CHAPTER 18
IN THE LIFE OF A FAMILY BUSINESS, THERE IS NO PERIOD MORE perilous than when the specter of succession arises—and begins to haunt every major decision, every minor decision, every conversation, and, ultimately, every fleeting glance. That period can last a week, a year, a decade, or sometimes forever. But once it starts, almost anything can happen.
By the mid-1890s, Ford and Dave had to be honest with themselves. They had been acting as “Fred Harvey” almost as long as Fred Harvey himself. In the day-to-day world of the company, Fred Harvey had transcended mere mortality to become a watchful, powerful entity, equally capable of benevolence or vengeance. He had become the corporate father-figurehead, a management tool used to keep employees focused on the high aspirations of the company and the dire consequences of mediocrity. And the more often Fred was away, pulling strings from behind the curtain, the more his mystique grew, not unlike a fictional character soon to be created in Kansas: the Wizard of Oz.
On January 24, 1896, Ford and Judy Harvey had a second child, a son they named Frederick Henry Harvey—“Freddy.” As sixty-year-old Fred Harvey held his namesake in his wiry arms, it was clearer than ever that the time had come to make a decision about succession. Ford was a different kind of executive than his father—less nervously demanding and more quietly commanding, able to motivate calmly with a raised eyebrow and subtle turn of phrase rather than a smashed plate. And he was more than ready to lead. Yet, like so many sons in family businesses, he didn’t know how to broach the subject with his father without seeming disrespectful.
The new president of the Santa Fe, however, knew exactly how to do it.
Edward Payson Ripley prided himself on being blunt. He got away with it because he was extremely bright as well as exceedingly large. At fifty, Ed Ripley was still a towering presence; nobody doubted him when he boasted of having nine Mayflower-era blacksmiths in his family tree. Even his walrussy mustache was formidable. One newspaper described him as “massive of head and features, tall, broad, flat as an athlete at the abdomen; huge of chin, nose, and mouth; gray of eyes and leonine—a man, in short, as one would picture on a tremendous black horse, armor-clad, and carrying a heavy sword.” His only physical weakness was his vision, but he refused to wear spectacles. So his disarming frankness was partly attributable to the fact that he often couldn’t focus on people when speaking to them, and so couldn’t see how they were reacting.
Fred had known Ed Ripley forever. They grew up in the business together—when Fred was general western agent for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, Ripley was its passenger and freight agent for the East—and they reconnected when Ripley, then a vice president at the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, sat on the steering committee for the Chicago world’s fair. It was a pleasant surprise when Ripley was made president of the railroad—renamed the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway after emerging from receivership—as it looked toward its future. Yet, because Ripley understood the Harvey family situation so well, his ascendancy also signaled the moment of truth.
Ripley went discreetly to his board of directors to find out how much leeway he had in determining his old friend’s future. Would they consider letting him fire Fred and buy out his eating house business if Ripley decided it was in the best interests of the railroad? As he pointed out to the board, he didn’t want to lose the Fred Harvey prestige if he could help it, but “we are under no obligation, moral or legal, to continue … as he has gotten rich out of the opportunities he has had.” Ripley believed the railroad could make a handsome profit taking over the eating houses, and even suggested they could probably swipe Ford—whom he considered “an exceedingly capable man”—for a handsome salary.
But, luckily for Fred, the railroad was still reluctant to invest its own cash in the food-service business. The board told Ripley to make a new deal with the legendary restaurateur—although, this time, on terms more advantageous to the railroad. If Fred Harvey wasn’t going to pay any rent, the railroad wanted a share, at least, of his profits.
Fred, ailing again, was already in England when the time came to negotiate, so the talks began without him, with Ford and Dave representing the company. As the deal-making became intense, Fred wrote to Ripley from London, lamenting that while he wished to return and get involved, the matter would have to wait until he felt better.
Ripley, however, wanted to deal with “Fred Harvey,” the innovative American company, not Fred Harvey, the aging international health seeker. So he decided to do Ford—and ultimately Fred as well—a big favor. He took it upon himself to tell the old man it was time to retire.
Ripley initially dictated a rather formal response to Fred’s letter, saying he was sorry to hear of his illness and didn’t feel it was necessary for him to rush home, since “I do not think your interests are at all likely to suffer in the hands of your son.”
When it came time to sign the typewritten letter, however, Ripley decided it needed a more personal touch. Below his signature, he hand-wrote: “FH, Stay til you feel like coming home. You have but one life to live and you have worked hard enough. Let the boys do it now.”
