CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



for a company which set out to bring mahogany 

 from San Domingo. He invested $55,000 in 

 the Tehuantepec Inter-Ocean Railroad, an am- 

 bitious attempt to join the Atlantic and Pacific 

 oceans by rail, which was begun in 1879 and 

 came to an inglorious end several years later. 

 And he was one of that daring group of Amer- 

 icans who planned and financed the Union 

 Pacific Railway the first road that really 

 joined sea to sea and reached to the farthest 

 acre in the West. 



In all these undertakings he lost money, except 

 in the instances of Chicago real estate and the 

 Union Pacific. By 1883 he had several hun : 

 dred thousand dollars invested in gold mines, 

 and yet had not received one dollar of profit. 

 It was the fascination of pioneering that had 

 lured him. He saw no charm, as the gambler 

 does, in the risk itself. The Wall Street game 

 he regarded as child's play. The thing that 

 gripped him was the developing of new material 

 resources the colonization of new lands 

 the mastery of whatever is hostile to the welfare 

 of the human race. 



[144] 



