Canadian Boundary Line Fails to Bisect the Sphere of Usefulness of a
Massachusetts Man.
Henry M. Whitney has crowded three or four great business careers into
his life, and each of them has resulted in good to the community in
which he operated. His father, General James S. Whitney, was fairly
prosperous, though there were then no capitalists and no rich men, as
rich men are reckoned to-day, in Conway, Massachusetts, where he lived.
Henry M. Whitney was born in Conway in 1839. He studied in the public
schools and at Williston Seminary until he was sixteen years old; then
he went to work in the Conway Savings Bank. When his father became
collector of the port of Boston, he went with him as a clerk, and later,
when the father entered the employ of the Metropolitan Steamship
Company, the son again went with him, still as a clerk.
His rise was neither rapid nor spectacular, but it was steady,
continuous, and solid. When General Whitney died in 1879 he was
president of the Metropolitan, and his son succeeded him in the office.
At forty years of age Henry M. Whitney was a fairly rich man, but known
to few people. The work that made his name known throughout the country
came afterward. He had begun to deal in suburban real estate in the
vicinity of Boston, and had picked Brookline as especially fitted for
development. It was a section much favored as a place of residence by
Boston business men, and as a first step in the development of his
holdings Whitney built, chiefly at his own expense, a magnificent
boulevard from the town to Boston. Over this the men who had offices in
the city were accustomed to drive daily, just as to-day they go in their
automobiles.
The development and extension of the trolley in the late eighties gave
Whitney another opportunity, and he built a trolley line from Brookline
to Boston. When he reached the city limits he found himself against a
stone wall.
The Boston horse-car companies would not allow him to transfer his
passengers without their paying another fare, and would make no
provisions for connections between the cars. They would not permit him
to get a franchise, and they ridiculed the idea that their own lines
would ever be operated by electricity. The Brookline line was sandbagged
and rendered worthless, for all it could offer passengers was a
pleasant, and, at the time, a novel ride to the Boston city line.
Whitney made several attempts to persuade the Boston companies to allow
him to use their tracks, and offered to stand part of the expense of
installing electric equipment. The offer was turned down, and the little
“West End” road still hung on the ragged edge.
Then Whitney went to work in another way. He quietly bought up the stock
of the various companies, and when at last matters came to a test he and
his friends were in control, and the “West End” entered Boston. Later it
gave its name to practically the whole Boston street railroad service.
As a first result of Whitney’s control and amalgamation of the Boston
streetcar lines, that city was among the earliest in the country to
benefit from an adequate trolley service.
In 1893 Whitney got control of the Cape Breton coal mines. Before then
the mines had dragged along, doing a fair business, but not advancing to
any extent. The people in Cape Breton did not have the money to develop
them, and the English capitalists in control were disinclined to advance
any money for the purpose.
Whitney saw a chance to push Cape Breton coal into new markets, and soon
the mines at Louisbourg and Glace Bay were doubling and trebling their
output, and Sydney and North Sydney became thriving ports. He had also
entered the gas business in Boston, and he began importing Cape Breton
coal for the gas and coke works at Everett, near Boston. Such an
increase in industry gave a tremendous impetus to Cape Breton, but it
was not until Whitney added steel, coke, and gas plants that Cape Breton
realized the full benefit of his work.
About the time Whitney entered the coal-mining industry, a fisherman had
come in with a killock so peculiar that it drew attention. Examination
showed that it was almost pure iron ore. He had found it near Belle
Isle, between Newfoundland and Labrador. Further search showed that
there were enormous deposits of excellent iron ore at Belle Isle.
The Sydneys had a good port and coal in abundance. Whitney made the
combination that has resulted in the building of the great iron works at
North Sydney. Fifteen years ago the two towns together did not have much
more than four thousand inhabitants. At present they have nearly five
times that number, and are thriving, growing cities, shipping enormous
quantities of coal, and the Dominion Iron and Steel Company at North
Sydney is regularly turning out twenty thousand tons of steel a month.
About three-fourths of this is steel rails, and the enormous development
of Canada’s railroad extension easily calls for much more than that.
Cape Breton is no longer a negligible section of the world, dependent on
its fisheries, the scanty farm produce that its stony soil yields, and
its mines slovenly managed and ill-developed. It is steadily growing
rich, and the workers are prosperous. Both of these conditions are
directly due to the foresight and management of Henry M. Whitney.