Word: bitterness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...bitter settlement of accounts after World War II, French justice gave short shrift to the men who had run the Vichy government for the Nazis. By the records, 8,348 collaborators were executed without benefit of trial and another 1,325 were sent to their death by kangaroo courts. In a trial that many Frenchmen would like to forget, the top collaborator of them all, Vichy Chief of Government Pierre Laval, drew his death sentence from a "High Court of Justice" that included resistance veterans who yelled curses at the defendant. When Laval swallowed poison just before his scheduled execution...
...Young was after power as well as money. While building his personal fortune, he began a battle to win control of Alleghany Corp., the rundown holding company of railroads and real estate put together by Cleveland's famed Van Sweringen brothers. After bitter battles with Wall Street bankers, the Interstate Commerce Commission and some of Alleghany's chief stockholders (Young became known as "the most litigious man in Wall Street"). Young bought heavily into Alleghany in 1937 with $1,000,000 of his own money and $3,000,000 put up by an associate, Allan Kirby...
High on the Hog. Taking over as chairman of the C. & O., he cashed in on the war-brought prosperity of the railroads. Flush with millions, he began the bitter attacks on the railroad industry that marked his stormy career from then on, launched a publicity campaign whose high point was the famous newspaper ad that said: "A hog can cross the country without changing trains-but you can't." He lashed out fiercely at "goddam bankers" (his favorite phrase) for their control of the railroads, set himself up as the champion of the people in a crusade...
...owned, was forced by lenders to sell as the price skidded lower. By year's end he had unloaded all but a few thousand of his remaining shares "to take tax losses." Friends insisted Young's own personal finances were in good shape, but it was a bitter blow for him to lose so much money on his own road...
...Equally bitter to Young was the knowledge that others who had counted on him to make good were also losing money. The Central's directors, all brought in by Young, lost hundreds of thousands of dollars as the road's stock fell. His Alleghany Corp. had paper losses of more than $16 million on stock it had bought in the New York Central. To make matters worse, Bob Young was being challenged in the courts by a former associate named Randolph Phillips, who blocked some of Young's pet plans for Alleghany Corp. (TIME...