to John Harley's introduction as shareholder and director it could get
no consideration in the way of freights from those giant corporations
which have to do with beef and sugar and oil--it being both slow and
crooked as a railroad--thereafter it was given all it could haul at
rates even with the best, and its prosperity became such that fifty-five
points were added to the quoted value of its stock.

It is possible that John Harley's nearness to Senator Hanway had
something to do with founding for him a railway and a coal-mine
popularity. The vote of a Senator may be important to armor plate and
shipbuilding concerns; as much might be said of companies that deal in
beef and sugar and oil. The action of a Senator may even become of
moment to a steamship line. The last was evidenced on a day when those
nineteen suddenly refused to purchase further coal from the Harley
mines. They were buying five millions of tons a year, those five
millions finding their way to the sea over the railway of which John
Harley was a director and in which he owned those sheaves of stocks, and
a fortune rose or fell by that refusal. The steamboats said they would
have no more Harley coal; it was stones and slates, they said.

Senator Hanway at once introduced a bill, with every chance of its
passage, which provided for a tariff reduction of ten per cent. _ad
valorem_ on goods brought to this country in American ships. Since the
recalcitrant nineteen were, to the last rebellionist among them, foreign
ships, flying alien flags, this threatened preference of American ships
took away their breath. The owners of those lines went black with rage;
however, their anger did not so obscure them but what they saw their
penitent way to readopt the Harley coal, and with that the mining and
carriage and sale of those annual five millions went forward as before.
The Hanway bill, which promised such American advantages, perished in