Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 1 (1961).pdf/70



EW Year's Day of 1873 had passed but a short time when the traveling public was startled to learn from the newspapers that President Fox and his Board of Directors had sold out their interest in the South Side RR to the Boston banking firm of Jacob R. Shipherd & Co. of 24 Pine Street, New York. It was reported that the negotiations were consummated only when it was agreed at a meeting of the principal shareholders for each to sell a bare majority of his interest and retain the rest. Thus, not a single owner would be bought out, and the corporation would retain as large a group of the same individual stockholders as before.

The actual transfer of control took place on January 21, 1873, and, as a result, several of the important posts in the management of the company changed hands. Jacob Shipherd himself became president of the road, and a Mr. L. S. Canfield from the Warren & Franklin RR of Pennsylvania became superintendent.

It is an old saying that a new broom sweeps clean, and the new management was determined to let the employees and the public know that they proposed to infuse renewed energy and vim into the road. For example, on the morning of January 28 Mr. Canfield personally ran a train from Hempstead over the branch and main line to South Eighth Street in the record time of forty-eight minutes to the great pleasure of the commuters who usually made the run in an hour and twenty minutes.

To further impress the travelling public, and attract riders, Canfield made a fetish of running trains exactly on time all through the snows and heavy weather of January 1873. He gave Hempstead an express service and put on night trains to ingratiate himself with travellers. There was excellent reason to do this. The South Side RR originally had only the Long Island RR for a competitor and this competition was limited largely to Jamaica. With the opening of the Hempstead Branch, there was renewed