Business & Finance: Burlington Men

Readers, who last week thumbed their magazines and newspapers for advertisements of railroad routes and accommodations, paused at a full page display. Its headlines read:

Ten railroad presidents can say: “I was a Burlington man.”

With proper pride the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. R. was celebrating its 75th anniversary with a boast: “There are ten presidents of U. S. railroads who can look back at their training days with the Burlington.” The advertisements might well have told off their names:

William George Besler, Central R. R. of New Jersey; Harry E. Byram, Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul (now receiver); Howard Elliott, Northern Pacific; James Edward Gorman, Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific; Howard George Hetzler, Western Indiana; N. L. Howard, C. G. W.; Charles Mack Levey, Western Pacific; Henry Miller, Terminal R. R. of St. Louis; H. C. Nutt, Monongahela; Daniel Willard, Baltimore & Ohio.

The coincidence of their training with the Burlington is noteworthy. Noteworthy too are the facts that six of the ten served their railroad apprenticeships with this line, that six of them are in their 60’s, that Presidents Daniel Willard and Howard Elliott might also write themselves university trustees (TIME, May 3).

Gently boastful though these advertisements were, yet they revealed a quaint modesty. They might well have told of the eleventh Burlington-trained railroad president. He is Hale Holden, 57, president of the Burlington itself.