Big Chief Ousted

"A railroad," Canadian National's robustious Sir Henry Worth Thornton has said time & again, "is never finished." Last week the veracity of his remark was once more impressed upon him. After a decade in the presidency of Canada's great public-owned rail system he was forced to resign. And while CNR's service has benefited immeasurably from Thorntonian touches, his job was far from finished, the CNR was far from becoming a moneymaker.

When in 1922 Prime Minister King picked Sir Henry to take over the management of the 22,000 mi. of track (Grand Trunk Pacific, Grand Trunk, Canadian Northern, Transcontinental, Intercolonial) which had fallen into Canada's not welcoming hands, he seemed the only man for the job. His past record was filled with superb successes, his genial personality made him seem just the right man for a position which carried with it much contact with politicians. Last week Sir Henry's downfall was being discussed in Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver. It was easy for one side to say he was not a good railroadman, that he had wasted his company's money in lavish expenditures on the road and on himself. But it was just as easy for the other side to say that throughout his career Sir Henry had forever been confronted with the difficult task of keeping out of politics.

Direct cause of Sir Henry's resignment was resentment at his expenditures. It has been a matter of public knowledge that he had received $75,000 a year from CNR plus $15,000 from its subsidiaries, $18,000 a year for his home, other sums for entertaining. To people who know Sir Henry there was nothing startling in these disclosures. He is a large, jovial man of 60 who stands 6 ft. 4 in., weighs nearly 16 stone (220 lb.), wears a Size 8 hat, Size 12 shoe. He likes caviar at least once a day, has a fondness for oysters, small pickled onions and other things he knows are not good for him. He is frank and forward, likes to work as hard as he lives. His ebullience and flair for speechmaking have made more than one tycoon call him "Canada's Charlie Schwab." It would be as hard to believe that he had not taken all he could get out of a job as it would be to believe he did not throw himself into it with his full force. In fact, there were those who felt that the deepest cause of his removal was the fear of Canada's Big Businessmen, to whom Conservative Premier Bennett is so much closer than was Liberal Premier King, that vigorous Sir Henry was making the competition too hot for Canadian Pacific.

Sir Henry's resignation came in the form of a well-tempered note to the directors. Said he: "In my opinion, a publicly owned railroad can be successful only if the management has the complete confidence of the owners. Public criticism indicates that such confidence is at least not general." The resignation was promptly accepted and Sir Henry was voted a $75,000 gratuity, perhaps because his contract had a 12-month notice clause.

Quick to express regret were CNR's employes, among whom Sir Henry was especially popular. "During Sir Henry's stewardship," their spokesman said, "cooperation between labor and management . . . has been developed to a degree unsurpassed anywhere in the railroad industry. Sir Henry leaves behind him one of the finest monuments in human relations ever erected in large scale industry."

Immediately upon Sir Henry's resignation a rumor was started that he may become the "tsar" which the western U. S. roads are seeking. Fred Wesley Sargent, president of Chicago & North Western, confirmed the fact that Sir Henry's name was being considered. His long railroad experience began in the U. S. A potent football player at University of Pennsylvania in 1893, Indiana-born Sir Henry coached the Vanderbilt University team at $100 a week for his first job, then became a draftsman for Pennsylvania Railroad at $50 a month. He caught the attention of bush-bearded Leonor Fresnel Loree, then general manager of the road. He was whipped through every department of the Pennsylvania to get a background which would enable him to teach and train employes. In 1911 he was given the task of rehabilitating the Long Island Railroad. With this experience, he left in 1914 for England. He carried two suitcases when he sailed, one filled with clothes, the other with reports of England's Great Eastern Railway of which he was to be general manager. He met the problems of War time transportation so well that he was knighted by King George, decorated by three governments. He became a British subject in 1919, remarking, "You can't use a visitor's card at a club forever." He was still with Great Eastern when Canada called him to revive the badly managed debt-gathering lines that became Canadian National.

Because Sir Henry's name is one of the greatest in railroadom, his resignation a great Canadian event, little was said last week of the smaller, quieter man who succeeds him--Samuel James Hungerford ("Sam" to a few friends, "S. J." to most), 60, for nine years vice president in charge of construction, operation and maintenance. His railroad career covers 46 years. It began just one year after Canadian Pacific spanned Canada, when he became a machinist's apprentice on Southeastern Railroad, which was later absorbed by CPR. In 1901 he was sent west from New Brunswick to be locomotive foreman for CPR at Cranbrook in southeastern British Columbia. Only two years later he was in muddy Calgary as master mechanic of the western division. In 1904 he was moved east to sprawling, plain-surrounded Winnipeg as superintendent of CPR's locomotive shops there which serve all its Western lines. In 1910 he left the position of foreman of all CPR shops to join the Canadian Northern as superintendent of rolling stock. His slow progression eastward was completed in 1915 when he was shifted to Toronto, there to become, in two years, general manager of Canadian Northern's eastern lines. In 1918 he be came an assistant vice president and now, acting president, he will soon in all probability be president in name as well as in power of the longest railroad in North America.

Too busy to dally in politics in the past, Mr. Hungerford gives the impression of being a man who will stick to the job on hand and command the respect of his employes, although he is far less dashing a character than Sir Henry. The Government last week pledged itself to non interference. Whether or not Mr. Hungerford can increase CNR's traffic, decrease its tremendous deficits, will probably be the final answer to the debatable question : Can any government run a railroad? Yet he may not have time to give an answer. For many a railroadman last week felt that Sir Henry's resignation may hurry what seems to be eventual, the unification of Canada's two great railroads whose passenger and freight cars, hotels, express services, and telegraph lines, compete from Montreal to Vancouver.

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