I
Some excerpts from an article on the late J. H. Osterman, by C. A.
Gridley, Chief Engineer of the Osterman Development Company. This
article appeared in the Engineering Record, for August last.
“My admiration for the late J. H. Osterman was based on his force and
courage and initiative, rather than upon his large fortune and the
speed with which he had accumulated it after he had passed the age
of forty. Mr. Osterman was not always a pleasant person to be near.
Not that he was given to violent rages, but in the prosecution of his
various enterprises he had the faculty of giving one the impression
that but a fraction of his thoughts was being revealed and that he
was sitting apart and in judgment upon one, as it were, even while he
talked. He had the habit of extracting the most carefully thought-out
opinions of all those about him, and when all had been said of shaking
his head and dismissing the whole matter as negligible, only to make
use of the advice in some form later. At such times he was apt to
convince himself, and quite innocently, I am sure, that his final
opinion was his own.
“In so far as I could judge from hearsay and active contact with him
for a period of something like fourteen years, Mr. Osterman was one
who required little if any rest and at all times much work to keep
him content. His was an intense and always dominant personality. Even
after he had passed the age of sixty-five, when most men of means are
content to rest and let others assume the strenuous burdens of the
world, he was always thinking of some new thing to do. It was only the
week before he died, stricken while walking upon his verandah, that
he was in my office with a plan to subsidize the reigning authorities
of a certain minor Asiatic state, in order that certain oil and other
properties there might be developed under peaceful conditions. A part
of this plan contemplated a local army to be organized and equipped and
maintained at his expense. Of a related nature was his plan for the
double-screw platform descents and exits for the proposed New York-New
Jersey traffic tunnel, which he appears to have worked out during the
spring which preceded his sudden demise and plans for which he was
most anxious to have this department prepare in order that they might
be submitted to the respective states. It is hardly needful to state,
since the fact is generally known, that those plans have been accepted.
Of a related nature were those Argentine-Chilean Trans-Andean railway
projects so much discussed in the technical engineering as well as
the trade papers of a few years since, and which recently have been
jointly financed by the two governments. Only the natural tact and
diplomacy of a man like Mr. Osterman, combined with his absolute genius
for detecting and organizing the natural though oftentimes difficult
resources of a country, would have been capable of making anything out
of that very knotty problem. It was too much identified with diplomacy
and the respective ambitions and prejudices of the countries involved.
Yet it was solved and he succeeded in winning for his South American
organization the confidence and friendship of the two governments.”