CHARLES T. POLLARD

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One of the first to be touched by the new industrial energy of railroads in Alabama was Colonel Charles T. Pollard. He came to Alabama about 1840, and located at Montgomery, where he exhibited high qualities as a commercial genius and by his uniform courtesy came to impress the people of the capital city not only, but leading men elsewhere in the great world of business. He established a wide compass of business relations and the integrity of his character was such that he commanded financial confidence in the highest circles. Railroading was a new feature and the management of enterprises necessarily colossal, both with respect to executive ability and financial provision, and it therefore required the highest qualities of skill and sagacity. Few men of that type were to be found in those early days, and enterprises so vast, had by their very nature, to develop them. Men frequently expand under demanding conditions, and when qualified with latent endowments rise with the constant pressure of demand to the utmost limit of capability.

There can be little doubt that the decline in the statesmanship of the South is largely due to the drain which has been made on men of great capability to occupy positions in the expanding world of commerce. Broad-brained, wide-visioned and many-sided men used to find their way into politics and command the heights of statesmanship, but in demand to existing conditions they are now found in the offices of presidents and managers of immense interests. As the industrial world has widened, inventive genius has found fuller play and stupendous enterprises have come to demand extraordinary headship. These men had to be developed by conditions, as enterprises grew and vast plans ripened.

For reasons already partly assigned, railroads were in their initial stages bunglingly managed as compared with the gigantic grasp with which they are now manipulated. Only occasionally was one found in those early days who was capable of responding to the demands of stupendous enterprises. Colonel Pollard was one of the few. A manager of large interests and a successful conductor of enterprises through financial storms, while others went down under a terrible strain, he was logically called into requisition in the infant days of railroad enterprise. He had faced financial hurricanes when merchants and business men generally, bankers and managers of great interests, as they were then accounted, had been drawn into the maelstrom of ruin, and Colonel Pollard had safely piloted his affairs through.

Naturally enough, when the West Point and Montgomery railway was threatened with disaster, he was summoned from his private affairs to the rescue. It was he who revived this important public utility, infused into it new life, and placed it first on a basis safe, sound and solid. The excellent skill here displayed resulting in his being called into connection with Alabama’s chief artery of commerce, the Louisville and Nashville railroad, and by means of his ability to command American and European capital, he was enabled to plant it on a permanent basis.

To know this giant king of finance was to confide in him. His judgment was as clear as amber, his power of adjustment in the management of vast concerns phenomenal, his skill in execution rare, his bearing that of one conscious of power; his courtesy toward his peers and subordinates always respectful, and his integrity unquestioned.

Facing a great undertaking he measured up to it. Thus rarely equipped he was a public benefactor at a time when such men were scarcely to be found. With a penetrative sagacity he could see clearly at once the merits and demerits of a given proposal or undertaking, and to its utmost limit he could measure it and speak with accuracy of the possibility of its success or failure. Laden with weighty responsibility which grew commensurately with the expansion of the railway interests with which he was connected, it is extraordinary that he was able to preserve so remarkable a poise. A man of less ability would have chafed and worn under conditions like these, but with his head raised above the clouds of fret and commotion, he was invariably serene. It is with pleasure that his former subordinates today refer to his kindly courtesy and ever polite bearing, even to the humblest man. Under the heaviest depression no cloud was on his brow, no tang of tartness in his speech. Of untiring energy and an activity which would have overwhelmed most men, Colonel Pollard moved along the even tenor of his way, commanding the respect of all alike from the highest to the humblest.

Without precedents to guide, for railroads were new, Colonel Pollard had to rely on his own inherent qualifications in the manipulation of mighty interests. The most substantial qualities were needed to master conditions of vastness, and a creative genius was necessary to find methods of accomplishment. In Colonel Pollard these were inherent and needed only the occasion for their evolution.

Few are able to appreciate the pressure of the burden borne by one under conditions like these. With agencies moving in divers and remote directions, and yet moving toward a common end and purpose, one in Colonel Pollard’s position had to dispatch business with electrical facility. A sudden juncture reached had to be promptly met. The busy brain of one in such circumstances had to be ubiquitous, directing, managing, suggesting, dictating, hour after hour, over a vast area of diversified interests. To lose one’s poise under such conditions meant jar and jostle to the enterprises fostered, but to be able to grapple with problems which came trooping in every day, meant generalship of the highest order. These forces were happily combined in Colonel Pollard. He could turn from one interest to another with ease and facility, and his constructive genius would readily grapple with a grave situation, attended by a flash of suggestiveness that was phenomenal. To him official labors came easy, for he was built for a station like this.For many years Colonel Pollard lived in Montgomery an honored citizen, and most fortunate for the young employes who came within the circle of his influence, he proved how one laden with grave matters could still be polite and courteous, and thus preserve universal respect, however unfavorable the environment.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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