And with that gesture, Ford Harvey was freed to seek his own greatness—which he chose to do, always, in the name of his father.
Over the next six months, Fred gave his son a broad power of attorney, and let him negotiate a new ten-year deal with the Santa Fe Railway to manage all its restaurants, hotels, and dining cars. The timing was perfect, because the U.S. economy was slowly starting to pull out of its rut like a creaky locomotive finally picking up steam.
While haggling with Ripley over the contract, Ford and Dave also made a subtle decision that forever changed the company’s fortunes, and would later be seen as a turning point in the history of American business. They decided to avoid any public acknowledgment of the family succession.
It would have been traditional to mark the milestone by changing the name of the company to Fred Harvey & Son. (Or Fred Harvey & Sons, since Byron, currently studying at Yale, might one day want to join the business.) Instead, they chose to do just the opposite.
The name of the company would remain “Fred Harvey.” Not “Fred Harvey Company” or “Fred Harvey, Inc.” Just “Fred Harvey.” The railroad would continue advertising its “Meals by Fred Harvey.” At the restaurants and hotels, menus and other printed materials would make a point of noting “Your host is Fred Harvey.”
The decision, while semantically tricky, was unambiguously brilliant. For the rest of Fred Harvey’s life, and for decades afterward, patrons would feel as if they were being taken care of by Fred Harvey himself.
And, in a way, they were.
UNDER THE NEW DEAL with Ripley, Ford became the exclusive concessionaire for all depots and dining cars associated with the Santa Fe. The contract continued to give the company free rent, utilities, and transportation, but Ford now agreed to split his profits with the railroad at the end of each year—after every possible expense had been deducted. As for dining cars, Ford made the same deal his father had with the railroad’s receivers: The Santa Fe agreed to reimburse Fred Harvey twenty-five cents for each meal served.
Ford also convinced Ripley to let him take over all the depot newsstands and gift shops for the Santa Fe. So, overnight, Fred Harvey became the dominant distributor of newspapers and periodicals west of the Mississippi. Ford now controlled newsstands stretching from Chicago to Los Angeles, as well as all the “butchers” who hawked reading material, snacks, and bag lunches to passengers by roaming the aisles or pushing their carts alongside the train to pass their goods up through the open windows. This also made him a major national player in a business near and dear to his father’s heart: cigars.
These new contracts immediately doubled the number of cities with Fred Harvey eating houses—or “Harvey Houses,” as they were coming to be called—since they included all the lines the Santa Fe had partnered with during the years when the railroad and the restaurateur were feuding. The new locations were on the St. Louis & San Francisco railroad, which was nicknamed the Frisco, even though its tracks ran from St. Louis to northern Texas, and the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe, which continued down through the Lone Star State to the Gulf of Mexico.
And since he was his father’s son, Ford asked Ripley for one more thing: permission to start a side business, outside of the Santa Fe contract. He wanted to start bidding to run the restaurants and newsstands in the new “union stations” that were springing up across the nation. While Indianapolis and Kansas City had early union stations, most cities still had individual depots for each railroad and were in the process of making deals to begin building central terminals. The first of these was going to be in St. Louis, and Ford snared the contract to run its restaurants and newsstands.
St. Louis Union Depot turned out to be the largest and most glamorous railroad depot in the nation, and certainly the most architecturally eclectic—a mesmerizing jumble of strong colors and Romanesque style with sixty-five-foot-high barrel-vaulted ceilings in its Grand Hall and a Victorian train shed covering eleven acres, built at a cost of some $6.5 million ($172 million). For Ford and Dave, it was a daring leap forward into the company’s largest market yet, its first major city. For Fred it was deeply nostalgic; he now owned one of the top restaurants in the city where he had first started, and first failed.
Soon Harvey Girls were serving the dishes that made Fred Harvey beloved in St. Louis, which came to include the Harvey Girl Special Little Thin Orange Pancakes, based on a recipe from the head vegetable cook’s grandmother; the cream of Wisconsin cheddar cheese soup; the Plantation Beef Stew served over hot biscuits; and the chef’s special sautéed cauliflower greens. In addition to new recipes, working in a big city meant new challenges: To help the numerous immigrants passing through the station who barely spoke English, Ford set up a separate side dining room with Harvey Girls who were multilingual.
The move into St. Louis also brought Fred Harvey a much bigger national profile because not long after Ford took over, St. Louis hosted the 1896 Republican National Convention. Harvey Girls were serving at some of the power meals that led to Ohio governor William McKinley’s nomination to run against populist orator and ideologue William Jennings Bryan.
