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Saint Paul and Northern Pacific Railway Co. Issued to and signed by Daniel S. Lamont, C.S. Mellen and Geo. H. Earl

Inv# AG2118   Stock
Saint Paul and Northern Pacific Railway Co. Issued to and signed by Daniel S. Lamont, C.S. Mellen and Geo. H. Earl
State(s): Minnesota
Years: 1897

Stock issued to Daniel S. Lamont and signed on back. Signed by C.S. Mellen as president and Geo. H. Earl signs as secretary and on the back. Transferred to Jas. N. Hill. Important! Rare!

Daniel Scott Lamont (February 9, 1851 – July 23, 1905) was the United States Secretary of War during Grover Cleveland's second term.

He was employed as engrossing clerk and assistant journal clerk in the state capitol at Albany, New York, was a clerk on the staff of the Democratic state central committee in 1872, and was chief clerk of the New York department of state from 1875 to 1882.

In 1883, through his mentor Daniel Manning, Lamont was assigned to then-New York Governor Grover Cleveland's staff as a political prompter. He became private and military secretary with the honorary rank of colonel on the governor’s staff the same year, and continued in his service after Cleveland became president in 1885. Lamont also held employment with William C. Whitney in his business ventures in 1889.

From March 5, 1893 to March 5, 1897, Lamont was served as United States Secretary of War in President Cleveland's cabinet. Throughout his tenure, he urged the adoption of a three-battalion infantry regiment as a part of a general modernization and strengthening of the Army. Furthermore, Lamont recommended the construction of a central hall of records to house Army archives, and urged that Congress authorize the marking of important battlefields in the manner adopted for Antietam. He also recommended that lands being used by Apache prisoners at Fort Sill be acquired for their permanent use and their prisoner status be terminated.

After his service as Secretary of War, Lamont was vice president of the Northern Pacific Railway Company from 1898 to 1904. He was also a director of numerous banks and corporations. In 1889, he went into business with William C. Whitney (Cleveland's Secretary of the Navy) and Oliver Hazard Payne (organizer of the American Tobacco trust).

In August 1904, he was considered as a candidate for Governor of New York, with The New York Times writing "Qualifying experience in large public and private affairs, ability and executive capacity already demonstrated in high office, and personal character quite above all impeachment or assault unmistakably designate Daniel S. Lamont as a fit candidate for the Democrats of New York to name for the Governorship."

 

Charles Sanger Mellen (1852-1927) was an American railroad man whose career culminated in the presidencies of the Northern Pacific Railway 1897-1903 and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad 1903-1913.

Mellen was born in Lowell, Mass. His family soon moved to Concord, N.H. where he attended high school. Rather than attending college, he began his railroad career as a clerk at the Northern New Hampshire Railroad in Concord in 1870. After a short time at the Central Vermont Railroad and back to the Northern New Hampshire Railroad, he moved to the Boston and Lowell Railroad  (B&L) where he was promoted to Superintendent. The Boston and Lowell enjoyed revenues from leasing use of its lines into Boston to the Boston and Maine Railroad. Its policies led the B&M to build its own line into Boston and to fight with the B&L to the New Hampshire courts. Mellen was the President of the B&L when it lost its court case, and ceased independent operations in 1887 when it was leased to the Boston and Maine Railroad.  In 1892, he became general manager of the New York and New England Railroad, during a time when it was engaged in a bitter war with the New Haven. Charles P. Clark, the New Haven's president, hired him away from his competitor in November 1892. Mellen later testified that "[Clark] said I was too much of a nuisance on the New England." Mellen came to the attention of J. P. Morgan when he drove such a hard bargain with the New York Central that Chauncey Depew complained to Morgan, a director of both the New Haven and the New York Central.

Morgan's bank had become receiver of the Northern Pacific in August 1893. Mellen had an active role in the reorganization and became president of the NP when it emerged from receivership in 1896. During his tenure there, NP's gross revenue increased by 156%, some of the increase at the expense of the Great Northern Railroad (GN), part of the same supposedly anti-competitive Northern Securities Company as the NP. Furthermore James J. Hill, founder of the GN and part of the Trust, called Mellen and his Morgan-appointed predecessor there "overrated underachievers". But by this time Mellen had become a staunch Morgan man.  But yet he was not fully informed about the machinations of Morgan, Hill, and Harriman concerning stock in his company. On Monday, May 6, 1901 the Morgan interests were buying up NP stock. On Tuesday Mellen wired an NP vice president in New York "Cannot you give me some idea what is transpiring, to explain tremendous movement our stock?"

By 1903 Morgan's priorities had changed. Upon assuming the New Haven presidency in Mellen undertook a program of "Morganization" of transportation in New England that extended from railroads to steamship lines and street railways. The New Haven even bought control of the chronicly unprofitable New York, Ontario and Western RR. His approach was marked by high prices for acquisitions, costly construction, and high debt levels. The failed Morganization of the New Haven was among the great embarrassments to the Morgan interests. The Mellen-Morgan policies led to the New Haven's future financial troubles, culminating in bankruptcy in 1935. Mellen's Morganization efforts in New England also put him in executive positions at the Maine Central RR, the New York, Ontario and Western RR, and the Boston and Maine RR.

J. P. Morgan was aged and ill when the difficulties of the New Haven and other efforts led him to be summoned to give testimony before the Pujo Committee. Morgan died 1913-03-31. Mellen shouldered the burden of testifying and faced indictments. He provided colorful testimony concerning nearly $10,000,000 disbursed in connection with acquiring the franchise for the New York, Westchester and Boston Railway and resolving a franchise dispute with the New York and Portchester Railroad.

James Norman Hill (1843-1910) was the eldest son of James J. Hill, and like his father, was a railroad man. He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was the third child of ten.  Hill graduated from Yale in 1893, and began his business career as a clerk in a railroad office.  He held various subordinate positions, but in 1905 was made vice president of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. He was also the vice president of the Minnesota & International Railroad, a director of the Burlington and Erie Railroads, of the Northern Securities Company, Pacific Coast Company, a Vice President of the Northern Express Company, and a Trustee of the New York Trust Company and the Washington and Columbia Trust Company. James N. Hill also moved to Texas and is noted to have earned millions investing in the Texas Oil Company.

George H Earl was a secretary of many Northern Pacific railroads including Duluth, Crookston and Northern Railroad, Duluth and Manitoba Railroad, Fargo and Southwestern Railroad, Helena and Jefferson County Railroad, Helena and Red Mountain Railroad, James River Valley Railroad, Jamestown and Northern Railroad, Little Falls and Dakota Railroad, Northern Pacific, Fergus and Black Hills Railroad, Northern Pacfic, La Moure and Missouri River Railroad, Rocky Mountain Railroad of Montana, Sanborn, Cooperstown and Turtle Mountain Railroad, and the Spokane and Palouse Railway.

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Condition: Excellent

A stock certificate is issued by businesses, usually companies. A stock is part of the permanent finance of a business. Normally, they are never repaid, and the investor can recover his/her money only by selling to another investor. Most stocks, or also called shares, earn dividends, at the business's discretion, depending on how well it has traded. A stockholder or shareholder is a part-owner of the business that issued the stock certificates.

Item ordered may not be exact piece shown. All original and authentic.
Price: $815.00