“As always, the public is beginning to understand the need for reform after the same public has been fleeced out of millions of dollars.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1932
Husky “highballing” James Symes was one of the more powerful men in American business in the 1960s, serving as the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, or “Pennsy.” But he didn’t get the job because he knew railroads, but because he knew backslapping. Symes was first put on the fast-track for corporate leadership as a young man because of his skill at shortstop on the company’s very WASP-y baseball team. Under his leadership, the railroad merged with its biggest rival, the New York Central, and it all collapsed in the largest bankruptcy of the era.
The two companies, once the most dynamic in America, creating industrialization itself, eventually turned into financialized slop. And the key personnels’ skillset reflected that. Symes could drink…
