The Daily Gazette

A New Railroad King.— A correspondent of the Philadelphia Sunday Times gives its readers the history of the rise and progress of a new southern railroad magnate, who bids fair to equal, if he does not excel the Vanderbilts, and other New York railroad celebrities. The new manager has only entered upon his fortieth year, and already controls five thousand miles of railroad and several steamship lines connecting therewith. By the rise in railroad stocks he is supposed to have acquired great wealth and is already rated at ten millions of dollars. Victor Newcomb is the name by which he is known. As to what he controls the story is told thusly:—

'Suppose you are in Chicago and want to go to New Orleans, you do this without leaving the tracks of his roads. If you are in St. Louis and want to go to Savannah his cars carry you through, and when you reach Savannah you find superb steamers belonging to his lines ready to carry you to New York or to Florida. If you are in Louisville and want to go to Havana or Vera Cruz, he carries you behind his engines to Pensacola, and there puts you on his steamers for either point named. If you are at Memphis and wish to go to Port Royal his trains take you. If you are coasting down the Atlantic coast you find that his freight and passenger trains enter every port on the ocean or the Gulf between Wilmington and Galveston, and absolutely control every port between Charleston and New Orleans. In the interior you will find that he enters Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville, Montgomery, Augusta, and in fact, that his lines have fallen like a web over the vast territory embraced between Chicago on the north, and the Gulf on the south—between St. Louis and Memphis and New Orleans on the west to the ocean on the east.

This vast system comprises the bulk of the Mississippi Valley and the South Atlantic States—it has over 5,000 miles of railway, five or six lines of steamships—is worth over one hundred and twenty millions of dollars, and does a business of fifty millions per annum. Of course, under this system there are many separate corporations and organizations, but the whole of it, from the Gulf to the lakes, and the Mississippi to the Atlantic, is under the control of this masterful young fellow. There is not a foot of road that he does not control or over which he cannot fix the rate. Every fibre of the vast body responds to the touch of his potential fingers. I presume he controls more miles of railroad than any man living, certainly with the exception of Jay Gould, who has built up a bundle of roads that look like a pile of jackstraws.'