PERSONNEL: Stepping Out

In 1907 Arthur Curtiss James was 40 and he had just received $25,000,000 by his father’s will. Instead of diversifying his investment as he was advised, he began to concentrate in railroad securities. By 1926 he had a beard like a buffalo, owned the world’s largest square-rigged yacht (the 675-ton Aloha), was Board Chairman of the big Western Pacific, controlled 40,000 miles of railroad trackage—a full seventh of the U. S. total—most of it in the Northwest, stamping ground of the late great Railroad Builder James Jerome Hill, whom he had known and idolized. By 1931 he had welded Western Pacific and others of his holdings together until he controlled two through routes running from Chicago to the Pacific Coast, had built a line connecting their Pacific terminals, Seattle and San Francisco.

By last week Arthur Curtiss James, now 72, had turned another corner. The biggest railroad owner announced that he no longer felt able to handle the duties of Western Pacific’s Board Chairmanship, that at year’s end he would vacate it.