Word: centralize
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Young was a man of grandiose ideas and supreme self-confidence who felt it his destiny to create a great transcontinental railroad system that would put to shame the 19th century railroad empires of Harriman, Vanderbilt and Gould. The keystone would be the Central. But it was not until 1954 that he was ready to move in for the kill. Quietly he had bought up stock, then loudly bombarded the Central with newspaper ads attacking its operating policies. Gradually, he softened confidence in the Central's management until he finally captured the road with the help of a dazzling...
Young made a clean sweep of Central's board (including such "goddam bankers" as two descendants of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt and the head of J. P. Morgan & Co.), brought in Alfred E. Perlman from the Denver & Rio Grande to run the road. The Central was one of the most heavily mortgaged U.S. roads and in terms of its heavy and unprofitable passenger traffic one of the least desirable. But Young talked as if his mere presence would banish trouble and nurture prosperity. For a while, it seemed as if Young would repeat the success he had with the coal...
Down the Road. Bob Young's golden moment soon passed. Like every other U.S. road, the Central was caught in the nationwide rail slump. Fortnight ago the Central's directors voted not to pay the quarterly dividend. The railroad's earnings had plummeted along with the stock, which reached a low of 13¼ last week. Bob Young, who had borrowed heavilyto buy the 100,000 shares of Central stock he owned, was forced by lenders to sell as the price skidded lower. By year's end he had unloaded all but a few thousand...
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...
...dreamily remembers how Stanislaw came to the U.S., how he became foreman in a knitting mill, fathered five daughters. Stella herself appears, a slut (or so it seems) newly married to a fat cloak-and-suiter. As details of her childhood come into focus, the reader approaches the shattered central figure of Stanislaw Machek...