C. E. Perkins
Cincinnati, 1840 - 1907, Westwood, Massachusetts
In the spring of 1859 John Murray Forbes of Boston, a second cousin of Perkins, offered the young man a $30-a-month clerkship in the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad. Forbes had earlier earned a fortune in China and in the 1850s had a major stake in the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (CB&Q) Railroad, which had recently acquired the Burlington & Missouri River (B&MR) Railroad. The eighteen-year-old Perkins quickly accepted the offer and moved west to Burlington, Iowa, in August 1859.
Perkins's job was to assist Charles Russel Lowell run the Burlington land office of the short 75-mile Iowa line. When Lowell resigned from the B&MR in 1860, Perkins was made assistant treasurer and land agent. Because of the Civil War, little additional mileage was added to the line in the early 1860s, but Perkins was appointed assistant treasurer and secretary in 1862. The lack of new construction in the early 1860s gave Perkins a chance to become familiar with the day-to-day operations of the railroad.
In 1864 Perkins married his cousin, Edith Forbes, daughter of Captain Robert Bennet Forbes of Milton, Massachusetts. The couple had seven children. In 1865 Perkins was made general superintendent of the Iowa line. He hoped to make this line the main feeder of the CB&Q for freight going west and thereby displace the Hannibal & St. Joseph line, and in 1869 Perkins's Iowa road was completed westward to the Missouri River and Council Bluffs. In the same year the B&MR in Nebraska was chartered and given a federal land grant.
Perkins was a director of the new Nebraska road and placed in charge of construction, but he refused to desert his home in Burlington. The 191-mile line went to Kearney, and a junction with the Union Pacific was completed in the late summer of 1872. In 1873 Perkins was made vice president and general manager of the B&MR in Nebraska, shortly after the CB&Q had obtained a lease of the Iowa road. Perkins's railroad career had been aided by his relationship with Forbes, but his continued promotions were more a result of merit and ability than of nepotism. In 1875 Perkins was elected to the CB&Q board of directors and a year later was made vice president of the line. On 1 October 1881 he became president of the CB&Q, a position he would hold for twenty years; he succeeded Forbes who had been president since 1879. Perkins still considered Forbes his mentor.
Perkins insisted on keeping his home and office in Burlington. He was attached to "The Apple Trees," the spacious house he had earlier built in Burlington, the thriving Iowa city on the Mississippi. Perkins was frequently called to the CB&Q main office in Chicago and to points on his growing system, but he preferred to direct the affairs of his railroad from the quiet of his home town. During his twenty-two years with the CB&Q, the system had grown from about 400 miles to more than 2,900 miles. Under Perkins the line continued to grow. It was extended to Denver early in 1882.
In 1883 the CB&Q regained possession of the Hannibal & St. Joseph line, acquiring it from Jay Gould. A Fast Mail service between Chicago and Council Bluffs was established in March 1884. In the summer of 1886 a new route along the Mississippi River through Wisconsin was opened to St. Paul, and an extension to St. Louis was completed in March 1894. In October 1894 a new CB&Q line through South Dakota and Wyoming made a connection with the Northern Pacific at Billings, Montana. During Perkins's presidency, about 5,000 miles had been acquired or built, and the total system, in ten midwestern states, had expanded to 7,900 miles by 1901. During the twenty years operating revenue climbed from $21 million to $50 million. Yearly cash dividends were as high as 8 percent in the early 1880s but dropped to 4 percent in the early 1890s.
Perkins had been opposed to the Granger Movement in Iowa and was an early critic of the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act, which prohibited the pooling of rail traffic. He believed that wages should be set by the bedrock law of supply and demand and that any pension system would only demoralize employees. He held that labor strikes should be met with firmness, and during the strike of 1877 he shut down all train movement in Iowa until the strike collapsed.
But Perkins had a strong sense of fiduciary responsibility. When he discovered in the mid-1870s that the CB&Q River Roads, three short branch lines located north of Burlington, were to be constructed under questionable contracts, his complaints resulted in the resignation of several CB&Q directors. Like other top CB&Q officials Perkins had the opportunity to make nearly risk-free investments in Iowa and Nebraska land located near projected rail routes. However, Perkins gave a large portion of his personal fortune to protect the depositors and shareholders of the First National Bank of Lincoln, Nebraska, which was facing failure in the late 1890s.
One of the first "modern" railroad presidents, early in his presidency Perkins insisted on collecting detailed statistics on operations, traffic, and revenue, and he introduced more promotional advertising than earlier presidents. A shy man, Perkins rarely gave public speeches. Rather, he sent his subordinates dozens of memoranda insisting that work be delegated and employees be trusted to do their work, that all company gossip be ignored, and that the feelings of those being supervised be regarded. When Perkins resigned as president in 1901, the CB&Q was generally regarded as one of the strongest and best-managed lines in the nation. Many of his peers considered him to be one of the best railroad presidents in office. In addition, he was a well-read gentleman of wit and intelligence who enjoyed lively conversation, hunting, and travel. Three or four years after his retirement Perkins established a new home in Westwood, Massachusetts, where he died.
Bibliography
Archival materials on Perkins are in the Burlington Archives (1851-1901) in the Newberry Library in Chicago. Excellent material on his life and career is in Richard C. Overton, Perkins/Budd: Railway Statesmen of the Burlington (1982). The standard work on John Murray Forbes, which mentions Perkins, is Henry G. Pearson, An American Railroad Builder: John Murray Forbes (1911). Many of Perkins's letters are in Thomas C. Cochran, Railroad Leaders, 1845-1890 (1953). The best history of the CB&Q is Overton, Burlington Route: A History of the Burlington Lines (1965), and a fine review of Perkins's career in Iowa is John L. Larson, Bonds of Enterprise (1984). A tribute to Perkins is in the Railroad Gazette, 22 Nov. 1907, p. 617.
John F. Stover
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John F. Stover. "Perkins, Charles Elliott";
http://www.anb.org/articles/10/10-01299.html;
American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
Access Date: Tue Aug 06 2013 12:34:06 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)
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