Besides all the expansion that happened almost immediately in 1896, Ripley had ambitious plans for the future. He was building new tracks between Los Angeles and San Francisco and expected that soon there would need to be Harvey Houses all over California. He also decided it was time for the Santa Fe to become much more aggressive about its passenger business, which had always taken a backseat to shipping. Just as the Santa Fe had always helped farmers, ranchers, miners, and manufacturers who would then use the railroad to ship their goods, Ripley now wanted to “seed” the passenger business. The Harvey “standard” of passenger care was a key to his strategy.
He started with grand personal gestures to demonstrate the Santa Fe’s newfound love of its riders. When the fast, new all-Pullman train was put into service between Chicago and Los Angeles—with a special dining car menu of “good things from Mr. Harvey’s plethoric larder,” including bluepoints, fillet of sole à la Normande, sweetbread cutlets with French peas in Claret sauce, and tenderloin of beef with mushrooms—a uniformed boy greeted passengers at the halfway point in Colorado, presenting every lady with a bouquet of roses, carnations, and violets, and every gentleman an alligator wallet.
But Ripley’s master plan was to build a chain of new trackside hotels along the Santa Fe route, big, beautiful destination hotels where tourists would be compelled to linger for several days. All these hotels would of course feature the fine food and impeccable service of Fred Harvey.
It sounded like quite a ride.
FORD DID HIS BEST to make sure that his father got to experience much of the excitement. When Fred was in England, he and his son exchanged letters and telegrams almost daily. They discussed everything from business strategy (Fred urged his son never to let his feelings “interfere with the strictest business principals [sic]”) to what lovely gifts of European foodstuffs, liquor, and cutlery Fred could ship back to the States, so that Ford could shower the company’s friends in high places with Harvey-style swag.
They wrote a lot about the family. Like all sick people, Fred was obsessed with everyone else’s health. He worried about his wife—who he thought should eat better and drink fewer “spirits”—and especially their daughter May, who had always been somewhat sickly and was being told by doctors that she needed the “Alexander operation,” a now-discredited surgery to “correct” the position of the uterus in women having menstrual problems.
They also corresponded about their mutual annoyance with some extended family members, whom Fred was about ready to disown. As he grew wealthier, his two sisters—Annie in London, Eliza in St. Louis—and their children had become more and more demanding. After Eliza’s son, George, solicited help yet again in a financial matter, Fred wrote to Ford, “The amount you gave him was quite enough & all I am willing to donate. That family has had enough, as well as my sister Annie’s family. She never has appreciated what I have done for her children, so I am unwilling to do any more.”
He and Ford also corresponded about the farm in Emporia, as well as the XY ranch out in Colorado, which they moved farther west yet again, closer to the La Junta depot. Fred reportedly sold his forty-five hundred acres in Granada for $200,000 ($5.3 million) to a syndicate from Bloomington, Illinois.
When Fred did return to the United States, he and Ford would often spend time together in Emporia, which was just a hundred miles from Kansas City. On a hill overlooking the 750-acre property, they had built a handsome fourteen-room home with the first indoor bathroom in the area. The property had several barns, as well as bunkhouses and carriage houses for staff and guests. Fred had bought it in 1890, as an experiment to see whether the company could grow some of its own corn and vegetables and raise some of its own beef and dairy cattle. They were now raising horses there as well.
The entire Harvey family tried to get to the Emporia farm for at least two weeks every summer, during which Fred and Ford did a lot of hunting and fishing. They were a familiar seasonal sight for Emporians. One ranch manager liked to tell the story of seeing father and son return after a particularly long day of hunting. He asked what they had gotten.
“Wet clothes and a hungry stomach” was Fred’s reply.
In Emporia, Fred and Ford had become friendly with journalist William Allen White, the editor of the Emporia Gazette, who often dined at the Harvey depot restaurant with his wife. For years the Harveys knew him as a talented but provincial small-town newspaper editor, but in the summer of 1896 he suddenly became a player in national politics. A sarcastic editorial he had dashed off before leaving on vacation was discovered by the McKinley campaign and was so quickly and widely distributed that by the time White returned from his trip, he was famous.
The editorial, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” took potshots at the Populist Party of William Jennings Bryan, making fun of the idea that what Kansas needed was “fewer white shirts and brains, fewer men with business judgment, and more of those fellows who boast that they are ‘just ordinary clodhoppers’ … who hate prosperity and who think because a man believes in national honor, he is a tool of Wall Street … Whoop it up for the ragged trousers; put the lazy, greasy fizzle, who can’t pay his debts, on an altar, and bow down and worship him.”
