Hays, Milton D.

Both Have the Same Man as President

It was a strange situation-two railroads were fighting each other tooth and nail; and the same man, Milton D. Hays, was president of both! One was the Pittsburgh & Castle Shannon, a six mile line serving the coal and steel capital of America. It extended from one of the South Side Hills of Pittsburgh, Pa., to Castle Shannon, a suburb. There it connected with the Pittsburgh Southern, running to Washington, Pa., which was really a glorified spur line of the P&C.S.

This extension, the Pittsburgh Southern, was thirty miles long, while the main line was only six. The contrast probably suggested Abraham Lincoln’s remark about a nine foot whistle on a six foot boiler to the directors of the P&C.S. Anyway, they gave much thought to this matter, and were exceedingly envious of the prestige and popularity of their southern rival. Finally they decided to do something about it.

But what could they do? They had neither ownership nor control of the Pittsburgh Southern, Milton Hays had built that road himself without calling upon the P&C.S. for any kind of financial assistance. The Pittsburgh Southern was serving a rich farm country; the local farmers had capitalized it, at the personal solicitation of Mr. Hays, and the six-mile connecting road had nothing to say about its operation.

It looked as if the P&C.S. directors were licked at the start. However, the Hays railroad owned no motive power or rolling stock; it borrowed such equipment from the northern rival. President Milton D. Hays of the P&C.S. made out the lease to President Milton D. Hays of the Pittsburgh Southern, and both presidents were eminently satisfied.

For a while this arrangement worked beautifully. The Pittsburgh Southern continued to rake in the money of farmers who shipped agricultural products and traveled by rail to the Smoky City and who ordered manufactured goods from the city for use in the country.

And then one bright May morning in 1878, the directors of the Pittsburgh & Castle Shannon Railroad struck what they thought would be the death blow to the Pittsburgh Southern Railroad. In a formal letter they announced to Mr. Hays that no more P.S. tickets would be honored by the P&C.S. and that the lease of motive power and rolling stock was terminated, both rulings to go into effect at the end of thirty days.

Further than that they could not go, Mr. Hays would still be president of the Pittsburgh & Castle Shannon Railroad through his influence with the men of wealth who had financed the construction of that road; but he was no longer permitted to use the P& C.S. equipment on his private line. It was a neat scheme to force him to turn the thirty-mile railroad over to the little P&C.S. at a bargain price, for the chief value of the Pittsburgh Southern lay in the fact that it could transport men and goods from the farm lands into the big city. If the thirty-mile road ended in a hayfield six miles from Pittsburgh, it wouldn’t be worth very much as a freight or passenger carrier.

The P&C.S. directors exulted as they planned. They rubbed their hands with glee. At last they had Mr. Milton D. Hays where they wanted him. But Mr. Milton D. Hays was not the kind to lie down and let the wheels of fate roll over him. The very day he received the board’s notification, he called upon a financier by the name of Father Henrici, head of a cult known as the Economite Society.

The Society owned and operated the little narrow-gauge Saw Mill Run Railroad. Mr. Hays had known Fr. Henrici for years, and although the two men were not reputed to be on friendly terms, Hays offered a proposition which the Economites were glad to accept.

Under the terms of this agreement, Hays would outwit the greedy directors of the Pittsburgh & Castle Shannon Railroad. To Father Henrici he explained the whole situation. “They’re squeezing me to the wall,” said Mr. Hays. “Severing my road from the Pittsburgh & Castle Shannon and leaving me in the middle of nowhere without motive power or rolling stock”.“What does that mean to the Economite Society?” Father Henrici asked cannily.

“Just this,” came the reply. You lease me a right- of -way over the tracks of the Saw Mill Run Railroad. I’ll pay you a fancy price”—he named a tempting figure—“and that will give me entrance to Pittsburgh. Then I’ll connect with Castle Shannon, my northern terminus, by laying three miles of track; and I’ll have a complete line all the way from Washington, Pa. to Pittsburgh without being bothered by the Pittsburgh & Castle Shannon Railroad. However, I must get this down within thirty days.”

“But,” questioned Father Henrici, “how can you use the Economite Railroad with its thirty-inch gage, while your road has a forty-inch gage? “Easy. We’ll lay a third rail.”

“And what will you do for rolling stock?

“You leave that to me,” Hays smiled reassuringly. “I’ve already started to do something about that. And in the meantime,” he cautioned the Economist leader, “not a word of this to anybody outside of your Society.”

Father Henrici pledged himself to secrecy. The lease was signed the following morning. Milton D. Hays was elated. Right now he held the ace cards. As president of the P&C.S. he was legally entitled to sit in on all the meetings of the board of directors, and thus he could keep informed on what they were doing, while they had no means of learning the plans of the Pittsburgh Southern Railroad. Meanwhile, he could still use the P&C.S. motive power and rolling stock, under terms of the lease which would not expire for nearly a month.

But Mr. Hays was confronted with a serious obstacle. In 1878 the P&C.S. and the Pittsburgh Southern were almost the only two railroads in the country-indeed in all the world-which had forty-inch gage. The P&C.S., originally a coal road, had been made especially to coincide with that gage, and when the Pittsburgh Southern had been built it naturally followed the same gage as the road it connected with.

“Which means,” Mr. Hays thought ruefully, “I’m going to have a pack of trouble getting motive power and rolling stock on short order.” It was only too true. Ready-made engines of forty-inch gage could not be had for love or money, although Mr. Hays appealed desperately to all of the builders in the East. Not one of them had such an engine on hand, but all were willing to manufacture as many forty-inch engines as he could pay for, if only he’d give them time.

But time was mighty important to the hard-pressed railroad builder. Since he could not buy a forty-inch locomotive on short notice, and since his roadbed was not heavy enough to carry a heavier type, he succeeded in locating a twenty-four ton locomotive of thirty-six inch gage which the Pittsburgh Locomotive Works agreed to sell to him for $4,500.

He bought it. Then, looking around for rolling stock to fit such power, he found a small three-foot gage line in northwestern Pennsylvania and quickly made a deal with them for two passenger coaches, one baggage car, and three flat cars. Buying these, he exacted a pledge of secrecy and ordered the equipment to be relettered with the name Pittsburgh Southern.

While this was being done, progress was being made on the work of grading for the three miles of railroad to be built between Castle Shannon and the terminus of the Economites’ Railroad. This work was pushed with the use of the P&C.S. equipment, which under the still unexpired lease the Pittsburgh Southern was permitted to use. The P&C.S. directors fretted and fumed but could not do anything to stop the work.