The Way Business Should Be Done: A Shining Example from the Past

Alexander Cassatt was born to a family of comfortable circumstances in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His parents came by their prosperity through a combination of education and hard work. They instilled in their children a sense that prosperous circumstances bring with it both an opportunity and a duty to use these advantages to benefit society. The Cassatt family felt guided by a tradition of integrated life-principles: to strive to excel, to believe in the power of ideals, to understand the value of education, to aspire to bring moral improvement of society, to seek to improve the circumstances of human existence by supporting scientific, technological, architectural and artistic progress. The children of this family felt led to believe that they had only to discover their talents, and then develop them for the good of the world. The most shining example of this family was Alexander Cassatt (1839-1906). After college, Alexander Cassatt found work on the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) as a track surveyor and then manager of pioneering railway construction projects into areas never before served by modern transportation. His technical skills, social intelligence and natural aptitude for making innovative improvements in the efficiency and safety of locomotive transportation enabled him to rise rapidly through the ranks of the PRR. He soon become one of its most important leaders in technical and logistical development. Indeed, Cassatt had a knack for finding and befriending the most talented engineers, technicians and architects of his time, inspiring and winning their utmost loyalty, selfless dedication and diligence. Cassatt could take people with a multiplicity of individual ideas and skill-sets, and then enable them to work together with synergy to create new pathways of achievement. By 1899, Cassatt had been elected President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and he was to lead it to the highest standards the railroad industry had ever known, forcing other major railroads to match him in order to stay competitive. He affirmed, enforced and extended policies of workplace safety. He built double and quadruple tracking to efficiently accommodate the travel and shipping needs of a growing society and expanding economy. He created separate corridors for freight traffic. He improved and helped standardize routing, signaling and traffic control methods to ensure the safest and conditions and fastest methods of coordinated train movements. Station stops were structurally improved to provide conveniences for the needs and comforts of travelers of every description. Viaducts were built to avoid conflict with highway traffic. Cassatt maintained the highest standards of wages, fair work hours, and comfortable retirement pension funds, ensuring he had the most loyal (and even adoring) workforce a CEO could ever hope for; in fact, there was never a strike during his ascending career through the company's principle administrative posts; he took such good care of the labor force that they never felt the need to strike! His greatest achievement though was building a direct and unbroken rail connection between New Jersey and New York City and between Long Island and New York City. He achieved this by creating sub-riparian tunnels using electrified locomotives (eliminating air pollution in confined spaces). No more did people have to rely on traversing the rough and congested intermediary waters of the East and Hudson Rivers to enter the cultural and business capital of the nation, where formerly trains had had to be loaded then floated to the opposite shore via dangerous barges. His second greatest achievement was building the Pennsylvania Station in New York City, with an accompanying stately post office building that handled national mails coming and going by train. These two structures were built in grand and lasting style. But it was the Pennsylvania Station that was perhaps one of the most magnificent architectural and engineering achievement the United States has ever known. Designed by the visionary architectural design firm of McKim, Mead and White, this public edifice flawlessly processed hundreds of trains and thousands of passengers a day. Its aesthetic graces were astonishing, modeled on the Roman Baths of Caracalla, but far, far larger. To build it, Cassatt had to fight the legal chicanery and bureaucratic obstructionism of corrupt political party machines, who liked to bilk the socioeconomic agonies of the status quo in which they luxuriantly wallowed. Moreover, in order to acquire the sheer necessary acreage for his railway complex which included an underground passenger train shed, its above-ground passenger support station, its railway post office and various auxiliary structures, he also had to clear out geographically entrenched criminal rackets that included everything from white slavery to slum landlords, negotiating a myriad real estate purchases from countless proprietors large and small, present and absent. He also had to fight his shortsighted investors. Many of them would have preferred safe mediocrity and fast profits, but Cassatt would not veer from his higher goals. His board remained loyal even under immense politically-motivated