Interrupted

Once every year, ticket agents and freight handlers at the sun-scorched railway stations dotted along the lines of the Northern Pacific shook hands with a rotund little man who climbed briskly down the steps of a private car. Many he knew by name, knew their histories and their troubles. He told them a good railroading yarn, climbed back into his car.

Approachable, candid, he was a hero to many a cub reporter. He said: "I am a quasi-public servant. I have no more right to refuse an interview to a newspaperman than to a director of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad." To neither newspapermen nor directors did he refuse interviews on the day he took over the N. Y., N. H. & H. in an effort to reduce accidents, deficits. On that day the ringing of a telephone had interrupted his breakfast. And a terror-stricken voice had reported the wrecking of the Bar Harbor Express, the loss of 23 lives.

Last week, Howard Elliott died. He lived just long enough to see the N.Y., N. H. & H. pay a dividend on its common stock, the first in 15 years, a direct result of his four years (1913-17) of reorganization. But the most tangible evidence of his labor lies in the Northwest. First as president, then as chairman of the board of the Northern Pacific, he watched, encouraged, hastened the development of a vast territory.

He joined many clubs, held many offices. Harvard university was his hobby.*

On the first Monday of each month he made the trip from New York to Cambridge to attend the meeting of the Harvard overseers. Of this governing group and of the active money-raising Harvard Fund Council, Railroader Elliott was president.

*Another railroader, famed President Daniel Willard of the B. & O., makes Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore) his hobby (TIME, May 3, 1926).