The Republicans loved White’s message that Middle America still needed a social and political elite. In return, they made him their homespun literary hero and invited him to help write their campaign platforms.
William Allen White’s fame as “the sage of Emporia” grew rapidly. As he traveled more and more, Fred arranged for him to have a pass for free meals at his Santa Fe eating houses. It was a friendly gesture but also a smart one. White was already a big fan of Fred Harvey, and now he would occasionally pontificate in print, to his growing national audience, about the joys of Harvey House food—which he missed even when dining in the best restaurants in New York.
“The more one sees of the world,” White wrote, “the more he respects Fred Harvey. He is the Great American Caterer.”
IT WASN’T LONG before the Harvey Houses became a sensation in a new broad swath of America, starting in St. Louis, going across Missouri, down through Oklahoma and Arkansas, and all over Texas. (The Harvey newsstands extended even farther, into Tennessee, Mississippi, and as far southeast as Mobile, Alabama.) With all these new locations, the “civilizing” influence of Harvey Girls, fine food, and jacket-only dining rooms reached more of the country’s rough patches. In one Texas town, the newspaper heralded the coming of Harvey Girls by noting that “no smirking, tip-seeking negro stands back of one’s chair in a Harvey restaurant, figuring out just how much he will get for his minimum service. Emoluments are given in the realm of the Harvey girl as they were originally intended to be given—in appreciation of the service rendered and the attentive interest shown by the clever girls in white.”
To fill the positions for all these new restaurants, the company went on a hiring spree for new Harvey Girls, promising good jobs, good pay, and, of course, the company’s legendary marital prospects. One Harvey Girl recalled being told, “We’ll guarantee you a good railroadman for a husband.” But she was also taught how to handicap desirability: “You learned that brakemen were a dime a dozen, engineers were good, but men in the communications department, like telegraphers, were very good.”
The Fred Harvey training was brought to a new generation of young women—including all the inside jokes and hazing. When a new girl cleared the table after serving her first order of bluepoint oysters, it wasn’t uncommon for one of the others to pull her aside and convince her she was expected to wash out those shells so they could be reused. Occasionally a kindly veteran would intercede to prevent the embarrassment—one remembered telling a rookie to take the clean shells, put them in her bag, and tell the other girls she had decided to start a collection.
As usual, the sudden influx of bright, single young Harvey Girls generated more excitement among men than women. “We caused a lot of jealousy among the local girls,” recalled one Harvey Girl. “Sometimes after a dance where one or more Harvey Girls had been socializing with a lot of the local men, young women from [the town] would come into the lunchroom and find fault with everything we did—the toast was too brown, the eggs not the way they ordered them—petty things. We’d just grin and bear it.”
The competition, however, was real. “You know, nearly every single unmarried man in [town] proposed to me!” recalled one Harvey Girl. “There were an awful lot of single men … I finally got engaged to a young man who was an engineer with the Santa Fe. His father was a big lawyer in Nebraska. We were engaged a few months … when he started to grow this mustache. He kissed me one night and that mustache made me mad. I asked him to shave it off—I told him I wouldn’t marry him if he didn’t. Well, he wouldn’t shave it, so I gave him back his ring.”
The newspapers started paying more attention to the impact of all these Harvey Girl marriages. William Curtis, a well-known Chicago journalist who covered the Southwest and Latin America, wrote:
[Fred Harvey] is responsible for a great deal of the growth and a great deal of the happiness in this part of the country. He has done more than any immigration society to settle up the Southwest and still continues to provide wives for ranchmen, cowboys, railway hands and other honest pioneers … and the successful results of his matrimonial bureau are found in every community. It must not be forgotten that a precedent for Mr. Harvey’s enterprise was established by the first English settlers in America. Two cargoes of wives were sent out to the colonists of Jamestown by the Virginia Society in London and were sold to bachelor colonists for 120 pounds of tobacco per wife—while Mr. Harvey does not even charge a commission.
But to the wives of travelers who were already married, these hundreds of single Harvey waitresses represented something else entirely. New Yorker memoirist Emily Hahn, who spent one college summer working for Fred Harvey, recalled childhood scenes of her parents arguing about Harvey Girls:
When my father … traveled every year in the West, Harvey Girls stood for much the same thing as businessmen’s secretaries often do today—they were hazards for stay-at-home wives. Harvey Girls were famous for looks as well as dexterity. Mother had half believed that my father was carrying on a flirtation with one of the young ladies, though even if he was it couldn’t have amounted to much—a gallant remark or two thrown at her, as she rushed past, across the heavy railway china.