Loree Out

Railroad presidents who sigh when they think of the magnificent open-field technique of Vanderbilt, Harriman, Gould and Hill, sighed again last week when Leonor Fresnel Loree, on the point of turning 80. resigned as president of Delaware & Hudson Co. Mr. Loree has a beard and a ferocious scowl. But despite his age and looks, he was always only on the fringes of the swashbuckling, end-of-the-century railroad men who ran railroads, the stock-market and a few States. He was a Harriman man, less of a giant than a tall man with aspirations.

Once he worked for the Pennsylvania. Then he was president of Baltimore & Ohio, and after that of Rock Island. In 1907 Harriman picked him for Delaware & Hudson, which ran 870 miles "from nowhere to nowhere" (meaning from Wilkes-Barre, Pa. to Montreal). He already was head of a "right of way and two streaks of rust"--Kansas City Southern, from Kansas City to Port Arthur, Texas. Before long they were both making good money. Then nothing more happened till Harriman died and the Interstate Commerce Commission began talking consolidation.

Time & again Mr. Loree tried to connect his two roads. Time & again the Commission shook its head. In the 1920s he inconspicuously bought into small Eastern lines like the Lehigh Valley and the Wabash, presented the Commission with a plan for a "fifth trunk line'' to rank with Pennsylvania, B. & O )., New York Central and C. & O. roads. The Commission shook its head again. To the open dismay of Mr. Loree, the Pennsylvania was allowed to buy up the Lehigh and the Wabash. But it was 1928. stocks had gone up, and Mr. Loree had $20,000,000 profit. There was plenty of cash in Delaware & Hudson when Depression hit.

Thereupon, at the bottom of the market, Mr. Loree used some of the cash to buy a clear 10% of New York Central stock. It was easily the largest New York Central holding. Railroad men spoke of the new Leonor Loree. But last week, six years after the purchase. New York Central stock was worth half what he paid for it, and Mr. Loree was weary of the game.

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