Business: Death of Hughitt

Last week, in Lake Forest, Ill., an old man was having his breakfast. Suddenly, he put his napkin down on the table; before the servant could reach him, he had fallen to the floor across the arm of his chair. An hour or two later, the newspapers in Chicago had headlines saying that Marvin Hughitt, Finance Chairman of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, had suffered a paralytic stroke. The morning after the old man had been carried upstairs from his breakfast table, the newspapers published extra editions to say that Marvin Hughitt had died, without regaining consciousness. Some days later every wheel stopped on 10,000 miles of railroad.

Ninety years ago, Marvin Hughitt was born on a farm in Genoa, N. Y. When he was 15, he was a telegraph operator in Albany. Ten years later he went without sleep for two nights to supervise the complicated departure of trains carrying Union soldiers to Cairo, Ill. While the railroads were pushing their bright tentacles across the Northwest, Marvin Hughitt was becoming assistant general manager of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, manager of the Pullman Palace Car Co., general superintendent of the Chicago & Northwestern, for whose present 10,000 miles of track he is largely responsible. In 1887 he became its president and remained so for 23 years. In 1910, he was made chairman of the board, an office which was abolished two years ago when he resigned to head the Finance Committee.

Like famed Chauncey Mitchell Depew, another survivor of a fibrous generation of railroad men, Marvin Hughitt was bothered by newsmongers because he continued to go to his office every day, despite the fact that he had reached an age never attained by less sturdy toilers. When, recently, he was asked by a coy cub reporter what advice he had to give the younger generation, Marvin Hughitt took thought for a moment. Then he replied: “Why, none.”