A GIGANTIC SPECULATION.

Dunstan Times, Issue 949, 25 June 1880, Page 3

A GIGANTIC SPECULATION.

Among the remarkable men in the United States (says a contemporary), one is coming to the front of whom presently much more will be heard. His name is Victor Newcomb, anil ho is rapidly rising to a position not unlike that held some years ago in England by Hudson, the Railway King. It is believed bc’will have built up a fortune of two millions sterling by the time he enters his 40th year. Newcomb’s field is the purchase and combination of railway companies. He is now vice-president of the Louisville and Nashville road, and sole owner of the undertaking, lie controls, more or less, all the lines between Chicago on the north and the Gulf of Mexico on the south, and between St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans on the West and Atlantic Ocean. Having brought his passengers and freight to the seaboard, it is in his steamers that they are carried to New York or Cuba ; and from Charleston southwards to New Orleans, Newcomb controls every port. This enormous property comprises over 5000 miles of railway, and live or six lines of steamers ; it is worth more than L 2,400,000, and does the large business of 10,000,000d01s per annum. Young Newcomb’s father commenced the enterprise, and had largely succeeded, wdien the civil war interfered and stopped further progress. Another effort was made ; then came the panic of 1874, and Mr Newcomb saw nothing but ruin before bim. At this juncture young Newcomb, who had but shortly before returned from completing bis education in Europe, volunteered to sell the bonds of the Louisville and Nashville railway in London. He succeeded, returned home to receive his father’s dying words, and before he was 30 years of age ho found himself entrusted with an organisation such as no man at his age had ever before managed. He has bought line after line, to unite his various iron ways, and is now making the busiest preparations for the future.