journalistic criticism to call a halt to his grand vision of improvements. Cassatt had always stood by the ethical side of the argument and won, and he had never stooped to short-sighted profiteering. He had even helped put down a corrupt system of favors carried out by lower management involving free rail passes and lowered freight charges for bullying clients who wanted preferment over their competitors. Cassatt set uniform policies that were fair and equal for both his company's clients and the financial security of the railroad's employees, thereby creating great institutional strength. Sadly, Cassatt died in 1907, just three years before Penn Station was completed in 1910. The terminal was the culmination of a project whose planning had begun in 1901, with actual construction starting in 1903. By unifying New York City and Long Island with the critical mid-latitude routes of the mainland, it was comparable in its importance to the transportation achievement of the Panama Canal. It had required the alliance of three railroads: The Pennsylvania Railroad, The New Jersey Railroad and The Long Island Railroad. Such an inter-corporate partnership could only have been achieved by a man of great intelligence harnessed to moral integrity, refined articulateness and compelling long-term vision. Penn Station, as it came to be affectionately known, was a monument to modern transportation, and provided more conveniences and amenities than any of today's shopping malls. It was built of lasting materials and soundly structured, characteristics that would have enabled the edifice to safely and proudly stand for centuries. In 1963 however, it was torn down to make room for plans by an allied group of short-sighted business investors whose principle achievement became Madison Square Garden. The beautiful building that was Penn Station, with its incredible Classical statuary, Doric columns, and decorative adornments of travertine marble, as well as its awe-inspiring spaces suffused with welcoming natural light from cathedral-like windows made its visitors feel like they were more than mere travelers but invitees to a palatial nexus where their adventures could either expectantly begin or happily end in the most inspiring surroundings. Like so much outgoing refuse, the transported remains of Cassatt's Penn Station is now a mere expanse of sinking rubble, summarily dumped over half a century ago now into a New Jersey swamp. And yet, however shameful and inglorious this end, Alexander Cassatt remains an example to follow for visionary entrepreneurs of our own time. Do not give up! Brush aside the small-minded naysayers! Build for the future! Build for the mutual and lasting benefit of all humankind. Treat your workers (without whom nothing would be possible) with all the respect and honorable compensation for their labors that you can. Your company and its achievements will shine on. When Cassatt died, he had doubled the Pennsylvania Railroad's assets, annual gross income and share values. It became the highest quality train service in the nation and ranked with the best in Europe. Unfortunately, a trend ensued in the latter half of the 20th century toward a policy of profiteering, seducing the business world into denaturing itself of a sense of responsibility to economic durability for America. The heinous destruction of Pennsylvania Station was just a symptom of this shift from civic excellence to crass selfishness in the world of business. Be that as it may, the larger question for us today revolves around those wonderful passenger trains that inspired all this in noble men like Cassatt. Passenger trains remain the most democratic form of transportation humankind has ever developed, serving people of all incomes and all purposes, both humble and grand. Now our gas prices are steadily rising, our computerized automobiles are growing more expensive to purchase and maintain. People who understand that a modern democratic society cannot prosper without an efficient and stable system of transportation available to all, now realize that we must bring passenger trains back. Cassatt knew they were crucial to the success of his society then. He recognized this system of transportation would be necessary for the future success of the American people, and honored its importance with an impressive edifice. If we cannot bring "Old Penn Station" back, we can certainly bring back what it stood for. The modern passenger train is the most fuel efficient, and least polluting form of transportation in the world, and it is actually saving and building the economies of Europe, South Asia and East Asia. Because it is a safe and direct form of transportation, it has the power to take thousands of unnecessary private vehicles off the road, vehicles whose daily carbon output is making it an almost impossible challenge to combat global warming. It is time America joined the rest of the world in re-discovering the green utility of passenger trains. After all, we were once the leaders in locomotive transportation and long the envy of the world in this enterprise. We have the human and material resources right here on our own native soil. Let us become great again. Passenger trains can build the foundation for everyone's success. To the rested soul of Alexander Cassatt: we salute your spirit as our once and future hope!