Education: Railroaders

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It is not by chance that a railroad clerk or track laborer rises to be president of the system. It is not by chance that universities select the heads of their boards of trustees and the chairmen of their endowment-raising committees. It is not by chance that Daniel Willard, president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, now fills those two positions at Johns Hopkins University exactly as Howard Elliott, chairman of the Northern Pacific Railroad, fills them at Harvard University.

Mr. Willard was elected last week, after twelve years on the Johns Hopkins board and three years as mainspring of a committee that has raised some six millions to expand and endow the Johns Hopkins hospital and medi-cal school. Now he will be, with President Goodnow, the mainspring by which Johns Hopkins means to eliminate its elementary instruction, reorganize itself on its original lines of advanced and research work (TIME, March 8) and raise six more millions to finance the change.

They say that Daniel Willard's mind proceeds like one of his express trains—from start to destination without local stops. It must have run that way always. Born on a Vermont farm, he won a teacher's certificate before he was 16 and taught while finishing high school. Lacking funds to go to Dartmouth, he made the most of the Massachusetts Agricultural College—made too much of it, wore out his eyes. He got a track laborer's job with the idea of rising to the throttle of a locomotive, which he did in two years, at 20. Out west the infant Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie road offered openings. Young Willard steered clear of cards and drink, the avocations of the human riffraff that used to infest young railroads. Then the B. & 0. sent for him. He assisted its general manager for two years, when the president of the Erie sent for him. In 1910, before he was 50, the B. & 0. sent for him again, this time to be president. His conduct of that line wag such that in 1917, President Wilson picked him to direct the biggest railroading job ever attempted in this country—integrating all U. S. lines under Federal control.

He rides constantly on his own trains, studies them, studies commuters, calls his private car his "business" car. "There is nothing more important than accuracy," says Daniel Willard. His eyes flash, his slim figure, almost boyish 'at 65, straightens. He adds, "There is romance in this business." . . .