. Ball (Ball Mason jars), who was dabbling in rail stocks. (Another 1.2 million shares were held by Ball as security for an additional $2 million which Young needed to complete the deal.) For this small amount of money, Bob Young got close to $2 billion worth of assets, on the books. The assets included either large stock interests or outright control of a dozen railroads with 23,000 miles of track, coal mines, trucking companies, peach orchards. And some trouble.
Trouble came from the House of Morgan, which had financed the Van Swerin-gens and wanted to keep Young out; from the ICC (which Young insultingly called "that tool of the bankers"). By his lawsuits, Young got to be known as the "most litigious man in Wall Street, who would sue anyone at the drop of a subpoena."
Just when it seemed as if he could hang on no longer, Young sued Ball, and collected $4,000,000 (including Ball's Alleghany holdings) from him on the grounds that even the low price of the $2 billion empire had been rigged too high. Then Bob Young persuaded the ICC to order rail securities sold at competitive bidding, thus knocking Morgan, Stanley & Co. and other New York bond houses which had fought to bar Young from Alleghany out of much fat business once given them by friendly railroads. By then Young's sandy hair had turned white and his self-esteem had become somewhat Napoleonic.
Help from ICC? Just how he was going to assert .his claimed control of the New York Central he did not know—at the moment. But Young intended to get his men on the Central's board somehow. If